Impact of defelonizing drug possession on recidivism

Abstract

Research SummaryCalifornia's Proposition 47 (Prop 47), passed in November 2014, sought to scale back punishment for selected drug and property offenses, making them misdemeanors rather than felonies. Although others have examined the impacts of Proposition 47 on crime rates, here we examine the impacts on a range of recidivism outcomes specifically for individuals convicted for drug possession offenses. We focus on the defelonization of drug possession because nationally evidence suggests that public and policy maker sympathy for reducing incarceration use is greatest for nonviolent drug offenders. Thus, the greatest relevance of Proposition 47 to the nation lies in its strategy of defelonizing drug possession. We draw on an ongoing data collection effort on criminal justice populations in 12 California counties and link these data to rearrest and reconviction data from county and state‐level sources. We find people who received drug possession convictions after Prop 47 had lower overall rearrest and reconviction rates than people with comparable convictions and criminal histories released prior to the proposition. Overall reductions in recidivism rates for Prop 47 drug offenders were driven by reductions in rearrest and reconviction for drug possession offenses. These findings are robust to a variety of specifications and sensitivity analyses. When we complicate the narrative of declines in nonviolent recidivism, however, we find evidence of a 2.8‐percentage‐point increase in rearrest for crimes against persons, mainly assaults and domestic violence. Reconviction rates for crimes against persons for drug possession offenders also increased by 1.1 percentage points.Policy ImplicationsThese findings add to the growing body of evidence that a targeted reform like Prop 47 does not result in increases in most measures of reoffending for people convicted of drug possession. Although we cannot rule out that the declines we observe in rearrest and reconviction are the result of behavioral change among offenders, it seems likely that those declines are partly, perhaps mostly, the result of changing decision‐making among law enforcement and prosecutors. Converting drug possession to be chargeable only as a misdemeanor has significantly reduced the likelihood individuals convicted of drug possession will return to jail or prison once they have been released and therefore stemmed some of the flow of people with such offenses through the system. Evidence from California, however, shows that there can be small increases in crimes against persons, which provides a cautionary note and points to the need to consider interventions that do not involve criminal justice responses in response to the negative aspects of drug use. Our conclusion discusses considerations in applying our findings to other states that have defelonized drug possession.