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• cmichel
• 14 Jul
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Excerpt from: “The Informant” – July 11, 2011 – 11:05 AM – By Sara Mayeux Santa Clara law professor W. David Ball has recently posted an interesting draft paper that breaks down California incarceration statistics county-by-county. He compares Alameda County to Southern California’s San Bernardino County, and finds a striking difference in how often these counties sentence offenders to state prison: Overall crime rates are nearly identical: Alameda is a little more violent and San Bernardino is a little worse for property crime. Both counties are part of the same state, governed by the same penal code and state judicial system, yet ten-year averages of prison usage for that time show two radically different outcomes: San Bernardinois prison population was more than twice as high, on average, as Alamedais, and it sent an average of more than three times as many inew felonsi to prison each year. [Full story:  http://informant.kalwnews.org/2011/07/why-the-bay-area-may-not-be-to-blame-for-prison-overcrowding/  ] For the research paper cited in this story:  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871427&

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Criminal justice research paper: “How Violent Crime Does Not Drive California Counties’ Incarceration Rates – And Why it…