The state came close to meeting its first court-imposed benchmark for reducing the prison population last week. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, readying its January 10 report to the federal court in the Northern District of California, announced it’s currently operating at 169.2 percent of its designed capacity. That number nearly hits the 167-percent figure the court demanded California meet by December 27, 2011.
Nielsen warnings on Realignment* from CA Assembly GOP on Vimeo.
The above video, produced by the Assembly Republican Caucus, gives a little glimpse into how prison realignment will play out in state politics in the years to come.
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Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla.
The LA Times opines that the state’s recent decision to let mothers incarcerated for non-violent, non-serious crimes out of prison early is akin to having them “plead the belly.” Never heard the term? Apparently, under English common law (when the death penalty was still in effect), women could ask that their execution be stayed if and while they were pregnant–leading, allegedly, to women lying about being pregnant to avoid death. The state’s new policy, which is expected to extend to fathers as well, is no less bizarre, the Times writes:
By Nicole Jones
With the reality of realignment just weeks away, California county officials are scrambling to make decisions on how to deal with thousands of new level low-level offenders and parole violators previously handled by the state.
All and all, county jails and probation departments are expected to absorb as many as 40,000 new offenders.
Google Public Data Explorer
The unemployment rate won't help.
By Richard Gilliam
It was recently reported that the national unemployment rate remained bogged down at 9.1 percent. But the national unemployment rate for African-American males is much higher: 18 percent. And the actual unemployment rate for African-American teens is a staggering 47.5 percent. The unemployment rate for formerly incarcerated individuals, especially minority males, eclipses even these numbers.
Here in California, with the specter of early releases of hundreds of state prisoners due to prison overcrowding, is it any wonder why some officials are predicting a rise in crime if this occurs? These same elected officials–who seem to never miss an opportunity to cry “public safety” whenever their tough-on-crime, lengthy sentencing policies are questioned–are still singing the same tune without offering any answers. You, the taxpayers, are about to inherit the “after” that comes of short-sighted thinking.
CDCR
California has what one might call a “pressing problem” when it comes to the prison system. In May, the US Supreme Court confirmed a lower court’s conclusion that California’s prison system is so overcrowded that inmates are being held in conditions that violate the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. So the state was told to do something about this overcrowding, and fast.
Basically, by the end of June, 2013, the state will have to reduce its prison population from 144,000 inmates to 110,000 inmates. How? California, led by Governor Jerry Brown, has a plan: move supervision and incarceration of lower-level felons to the counties. That plan goes into action on October 1 of this year. Realignment is set to drastically change the way we do criminal justice in California. Here’s why.
CDCR
CDCR
The Legislative Analysts Office–that body of state number crunchers who give non-partisan assessments of whether proposed and new laws would do what they claim and how much they would cost–doesn’t think we’re out of the woods on complying with the federal court order to reduce prison overcrowding.
As a refresher, a panel of three federal judges ordered California to lighten its prison system, either by reducing the number of prisoners or building more space to house them. Because of the budgetary situation in California, the state decided that reducing the population would be the most feasible option. So Governor Jerry Brown took a plan to the legislature, now known as AB 109 or “realignment,” aimed at reducing California’s prison population by 34,000 inmates before the end of June 2013 (the court-imposed deadline). That plan calls for a few things, the biggest one being that starting October 1 of this year, people convicted of certain non-violent, non-serious felonies and most parole violators will serve their sentences in county jail instead of state prison. That shift is expected to go a long way towards permanently freeing up space in California’s prisons.
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