Drummond: More transparency needed with county realignment funds

In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 109 into law. Realignment allowed people convicted of 500 "non-serious, non-violent and non-sex related" felonies to serve their sentences in county jail or in a supervised community release program. 

The idea was to help reduce the state's prison population and the soaring costs of incarceration. Supporters of this major corrections policy shift saw it as an opportunity to break the cycle of re-incarceration by sending more low-level offenders to evidenced-based community programs that offer drug rehab, education, job training, anger management, housing and other services to help them to re-enter society.

Yet in fact, AB 109 was set up to maintain the status quo.

The state gives each county a certain amount of money -- based on a formula -- to help absorb the costs associated with this new group of people still serving sentences and parolees that they are now responsible for.

The Community Corrections Partnership Executive Committee makes funding recommendations to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. Six of its seven members come from law enforcement and the courts. They include LaDonna Harris, chief probation officer, Fremont Police Chief Richard Lucero, Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern, District Attorney Nancy O'Malley, Public Defender Brendon Woods and court executive officer Leah Wilson. There are no community members on the powerful committee.

The Alameda County Sheriff's Department, which runs the jails, has gotten the lion's share of the money. The department has been allocated more than half of the $34.6 million AB 109 funds -- the same percentage as last year. Yet the number of inmates at Santa Rita and Glenn Dyer dropped from 10,000 to 7,000, according to a presentation by sheriff's officials before the county Public Protection Committee. The department has closed three housing units at Santa Rita and two floors at Glenn Dyer.

So with fewer inmates under its supervision, why is the department still set to get $18 million -- close to the same amount as when there were more inmates?

"The number of bed days have gone down and the number of inmates have gone down but our costs continue to rise with the cost of living," Ahern said.

Ahern said there were fixed programming costs that don't go down just because of fewer inmates. He also characterized many of the prisoners coming from state prison as having been "in and out of jail with a high level of sophistication."

Yet how could they be any more difficult for deputies to manage than the gang members and killers who are routinely housed in Santa Rita while they're on trial?

"The Alameda County jail population is the same as its always been and the people who are coming from state prison are nonviolent," says Ella Baker Center for Human Rights organizer Darris Young.

According to an Ella Baker Center analysis, the county spent just under $6 million of the $9.5 million allocated to community-based organizations in 2013-2014. Young said that the county's failure to disburse the funds to community-based organizations meant that ex-offenders with pressing housing and other needs didn't get help, which makes no sense. Activists complain that the sheriff has not given a detailed accounting of expenditures.

The Ella Baker Center "Jobs not Jails" campaign has been waging a battle to get Alameda County to reduce the sheriff's share of realignment dollars and dedicate at least 50 percent to community-based organizations that provide re-entry series. They are currently set to receive 29 percent of the $34.6 million pie under the proposed 2014-2015 budget.

"This fight is going on in almost every county in California," says Barry Krisberg, a criminologist at UC Berkeley. "Unfortunately, in a lot of places the traditional voices are winning."

The highly organized "Jobs not Jails" campaign is beginning to gain traction.

Ella Baker activists took over a board of supervisors meeting earlier this month. They sang and chanted, demanding that the supervisors dedicate nearly 50 percent of funds from the proposed realignment budget to community re-entry programs. Supervisor Keith Carson introduced a compromise proposal to up those programs to 50 percent -- starting July 1.

The activists say that's a step in the right direction but they won't concede on the current AB 109 budget vote set for Tuesday. It's going to be a wild ride.

No Link Between California’s Prison Realignment and Increased Crime?

Despite being blamed by some members of law enforcement for a recent uptick in crime in some counties, there is no connection between California’s Prison Realignment and increased criminal activity, according to a report released Wednesday.

The Center of Juvenile and Criminal Justice report found little evidence of there being more crime due to realignment based on random crime trends in counties since the implementation of the law.

For example, Los Angeles County, which has one of the highest percentage of realigned offenders, has continued to see a steady drop in total crime, including an 11 percent decrease in violent crime.

This lack of a clear pattern of crime shows it’s still too soon to draw any conclusion when it comes to the relationship between realignment and crime, according to a Center of Juvenile and Criminal Justice news release.

“We are pleased that CJCJ took an impartial look at the data and found no causal relationship between crime and realignment…,” said Jeffrey Callison, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Callison said crime rates are continually rising and falling, and they vary from one community to the next, and from one crime category to the next.

California was ordered to reduce the state prison population to about 110,000, or 137.5 percent of prison capacity, as a way to improve the quality of inmates’ health. To accomplish that, Assembly Bill 109, the state’s prison realignment law, shifted the responsibility of monitoring lower-level inmates from the state to the counties.

Under AB 109, those convicted of a triple-non offense — nonviolent, nonserious, nonsexual — would be eligible to be supervised by county probation departments or serve their sentences in county jail. AB 109 was implemented Oct. 1, 2011, as a way for the state to comply with a federal three-judge panel’s order to decrease the population of California’s prisons. The panel found the overcrowded conditions in state prisons led to inadequate medical attention for inmates.

However, high-ranking law enforcement officials from across the state have talked about the dangers of prison realignment.

Glendale Police Chief Ronald De Pompa has called the legislation “dangerous public policy,” and Fontana Police Chief Rod Jones has labeled the law a failure after an AB 109 probationer, David Mulder, allegedly fatally stabbed a woman in 2013 at a Fontana Park and Ride.

At this week’s Lakewood State of the City address, sheriff’s Capt. Merrill Ladenheim referenced a report from the Public Policy Institute of California that found a connection between AB 109 and property crimes. During his presentation at the meeting, Ladenheim called realignment, as well as the issue of county jail capacity, a challenge to public safety.

Along with finding no real connection between realignment and an increase in crimes, the Center of Juvenile and Criminal Justice report, which used data from 2010 to 2012, found that California’s 58 counties have seen varying crime rates since the implementation of AB 109.

Kings County had a 46 percent increase in violent crime trends, according to the data used for the report, while Humboldt and Napa counties saw a 26 percent drop.

Los Angeles County, which received a higher-than-average proportion of realigned offenders, has experienced a drop in violent as well as property crimes.

Only Placer, Sacramento, San Mateo and Tulare counties experienced similar, across-the-board crime reductions, however, they have relatively smaller populations compared to Los Angeles County.

San Bernardino County saw an increase in overall crime by about 10 percent from 2010 to 2012 but a slight decrease in violent crime.

Some experts said they feel it’s not necessarily those who are under county supervision who may be driving up some crime rates but those who are no longer under the watch of any agency.

“Realignment now permits offenders who are sentenced under AB 109 guidelines to be given straight or split sentencing, thus allowing them to avoid any supervision after serving a jail sentence instead of a prison commitment,” said Chris Condon, spokesman for the San Bernardino County Probation Department.

Under sentencing code 1170, a person convicted of a triple-non can opt to serve a portion of their time in county jail and then spend the remainder of their time being supervised by county probation. They can also serve their entire time in county jail and not require any supervision once their terms have been completed.

“These offenders do not fall under our jurisdiction, and recidivism rates cannot be determined,” Condon said. “We know that there has been a 40 percent reduction in recidivism for the AB 109 offenders we do supervise.”

via: http://justicenotjails.org/no-link-between-californias-prison-realignment-and-increased-crime/

Stanford University studies look at how California's prison realignment is playing out

The state's prison realignment program shifted thousands of would-be state prisoners to local control. But it didn't set up a mechanism for tracking what happened to the population or the impact on the counties where they ended up.

Now, two papers out of Stanford Law School's Criminal Justice Center look at how realignment is playing out in California counties. 

How realignment is perceived

In the first study, Stanford Law Professor Joan Petersilia spoke with 125 local stakeholders: police chiefs, district attorneys, public defenders, probation officers, judges, and sheriffs. The idea was to get a sense of how realignment is going. It resulted in "a portrait of counties struggling, often heroically, to carry out an initiative that was poorly planned and imposed upon them almost overnight."

Nonetheless, Petersilia found most law enforcement accepted that realignment is "here to stay," and that "the old system was yielding disappointing results." 

Perhaps the most optimistic and supportive group, probation officers, felt realignment: "gave them an opportunity to fully test whether well-tailored rehabilitation services can keep lower-level felony offenders from committing new crimes and returning to prison."

Petersilia also offers a number of recommendations based on the conversations:

• Create a database of state prisoners released to county probation supervision.
• Consider an offender's past crimes when determining his or her level of post-prison supervision (parole or probation).
• Cap county jail sentences at three years, and consider prison time for repeat probation violators (like sex offenders who cut off their GPS monitors). 

Such changes, Petersilia suggests, could help law enforcement deal with the challenges realignment has brought. 

Where the money is going

The second study examines how California counties are spending billions of dollars they've been allocated by the state to implement realignment.

Looking at the county's plans for the first year of realignment, University of Denver Sociology Professor Jeffrey Lin found that counties varied in whether they allocated more of their realignment dollars to law enforcement or treatment and rehabilitation.

Lin found counties that had relatively fewer per capita law enforcement personnel (like Riverside and Kings counties) used realignment dollars to beef up their law enforcement ranks.

Other counties that invested more heavily in law enforcement (like Los Angeles and Kern counties) may have felt compelled to invest in law enforcement because of higher crime rates and politically, their "relatively high preference for prison for drug crimes."

Those investing more in treatment and rehabilitation also shared some characteristics.

A category of counties that included Alameda and Sonoma tended to have high Black unemployment rates and popular county sheriff's. In these counties, Lin hypothesizes: "high confidence in the sheriff’s office may allow key leaders to address those needs in less politically popular ways—i.e., pursuing treatment as a solution to crime problems."

Overall, "Sheriff and Law Enforcement spending is generally a product of local needs (crime conditions and dedication to law enforcement) and preference for punishment."

Whereas, "Programs and Services spending fundamentally revolves around electoral
confidence in the Sheriff."

Lin adds the caveat that only the first year of planned realignment spending was included in the study. He plans to follow up to see how the trends hold up over time. 

Stop the Revolving Jail Door

Split sentencing, in which a felon serves a portion of his time in jail and another portion in the community but under supervision, shows promise.

By The Times editorial board

June 29, 2013, 5:00 p.m.

Criminal defendants convicted of felonies in California used to be sentenced to state prison. Most, after serving 50% of their terms, were released on parole and returned to their communities. And of them, most ended up back in prison, either because they committed new crimes or because they were caught violating parole. California was good at running felons through a revolving door and very bad at guiding their safe return to society: getting the addicted off drugs, getting treatment for the mentally ill, getting those with antisocial and criminal mind-sets into structured, supervised programs with reliable records of reforming those former inmates who were amenable to reform.

The state had a Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, but in most cases it neither corrected nor rehabilitated. It kept criminals incapacitated, but when they returned to their neighborhoods, they were at least as dangerous as when they were sent away.

Today, defendants convicted of felonies defined by law as violent, serious or sexual continue to go to state prison; and despite widespread public misunderstanding and assertions to the contrary by officials who ought to know better, defendants convicted of lesser felonies also go to state prison if they have rap sheets that include past violent, serious or sexual offenses.
But since October 2011, newly convicted "non-non-non" felons — those whose offenses are not violent, serious or sexual — with no current or previous record of serious convictions go to county jail. Just like their counterparts in state prison, they will serve their time, get out and return to their communities.

And then what? The addicted and the mentally ill will most likely remain untreated; they and other inmates badly in need of life skills, anger management counseling or similar programs will leave jail at complete liberty, with an unstructured reentry into society. Their prospects for success — shunning trouble, getting work, leading productive, crime-free lives, leaving their neighbors safe — will be about the same as those of felons returning from state prison: not good.

Evidence has shown, time and again, that the outcomes are better for inmates who begin programs in jail — and who then return to society under supervision while continuing mandatory treatment and education. There are three choices for dealing with inmates, and three well-documented outcomes: no treatment or education in or out of jail, and a poor chance at success; compelled treatment and education in jail, and slightly better chances; and mandatory treatment in jail followed by mandatory treatment and monitoring, for a period of time, on return to society, with much improved prospects of breaking the cycle of offending, being locked up, returning to the streets and offending again. And keep in mind: The beneficiaries of these programs are not just the offenders but also those who are victimized by them.

AB 109, the criminal justice realignment laws adopted in 2011 that gave counties new responsibilities over low-level felons, also proposed a reinvention of the reentry process to deal with criminal recidivism. Defendants could receive what is known as a "split sentence," with a portion of the time to be served in jail and another portion to be served in the community, under supervision by probation officers who would monitor mandatory participation in rehabilitation and other programs. The period served under supervision in the community, after release from jail, is known as a "tail."

In keeping with the spirit of realignment, which gives counties maximum flexibility to experiment, compile data, compare notes and adjust as necessary, AB 109 doesn't mandate split sentencing. Nor does it compel counties to abide by any formula or guideline in determining how much it can spend on programming, or what kind of programs to offer. Counties can decide whether to spend more of their realignment funding on incarceration or reentry.

Some counties — especially those already geared toward community-based corrections for their misdemeanor defendants — have embraced split sentencing. In Contra Costa County, for example, 90% of the AB 109 felony sentences are split. Other counties and their trial courts are also turning to split sentencing, pairing the post-incarceration tail with innovative and proven programs that reintroduce felons to their neighborhoods with carefully tailored treatment and scrutiny. Because more time is served under community supervision, jail cells are freed up for the most dangerous offenders.

So how tightly is the state's largest jurisdiction, Los Angeles County, embracing the opportunities presented by split sentencing? This county is bottom of the barrel, with a supervised tail in only 4% of sentences.

The reasons for the failure to use this proven tool are unimpressive. Defense lawyers and prosecutors are used to bargaining over custody time, not negotiating for tails. Defendants would rather do their time and return to the streets at full liberty. Prosecutors would rather maximize custody time than require post-custody programming. Judges defer to the lawyers' plea bargains when sentencing. The focus is shortsighted, aimed at efficient processing, not structured reentry or breaking the cycle of recidivism. The leader of a committee made up of local law enforcement officers, judges and county service providers told the Board of Supervisors last week that he expects no change in the number of split sentences here.

Lawmakers this year considered a bill that would have required courts to include at least a six-month tail on AB 109 sentences, helping sluggish counties to begin solving the recidivism problem even when they don't want to. Under heavy lobbying from prosecutors, the measure died in committee.

That's a shame. Los Angeles County and its courts are squandering the opportunity presented by AB 109 to return corrections and rehabilitation to the criminal justice system. If they can't make use of split sentencing on their own — and so far they have demonstrated that they can't — they will need to be pushed.

Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

A New Way of Life Reentry Project Susan Burton

Susan Burton confronts 3 police officers in front of her resident where she house women and their children, after they came to do a compliance check under AB109. The officers handcuffed the woman, searched her twice, tore her room and closet up and told her that it was protocol and that they would be back. All of this took place while Board of Supervisor Mark Ritley Thomas was down the street visiting another resident of Susan where the woman had just told her story to MRT and his crew.

Susan speaks to some of the issues concerning AB 109 and calls up the woman that the police harrassed earlier that day to tell of what took place.

Chief of the police officers that came out speaks to the townhall meeting about AB 109 at the Community Coalition headquarters. He indicated that there should be some changes and that they were working on reviewing how officers do compliance checks. 

California prison population drops by 8,000 since realignment

via KPCC

Dec. 16, 2011 | By Julie Small | KPCC

The number of inmates in California prisons has dropped by 8,000 since “realignment” took effect Oct. 1. Court papers state officials filed Thursday indicate the change. Officials reported the new numbers Thursday under a federal court order to reduce crowding in the prisons.

In its monthly status report to the court, officials said the state prison population dropped by 8,218 between Oct. 5 and Dec. 7.

California prison officials say the transfer of low-level felons to county officials that began in October will allow the state to meet a court-ordered reduction a month after a Dec. 27 deadline.

The state’s prison population has declined from a record high of 173,000 in 2006 to the current population of 135,000. But many prisons remain packed with almost twice the number of inmates they were designed to hold.

About two years ago, attorneys at the Prison Law Office convinced a panel of three federal judges that crowded conditions prevented inmates from getting basic medical care. The judges ordered California to reduce the state inmate population within two years.

In March this year the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that order.

The court order and state budget deficits convinced state lawmakers to enact Gov. Jerry Brown's historic "realignment" plan that shifts responsibility for non-serious, non-violent, non-sex offenders to counties. The Legislature also diverted some sales tax and vehicle licensing revenues in the next fiscal year to help local government pay for the new responsibility. The law took effect Oct. 1.

Counties dilemma: how to use funds for inmates

Count dilemma: how to use funds for inmates

Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, December 5, 2011

In a nondescript classroom one block from the San Francisco Hall of
Justice, 10 men gathered on a recent night for a parenting class.

They went around the room, sharing the high and low points of their weeks.
One man said he was relieved that November - the anniversary of both his
brother's and father's deaths - was over. Another was excited and nervous
about an upcoming job interview. The group - many of them ex-convicts, all
of them there because of past involvement with the criminal justice system
- responded with encouragement and support.

The parenting class, run by the nonprofit Community Works and sponsored by
the San Francisco Sheriff's Department, is one of a host of programs
offered both in San Francisco's jails and in the community to help
offenders get their lives back in order. Supporters say that for someone
with a criminal history, a program can mean the difference between
rehabilitation and returning to jail.

And that's why many nonprofit community organizations around California
have been lobbying hard to be included in the pot of money counties are
receiving under the state's criminal justice realignment plan, which
includes keeping more felons at county lockups instead of shipping them to
state prisons.

But how that funding is spent varies by county. Some jurisdictions are
spending the bulk of the money on law enforcement, including the hiring of
police and probation officers, while others are choosing to invest in
nonprofits that offer substance abuse counseling, housing, job training and
other services to criminal offenders.

Experts say counties that choose to invest in services are more likely to
reduce recidivism - and thus the number of people in the state's crowded
jails and prisons.

Studies back that up. A recent report by the Pew Center on the States noted
that the "largest reductions in recidivism are realized when evidence-based
programs and practices are implemented in prisons and govern the
supervision of (offenders) in the community post-release."

One of the participants in the parenting class at the Hall of Justice, a
38-year-old former drug addict, said he is proof that these programs work.

A year ago, he was living in San Francisco County Jail after 10 years of
bouncing between sobriety, drug binges and run-ins with the law. Now, he is
working full time, getting straight
A's<http://www.sfgate.com/sports/athletics/>at City
College <http://www.sfgate.com/education-guide/> and preparing to move back
in with his girlfriend and 1-year-old son.

Last week, he graduated from the parenting class.

"I'm doing really well ... and I'm proud of myself for sticking with it,"
said Scott, who did not want his last name used because he is worried about
future employment opportunities. "A lot of people don't know about drug
addiction, the things we've been through. They think it doesn't work
because statistically, it doesn't always.

"If no one else believes in you, and you don't believe in you, one person,
saying, 'I do' - that's really all it takes."
Investing in solutions

Many Bay Area counties have embraced the idea of investing in services,
with San Francisco, Alameda and Santa Clara each allocating one-quarter to
one-third of their first year realignment budget to nonprofit providers.

"Our belief is that what's really going to help in terms of resolving
recidivism and having a higher success rate is getting folks jobs and
much-needed services," said Santa Clara Probation Chief Sheila Mitchell,
who put 25 percent of the county's $15.4 million into services. "Our
funding plan mirrors our philosophy."

Some of the state's largest counties, however, have put just a fraction of
their realignment budget into services.

One of those is San Bernardino County, which is second only to Los Angeles
County in the number of inmates it sends to state prison every year. County
leaders there chose to earmark about $300,000 of their $27.5 million budget
to faith- and community-based organizations this year, a move that angered
many advocates.

County probation Chief Michelle Scray said she believes community
organizations can make the difference between incarceration and a
productive, crime-free life for someone with a criminal history.

However, Scray noted that she must ensure the county probation department
can handle an additional 2,500 former prison inmates over the next four
years. That's in addition to the 19,000 probationers the agency already
supervises.

So when San Bernardino County came up with a plan for spending its money,
Scray and other county leaders decided to spend the lion's share on hiring
probation officers, sheriff's deputies and other law enforcement officials.

Scray said she is training probation officers to do things like teach
anger-management classes at one of the three reporting centers the county
plans to open. But she said the state needs to give additional money for
nongovernment services, which she believes are important.
Ill-equipped for influx

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting different results," she said. "California has a 67 percent
recidivism rate because we only do things from the law enforcement side and
there is no rehabilitation."

Those who run nonprofits and churches say that's exactly why counties
should be investing in their services instead of waiting for money that
will likely never materialize from the deficit-plagued state.

The Rev. Samuel Casey runs COPE, a network of African American
congregations in the Inland Empire. He said San Bernardino County is
ill-equipped to handle the thousands of men and women it will be charged
with supervising under realignment. County leaders, he said, need to
analyze where these offenders will be going, what they need and what
resources are available to them - and then, they should invest in those
services.

"Part of it is just cultural competency, being able to engage this
population. These are some of our brothers, sisters, mothers, grandfathers
and uncles coming home," he said. "Probation is not going to have the
engagement with these individuals the way everyone thinks. They will barely
see them. They barely see the ones that are on probation now."

Community leaders in Sacramento, Los Angeles and elsewhere are also angry
and frustrated by the tiny amount those jurisdictions have decided to
invest this year in community services.

Daniel Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal
Justice in San Francisco, said the discrepancies between counties mirror
what was already happening in each jurisdiction prior to realignment. The
center conducts criminal justice research and provides direct services,
including a substance abuse program for adults who are released from
prison.
'Counties not prepared'

"Most counties are not prepared to meet the challenges of realignment, and
for many of them it's their own fault. They have engaged in bad practices
and policies for 30 years," he said. "The counties that will have the
hardest time are some of the Southern California and Central Valley
counties that have relied heavily on the state prison system."

Macallair said probation departments need to change the way they approach
their job and rely more on the community.

"What people don't realize is that even though we're the state of
California and we have one set of criminal laws, you have 58 counties
responsible for interpreting and applying those laws and essentially 58
different criminal justice systems," he said. "You're going to have well
functioning counties able to meet this challenge and a lot that are going
to lag behind. There's nothing uniform about this."

E-mail Marisa Lagos at mlagos@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/05/MNDF1M6CVP.DTL

This article appeared on page *A - 1* of the San Francisco Chronicle

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California jails receiving more state prisoners than expected

Full Story Here

By Richard Winton and Andrew Blankstein
Los Angeles Times

November 16, 2011

The number of state prisoners arriving in county jails under California's controversial prison diversion program is significantly higher than officials had estimated, adding new pressure on sheriff's departments to figure out what to do with thousands of extra inmates.

Prisoners convicted of some nonviolent crimes began serving their time in county jails last month as California complied with a U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring the state to lower its prison population by 30,000.

But the number of state prisoners being transferred has been much higher than officials had predicted, prompting counties to speed up efforts to reopen shuttered jail wings and find other arrangements for some inmates.

Los Angeles County was projected to add about 600 state prisoners by now but has booked more than 900. The tally in Orange County is running more than double what the state had estimated.

Based on the state's initial projections, Orange County officials believed their jail system would reach capacity sometime in 2013, giving them time to find more jail beds. But if the trend continues, the county could reach capacity by May, said Assistant Sheriff Mike James.

In Kern County, the jail system got so full last week that the Sheriff's Department freed 50 parole violators — including thieves — because they had no jail beds for them.

"Instead of 120 inmates, we got 150 inmates extra in October. That adds up over 12 months," said Corrections Chief Kevin Zimmermann of the Kern County Sheriff's Department.

County jails are receiving extra state funding to help house the prisoners, but there are doubts about whether the money will be enough to avoid releasing some inmates. Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said he is considering a plan to release some inmates who are awaiting trial and outfit them with electronic monitors that chronicle their movements.

Other counties are also considering major expansions of house-arrest programs, as well as channeling some nonviolent inmates into mental health and substance abuse programs.

The L.A. County Sheriff's Department has the funding to open only an additional 1,800 beds, but the county is expected to receive 8,000 state prisoners in the next year, according to an internal report by the district attorney's office. That report also said the jails could reach capacity in December. Sheriff's officials said that it's unclear when the jails will be full but that it could occur in 2012.

Some counties, such as Los Angeles, are under court order preventing jail overcrowding. So officials said it's almost a foregone conclusion that some inmates will be released to make way for the state prisoners.

Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said none of the alternatives are ideal. For example, she said, she's not sure how many inmates can be trusted to serve time wearing GPS-monitored bracelets.

"The question is how many can be put out safely on electronic monitoring? We are not going to have enough money to put everyone in jail. Jail is the most costly alternative," Hutchens said. "In California, the public wants criminals to do their full time, but no one wants to build more county jails and prisons. So something has to give."

State corrections officials said they hadn't expected the plan known as realignment to be a smooth transition because it is such an unprecedented shift. They acknowledged that their estimates have been off but believe the surge will be short-lived.

"We do expect that the overall jail admissions will level out," said Dana Toyama, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She added that some estimates have turned out to be correct, including the number of prisoners sent to San Francisco.

State officials and some sheriffs believe the higher-than-projected number of state prisoners being sent to jails has occurred in part because defense attorneys waited until realignment took effect to settle their clients' cases. By doing that, the attorneys were assured that their clients would receive jail time instead of prison time.

"We believe it has occurred because of publicity the realignment received. Defense attorneys delayed a lot of adjudications until after Oct. 1," when the law took effect, said Merced County Sheriff Mark Pazin, president of the California State Sheriffs' Assn. "Those persons who pleaded guilty ended up in the local facilities when under the old course of events they would have gone to prison."

Many county officials say it's just a matter time before some inmates have to be released.

Riverside County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Jerry Gutierrez said his jail is now at 93% capacity and will be full by January. In San Bernardino County, officials are planning to significantly expands their work-release and electronic monitoring programs, certain that the influx of state prisoners will force some releases.

"We just started the biggest system change in the history of California justice," said Nick Warner, legislative director for the State Sheriffs' Assn. "Anyone who predicts with certainty failure or success is premature in that judgment."