February 2017
Charis Kubrin and Carroll Seron, Professors of Criminology, Law and Society, is featured in The Mercury News for their research on AB 109, the first of its kind. Kubrin explains that the recent death of Whittier Officer Keith Boyer is not an accurate reflection of the current trends and research associated with AB 109.
From The Mercury News:
“As upsetting as this instance was and as problematic as it was, if we were to throw out AB 109 as a result of this incident, we would not be doing empirically based policy,” said Charis Kubrin, a professor of criminology at UC Irvine and one of the few to study the topic in depth. “There is no doubt in my mind that AB 109 had zero impact one way or another on violent crime across the state.”
Kubrin and UC Irvine’s Carroll Seron oversaw the first scientific analysis of AB 109 last year in an issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science focused entirely on the topic. Few other impartial reviews of the law exist in part because the state did not set aside money for studying AB 109. And any statistics are managed at the county level.