Public Safety Realignment

In May 2011, the Supreme Court affirmed a 9th Circuit Court ruling that ordered the state to reduce its prison population. Although California’s prison population fell dramatically post-AB109, critics argued that releasing prisoners would lead to an increase in property crime. To test this hypothesis, Lofstrom and Raphael (2013) compared post-AB109 crime in California with crime in a matched synthetic control group of states (Abadie, Diamond and Hainmueller, 2010). They found an effect in Part I Auto Theft but no other crime. In a replication of the Lofstrom-Raphael synthetic control group analysis, we find no effect on any crime. We attribute this difference to two factors. First, the pre-intervention matched synthetic control group used by Lofstrom and Raphael was less than ideal. Second, due to the passage of time, we were able to construct a longer, better match control group.