California's Proposition 47 (Prop 47), passed in November 2014, sought to scale back punishment for selected drug and property offenses, making them misdemeanors rather than felonies. Although others have examined the impacts of Proposition 47 on crime rates, here we examine the impacts on a range of recidivism outcomes specifically for individuals convicted for drug possession offenses. We focus on the defelonization of drug possession because nationally evidence suggests that public and policy maker sympathy for reducing incarceration use is greatest for nonviolent drug offenders. Thus, the greatest relevance of Proposition 47 to the nation lies in its strategy of defelonizing drug possession. We draw on an ongoing data collection effort on criminal justice populations in 12 California counties and link these data to rearrest and reconviction data from county and state‐level sources. We find people who received drug possession convictions after Prop 47 had lower overall rearrest and reconviction rates than people with comparable convictions and criminal histories released prior to the proposition. Overall reductions in recidivism rates for Prop 47 drug offenders were driven by reductions in rearrest and reconviction for drug possession offenses. These findings are robust to a variety of specifications and sensitivity analyses. When we complicate the narrative of declines in nonviolent recidivism, however, we find evidence of a 2.8‐percentage‐point increase in rearrest for crimes against persons, mainly assaults and domestic violence. Reconviction rates for crimes against persons for drug possession offenders also increased by 1.1 percentage points.

中文翻译：

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非毒品化对重犯的影响

加利福尼亚州在2014年11月通过的第47号提案（第47号提案）寻求减少对某些毒品和财产犯罪的惩罚，使其成为轻罪，而不是重罪。尽管其他人研究了提案47对犯罪率的影响，但在这里，我们研究了对一系列累犯结果的影响，特别是针对因拥有毒品罪而被定罪的个人。我们将重点放在毒品拥有的非重金属化上，因为国家证据表明，公众和政策制定者对减少监禁使用的同情对非暴力毒品犯最大。因此，第47号提案与国家的最大相关性在于其取消毒品拥有的非殖民化战略。我们利用正在进行的有关12个加利福尼亚州县的刑事司法人口的数据收集工作，并将这些数据与来自县和州级来源的重新逮捕和定罪数据联系起来。我们发现，在提案47之后，接受毒品拥有定罪的人的总体逮捕和再定罪率要低于在提议之前被释放的具有类似定罪和犯罪历史的人。提案47中的罪犯的再犯率总体上有所下降，其原因是减少了对毒品拥有罪的重新逮捕和定罪。这些发现对各种规格和灵敏度分析都非常可靠。但是，当我们将非暴力累犯性下降的叙述复杂化时，我们发现有证据表明，针对侵害人身罪（主要是攻击和家庭暴力）的再捕增加了2.8个百分点。