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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California prison population drops under Proposition 47, but public safety impact still unclear

Citrus Heights police Officer Wesley Herman recently arrested a parolee carrying stolen jewelry and a deceased man’s identification card.

If the property was valued at more than $950, the case was a felony that would let him take the man into custody. If not, it was a misdemeanor and he’d get a citation.

The first words out of his mouth, Herman said, were, “Am I going to jail?”

It’s been nine months since California voters approved a ballot measure reducing charges for some nonviolent drug and property crimes, and Herman says repeat offenders are getting savvy about the new limits of the law.

“These guys know that if they are running around with less than $950 of stolen property on them, they’re not going to jail,” he said. “They’re always trying to stay a step ahead of us.”

Continuing the recent trend away from decades of tough-on-crime policy, nearly 60 percent of voters last November supported Proposition 47, which reduced from felonies to misdemeanors offenses including drug possession for personal use. Savings on correctional spending, estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars annually, is intended to go to mental health and drug treatment, anti-truancy efforts and victim services.

Only a spotty picture has emerged of the law’s early effects: Supporters celebrate that tens of thousands of current and former convicts have already had the felonies on their records changed to misdemeanors, opening up new opportunities for jobs, housing and public benefits. Police and prosecutors argue that it has made their jobs more difficult.

Communities across the state fret about the connection to spikes in crime, but those familiar with public safety statistics say it’s too soon to know whether anecdotes from the street are evidence that Proposition 47 is responsible.

“Law enforcement isn’t a place where change is readily embraced,” said Tom Hoffman, a longtime police officer and former director of California’s parole operations, who advised the Proposition 47 campaign. For this sentencing overhaul to succeed, it will take “a lot of time and a lot of patience and, quite candidly, a lot of courage.”

Proposition 47 has accomplished at least one of its objectives already.

As of this week, 4,347 inmates have been released from state prisons due to resentencing, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The releases helped push the overcrowded prison system below court-mandated capacity levels by February, a full year ahead of its deadline.

Many more individuals have successfully petitioned at the county level to have their records changed, including approximately 1,400 so far in Sacramento County. As some inmates are released from jail and cramped facilities clear out, more serious offenders are serving longer portions of their sentences.

“We want to be very careful about who we’re putting in a cage,” said Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, because incarceration can sometimes “work at cross-purposes” with those people turning their lives around.

Nearly 3,600 defendants in Santa Clara County have had their felonies reduced to misdemeanors since November. Rosen, one of only three district attorneys in California to endorse Proposition 47, said they are sending fewer people to prison for these crimes than before.

“The benefits to our society from locking up fewer nonviolent offenders will in the long run translate into safer communities, a better economy, and stronger services,” he said.

Increases in crime during the first half of the year, however, have raised early doubts in many communities.

Preliminary statistics for the city of Sacramento show a 25 percent rise in violent crime, including homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, through June, compared with the same period in 2014. Property crimes, such as burglary and motor vehicle theft, are up about 5 percent, though larcenies have dropped slightly.

The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office has seen a 9 percent increase in filings so far this year for cases it is pursuing – an 11 percent drop in felonies offset by a 27 percent jump in misdemeanors.

Magnus Lofstrom, a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California who has studied the impacts of realignment, cautioned against drawing conclusions from the data.

Upticks in violent and property crime rates during the first year of realignment caused similar concerns, Lofstrom said. With the exception of a boost in auto thefts, however, the spike was in line with increases in states that did not undergo realignment, and crime rates have since dropped again.

With a surge of releases under Proposition 47, “it’s fair to say it puts an upward pressure on crime rates” for the types of low-level offenses those inmates committed, he added. But he said it’s very difficult to attribute a particular change in law to a change in crime rates. Cities and counties vary in their staffing levels, law enforcement priorities and reentry services for released offenders.

Law enforcement officials feel more certain of the connection, pointing to “unintended consequences” of the law.

Herman of the Citrus Heights Police Department said Proposition 47 has limited the ability of police to respond to drug-related crimes.

Previously, he said, he was able to take someone to jail for simple possession, where at least “he’s going to be clean a few days.”

“Now you have to show that this is a crime heinous enough to take them out of the community,” he said.

Instead of being arrested, the suspect might instead receive a citation to appear in court in 30 days. Herman said that allows addicts to keep using – and potentially commit thefts to support their habit.

“It’s been difficult for us to prevent as many crimes as we could have before,” he said. “Our hands do sometimes get tied.”

The changes have also had a detrimental effect on California drug courts, according to prosecutors.

Those programs provide offenders with the option of seeking treatment for substance abuse rather than facing prison time. But without the “hammer” of a felony now hanging over them, Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said, those arrested for drug-related crimes have little incentive to choose rehabilitation over the lesser charges.

“Logically, many of those people who have the addiction problems that we want to address are not going to avail themselves of that because it’s too much work,” she said, adding that it creates a “revolving door” for petty criminals to return to the streets and reoffend. “If you don’t have accountability for criminal behavior, there’s no reason not to commit that criminal behavior.”

The number of cases in Sacramento County’s two drug courts has fallen to 587 from 970 since the passage of Proposition 47. In Fresno County, one drug court has halved to 280 cases, while another lost all 80 of its participants.

San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos said proponents of the measure went about their aims in the wrong way. Established diversion programs in his county are collapsing – drug court participation is down 60 percent – and there are not yet resources to create new ones.

While 65 percent of any savings on correctional spending from Proposition 47 is earmarked for mental health and drug treatment programs to keep at-risk individuals out of custody, counties won’t see any of that money until August 2016, after the next budget cycle.

“What are they going to do in the meantime?” Ramos said. “They should have had a plan in place.”

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Time for Change Foundation Hosting Prop 47 Felony Reduction Clinic

On Saturday July 25, Time for Change Foundation (TFCF) will be hosting their Creating Healthy Alternatives Mobilizing Prop 47 (CHAMP 47) Felony Reduction Clinic under the guidelines of Proposition 47. Their campaign is seeking to reach the thousands of residents in San Bernardino County that have the qualifying felonies on their record; simple drug possession, petty theft under $950, shoplifting under $950, forging or writing a bad check under $950, and receipt of stolen property under $950.

What Prop 47 is seeking to accomplish is to change policies that contribute to discrimination, racial disparities in low-income communities and communities of color, and invest in our communities.

TFCF believes in the value of “treatment, not punishment is the solution.” While the United States has the greatest number of incarcerated people in the world (prisonpolicy.org), and California recently coming into compliance with the federal mandate to reduce its prison population, Prop 47 was a huge step forward in the journey towards ending mass incarceration.

While spreading community awareness about the event, Time for Change Foundation spoke to many individuals and families that needed the assistance provided through Prop 47. “We see the faces of those who need it and the numbers are staggering,” said Civic Engagement Specialist, Vanessa Perez. “We anticipate a huge turnout at this event and look forward to people getting closer to obtain employment, which is the number one struggle for people that have these felonies.”

Time for Change seeks to lower recidivism rates and provide families with the opportunity to move forward in life. Many people assume that having a record is something that only affects the individual, yet hardly ever is just one person affected. The effects of prop 47, when made available to those who need it, can change the lived experiences of entire families.

TFCF believes in the power of this initiative and have hope in the short term and long term effects that it can have in California and ultimately our nation.

The Free Felony reduction Clinic that is being held at the Way World Outreach Downtown Mission in San Bernardino, gives people the opportunity to meet with a lawyer and have their records changed for free. The event will begin at 9:00 a.m. and end at 3:00 p.m. They encourage everyone that is eligible to attend and spread the word.


By Abry Elmassian, Intern

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 

Declaring an impasse, judges to order solution on prisons

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown and lawyers for state prison inmates have failed to agree on a plan to handle crowding in the state's prisons, and the judges who ordered the two sides into talks said they would now order a solution themselves.

The judges gave Brown and the prisoners' attorneys until Jan. 23 to file proposals for achieving "durable compliance" with population limits that are scheduled to go into effect April 18.


The federal jurists — U.S. District Judges Thelton Henderson in San Francisco and Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento, and 9th Circuit Appellate Judge Stephen Reinhardt in Los Angeles — had set last Friday as a deadline for a negotiated solution to overcrowding that they say endangers inmates' health and safety.

But after three months of talks, "it now appears that no such agreement will be reached," the judges said in an order released Monday.

The jurists said they would make their decision within a month, possibly extending the April deadline.

Brown said Tuesday that any deal permitting the early release of offenders would have been untenable.

"We've talked a lot to the prison lawyers, and I understand their job is to get people out of prison, regardless of what the law may say," he told reporters in Bakersfield, where he stopped during a brief state tour to discuss policy issues. "My job is to protect public safety."

The governor said he would handle any order to further lower inmate numbers by moving more prisoners to privately owned lockups and county facilities.

"We're prepared to respond, and certainly over the next couple years to purchase more prison capacity," Brown said.

Brown had asked the judges to delay the population caps by three years. The state budget he proposed last week assumes at least a two-year delay.

The judges' latest order means a short delay before Brown and state lawmakers learn whether they will need to increase spending to send more prisoners to alternate facilities.

If the judges push the April deadline back to 2016, as Brown seeks, the governor proposes in his budget to direct $81 million in savings to prisoner rehabilitation programs.

Meanwhile, as the governor revealed in his budget plan, he is immediately extending eligibility for parole to more frail and elderly inmates, as well as expanding the number of some repeat offenders eligible for early release.

Those steps would make about 2,200 inmates newly eligible to be removed from the prisons, but state officials have told the court they expect only about 440 to be freed in the first six months of such changes.

California's prison population has dropped by more than 27,000 since Brown took office. But state reports show it has been growing since June and will continue to expand in the coming years.


"We are hopeful the court will recognize that the state has made significant reforms to our criminal justice system and will allow us an extension so we can build upon these landmark reforms," corrections spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said.

via: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ff-prisons-20140115,0,1442683.story#axzz2qVgzIeX5

Jerry Brown meets with wardens amid prison negotiations

Facing a three-month deadline to reduce California's prison population, Gov. Jerry Brown said he plans to meet today with 34 wardens and a dozen top administrators of the prison system.

At the meetings, tentatively scheduled for 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. today, the governor said he planned to ask the wardens about overcrowding, healthcare, drug treatment, mental health and vocational learning.

Brown said the appointments demonstrate his engagement in the process and commitment to the issue as the state continues negotiations with its court-appointed mediator. He described the meetings with the mediator as "collaborative and informative" and said talks with plaintiff's lawyers have made him optimistic about reaching a resolution.

"This is a matter that I am very interested in, very committed to getting it right," Brown told reporters Tuesday at a school event in Sacramento. "So that's why we are going very carefully."

The Brown administration has significantly reduced the number of inmates in part by shifting responsibility for certain low-level offenders from the state prison system to counties. The administration now wants more time to allow various rehabilitation programs to take hold as a way to avoid shuttling thousands more inmates to private prisons outside of California.

"We have to understand that when government embarks on major programs, it should do so with humility, and caution and a lot of planning," he said.

"So whenever people say, 'Hey, we need 10,000 fewer people in prison - do something,' I want to do that something very careful, particularly when it comes on top of 25,000 fewer, and on top of 15,000 fewer a few years before."

Editor's note: This post was updated at 2 p.m. to reflect the number of wardens.
PHOTO: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks at the California Chamber of Commerce's annual host breakfast in Sacramento on May 22, 2013. The Associated Press/Rich Pedroncelli

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