COVID can spread easily in places like prisons. And Gov. Kate Brown commuted the sentence of 963 prisoners to help reduce the danger.

The debate is: Did she make the right decision?

The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission released a report this month looking at the recidivism rates of those who were released. The short summary: A subset of those released did not have higher rates of recidivism than the most recent rates of recidivism.

People protested the early releases. Four people who are members of families of homicide victims, the Lane and Linn county district attorneys filed a lawsuit. They claimed Brown overreached her authority. That’s an important question, but it’s also important to look at the behavior of those who were released.

The prisoners were released from July 2020 through October 2021. Most, 63%, were defined by the state as medically vulnerable. The analysis is only for the first 266 who were commuted in 2020.

The results were that 18%, or 48 people, were arrested within one year of commutation. A total of 8% were convicted of a new misdemeanor or felony and 2% were reincarcerated. By way of contrast the people released from prison in late 2019 had a rate of arrest of 20%, a rate of conviction of 8% and a rate of incarceration of 3%.

There are always difficulties in making comparisons like this. For instance, the law changed after the passage of Measure 110, which decriminalized drug possession violations after Feb. 1 of last year.

It’s also important to look at the types of crimes people commit. Some of the 266 studied did commit person crimes, such as menacing, recklessly endangering another person, assault in the fourth degree, robbery in the second and first degrees and assaulting a public safety officer.

Some people may read the results of this study and conclude Brown’s decision was correct. Others may conclude it was wrong or wrong no matter what the study or follow-ups of the study showed. You can tell Brown what you think here: tinyurl.com/TellBrown.