California prison resentencing project yields modest results

A three-year effort to encourage California prosecutors to reconsider the sentences given to some people in state prison has resulted in a modest number of people being resentenced, but improvements are needed to speed review of more cases, according to a new RAND report.
 
During the project involving nine counties, more than 1,100 cases received an initial review. After comprehensive reviews by county district attorneys for the suitability for resentencing, 227 individuals eventually received new sentences and 174 of those offenders had been released from prison by the end of September 2024, according to the report. 
 
The California County Resentencing Pilot Program was established by the state legislature to support and evaluate a collaborative approach to exercising discretion in prosecutorial resentencing. The pilot project was established to review cases where the sentence may benefit from additional examination. 

Fifty-six percent of the cases that district attorney offices referred for resentencing involved individuals who were over the age of 50. Nearly 79% of cases involved crimes against persons, with the most common being robbery, assault or battery, and assault with a deadly weapon.  
 
Cases involving third-strike sentences were a clear priority for prosecutor-initiated review. While 7% of the individuals incarcerated in state prison from the pilot counties are serving third-strike sentences, such cases accounted for 43% of all cases referred for resentencing. Overall, 85% of the cases referred for resentencing had at least one sentence enhancement, such a receiving a longer sentence because of a prior conviction. 
 
Researchers recommend a number of ways to improve the program, including more funding, making sure there are judges dedicated to overseeing each county’s resentencing efforts, training for district attorneys and public defenders, and some standardization of factors that should be considered in the review of cases. 
 
“While this first-of-its-kind resentencing project made some progress on revisiting sentences, we identified many changes could be made to strengthen and quicken the pace of those reviews,” said Lois Davis, the lead author of the report and a senior policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.  
 
Over the past decade, states across the nation have invested in numerous strategies to reduce the sizes of prison populations, with the aim of both protecting public safety and reining in corrections spending. 
 
Policies include reducing lengthy prison terms, prioritizing prison space for violent and career offenders, providing alternatives to prison for lower-level nonviolent offenders, reducing probation and parole revocations, and directing correctional savings into programs to help reduce recidivism. 
 
Nine counties (Contra Costa, Humboldt, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Yolo) were provided with funding to participate in the three-year California County Resentencing Pilot Program. Participants include the county district attorney office and the county public defender office, with community-based organizations involved in some jurisdictions. 
 
Although the criteria for identifying cases eligible for resentencing consideration varied somewhat across localities, programs generally focused on factors such as the age of the inmate, the crime committed, and the length and other details of the sentence.  
 
Factors that facilitated the adoption of successful resentencing efforts included prior history of collaboration between the district attorney and public defender, leadership support from the district attorney for prosecutor-initiated resentencing, close coordination with the courts, and the use of stipulation (an agreed-upon set of facts and a proposed new sentence before going to court). 
 
Researchers found that the total expenditures on resentencing reviews for the six counties that were most actively engaged in the resentencing pilot reached nearly $28 million, more than twice as much as the $12.5 million allocated to those counties for the pilot.   
 
The report recommends many steps that could strengthen the approach. This includes better clarifying the roles of district attorneys and public defenders, with an accountability mechanism to encourage them to work together more closely. 
 
More-realistic time frames for the resentencing process also are needed. This should include establishing benchmarks for the number of cases reviewed and length of time for district attorneys to review cases. 
 
An ongoing RAND project will examine the extent to which individuals who were resentenced under the pilot program committed new crimes once released from prison. 
 
Support for the project was provided by the California State Legislature. 
 
The report, “Evaluation of the California County Resentencing Pilot Program - Year 3 Findings,” is available at www.rand.org. Other authors of the report are Louis T. Mariano, Melissa M. Labriola, Susan Turner, Andy Bogart, Matt Strawn and Lynn A. Karoly. 
 
The RAND Social and Economic Well-Being division seeks to actively improve the health, and social and economic well-being of populations and communities throughout the world.