BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 2524 Page 1 CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS AB 2524 (Irwin) As Amended August 16, 2016 Majority vote -------------------------------------------------------------------- |ASSEMBLY: |78-0 |(June 2, 2016) |SENATE: |39-0 |(August 24, | | | | | | |2016) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | -------------------------------------------------------------------- Original Committee Reference: PUB. S. SUMMARY: Requires the Department of Justice (DOJ) make available to the public its mandatory criminal justice statistics reports through the OpenJustice Web Portal, to be updated at least yearly, and makes conforming changes to existing provisions related to criminal statistics. The Senate amendments: 1)Delete the intent of the Legislature that on or before January 1, 2022, DOJ's statistical systems shall be electronic, and instead provide that it is the intent of the Legislature that following full implementation of incident-based crime reporting, DOJ work to transition to exclusively electronic crime data collection and evaluate the potential for criminal justice statistical data to be updated on the OpenJustice Web portal at a frequency greater than once per year. AB 2524 Page 2 2)Require the criminal justice statistics reports available on the OpenJustice Web Portal to be updated at least once per year, instead of quarterly. 3)Delete specified deadlines in the bill and instead provide that DOJ shall evaluate, on an annual basis, the progress of California's transition from summary crime reporting to incident-based crime reporting, in alignment with the federal National Incident-Based Reporting System, and report its findings to the Legislature annually through 2019. 4)Make other conforming changes. EXISTING LAW: 1)Requires DOJ to annually interpret and present crime statistics, required to be reported by law enforcement and other agencies and information, to the Governor. 2)Requires DOJ to interpret and present statistics and information to the Legislature and to those in charge or concerned with of the apprehension, prosecution, and treatment of the criminals and delinquents. 3)Allows the Attorney General to issue special reports on crime statistics. 4)Requires the Racial and Identity Profiling Board (RIPA) to annually analyze and report to the Attorney General statistics collected from law enforcement agencies regarding citizen complaints. AB 2524 Page 3 5)Requires the Attorney General to make available a sufficient number of copies of both the required annual report on crime statistics and any special reports. 6)Requires DOJ to prepare and distribute to any person or agency required to submit crime statistics the cards, forms, or electronic means used in reporting data to the department. The cards, forms, or electronic means may, in addition to other items, include items of information needed by federal bureaus or departments engaged in the development of national and uniform criminal statistics. 7)Requires DOJ to periodically review the requirements of units of government using criminal justice statistics, and to make recommendations for changes it deems necessary in the design of criminal justice statistics systems, including new techniques of collection and processing made possible by automation. 8)Requires DOJ, beginning January 1, 2017, to issue an annual summary of incidents reported by law enforcement including: a) The shooting of a civilian by a peace officer; b) The shooting of a peace officer by a civilian; c) The use of force by a peace officer against a civilian that results in serious bodily injury or death; and d) The use of force by a civilian against a peace officer that results in serious bodily injury or death; 9)Requires DOJ's annual summary of shootings of and by peace officers, and of use of force by or against peace officers, to include the number and demographics of those involved, if the civilian was armed, the type of force used, and a description AB 2524 Page 4 of the incident, as provided. 10)Requires DOJ to collect data pertaining to the juvenile justice system for criminal history and statistical purposes, including all of the following: a) The amount and the types of offenses known to the public authorities; b) The personal and social characteristics of criminals and delinquents; c) The administrative actions taken by law enforcement, judicial, penal, and correctional agencies or institutions, including those in the juvenile justice system, in dealing with criminals or delinquents; d) The administrative actions taken by law enforcement, prosecutorial, judicial, penal, and correctional agencies including those in the juvenile justice system, in dealing with minors who are the subject of a petition or hearing in the juvenile court to transfer their case to the jurisdiction of an adult criminal court or whose cases are directly filed or otherwise initiated in an adult criminal court; and e) The total number of each of the following, disaggregated by individual law enforcement agency, including whether the disposition of the complaints was sustained, not sustained, exonerated or unfounded, as defined: i) Citizen complaints received by law enforcement agencies; ii) Citizen complaints alleging criminal conduct of either a felony or misdemeanor; and iii) Citizen complaints alleging racial or identity profiling, as defined. These statistics shall be AB 2524 Page 5 disaggregated by the specific type of racial or identity profiling alleged, such as based on a consideration of race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or mental or physical disability. 11)Requires the annual report published by DOJ to include information concerning arrests for identity theft. 12)Requires DOJ to maintain a data set, updated annually, that contains the number of crimes reported, number of clearances and clearance rates in California as reported by individual law enforcement agencies for required-to-be-reported crimes. The data set shall be made available through a prominently displayed hypertext link on the Department's Internet Web site or through the Department's OpenJustice data portal. 13)Requires DOJ to perform the following duties concerning the investigation and prosecution of homicide cases: a) Collect information on all persons who are the victims of, and all persons who are charged with, homicide; b) Adopt and distribute as a written form or by electronic means to all state and governmental entities that are responsible for the investigation and prosecution of homicide cases forms that will include information to be provided to the department; and c) Compile, collate, index, and maintain an electronic file of the information regarding victims of and those charged with homicide into a report available to the public. 14)Requires local law enforcement agencies to report to DOJ, in a manner prescribed by the Attorney General, any information that may be required relative to hate crimes so that the Department can report, on or before July 1 of each year, the Department's analysis to the Legislature. AB 2524 Page 6 AS PASSED BY THE ASSEMBLY, this bill: 1)Eliminated DOJ's requirement to annually present a report on criminal justice statistics to the Governor and the Legislature, but requires that a downloadable summary of this information shall be annually prepared so that the Attorney General may send a copy to the Governor and other entities. 2)Specified that the provisions of this bill shall not be construed to require more frequent reporting by local agencies than what is required by any other law. 3)Required DOJ to add prosecutorial administrative actions to its criminal justice statistics collection and summaries 4)Stated that, on or before January 1, 2021, it shall be the duty of DOJ to transition all of California's crime data from summary crime reporting to incident-based crime reporting, through electronic means, in alignment with the federal National Incident-Based Reporting System. 5)Required DOJ to evaluate, on an annual basis, the probability of meeting the January 1, 2021, implementation deadline and report its findings to the Legislature annually through 2019. 6)Provided that local and state agencies that are unable to meet this implementation deadline and that have committed to transitioning to incident-based crime reporting shall collaborate with DOJ to develop a transition plan with a timeline for the transition. 7)Stated that, commencing January 1, 2021, it shall be the duty of DOJ to accept the collection of crime data from local and state crime reporting agencies only through electronic means. AB 2524 Page 7 8)Required, commencing January 1, 2021, local and state crime reporting agencies to submit crime data to DOJ only through electronic means. 9)Stated that, on or before January 1, 2022, it shall be the duty of DOJ to ensure that the statistical systems of DOJ are electronic, allowing for criminal justice statistical data to be updated more frequently than annually on the OpenJustice Web portal. FISCAL EFFECT: According to the Senate Appropriations Committee: 1)OpenJustice web portal: Potential minor to significant costs (General Fund) to the DOJ for programming and staffing for annual reporting through its OpenJustice web portal. 2)Law enforcement agency data reporting: Potentially major one-time and ongoing future cost pressure (Local Funds/General Fund/Federal Funds) to state and local law enforcement agencies potentially in excess of millions of dollars statewide to report data solely through electronic means and to transition data from summary to incident-based crime reporting. To the extent federal funds (Federal Funds) are provided as an incentive to agencies to transition to electronic incident-based reporting, a portion of future costs could be defrayed. COMMENTS: According to the author, "AB 2524 will modernize California's collection and publication of criminal justice data. The OpenJustice Data Act builds upon Attorney General Kamala Harris' open data initiative to improve and empower the public's access to local and statewide crime statistics. "AB 2524 will reinvent Crime in California and other annual reports published by the California DOJ as digital data sets AB 2524 Page 8 within the Attorney General's OpenJustice Web portal. These reports provide statistical summaries including numbers of arrests, complaints against peace officers, hate crime offenses, and law enforcement officers killed or assaulted; however, the static nature of these print publications means that data often lacks context. The OpenJustice Web portal will alchemize this information with interactive, accessible visualization tools, while making raw data available for public interest researchers. "Additionally, AB 2524 will bring the state's data collection into the 21st century by requiring local law enforcement agencies to submit all currently required statistical reports digitally. Despite the fact that electronic reporting provides for more accurate and efficient data submission, as many as 60% of local agencies still submit required data to the California DOJ on paper. The OpenJustice Data Act will direct all agencies to transition into digital reporting, which will allow for more frequent updates to statistics contained within the Web portal. "DOJ first launched the OpenJustice initiative in 2015 as a mechanism for improving community trust in law enforcement, enhancing government accountability, and informing public policy. In early 2016 the Attorney General announced the release of OpenJustice 1.1, which enriched the Web portal's initial data sets with city, county, and state level context including population and demographic information, unemployment rates, poverty rates, and educational attainment levels. In addition to providing greater transparency, this information enables policymakers to craft informed, data-driven public policy." Please see the policy committee analysis for a full discussion of this bill. Analysis Prepared by: Stella Choe / PUB. S. / (916) 319-3744 FN: 0004430 AB 2524 Page 9