Prison Populations Down, But Success of AB 109 in the Eye of the Beholder

A San Diego County Supervisor would criticize the state’s realignment process, arguing, “Since [the law] was passed, theft is up in this county by 16 percent, including autos.  You can’t blame that on our budget. But it’s Sacramento’s budget that has presented us with this dilemma.”

Except for one problem, a San Diego news site reports, it is untrue.

The Voice of San Diego reported, “We decided to Fact Check whether theft had risen so distinctly because it addresses a key concern that local authorities raised after state lawmakers approved the prison shift.”

“Our review showed theft didn’t spike by 16 percent as Horn claimed. The number had climbed by about 3 percent,” they reported.

“By claiming a 16 percent increase, he essentially made about 5,300 additional crimes appear out of thin air,” their data specialist Keegan Kyle reports. “And those thousands of nonexistent crimes helped bolster his criticism” of the state.

Those findings parallel with much of the data from the rest of the state.  But while the worst fears of realignment critics have not panned out, others have argued that even as California’s prison population fell below that of Texas for tops in the nation and thus the world, the jury is still out on the goal of actually reducing recidivism.

Part of that may be that there simply has not been enough time for a longer term plan to work.  Others would argue that local jurisdictions such as Yolo County are still putting too much in the way of resources into incarceration and too little into the type of evidence-based programs that could reduce recidivism.

California has seen its prison population fall from roughly 160,000 to 135,000 since last October, according to reports by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

However, as the ACLU reported, “Critics of the department welcomed the precipitous drop but many say they remain unconvinced that the reduction signifies a shift in correctional philosophy rather than just a transfer from state buildings to local ones.”

“What is the long-term plan for reaching an appropriate level of spending on incarceration in the state?” said Allen Hopper, criminal justice and drug policy director for the ACLU of Northern California. “We have the second highest recidivism rate in the country. We can’t simply shift the problem to the counties and expect to have a different outcome. We have to figure out an alternative to incarceration.”

“Critics like Hopper point to recent signs that county jail populations are swelling and that they could continue to grow, as signs that reducing the incarcerated population through rehabilitation programs like drug courts and job training seminars is not a main goal of realignment,” Henry Meier, staff at the California Daily Journal wrote.

Citing an ACLU report, an estimated 25,000 prisoners were removed from the prisons while 12,000 county jail spots have opened up.  Those numbers suggest the need for more beds and the lawmakers are obliging earmarking another $500 million toward the construction of jails through construction bonds.

According to Mr. Meier’s report, Stanford Law School professor Joan Petersilia, the co-director of the school’s Criminal Justice Center and a former adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, believes both sides “need to take a more nuanced look at the problem.”

“It’s clearly not the intent of the law or the Legislature to basically downscale the prison population on the back of county jails,” she said. “But if this is the way it has to be, we’re still better off in the long run, even if former prison inmates are doing the same amount of time in jail,” because inmates are closer to their home communities and the resources there.

“The AB 900 money was to be used to help inmates exit out of prison,” she said. “They would have been moved [from prison] in the last year of their sentence to these re-entry hubs where you can reconnect them to family and services in the community. Now [the state] has sort of repurposed that money for regular jails, but it’s still possible to get the benefits of local programming.”

The Associated Press reported that realignment has prompted anger “from certain lawmakers who believe the state again is reneging on its promise to keep those convicted of violent and other serious crimes in state prisons rather than county jails.”

Last week, the governor signed legislation that shifted ten crimes back to state prison, including “child sex offenses, selling drugs to a child in a park, seriously injuring a peace officer during an escape or while resisting arrest, and escaping from a mental hospital.”

At the same time it shifts four crimes to county jails, including “possession of certain dangerous items, such as certain explosives, various knives, and exotic weapons like guns or swords hidden in walking canes, belt buckles, lipstick cases, wallets or writing pens. Check fraud and defrauding the state’s food stamp program also now merit time in jail instead of prison.”

Republican legislators Ted Gaines and Doug La Malfa are angry.

“I don’t want them in my backyard … violent crime, felonies involving weapons of violence,” said Senator La Malfa. “This isn’t fear-mongering, this is reality.”

On the other hand, Senator Mark Leno said that “the changes merely fix drafting errors that will affect a small number of criminals who should have merited jail time all along.”

“Taxpayers will save money by having them serve time in county jail rather than in state prison,” said Senator Leno. “We’re getting smarter on crime so we can better invest limited resources on education rather than corrections, which every poll shows Californians support. And of course education is our best known crime prevention tool.”

Meanwhile, today the Associated Press reports that nearly 250 more inmates will go to county jail rather than prison each year, which they call “a sharp increase from the state’s original projections.”

“The corrections department said Thursday that it miscalculated the effect of changing where some criminals serve their time,” the AP reports.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

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