BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1998
Page 1
Date of Hearing: May 4, 2016
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Lorena Gonzalez, Chair
AB
1998 (Campos) - As Amended April 5, 2016
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|Policy |Rules |Vote:|9 - 0 |
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| |Public Safety | |7 - 0 |
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: NoReimbursable: No
SUMMARY:
This bill 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.
FISCAL EFFECT:
AB 1998
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One-time cost in the $50,000 range for the BSCC to prepare the
guidelines.
COMMENTS:
1)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."
Each county in the state is required, as a condition of
receiving an allocation from the Youthful Offender Block Grant
fund, by October 1 of each year, to submit an annual report to
the Corrections Standards Authority on its utilization of the
block grant funds in the preceding fiscal year.
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. The author asserts that inadequate data collection is
singularly harmful to Latino youth.
2)Purpose. According to the author, Latino youth are
increasingly singled out by the criminal justice system.
However, with many Latinos being classified as white or
African-American, the extent of this problem is not well
known. The flawed data collection system, does not
AB 1998
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consistently separate ethnicity from race.
The author states, "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 enable policy-makers and social justice advocates to
take adequate actions to address the issue of Latino over
incarceration in California."
3)Support. According to NOXTIN: Equal Justice for All, "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.
4)Related Legislation. SB 1031 (Hancock), pending in Senate
Appropriations, requires 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, effective, January 1, 2020, will also remove the
requirement that the Department of Justice collect information
regarding the juvenile justice system. The bill appropriates
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.
5)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
AB 1998
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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.
Analysis Prepared by:Pedro Reyes / APPR. / (916)
319-2081