Crime trends and the effect of mandated drug treatment: Evidence from California's Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act

John L. Worrall, Scott Hiromoto, Nancy Merritt, Dan Du, Jerry O. Jacobson and Martin Y. Iguchi

Journal of Criminal Justice, 2009, vol. 37, issue 2, 109-113

Abstract: The Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act (SACPA), implemented statewide in California in July 2001, mandates drug treatment rather than incarceration for certain nonviolent drug offenders. Critics of the legislation suggest that crime increased as a result of the legislation, but researchers have largely ignored this issue. Utilizing time series methodology applied across several independent data sets from Orange County, California, the effects of SACPA on crime were assessed. Results indicate that significant increases in commercial burglaries and paraphernalia arrests may have been attributed to SACPA, but the overall pattern does not support a conclusion that crime increased markedly.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047-2352(09)00012-9
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcjust:v:37:y::i:2:p:109-113

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Criminal Justice is currently edited by Matthew DeLisi

More articles in Journal of Criminal Justice from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().