BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Kevin de Le�n, Chair
SB 1198 (Hancock) - Criminal statistics: countywide data.
Amended: March 25, 2014 Policy Vote: Public Safety 7-0
Urgency: No Mandate: No (See Staff Comments)
Hearing Date: April 28, 2014
Consultant: Jolie Onodera
This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill Summary: SB 1198 would require the Department of Justice
(DOJ) to collect and publicly report via its website additional
data regarding juvenile offenders, as specified.
Fiscal Impact:
One-time staffing costs potentially in excess of $150,000
(General Fund) to develop an interactive interface for the
Attorney General (AG) website, as well as collect and report
the additional data elements. Ongoing costs to the DOJ are
estimated to be minor for ongoing system support and
maintenance.
Potential state-reimbursable costs in the hundreds of
thousands of dollars (General Fund) per year to the extent law
enforcement agencies are required to compile and report new
data elements to the DOJ in order to meet the requirements of
this measure.
Minor one-time costs (General Fund) for the Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to create an initial
report to DOJ. Negligible ongoing costs.
Background: Existing law requires the AG to present an annual
report to the Governor on or before July 1st containing criminal
statistics including but not limited to the amount and types of
offenses, the personal and social characteristics of offenders,
the administrative actions taken by law enforcement,
prosecutorial, judicial, penal, and correctional agencies,
including those in the juvenile justice system, and the number
of citizens' complaints received by law enforcement. The DOJ is
required to collect data pertaining to the juvenile justice
system for criminal history and statistical purposes (PC
�13010.5) to assist in complying with the annual reporting
requirement, measuring the extent of juvenile delinquency,
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determining the need for and effectiveness of relevant
legislation, and identifying long term trends in juvenile
delinquency.
The annual report published by the DOJ is required to include
the following statewide information (PC � 13012.5):
The annual number of fitness hearings held in the juvenile
courts and the outcomes of those hearings including orders to
remand to adult criminal court, cross-referenced with
information about the age, gender, ethnicity, and offense of
the minors whose cases are the subject of those fitness
hearings.
The annual number of minors whose cases are filed directly in
adult criminal court, cross-referenced with information about
the age, gender, ethnicity, and offense of the minors whose
cases are filed directly to the adult criminal court.
The outcomes of cases involving minors who are prosecuted in
adult criminal courts, regardless of how adult court
jurisdiction was initiated, including whether the minor was
acquitted or convicted, or whether the case was dismissed and
returned to juvenile court, including sentencing outcomes,
cross-referenced with the age, gender, ethnicity, and offense
of the minors subject to these court actions.
This bill seeks to expand the collection and reporting
statistics on juveniles and require the DOJ to provide the
information in a format that can be downloaded and queried by
the public.
Proposed Law: This bill would expand DOJ reporting requirements
and data specifications related to juveniles, as follows:
Expands data reporting to include "county level" information.
Adds the commitment county to all data points currently and
proposed to be collected and reported.
Requires addition of the classification of cases filed
directly in adult criminal court according to the manner in
which adult court jurisdiction was initiated.
With respect to outcomes from adult court filings, provides
that data be classified according to the manner in which adult
court jurisdiction was initiated, and include length of time
in custody prior to disposition, and sentencing outcomes.
Adds to the required data, the total number of people who were
under 21 years of age at the time of their offenses who are
currently committed to the CDCR, cross-referenced with the
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age, gender, ethnicity, and offense of the individuals.
Requires DOJ to post on its internet website all of the juvenile
information described above "in a format that allows a user to
query and download the information for the most recent reporting
year and for prior years or reporting cycles for which the
information is available."
Requires DOJ to post on its internet website individual offender
information used to compile the juvenile information described
above including, but not limited to (1) the offender's residence
ZIP code at the time of the offense, and (2) the number of the
offender's adjudications prior to the offense.
Requires DOJ to post on its internet website annually the number
of people under 21 years of age at the time of their offenses
who were sentenced to state prison, including those sentenced to
state prison who were ordered to serve their terms in a county
facility, and the number of those people who were still serving
sentences at year-end, the offense, the sentence and enhancement
for each offense, cross-referenced with the person's age at the
time of the offense, gender, ethnicity, commitment county, and
date of offense.
Prior Legislation: SB 314 (Alpert) Chapter 468/2001 requires the
DOJ report to contain statistics on the administrative actions
taken by various branches of law enforcement and the criminal
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, as specified, beginning with the report due on July 1,
2003.
AB 807 (Ammiano) 2013 would have required the DOJ to collect and
include in its annual report on criminal statistics additional
information related to complaints received by law enforcement
agencies and criminal convictions of peace officers, as
specified. This bill was held on the Suspense File of this
committee.
Staff Comments: The DOJ has indicated the need for limited-term
resources in excess of $150,000 to develop a new interactive
interface for the DOJ website to meet the mandates of this bill.
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Ongoing system support and maintenance costs are estimated to be
minor.
Local probation departments will be required to report new
information and have indicated this will potentially create
significant new workload on an ongoing basis. For example, the
bill requires the number of minors whose cases are filed
directly in adult criminal court to be classified "according to
the manner in which adult court jurisdiction was initiated,"
requiring the submittal of descriptive information rather than
simply a caseload count. The bill also requires the submittal of
information on the outcomes of cases involving minors who are
prosecuted in adult criminal court to include the length of time
in custody prior to disposition of the case, and sentencing
outcomes in juvenile or adult criminal courts. Local agencies
have indicated the use of different reporting systems for
juveniles 18 -21 years old, so additional workload would be
required to review and pull data from juvenile and adult
reporting systems.
While this bill is not keyed a state-mandated local program, to
the extent local law enforcement agencies submit mandate claims
and the Commission on State Mandates determines the provisions
of this measure constitute a higher level of service mandated on
local agencies, the initial and ongoing costs for data
collection, compilation, and submittal would be reimbursable by
the state. Costs are unknown at this time, but could be
significant.
The CDCR has indicated minor costs to create the initial report
to provide to DOJ on the number of individuals under age 21 at
the time of the offense who are committed to state prison, with
negligible ongoing costs to run the required report.
Recommended Amendments: As drafted, subdivision (c) of PC �
13012.5 requires the data elements listed in subdivisions (a)
and (b) of the section to be available for download and query,
however, the data elements required under subdivisions (d) and
(e) are not similarly referenced in subdivision (c). For
clarity, staff recommends the following amendments to ensure all
data elements are subject to the data accessibility
requirements:
1. On page 2, in line 35, strike and replace (c) with (e).
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2. On page 2, in line 36, strike and replace "(a) and (b)"
with "(a), (b), (c), and (d)".
3. On page 3, in line 1, strike and replace (d) with (c).
4. On page 3, in line 7, strike and replace (e) with (d).