The Council of State Governments (CSG) announced the result of a new “unprecedented study of four California districts” which recommends that law enforcement and corrections work together to lessen crimes committed by people under supervision.
According to the CSG, police chiefs in Los Angeles, Redlands, Sacramento, and San Francisco commissioned the study which looked at data collected over a period of 3.5 years. The study, The Impact of Probation and Parole Populations on Arrests in Four California Cities sought to determine “to what extent do people on parole and probation contribute to crime, as measured by arrests?”
Some of the highlights of the report include the following information:
The majority of all adult felony and misdemeanor arrests involved people who were not currently under supervision. People under supervision accounted for only 22 percent of total arrests.
Whereas people under probation and parole supervision accounted for one out of every six arrests for violent crimes, they accounted for one out of every three drug arrests.
During a 3.5 year period in which total arrests fell by 18 percent, the number of arrestees involving individuals under parole supervision declined by 61 percent and by 26 percent for individuals under probation supervision.
The press release quotes former Sacramento police chief Rick Brazier, who has since retired, as stating ““When making an arrest, law enforcement officers typically try to determine if an individual is on probation or parole. Our assumption has been that people under probation and parole were driving our arrest activity, but the data suggests otherwise. This new information opens up opportunities for law enforcement agencies, which are grappling with huge budget cuts, to work with partners in probation and parole to be more efficient and targeted in our prevention, intervention, and enforcement efforts.”
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