Bradley Bartos

Interests

No activities entered.

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Chapters

• Bartos, B., McCleary, R., & Mcdowall, D. (2023). Time Series Designs. In APA handbook of research methods in psychology: Research designs: Quantitative, qualitative, neuropsychological, and biological(pp 763–784). American Psychological Association. doi:10.1037/0000319-034

Journals/Publications

• Bartos, B., & Kubrin, C. (2021).

  Criminal Justice Reform and Public Safety: Facts-Origins-Trends

  . California 100 Commission Report.
  More info

  The report is organized around six themes: 1) the current status of California’s criminal justice system; 2) the origins of California’s corrections crisis; 3) the diffusion and translation of criminal justice policy reform—prison downsizing in particular—throughout the state; 4) further correctional population reductions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; 5) the effects of these reforms, and downsizing more generally, on public safety and other outcomes; and, 6) the role of newly implemented reforms aimed at further downsizing the prison population as well as targeting racial disparities in the criminal justice system. In this report, we focus primarily on sentencing and corrections, or the back-end of criminal justice in California, in large part because correctional reform has dominated the state’s policy landscape over the past decade. However, given the current moment in time, many now call for reforms to policing and prosecution , or the front-end of the state’s criminal justice system. These front-end reforms warrant consideration moving forward, something we discuss in the Scenarios and Future Policies report.
• Bartos, B., & Kubrin, C. (2021).

  Criminal Justice Reform and Public Safety: Scenarios and Future Policies Report

  . California 100 Commission Report.
• Bartos, B. J., & Bartos, B. J. (2023). Effecting change in the aftermath of school shootings. Science Advances, 9(51). doi:10.1126/sciadv.adn2625
• Kubrin, C. E., & Bartos, B. J. (2024).

  The COVID-19 Pandemic, Prison Downsizing, and Crime Trends

  . Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 40(1), 113-137. doi:10.1177/10439862231190206
• Bartos, B. J., Kubrin, C. E., & McCleary, R. (2022). The debt crisis, austerity measures, and suicide in Greece. Social Science Quarterly, 103(1), 120-140. doi:10.1111/ssqu.13118
  More info

  Background: How are economic downturns and suicide related?Objective: This study examines the link between economically driven austerity measures implemented during a recent economic downturn—the Greek debt crisis—and suicide for the population as a whole, as well as for men and women separately.Methods: Utilizing a 50-nation panel containing annual suicide counts and population demographics for the years 1995–2015 from the World Health Organization's Mortality archive, the analysis employs a synthetic control design, a quasi-experimental approach that allows us to causally model the relationship between Greece's International Monetary Fund-imposed austerity measures and suicide, something that has hampered prior research efforts.Results: Findings show austerity policies corresponded with increased suicide rates in Greece for the population as a whole and for men and women. Robustness tests confirm these results.Conclusions: We discuss the implications of the findings for the current economic crisis associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Renner, M., & Bartos, B. (2022). Decarceration, Sanction Severity and Crime: Causal Analysis of Proposition 47 and Property Crime in Los Angeles. Justice Evaluation Journal, 5(2), 149-171. doi:10.1080/24751979.2021.1996207
• Renner, M., & Bartos, B. (2022). Decarceration, Sanction Severity and Crime: Causal Analysis of Proposition 47 and Property Crime in Los Angeles. Justice Evaluation Journal, 5(Issue 2). doi:10.1080/24751979.2021.1996207
  More info

  Decarcerative policies aim to decrease rates of incarceration primarily through lessening the severity of criminal sanctions. These policies have proliferated in recent years as states looked to reduce correctional expenditures and begin to reverse decades of growth in incarceration. Yet, there are relatively few empirical studies that examine decarcerative policies. This study evaluates the impact of California’s Proposition 47 (Prop 47), which reduced penalties for a variety of low-level offenses. We utilize a range of causal methods (difference in difference, triple difference, and synthetic control group analysis) to estimate the effects of the policy on property crime rates in the Los Angeles; and to examine the potential mechanisms driving these effects. We find robust evidence that Prop 47 increased property crime in Los Angeles, and this finding emerges across our methodological approaches. We discuss our findings in the context of a growing body of literature on Prop 47; and conclude that the policy was effective in limiting crime rate increases to anticipated and low-level offenses while achieving its primary aim of decarceration.
• Bartos, B. J., Kubrin, C. E., Newark, C., & McCleary, R. (2019). Medical marijuana laws and suicide. Archives of suicide research, 24(2), 204-217. doi:10.1080/13811118.2019.1612803
• Bartos, B. J., McCleary, R., Mazerolle, L., & Luengen, K. (2020). Controlling Gun Violence: Assessing the Impact of Australia’s Gun Buyback Program Using a Synthetic Control Group Experiment. Prevention Science, 21(Issue 1). doi:10.1007/s11121-019-01064-8
  More info

  Gun Buyback programs have been implemented in various forms in countries such as the UK, USA, Brazil, Australia, and Argentina. Whether or not these programs are an effective approach for reducing national violent crime and homicides, however, remains unclear. Much of the uncertainty is due to the different ways in which Gun Buyback programs have been implemented. The Australian Gun Buyback program is distinguished from Gun Buyback programs in other countries by its abrupt implementation, its narrow focus on a particular class of firearms, and its broad application across the entire population. We assess the impact of Australia’s 1996 Gun Buyback program on national homicide rates using a synthetic control group quasi-experimental design, comparing the results to suicide and motor vehicle fatality trends to test for plausible alternative hypotheses. Results suggest that the Gun Buyback program significantly reduced Australia’s homicide rate in the decade following the intervention (1997–2007).
• Bartos, B. J., McCleary, R., Mazerolle, L., & Luengen, K. (2020). Controlling Gun Violence: Assessing the Impact of Australia’s Gun Buyback Program Using a Synthetic Control Group Experiment. Prevention science, 21(1), 131--136.
• Bartos, B., Newark, C., & McCleary, R. (2020). Marijuana medicalization and motor vehicle fatalities: a synthetic control group approach. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 16(2). doi:10.1007/s11292-018-9345-3
  More info

  Objectives: This paper reports a quasi-experimental evaluation of California’s 1996 medical marijuana law (MML), known as Proposition 215, on statewide motor vehicle fatalities between 1996 and 2015. Methods: To infer the causal impact of California’s MML enactment on statewide motor vehicle fatalities, we construct a synthetic control group for California (i.e., California had it NOT enacted MMLs) as a weighted sum of annual traffic fatality time series from a donor pool of untreated (no MML) states. The post-MML difference between California and its constructed counterfactual reflects the net effect of MMLs on statewide traffic fatalities. The synthetic control group design avoids the problematic homogeneity assumptions intrinsic to panel regression models, which have been employed in prominent studies of this topic. Results: California’s 1996 MML appears to have produced a large, sustained decrease in statewide motor vehicle fatalities amounting to an annual reduction between 588 and 900 vehicle fatalities. This finding is consistent across a wide range of model specifications and donor pool restrictions. In-sample placebo test results suggest that the estimated intervention effect is unlikely to be a spurious artifact and the “leave-one-out” sensitivity analysis demonstrates that the effect is not being driven by an individual or ensemble of influential donor pool states. Conclusions: Our focus on California as a case study limits our ability to generalize our estimate of the MML intervention on motor vehicle fatalities in California to other MML states; however, state-level MML interventions have major differences in their policy dimensions that seem unlikely to “average out” through aggregation.
• Gravel, J., Bartos, B. J., & Delgado, M. K. (2020). 211 Unintended consequences of carrying firearms in vehicles on firearm thefts: an analysis of Tennessee’s 2014 legal change. Injury Prevention, 26(Suppl 1), A36.
• Kubrin, C. E., & Bartos, B. J. (2020). Sanctuary Status and Crime in California: What’s the Connection?. Justice Evaluation Journal, 3(2), 115--133. doi:10.1080/24751979.2020.1745662
• Kubrin, C. E., & Bartos, B. J. (2020). Sanctuary Status and Crime in California: What’s the Connection?. Justice Evaluation Journal, 3(Issue 2). doi:10.1080/24751979.2020.1745662
  More info

  In 2017, California officially became a sanctuary state following the passage of Senate Bill 54, which limits state and local police cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Following the passage of SB54, critics worried that crime rates would rise. What impact did this policy have on crime in California? The current study, the first of its kind, addresses this question. Using a state-level panel containing violent and property offenses from 1970 through 2018, we employ a synthetic control group design to approximate California’s crime rates had SB54 not been enacted. We interpret the gap between California’s 2018 crime rate and its synthetic counterfactual as SB54’s impact. Results show that SB54’s impact on violent and property crime is neither robust nor sufficiently large to rule out a null effect. Sensitivity analyses buttress this finding. We discuss the implications of the findings for crime policy in the U.S.
• Bartos, B., & McCleary, R. (2019). Tautology in Criminological Theory. Available at SSRN 3418629.
• Bartos, B. J., & Kubrin, C. E. (2018). Can We Downsize Our Prisons and Jails Without Compromising Public Safety?: Findings from California's Prop 47. Criminology and Public Policy, 17(Issue 3). doi:10.1111/1745-9133.12378
  More info

  Research Summary: Our study represents the first effort to evaluate systematically Proposition 47's (Prop 47's) impact on California's crime rates. With a state-level panel containing violent and property offenses from 1970 through 2015, we employ a synthetic control group design to approximate California's crime rates had Prop 47 not been enacted. Our findings suggest that Prop 47 had no effect on homicide, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, or burglary. Larceny and motor vehicle thefts, however, seem to have increased moderately after Prop 47, but these results were both sensitive to alternative specifications of our synthetic control group and small enough that placebo testing cannot rule out spuriousness. Policy Implications: As the United States engages in renewed debates regarding the scale and cost of its incarcerated population, California stands at the forefront of criminal justice reform. Although California reduced its prison population by 13,000 through Prop 47, critics argue anecdotally that the measure is responsible for recent crime upticks across the state. We find little empirical support for these claims. Thus, our findings suggest that California can downsize its prisons and jails without compromising public safety.
• Bartos, B. J., & Kubrin, C. E. (2018). Can we downsize our prisons and jails without compromising public safety? Findings from California's Prop 47. Criminology & Public Policy, 17(3), 693--715.
• Bartos, B. J., Mazerolle, L., & McCleary, R. (2018). Life and death decisions: estimating the causal impact of Australia’s gun buyback program on homicide and suicide.
• Bartos, B. J., Newark, C., & McCleary, R. (2018). Marijuana medicalization and motor vehicle fatalities: a synthetic control group approach. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 1--18.
• Renner, M., Newark, C., Bartos, B. J., McCleary, R., & Scurich, N. (2018). Corrigendum to ‘Length of stay for 25,791 California patients found incompetent to stand trial’ [Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine 51C (2017) 22–26](S1752928X17300847)(10.1016/j.jflm.2017.07.006). Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 54(Issue). doi:10.1016/j.jflm.2018.02.023
  More info

  The authors would like to inform that the views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the official views or policies of the California Department of State Hospitals. The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused. DOI of original article: 10.1016/j.jflm.2017.07.006
• Bartos, B. J., Renner, M., Newark, C., McCleary, R., & Scurich, N. (2017). Characteristics of forensic patients in California with dementia/Alzheimer's disease. Journal of Forensic Nursing, 13(Issue 2). doi:10.1097/jfn.0000000000000143
  More info

  Criminal defendants found incompetent to stand trial (IST) are sent to state hospitals for treatment to be restored to competency. IST patients diagnosed with dementia and related disorders present a particular challenge to clinicians, because they must be restored successfully within a statutorily mandated time frame (e.g., 3 years in California for defendants charged with a felony offense). This study examined a comprehensive data set that included all forensic patients served by California's Department of State Hospitals from September 2003 to February 2016. The findings revealed that, althoughmost IST patients with a dementia diagnosis were restored to competency within the statutory time frames, they spent, on average, over twice as long confined than IST patients without a dementia diagnosis and were less likely than the latter group to be successfully restored. One implication of these findings is that forensic clinicians ought to assess whether IST patients diagnosed with dementia are likely to be restored or not as early as possible in the evaluation and triage process and report to the court any IST patients with a dementia diagnosis who are unlikely to be restored successfully. This would both prevent such patients from gratuitous confinement as well as free up treatment resources for other patients.
• Renner, M., Newark, C., Bartos, B. J., McCleary, R., & Scurich, N. (2017). Length of stay for 25,791 California patients found incompetent to stand trial. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 51(Issue). doi:10.1016/j.jflm.2017.07.006
  More info

  Referrals and admissions to state psychiatric hospitals of criminal defendants found Incompetent to Stand Trial (IST) are on the rise in the state of California and other parts of the country. Studies of treatment outcomes of this population have primarily focused on factors that determine competency and/or restorability. However, as IST patients place an increasing resource burden on state psychiatric hospital systems, other outcomes such as length of stay (LOS) are becoming increasingly important for practitioners and policy makers to understand. This study employs the largest sample of IST patients in the literature; it includes all IST patients admitted to California's state psychiatric hospitals between 2003 and 2016. This study analyzes demographics, clinical diagnoses, and hospital placement as predictors of LOS. Results suggest that demographics, with the exception of age, are poor predictors of LOS. However, diagnoses, especially of severe mental disorders (e.g., schizophrenia) were strongly related to LOS. Hospital placement was the strongest predictor of LOS. Explanations of these results and implications for forensic practitioners are discussed.

Proceedings Publications

• Bartos, B. J., Mioduszewski, M., Renner, M., & McCleary, R. (2017). An application of discrete event simulation for planning and resource allocation in a state hospital system servicing both criminal and civil commitments. In 2017 Winter Simulation Conference, WSC 2017.
  More info

  A discrete event simulation (DES) model with Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) forecast inputs, sampled service times, resource capacities and scheduled resource changes was used to project inpatient populations, referral waitlists, and bed utilization for a five-site hospital system with over 10,000 patients. Based on a SAS Simulation Studio platform, the model can project arbitrary subpopulations on a three-year horizon and perform 'what if' experiments with bed allocations and patient flows. This application demonstrates the utility of DES for providers with statutory obligations to serve forensic populations, while also exposing the limitations presented by missing data, non-random variations in data collection across sites, and sizable exogenous variation.

Presentations

• Kubrin, C., & Bartos, B. (2024).

  The COVID-19 Pandemic, Decarceration, and Crime Trends

  . American Society of Criminology Annual Conference. Philadelphia, PA.
• Bartos, B. (2022, February). The Debt Crisis, Austerity Measures, and Suicide in Greece. Western Society of Criminology. Honolulu, HI.
• Bartos, B. J., & Renner, M. (2021, November). Decarceration and Deterrence: A Causal Analysis of Proposition 47 and Property Crime in Los Angeles. American Society of Criminology 2021 Annual Meeting. Chicago, IL.
  More info

  In Event: Deterrence, Decisions, and Criminal Justice PolicyAbstractObjectives: We examine the effects of Proposition 47 a decarcerative policy which decreased the severity of criminal sanctions for property crime through the lens of deterrence theory.Methods: Difference in difference, triple difference, and synthetic control group methods are used to produce main results. Various methods are used to evaluate sensitivity and robustness of effect size estimates.Results: Within-city and between city analyses produce robust evidence that Prop 47 increased property crime, especially shoplifting, in Los Angeles. Results also contain strong indications that part of this increase is attributable to deterrence rather than incapacitation.Conclusions: The study shows that under specific circumstances decarcerative policies may lead to increases in crime through reduced deterrence. Despite this, we ultimately conclude, with the benefit of a growing body of literature on Prop 47, that the policy was effective in limiting these increases to anticipated, and less serious forms of crime.
• Bartos, B., Kubrin, C., & McCleary, R. (2021, November). The Debt Crisis, Austerity Measures and Suicide in Greece. American Society of Criminology's 2022 Annual Meeting. Chicago, IL.
• Bartos, B. (2019, November). Scaling Transformations and Standardization: Implications for Time-series Matching Methods. The American Society of Criminology Annual Conference,. San Francisco, CA.
  More info

  Time-series matching methods, such difference-in-differences and synthetic control group designs, aim to identify or construct a control time-series that represents the treated unit “had the intervention not occurred”. While a control time series that satisfies the parallel trends assumption is rarely available in nature, it can sometimes be approximated as a weighted combination of untreated “donor pool” units. The weights assigned to untreated units are selected by a matching algorithm intended to minimize the pre-intervention differences between the treated unit and its constructed synthetic control series. Since the weights are constrained to be non-negative and sum to one, the synthetic control unit cannot extrapolate beyond the range of values contained in the donor pool. This constraint can be relaxed through scaling transformations, of which per capita rates are most common to researchers. Although population-based rates work quite well for health outcomes when every living human has the potential to contribute an occurrence of the outcome, many criminological outcomes require some antecedent behavior or material pre-condition in order for them to occur. Using a state-level panel of annual motor vehicle fatalities between 1975 and 2015, the current study demonstrates the non-trivial impact scaling factors can produce in synthetic control group estimates.

Creative Productions

• Bartos, B., & Kubrin, C. (2025.

  When it comes to criminal justice reform, California is at a crossroads (Op-Ed)

  . TBD, California 100 Commission will determine highest impact outletCalifornia 100 Commission.
• Kubrin, C., & Bartos, B. (2024. Decarceration and Crime Do Not Go Hand in Hand. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/decarceration-and-crime-do-not-go-hand-in-hand1/
  More info

  The pandemic provided a natural experiment, one that suggests fewer people in jail does not lead to more crime.

Others

• Bartos, B. J. (2020). Methodological Foundations of the Synthetic Control Group Design: Formalizing Model Construction for Case Study Applications in the Social Sciences.
• McDowall, D., McCleary, R., & Bartos, B. J. (2019). Interrupted time series analysis.
• McCleary, R., McDowall, D., & Bartos, B. (2017). Design and Analysis of Time Series Experiments.