Vera collected criminal legal system statistics from documents and datasets published by the California Department of Justice (arrests), the California Board of State and Community Corrections (county jails), the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (state prisons), and the California State Controller’s Office (county budgets). The researchers supplemented this data with information from Vera’s Incarceration Trends.
Arrest data comes from Open Justice, an initiative of the California Department of Justice. Vera used data found in the “Arrests” data set of the “Criminal Justice Data” section.
County jail data comes from the California Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC). Population data and facility information, including facility names, are from the Jail Profile Survey. County jail facility addresses are from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Census of Jails, 2019. Juvenile facility information,including facility names,are from the Juvenile Detention Profile Survey. Vera obtained and verified facility addresses through internet searches.
Data on county jail mental health populations from the BSCC’s Jail Profile Survey have some obvious inaccuracies. For example, some jails reported a mental health population much larger than the total jail population. To provide estimates of mental health populations despite the limitations of the data reported by jails, Vera researchers discarded data that was obviously inaccurate. The researchers then calculated the annual average of the larger of two variables: 1) the number of people with mental health cases open at the end of the month, and 2) the number of people receiving psychotropic medication. Statewide jail population data for comparing the mental health population to the total jail population only includes counties with mental health population data that appears accurate. More information on these two measures is available in the BSCC’s Jail Profile Survey Workbook: Instructions for Monthly and Quarterly Forms.
Vera collected state prison populations, admissions, and releases—for the period since 2015—from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Sources include “Offender Data Points Report(s)” from 2016 to 2019 and “Offender Data Point Dashboard” from 2019 onward. Vera submitted a Public Records Act request through CDCR’s Public Records Portal to obtain the “In-Custody,” “Admissions,” and “Releases” data in Microsoft Excel format. Vera researchers collected data on prison populations and admissions—for the period 2002 to 2014—from Vera’s Incarceration Trends dataset, which includes county-level prison statistics sourced from the BJS National Corrections Reporting Program. State prison facility names are from the CDCR, and state-operated youth facilities are from the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). Prison addresses, design capacities, and populations are from the BJS Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities, 2019. Vera verified all facility addresses through internet searches. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons operates nine prisons and detention centers in California that are not included in this tool.
Budget data comes from Counties Financial Data from the California State Controller’s Office. Vera adjusted dollars for inflation to 2022 using the consumer price index for all urban consumers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States Department of Labor. Mendocino County did not report data to the State Controller’s Office in time to be included in their dataset in 2021, and San Francisco, which is both a city and a county, reports financial data as a city in Cities Financial Data. Vera does not include data for Mendocino County and San Francisco City/County in this tool.
Vera obtained Information on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and the average daily population from the ICE Detention Statistics previous Year-End Reports (FY23_detentionStats.xlsx accessed on May 15, 2024).
Demographic data comes from Vera’s Incarceration Trends Project (ITP). Rates are per 100,000 residents ages 15 to 64. The demographic data used in ITP comes from the National Center for Health Statistics’ Bridged-Race Population Estimates. Vera researchers used population data for 2020 to compute rates for the period since 2020.
Fair Market Rent information comes from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair Market Rents Documentation System (FY 2023). Data on homelessness represents people counted as unsheltered and homeless and is taken from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Point-in-Time estimates of homelessness for 2022. HUD's data reports homelessness on the "Continuum of Care" geographic level, so counties in Contiuums of Care that include multiple counties show homeless numbers for the entire Continuum. Homeless numbers for Los Angeles County include homeless numbers for Glendale, Long Beach, Los Angeles City & County, and Pasadena Continuums of Care.
The cost of Permanent Supportive Housing comes from a study on permanent supportive housing in Los Angeles for people who experienced homelessness and who ranked in the top 10 percentile in public and hospital costs. The cost includes both rent and supportive services. The study estimated “$15,159 in one-time costs to house each patient, including the first year of local subsidies for rent and supportive services, $3,518 in annual rent subsidy in the second and subsequent years (in addition to the Section 8 or Shelter plus Care rent subsidy) and $3,000 in annual cost for enriched supportive services in the second and subsequent years.” In this tool, Vera adjusted these costs are adjusted for inflation to 2022 dollars.
Employment and wage data comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, accessed May 17, 2024, showing May 2023 Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Area Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates.
Vera took the cost of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) from estimates made by the U.S. Department of Defense, published by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, for “methadone treatment, including medication and integrated psychosocial and medical support services (assumes daily visits)”. Public health and medical experts describe MAT as “the gold standard” for opioid use disorder treatment, and it has been shown to decrease opioid use, increase treatment retention, and reduce participants’ contact with the criminal legal system. However, methadone and buprenorphine, two medications for opioid use disorder, have been shown to be just as effective at reducing the use of illicit opioids even without the psychosocial interventions required by MAT.
Overdose data comes from the California Department of Public Health’s California Overdose Surveillance Dashboard. Vera used 2022 data, accessed on May 17, 2024.
Please email mparris@vera.org with any questions.