California shrank prisons with sentencing changes. A study shows how that’s working

CALIFORNIA OVER THE PAST DOZEN YEARS enacted a series of criminal justice laws that were meant to give more people an opportunity to be resentenced and thin out the state’s severely overcrowded prisons. Last week a state agency released the most-comprehensive look yet at how those changes are playing out among formerly incarcerated people. 

The report found low recidivism rates among people who were older and had served lengthy sentences. Those patterns contrasted with people serving shorter prison sentences for nonviolent crimes, which showed higher rates of recidivism, the majority of which were for misdemeanors.