BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 246 Page 1 Date of Hearing: April 15, 2015 ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS Jimmy Gomez, Chair AB 246 (Roger Hernández) - As Amended March 19, 2015 ----------------------------------------------------------------- |Policy |Public Safety |Vote:|5 - 1 | |Committee: | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-------------+-------------------------------+-----+-------------| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-------------+-------------------------------+-----+-------------| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: YesReimbursable: No SUMMARY: This bill makes the assassination, rape, and kidnap, as well as an attempt to commit these crimes, a hate crime when the crime is committed against a peace officer, or an immediate family AB 246 Page 2 member, and the crime was knowingly committed because of the peace officer status. FISCAL EFFECT: 1)Potential one-time costs of $75,000 (GF) to the Department of Justice to establish a data base and for associated computer programming to collect the data in the Criminal Justice Statistics Center. 2)Potential one-time moderate reimbursable mandated costs (GF) for local law enforcement agencies in Information Technology costs for agencies to update the computer systems they use to report hate crime information to DOJ. If 50 law enforcement agencies have to incur programming costs, and the programming costs are $5,000 per agency, the potential cost would be $250,000. 3)Minor increase in state prison time commitments, as a result of the hate crime enhancements, in rare cases where the assailant is prosecuted under the proposed hate crime provisions. Assuming the annual contracted bed rate of $27,000 per inmate, the annual General Fund costs would be $27,000 per each additional year served under such conviction. COMMENTS: 1)Background. Current law defines "hate crime" as any criminal act committed, in whole or in part, because of one or more of several actual or perceived characteristics of the victim, such as: Disability, gender, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation. AB 246 Page 3 Current law provides that a person who commits, or voluntarily acted in concert with another person, to commit a felony motivated by bias, or attempts to commit a bias-motivated felony, shall receive an additional term of one, two or three years in state prison, at the court's discretion. The penalty for a person who commits murder in the first degree in a hate crime, or knowingly murders a peace officer while the officer performs his or her duties, is death or imprisonment in the state prison for life wife without the possibility of parole. The DOJ is required to provide an annual report on hate crime information provided by local law enforcement agencies. 2)Argument in Support. According to the Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, the sponsor of this bill, "The recent attacks on police officers - occasioned only due to their status as police officers - provides eloquent testimony to the need for this bill. The gravamen of a hate crime is that the crime is committed without any transactional motive; instead, the crime is committed because of the status of the prospective victim. The recent unprovoked and non-transactional shootings of police officers are an example of exactly that activity." 3)Argument in Opposition. The Anti-Defamation League writes, "At the outset, we want to acknowledge the importance of efforts to protect our peace officers from violence. In the wake of recent events across the country, tension and aggression against law enforcement officers has been heightened. Like Assemblymember Hernández, we believe protection of peace officers is critically important. While we understand AB 246 is intended to address this problem, adding peace officers to the groups protected by hate crime laws is not the approach we favor. 4)Related Legislation. AB 242 (Salas), pending in Assembly Public Safety Committee, adds "peace-officer status" to the list of actual or perceived characteristics of a victim for determining whether a criminal act qualifies as a hate crime. AB 246 Page 4 5)Prior Legislation: a) AB 1206 (Miller), of the 2009-2010 Legislative Session, would have added political affiliation to the list of actual or perceived characteristics qualifying for hate crime status. AB 1206 was never heard in committee. b) SB 122 (Steinberg), of the 2007-2008 Legislative Session, would have added homelessness to the list of actual or perceived characteristics qualifying for hate crime status. SB 122 was held in the Senate Public Safety committee without recommendation. Analysis Prepared by:Pedro R. Reyes / APPR. / (916) 319-2081