Old Brown tries to fix a young Brown's mistake

— Hang around long enough and you might see things turn full circle. People included.

Like a comet, they come back around.

Gov. Jerry Brown is a comet. He dominated the Capitol cosmos two generations ago, floated off and circled back.

Now one of the major public policy issues of 40 years ago also has returned, meteor-like. It concerns criminal sentencing.

Like too many things involving government, however, the jargon is wonky: "determinate" and "indeterminate."

Put simply, it's about whether a judge determines how long a felon will be locked up, or left undetermined, with parole boards having the flexibility to retain or release an inmate based on behavior and perceived rehabilitation.

In 1976, young Gov. Brown was a reformer who signed legislation changing sentencing from indeterminate to determinate.

Last week, he proposed a new reform: Scrap that 1970s reform and return to basically the way things had been for six decades before.

Times change. Situations change. Ideas? Not so much.

I asked Brown why he and the Legislature had changed the system in the first place four decades ago.

Back then, he'd been thinking about it for a long time, he recalled, even when his father, Pat Brown, was governor in the 1960s.

"People were lingering in prisons and didn't know when they were going to get out," he said. "Racial minorities might be in longer."

Prisoners, the governor continued, were compelled "to mouth certain words" to demonstrate their readiness for freedom. White parole boards seemed to be "trying to get the prisoners to have a certain mentality, messing with their heads. It didn't seem right to me.

"It came to me that if they did the crime, they should do the time. And then get out."

That became many legislators' attitude: The whole system was arbitrary and unfair — sometimes political and racial.

What else could you expect from sentences so broad? For example, one to 14 years or five to life.

Republican Sen. John Negedly, a former Contra Costa County district attorney, had sponsored the bill that switched sentences from flexible to more fixed.

"Punishment should be swift, certain and definite," Brown said after signing the measure. But soon he began having second thoughts, mentioning "ambiguities" in the new law.

There was bipartisan criticism.

Then-LAPD Chief Ed Davis, a conservative Republican, planning to run against Brown, complained that prisoners no longer would "have to pay much attention" to guards. Brown "is going to blow these prisons up before I can take over as governor."

State Sen. Alan Sieroty, a liberal Democrat from Los Angeles, feared that fixed sentencing would lead to longer terms. That would only "further brutalize the individual and make his reentry into society less possible."

Both were right.

"Liberals thought the Legislature would jack up the sentences, which it did," Brown told me. "And it never stopped. I never imagined there'd be thousands of [increased sentencing] laws and enhancements."

State government embarked on a prison-building, lock-em-up binge. There was a political stampede in the 1990s after the L.A. riots and the gripping kidnap-murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas. Voters and the Legislature passed "three strikes and you're out" — meaning you're "in" for life.

When Brown was governor the first time, there were 21,000 inmates in state custody. By the time he returned in 2011, the number had ballooned to 170,000 — packed like sardines into bunks and sleeping on cots in gymnasiums. At one point, taxpayers were spending more on prisoners than on college kids.

Prisoners-rights groups sued. A federal judicial panel ordered the state to knock it off. Voters and the governor got the message.

The California electorate softened three-strikes and other sentencing laws. Brown, through what he calls "realignment," began shifting control of low-level felons to the counties.

The state prison population is now down to 127,000.

Brown has wanted to eliminate determinate sentencing for years — calling it an "abysmal failure" in 2003 — but said he first needed to achieve realignment and form a political coalition.

"If I'd done it right out of the box, I might have made mistakes," he told me.

Brown added that he'd also been pretty busy.

"No one has done more than I have," he said, listing such things as pension reform, water programs and fighting climate change. "I haven't been sitting on my ass."

The governor's sentencing proposal is targeted for the November ballot as an initiative. It would affect only inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes. Murderers and rapists, forget it.

A nonviolent felon would need to complete his time for the basic crime. But he could earn credits for good behavior and rehab. And before serving added time for an enhancement — such as gang activity — he could seek parole for being a model prisoner

An "unintended consequence" of the law he signed 40 years ago, Brown told reporters, "was the removal of incentives for inmates to improve themselves, refrain from gang activity, using narcotics, otherwise misbehaving. Because they had a certain [release] date and there was nothing in their control that would give them a reward for turning their lives around."

Why the ballot and not the Legislature? It would require a two-thirds legislative vote, and that's a hassle. And he has $24 million in leftover campaign money begging to be spent.

This reform seems to make sense. The old one did, too — at the time. But this is another time.

The lingo also should change. Junk "determinate" and call it "fixed" or "flexible."

Via: http://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-pol-sac-cap-20160201-column.html 

California public safety overhauls show promise, but problems remain

A contentious program that shifted control of some state prisoners to local governments dramatically reduced the prison population in California, but the decrease was not enough to meet a federal court order, according to a report released Monday.

It was only after statewide voters last fall approved reduced penalties for certain drug and property crimes that the prison population fell below the mandated target, said the new analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California. It has remained there since January, more than a year ahead of schedule.

Public safety realignment, launched four years ago, was considered one of Gov. Jerry Brown’s largest political and policy hurdles since he returned to the Governor’s Office in 2011. Brown, responding to the prison reduction order, argued that local authorities were better positioned to deal with alleviating the overcrowding crisis. But his critics, including law-and-order Republicans and some in law enforcement, asserted the changes would lead to a spike in crime.

PPIC makes no wholesale claims about the efficacy of the program. However, it provides a snapshot of its early effects as new reforms continue to take hold, including November’s successful Proposition 47 that changed most nonviolent property and drug crimes to misdemeanors from felonies.

“Realignment has largely been successful, but the state and county correctional systems face significant challenges,” wrote Magnus Lofstrom and Brandon Martin, the authors of the study. “The state needs to regain control of prison medical care, which is now in the hands of a federal receiver. And the state and counties together must make progress in reducing stubbornly high recidivism rates.”

The report found no dramatic change in recidivism rates. There also was no evidence that realignment has increased violent crime in California.

The lone area where crime increased was in auto thefts. Researchers estimate that the overhaul led to car thefts increasing by more than 70 per 100,000 residents. The car theft rate is about 17 percent higher than it would have been without realignment, the report states.

Although the realignment shift drove county jail populations close to historical highs, the program also has changed the profile of those incarcerated. The report found that by early 2014, some 1,761 inmates were serving sentences of more than five years, up from 1,155 in 2013.

Still, while county jail populations increased since 2011, the growth was far smaller than the prison population drop.

Researchers suggest various alternative crime-prevention strategies such as boosting policing, behavioral therapy and targeted intervention for high-risk youths.

Via: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article36881103.html 

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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.

Women Overlooked in California Prisoner Realignment Program

California is in the midst of reducing its state prison inmate population to no more than 137.5 percent of capacity, the first step to address what was deemed inhumane overcrowded conditions. Much of the overcrowding in state prisons has been due to offenders violating conditions of their parole and automatically being sent back to prison. One of the programs undertaken has been transferring parole supervision of low level, non-violent, non-sex offenders to county probation departments. While still more than 5,400 inmates away from the desired benchmark, the population has been reduced and overcrowding has been eased somewhat in many of the state’s prisons.

However, the efforts seem to be more of an accounting trick.

A little discussed loophole in the mandate concerns how the reduction occurs. The court order requires that the overcrowding has to be reduced overall, but there seems to be some leeway regarding the percentage as to individual facilities. So while some of the more notable facilities have seen a reduction, many are still well above the desired capacity.

The most overcrowded are women’s facilities.

At the beginning of the realignment in 2011, women overwhelmingly benefited from the realignment. In the first year, more than 5,200 female prisoners were released. The majority of these releases were first time, non serious offenders.

As a result, the three women’s prisons were quickly below the court ordered benchmark. One facility, Valley State Prison for Women, saw a 36 percent reduction in inmates in 2011. The California Department of Corrections decided to convert the facility to a men’s prison to reduce overcrowding elsewhere. The remaining inmates at Valley State Prison were then transferred to the state’s two remaining women’s prisons.

The two women’s facilities are now operating higher than the court mandated level, one of which is currently at 175 percent capacity.

Nearly two-thirds of female prisoners are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, such as drugs or property crimes. Under the realignment, they are put under county jurisdiction as parolees. This gives them access to diversion programs which provide alternatives to jail should they violate their probation. Furthermore, all newly convicted offenders of non-violent, non-sex crimes are also eligible to serve their sentences under county jurisdiction instead of state.

A program that has become popular with several counties is called split sentencing. Under this program, offenders serve a portion of their term in the jail, and the remainder under strict supervision of the probation department. Often this means serving the remainder of their term under house arrest with electronic monitoring. They are subject to regular and surprise inspections and searches, with any violations subject to a number of penalties, including returning to jail.

Not all counties are created equal, however.

Nearly 30 percent of the realignment prisoners released fell under the supervision of Los Angeles County. Only 5 percent of the inmates in LA County jails are involved in a split sentencing program, with officials claiming that they don’t have the resources for the time intensive program. This means that most offenders that would normally serve in prison are serving longer sentences in jails that are not equipped for extended stays.

State prisons and county jails differ due to their populations. Prisons facilities and services are built and designed to house offenders with longer sentences. Jails are temporary facilities, housing those recently arrested, on parole violations, or serving a sentence of a year or less. The influx of prisoners has lead to overcrowding at the jails, which have seen stretched resources, including having to house the overflow in makeshift dorms such as basements.

This has become especially hard on women.

The majority of incarcerated women have children. In jail, visitations must occur through a window, if they happen at all. There are no family rooms, or outside yards for exercising as there are in state prisons. Personal items, such as feminine hygiene products, aren’t easily available or in the same quantities. The standard issued sandals are the only option for footwear. Bad medical conditions and several inmates in a cell are also becoming more common.

The conditions are much like those that were occurring in state prisons, leading to the need for the prisoner realignment.

These issues also exist in the men’s jails, where many are seeing a marked increase in violence. There are plans for a new women’s jail in LA County, though it is still in the planning stages. The sheriff’s department is also looking to developing their jail diversion programs for both men and women.

In the meantime, the state prison population continues to decline because none of the prisoners in the county jail system count towards the state prison population, which makes them closer to meeting their reduction goal.

Crystal Shepeard

via: http://ow.ly/tWzXp 

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. 

California gets extra time to reduce prison crowding: another month

SACRAMENTO — Federal judges on Monday gave Gov.Jerry Brown an additional 28 days to meet their order to reduce prison crowding.

Brown, whose administration has been in court-ordered talks with inmates' lawyers in search of a long-term solution to overcrowding, now has until Feb. 24 to remove about 9,600 prisoners from state lockups.

The three-judge panel also said Monday that the negotiations must continue. State appellate judge Peter J. Siggins has been mediating those confidential talks, and on Monday he was told to provide another update in mid-November.

The judicial trio did not describe the state of the discussions in their order, and Siggins' report was confidential.

Last month, Brown filed a plan to expand rehabilitation services in hopes of eventually reducing new offenses by inmates who return to society, and he asked for three years to lower prisoner numbers that way. The judges gave him an extra month instead, moving their deadline to Jan. 27 from Dec. 31 and ordering the talks.

Corrections spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said Monday the agency was pleased by the judges' extension of their deadline and would work with local government and law enforcement groups to "build upon California's landmark reforms to our criminal justice system."

Inmate advocates and civil rights groups want the state to take a different path from the one Brown has outlined in court filings. The groups want reductions in criminal penalties, expanded parole programs for the sick and old, and a backlog cleared for thousands of prisoners eligible to have their cases reheard.

California is halfway toward meeting the judges' inmate population cap through contracts for 3,180 beds in privately owned facilities and an increase in the number of prisoners sent to firefighting camps around the state.

The latest contract, announced Monday, is an $11-million, five-year deal with the private prison company Geo Group. California already has 8,300 prisoners in private prisons in other states, but the federal judges have temporarily blocked further such transfers.

In 2009, federal judges ordered California's prison population reduced, declaring that overcrowding was the root of unconstitutionally poor inmate care. Despite construction of a new medical prison and a court-run healthcare system, lawyers for prisoners say that care remains substandard and that mentally ill prisoners are mistreated.

California's corrections department "has never taken its obligation to provide basic healthcare seriously," said Don Specter, lead attorney for the Prison Law Office, testifying Monday at a legislative hearing on the state's prison problems.

The hearing was mostly a basic briefing, and no corrections officials testified. Assembly Public Safety Committee Chairman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) said the next hearing, Nov. 13, will focus on alternative programs and sentencing.

Brown has taken the position since January that California's prison conditions are vastly improved. But court experts have continued to report poor medical services at some prison hospitals. A federal court has refused to relinquish control over mental health services, and the U.S. Supreme Court has rebuffed Brown's attempts to appeal capacity limits that he argues are arbitrary.

A report last week from the corrections department shows California's prison population up by more than 500 from a year ago, to more than 133,860 inmates.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

chris.megerian@latimes.com

via http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ff-prisons-20131022,0,1115000.story#axzz2j3QS5Rql

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

SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY: Jail expansion tab rises $10 million more

San Bernardino County supervisors are expected to approve a $10 million increase for the Adelanto jail expansion on Tuesday, June 25, because of project costs that continue to increase.

The change order is the latest in a series that have boosted the project budget from $120 million, when the contract was awarded in December 2010, to $144 million.

It also will mean a delay in the completion of the jail, which originally had been expected to be finished by this fall and now is scheduled to be done by late January 2014.

Last month, the board approved an $8 million increase to the jail project budget and in February signed off on a $6 million increase. The item for the latest changes is on the Board of Supervisors’ consent calendar, a list of usually non-controversial items that can be approved on a single vote.

Board Chairwoman Janice Rutherford said she’s not happy with the cost increases but said the county’s focus is on getting the project done by the late January deadline, which is a condition of state funding.

“I hope this is it,” she said. “We’ve said that in the past and additional problems have cropped up so fingers crossed.”

As with the previous change orders, the main reason for the increase was design problems with the smoke control and fire sprinkler system, said Carl Alban, director of the county's architecture and engineering department. Resolving those problems also caused delays that increased costs for other construction on the project, he said.

Another increase was because of a water well that had a high level of fluoride that required additional treatment. The well will supply drinking water to the facility.

The county was awarded state funding for three-quarters of the cost of the project, up to $100 million, as part of a $1.2 billion jail construction bill approved by the state Legislature in 2007.

The latest increase puts the state’s share of the projects costs at the $100 million threshold, with the county picking up the remaining $44 million. Any more increases will be the sole responsibility of the county instead of being split with the state, as has been done so far, Alban said.

The project consists of three four-story housing buildings plus a support building that includes booking and holding cells and a medical clinic.

The expansion comes at a time when the county jails have been dealing with crowding because of the state’s realignment law that shifted to county jails some prisoners who would have gone to state prisons.

Between January 2012 and last week, 6,932 prisoners have been released early because of crowding, sheriff’s spokeswoman Cindy Bachman said.

The county’s four jails have a capacity of about 6,000 prisoners. The Adelanto project will add 1,392 beds to the existing 706-bed jail, but sheriff’s officials plan to move into the new facility in phases. County officials still are working on a plan to pay for the $37.9 million in ongoing costs to staff the new jail.

Via Press Enterprise BY IMRAN GHORI June 24, 2013; 05:20 PM 

http://www.pe.com/local-news/politics/imran-ghori-headlines/20130624-san-bernardino-county-jail-expansion-tab-rises-10-million-more.ece

Federal judges order California to free 9,600 inmates

SACRAMENTO — A trio of federal judges ordered Gov. Jerry Brown to immediately begin freeing state inmates and waived state laws to allow early releases, threatening the governor with contempt if he does not comply.

Citing California's "defiance," "intransigence" and "deliberate failure" to provide inmates with adequate care in its overcrowded lockups, the judges on Thursday said Brown must shed 9,600 inmates —about 8% of the prison population — by the end of the year.

Unless he finds another way to ease crowding, the governor must expand the credits that inmates can earn for good behavior or participation in rehabilitation programs, the judges said.

"We are willing to defer to their choice for how to comply with our order, not whether to comply with it," the judges wrote. "Defendants have consistently sought to frustrate every attempt by this court to achieve a resolution to the overcrowding problem."

If Sacramento does not meet the inmate cap on time, the judges said, it will have to release prisoners from a list of "low risk" offenders the court has told the administration to prepare.

Brown had already taken steps to appeal the court-imposed cap to the U.S. Supreme Court, and he vowed to fight the latest ruling as well.

"The state will seek an immediate stay of this unprecedented order to release almost 10,000 inmates by the end of this year," he said in a statement.

He had immediate backing from the California Police Chiefs Assn. The court order shows "a complete disregard for the safety of communities across California," said the group's president, Covina Police Chief Kim Raney.

"Pressing for 9,000 more inmates on the streets," Raney said, shows "an activist court more concerned with prisoners than the safety of the communities."

But a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said it did not expect to have to contend with a flood of ex-convicts to watch over.

"It is never a positive step when prisoners have to be released," said spokesman Steve Whitmore, "but the Sheriff's Department is prepared for this eventuality."

Brown has until July 13 to file his full appeal with the high court, the same body that two years ago upheld findings that California prison conditions violated the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Lawyers for inmates, meanwhile, said Brown has few options but to let some prisoners go.

"At this point, the governor is an inch away from contempt," said Don Specter, lead attorney for the Prison Law Office, which in 2001 filed one of two lawsuits on which the judges based their order. "He must make every effort to comply immediately."

In May, Brown told the court under protest that he could further trim the prison population by continuing to use firefighting camps and privately owned facilities to house state inmates, and by leasing space in Los Angeles and Alameda county jails. In that plan, increasing the time off that inmates may earn for good behavior would have had little impact.

Thursday's order requires, absent other solutions, that the state give minimum-custody inmates two days off for every one served without trouble and to apply those credits retroactively. Such a step could spur the release of as many as 5,385 prisoners by the end of December.

A separate lawsuit, dating to 1990, alleges unconstitutionally cruel treatment of mentally ill inmates. That the courts are still trying, after two decades, to fix prison conditions was not lost on the three-judge panel that oversees prison crowding, U.S. District Judges Lawrence Karlton and Thelton Henderson and U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt.

Their order accuses the state of "a series of contumacious actions" and challenges Brown's sincerity about obeying their orders. They noted that the governor lifted an emergency proclamation that allowed inmates to be transferred to prisons in other states, for example.

Requests from prison lawyers that the administration be held in contempt "have considerable merit," the judges wrote.

The governor's reluctance to set prisoners free early has the backing of legislative leaders, including Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). He joked openly on Wednesday about intending to kill any population-reduction plans the courts might order the governor to submit to the Legislature.

Republicans in the Legislature have pushed a plan to resume prison expansion in California.

In April, they urged Brown to restore borrowing authority that would have allowed 13,000 beds to be added. They also asked that he continue to pay to house some prisoners in private facilities in the interim. Brown did not include such provisions in the budget that is now on his desk.

The judges said there could be no delays in compliance with their order for appeals or for amendments to the plan Brown submitted in May.

They rejected state officials' assertion that "with more time, they could resolve the problem."

California voters may be more willing than Brown to release inmates to reduce crowding. In a recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll, they were wary of sacrificing public safety, but at the same time supported steps to reduce crowding.

Sixty-three percent said they favored releasing low-level, nonviolent offenders from prison early.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

Times staff writers Chris Megerian and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ff-brown-prisons-20130621,0,6492733.story

Editorial: Brown needs to convene prison settlement talks

Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature did a heavy lift in reducing California's 33 overcrowded state prisons from 141,000 inmates to 119,000 in two years. But the effects of Brown's public safety realignment have plateaued.

The state still has 9,000 inmates to go to meet the population cap affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 – reducing prison population to 137.5 percent of design capacity (110,000) and sustaining that reduction.

Unfortunately, Brown has been bellicose in saying "no more" and he intends to appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, again. Appeals may delay the reckoning, as before, but are highly unlikely to end federal oversight.

All this fighting is sidetracking everybody from the real task – which should be finding common ground around durable remedies to reduce prison population. A better course would be for Brown to bring Assembly and Senate leaders, law enforcement officials, the federal health receiver and special master, the corrections secretary and Prison Law Office attorneys in the same room and hammer this out.

Further prison reductions need not be onerous, unworkable or detrimental to the public interest.

For example, to his credit, Brown says he is open to expanding prison fire camps, which are well below the 4,500 capacity. Brown wants to add 1,250 inmates by Dec. 31. He should go further. Today, inmates with serious or violent offenses are barred from fire camps, even if they are rated low risk. The Legislative Analyst's Office last year recommended changing the eligibility criteria to consider risk, looking at all 30,000 low-security inmates. The state needs more fire crews than ever.

Brown has given short shrift to expanding geriatric parole to address the rapidly aging prison population that is driving prison health costs. Many of the 6,500 inmates who are 60 or older pose little threat to public safety but cost the state a lot in health expenses. Brown believes 250 of these inmates could be paroled by Dec. 31. Legislators should change the law to expand that.

Brown also is dismissive of expanding earned-time credits for inmates who successfully complete education, vocational training and treatment programs that reduce recidivism rates. California only allows up to six weeks a year, well below other states. Why not increase the length of good-time credits to the national average of four to six months?

In addition, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg has a proposal to address mental health and substance abuse issues that get people cycling in and out of jail and prison. And while Steinberg was early to jump on Brown's appeal bandwagon, he is open to expanding fire camps, parole for elderly inmates and earned-time credits.

The big missing piece is sentencing reform, creating a sentencing commission to create a framework for organizing the state's piecemeal sentencing laws. In states such as North Carolinaand Virginia, sentencing commissions have brought longer sentences for violent offenders, tougher community punishments, more consistency and an end to prison crowding. Steinberg is strongly supportive. Brown should champion this.

Prison reform advocates say they are open to negotiating the crowding issue, though they have won most of the important court orders. Brown should take heed of this. Don Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, says sitting in a room together would go a long way in overcoming the balkanization and distrust that has built up.

California should build on the progress of the last two years, not stop the prison overhaul. The governor needs to get everybody to the table now and craft durable remedies that would end federal oversight of California's prisons.

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/08/5402832/brown-needs-to-convene-prison.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/08/5402832/brown-needs-to-convene-prison.html#storylink=cpy

Who's crowding California's jails

According to a new report, California's jails are full of people who can't afford bail.

California's county jails are overcrowded, and a new report from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a criminal justice reform think tank based in San Francisco, says much of the blame lies with California's commercial bail bond system. In "The Commercial Bail  Industry: Profit or Public Safety?" author Amanda Gullings warns that jails will remain overcrowded until they develop alternatives to monetary bail.


According to the report, a large number of people are sitting in California jails because they can't afford bail. Seventy-one percent of California's jail population is pretrial--meaning, people are locked up in county jail but not because they've been convicted of a crime. There are various reasons these inmates are locked up despite not having been found guilty yet--immigration holds, warrants in other states--and the actual number of bailable inmates sitting  behind bars varies from county to county.


In Los Angeles County, roughly 33.75 percent of the county's jail inmates could be out of jail if they could afford (or, in some cases, chose to afford) bail, according to a report prepared last month for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD). Another 11.25 percent are being held without bail by a judge. Theoretically, that means Los Angeles could have about 5,500 fewer jail inmates, if those inmates could afford to bail themselves out, or pay for the standard 8-10 percent premium charged by most commercial bail bonds companies.


This population of bailable, unsentenced inmates is becoming a hot topic for sheriff's departments around the state, as prison realignment kicks into gear. Under realignment, a large number of convicted offenders who used to be sent to state prison have become the domain of county sheriff's departments. LASD expects the daily jail population in LA to increase by 7,000 inmates by the end of 2014.


Steve Whitmore, spokesman for LA Sheriff Lee Baca, says Baca is focused on the bailable population "like a laser beam." Actually doing anything to get that population onto bail alternatives, like ankle bracelet monitoring, is a complicated process, he says. "It's a very difficult negotiation and everyone has to be involved, like the Board of Supervisors."


CJCJ's Gullings says the coming political battle over the pretrial population will be fierce, with the bail industry lobby playing a big role. Between 2000 and 2012, the bail lobby spent $456,480 on political campaigns in California, according to Gullings.


"Right now is a real pivotal moment for the bail industry to sort of undermine the accountability of pretrial services," she says. "Because this is an opportunity for counties to really expand those pretrial services if that’s what they wish to do."


But those in the bail industry insist that bail is still the most effective form of pretrial release. Eric Granof, chief marketing officer for AIA, the largest underwriter of bail bonds in the country, says the bail industry is widely misunderstood because the media perpetuates the "Dog the Bounty Hunter" image of bail agents as just in it for the money. Really, Granof says, they're insurance agents who perform a professional service. Bail, he says, serves its purpose.


"When someone has money on the hook, they’re going to show up,"says Granof. "When they have something on the hook that affects a family member, they’ll show up. When a bail agent has financial responsibility and they’re on the hook, they’re going to make sure that person shows up."


As for political influence, Granof says, "just like any other industry, we have lobbyists, ok? Is it big lobbyists, like the automobile industry or tobacco? It’s nothing like that."


There's a role for pretrial services, Granof says. "Our issue is that we think sometimes it goes a little too far."


That debate is just at its inception: what to do with the pretrial population to free up jail space for new inmates will be a county-by-county battle in California.

California Prisons Face Maximum Security Shortage

http://www.scpr.org/news/2012/02/27/31402/california-prisons-face-shortage-masimum-security-/
Feb. 27, 2012 | By Julie Small | KPCC

Last year, California began complying with a federal court order to reduce its prison population by shifting thousands of low-level felons to county custody. It’s called “realignment” and although it helped bring down the number of inmates in prison, it won’t solve another problem: Where to put the thousands of serious and violent inmates.

The number of inmates in state prisons has already dropped by 16,000 since realignment took effect in October. Corrections officials project that the diversion of low-level felons to counties will reduce the state prison population by 40,000 inmates within a few years. But California's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation can’t shift serious felons to the counties.

In a report out last week the Legislative Analyst’s Office projected that as realignment progresses, state prisons will have a surplus of 15,000 low security beds and a shortage of 13,000 high-security beds.

The non-partisan report suggest several ways to deal with the mismatch.

Analyst Drew Soderborg says, "One thing that we’re recommending is that they try to maximize their use of their existing space to house high security inmates."

Soderborg thinks CDCR should convert most of the reception centers used to temporarily house new inmates into the higher security housing the prison system needs.

Corrections is also in the process of converting Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla into a men’s prison. The LAO recommends that CDCR use the prison to house as many serious offenders as possible.

Soderborg also says, "We’re recommending that they identify if there’s any other facilities out there that they can use to house high security inmates."

Converting facilities from minimum to maximum security will require an investment in construction, equipment and additional staff.

Soderborg says the state could save money by shutting down some of its more expensive prisons: One example the LAO's report cites is the California Institution for Men in Chino. Its security level matches that of the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, but Deuel spends $10,000 less per inmate per year to house felons than Chino does.

Soderborg says CDCR could also consider shutting down remote prisons that are difficult and expensive to staff and transferring inmates to maximum-security prisons in other states. He says California could also keep some of its high security facilities "slightly overcrowded."