BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1998
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 19, 2016
Consultant: Matt Dean
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY
Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer, Sr., Chair
AB
1998 (Campos) - As Amended April 5, 2016
SUMMARY: Requires the Board of State and Community Corrections
(BSCC) to prepare guidelines for counties on how to disaggregate
juvenile justice caseload, performance and outcome data by race
and ethnicity.
EXISTING LAW:
1)Requires the State Commission on Juvenile Justice to develop a
Juvenile Justice Operational Master Plan and to make
available, for implementation by all of the counties of the
state, a number of strategies, including "Juvenile justice
universal data collection elements, which shall be common to
all counties." (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 1960.5, subd. (a).)
2)Requires each county in the state, as a condition of receiving
an allocation from the Youthful Offender Block Grant fund
described in Section 1951 to, by October 1 of each year,
submit an annual report to the Corrections Standards Authority
on its utilization of the block grant funds in the preceding
fiscal year and requires the report to be in a format
specified by the authority that includes all of the following:
AB 1998
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a) A description of the programs, placements, services,
and strategies supported by block grant funds in the
preceding fiscal year, and an accounting of all of the
county's expenditures of block grant funds for the
preceding fiscal year; and
b) Performance outcomes for the programs, placements,
services, and strategies supported by block grant funds
in the preceding fiscal year, including, at a minimum,
the following: the number of youth served including their
characteristics as to offense, age, gender, race, and
ethnicity. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 1961, subd. (c).)
FISCAL EFFECT: Unknown
COMMENTS:
1)Author's Statement: According to the author, "Latino
communities, especially Latino youth, are increasingly singled
out by the criminal justice system. The extent of this
problem is not well known because of our state's flawed data
collection system, which does not consistently separate
ethnicity from race. With many Latinos being classified as
white or African American, it is currently impossible to
determine the full scope of the unequal tre3atment of Latinos
at key decision points in the juvenile justice system.
"Gathering accurate race and ethnicity data from youth
involved in the juvenile justice system allows for better
understanding of trends, policy effects, and inequities by
legislators, the public, and state or federal agencies.
"AB 1998 will ensure that Latinos are counted as Latinos by
their race and ethnicity in the Juveniles Justice System. It
would do this by directing the Board of State and Community
Corrections to prepare guidelines for counties on how to
disaggregate caseload and data by race and ethnicity. In
doing this, AB 1998 will enable policy-makers and social
justice advocates to take adequate actions to address the
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issue of Latino over incarceration in California."
2)Background: In 2007, the Legislature passed and the governor
signed the Budget bill on Corrections, SB 81, which required
the State Commission on Juvenile Justice to develop a Juvenile
Justice Operational Master Plan and to make available, for
implementation by all of the counties of the state, a number
of strategies, including "Juvenile justice universal data
collection elements, which shall be common to all counties."
(WIC Section 1960.5 (a).) The 2009 Juvenile Justice
Operational Master Plan provides that the "minimum person
identifiers needed" to be collected by juvenile courts should
include "race/ethnicity" data that is the "same as US census
data." As of the date of the 2009 report, courts collect race
and ethnicity data" but not in a manner consistent with the US
census. According to the Commission, "It should be possible
to construct a crosswalk between JCPSS, CHS, and census
categories."
(<
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/reports_research/docs/JJOMP_Final_Report.pdf >.)
Each county in the state is required, as a condition of
receiving an allocation from the Youthful Offender Block Grant
fund described in Section 1951 shall, by October 1 of each
year, submit an annual report to the Corrections Standards
Authority on its utilization of the block grant funds in the
preceding fiscal year. The report shall be in a format
specified by the authority and shall include all of the
following:
(1) A description of the programs, placements, services,
and strategies supported by block grant funds in the
preceding fiscal year, and an accounting of all of the
county's expenditures of block grant funds for the
preceding fiscal year.
(2) Performance outcomes for the programs, placements,
services, and strategies supported by block grant funds in
the preceding fiscal year, including, at a minimum, the
following:
AB 1998
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(A) The number of youth served including their
characteristics as to offense, age, gender, race, and
ethnicity. (WIC Section 1961 (c).)
BSCC prepares an annual "Youthful Offender Block Grant" report
to the Legislature. The report includes data for
Hispanic/Latino youth in county detention. In the 2015
report, BSCC did not provide comprehensive data about all
youth in detention, but analyzed a sample of youth and found
that approximately 54% of the sample study were Hispanic or
Latino (See page 18 of the report).
(< http://www.bscc.ca.gov/downloads/YOBG%20Report%20Final%204.2.
2015%20mr-r.pdf >)
3)Conforming California's Definitions with Federal Definitions:
The author acknowledges that these requirements are in
existing law, but asserts that compliance with these
requirements is inadequate.
"The federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
Act requires States to report and address "disproportionate
minority contact." Presently, the California Department of
Juvenile Justice publishes semi-annual reports of race and
ethnicity representation through the Juvenile Research
Branch. However, the race categories (white, Hispanic,
African American, Asian, Native American, Filipino, Pacific
Islander, and other) currently gathered do not meet minimum
federal standards for race reporting as established by
either the federal 1997 Revisions to the Standards for the
Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity or the
2007 U.S. Department of Education guidance.
"As such, data from California are not compatible with
reported data from other states, and federal analysis
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cannot research potential improvements from the Californian
system. Pennsylvania, for instance, presents a model case
for recoding data in a standardized format to improve
accuracy and compatibility."
The author asserts that inadequate data collection is
singularly harmful to Latino youth. According to the author,
"Latino communities, especially Latino youth, are
increasingly singled out by the criminal justice system.
The extent of this problem is not well known because of our
state's flawed data collection system, which does not
consistently separate ethnicity from race throughout the
justice system. With many Latinos being classified as
white or African American, it is currently impossible to
determine the full scope of the unequal treatment of
Latinos at key decision points in the juvenile justice
system.
"Gathering race and ethnicity data from youth involved in
the juvenile justice system allows better understanding of
trends, policy effects, and inequities by legislators, the
public, and state or federal agencies.
"Additionally, this bill expands the number of data
collection points. Currently, data is only reported for
juveniles in juvenile detention facilities by both the
Juvenile Detention Profile Survey and the Characteristics
of the Department of Juvenile Justice Population report.
Under this bill, data collection would occur in juvenile
courts and county probation departments in addition to
detention facilities. AB 1998 would ensure proper data
retrieval by collecting ethnicity and race statistics
separately. This will maintain that Latinos are counted as
Latinos, and enable policy-makers and social justice
advocates to take appropriate actions to address the issue
of Latino youth incarceration in California.
AB 1998
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"The complete degree of Latino mistreatment is unknown due
to the lack of comprehensive information resulting from
inadequate data gathering practices. Currently, most
localities fail to separate race and ethnicity categories
when surveying youth. For example, most questionnaires do
not allow a youth to identify his race (physical
characteristic) as black and his ethnicity (cultural
factor) as Hispanic. They are forced to choose one or the
other. Because of this, many Latino youth are classifying
themselves based on race (black, white, other) resulting in
underreporting of Latinos in the justice system. "
4)Argument in Support: According to NOXTIN: Equal Justice for
All, "Latino communities, especially Latino youth, bear an
increasing brunt in volume of youth confined in the state of
California. The extent of this problem is not well known
because of our state's flawed data collection system, which
does not consistently disaggregate ethnicity (like Latino,
Hispanic) from race (such as white, black, or other)
throughout the entire justice system. As a result, Latinos are
not counted uniformly across the various institutions that
make up the juvenile justice system, and are classified as
white or black, resulting in Latino underrepresentation in
reporting of justice system data.
"The failure to collect disaggregate data on Latinos inflates
the incarceration rate of non-Hispanic white youth, further
masking the inequity and disproportionality of all youth of
color in confinement. The status quo makes it impossible to
oversee the full magnitude of the unequal or disparate
treatment of Latino youth, or to develop comprehensive and
effective policies to remedy the discrepancy particularly in
the places where data shows the greatest disproportionality
and/or disparity. Implementing comprehensive and accurate data
collection is the first of many steps to implement proven
effective and time tested detention reform models that will
end the over-reliance of incarceration, save money, make
critical systems improvements, increase public safety and as
research has shown, increase better life outcomes for youth,
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their families and ultimately our communities."
5)Related Legislation: SB 1031 (Hancock) would require BSCC, on
or before July 1, 2019, to establish a Juvenile Justice
Information System to develop and maintain statewide
statistical information, as specified. The bill would
additionally, on January 1, 2020, remove the require that the
Department of Justice collect information regarding the
juvenile justice system. The bill would appropriate an
unspecified sum from the General Fund to the BSCC for the
purpose of funding the development of a design structure and
implementation plan for the Juvenile Justice Information
System. This bill is set for hearing in the Senate Committee
on Public Safety on April 19, 2016.
6)Prior Legislation:
a) AB 1468 (Assembly Committee on Budget), Chapter 26,
Statutes of 2014, established the Juvenile Justice Data
Working Group (JJDWG) within BSCC and stated: "[t]he
purpose of the working group is to recommend options for
coordinating and modernizing the juvenile justice data
systems and reports that are developed and maintained by
state and county agencies."
b) AB 1050 (Dickinson), Chapter 270, Statutes of 2013,
required BSCC, in consultation with certain individuals,
including a county supervisor or county administrative
officer, a county sheriff, and the Secretary of the
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, to develop
definitions of specified key terms in order to facilitate
consistency in local data collection, evaluation, and
implementation of evidence-based programs.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
AB 1998
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Support
Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
National Association of Social Workers, California Chapter
NOXTIN: Equal Justice for All
Pacific Juvenile Defender Center
Opposition
None
Analysis Prepared
by: Matt Dean / PUB. S. / (916) 319-3744