County Gets High Marks in Prisoner-Shift Program

The impact of California's realignment legislation is just beginning to unfold, but Santa Cruz County appears to be on the right track, according to a statewide organization that issued grades for more than a dozen counties based on their plans for the transition.

AB 109, the new state legislation that was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on April 4 and went into effect on Saturday, addresses overcrowding in state prisons by shifting prisoners from state prisons to county level jails and programs.

Of the 13 counties evaluated, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and San Francisco counties scored the highest grades for their use of alternative solutions based on their plans for realignment.

"What we were looking at is how many resources are being invested in community-based solutions and programs, or whether or not counties are trying to expand their jail capacity," said Lisa Marie Alatorre, campaign director for Critical Resistance, a member organization of Californians United for a Responsible Budget, or CURB, the coalition that assigned the grades.

CURB, a coalition of more than 40 organizations that aim to curb spending by reducing the number of prisoners and prisons, based their grading system on the counties' plans to balance alternative sentencing and corrections spending.

Alatorre said the counties that received a passing grade are those that prioritized alternatives to incarceration and have not expressed interest in seeking funds to construct new jails.

Counties will receive $5.6 billion through June 2012 in state funding to invest in the supervision of parolees, management of lower-level offenders, and to provide mental health, substance abuse, and child protective services for the state inmates convicted of nonviolent, non-serious offenses—as well as adult parolees and juvenile offenders—who are returning to local jurisdictions.

Santa Cruz County fared well for devising alternative programs, in the form of electronic monitoring, work programs and community-based treatment.

The county is receiving $1.6 million in realignment funding, though officials have not announced exactly how the money will be divided up. They have indicated, however, that they would expand alternative programs versus expanding the county's jail space, Alatorre said.

"What we like about Santa Cruz County is that their jails are over capacity, and yet they have made the decision that they do not want to increase their jail space, but they want to increase alternatives to incarceration," Alatorre said.

The county is considering custody alternatives such as community service, work furlough and electronic monitoring, and expanding anger management and other programs.

The prison-reduction order, mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court in May, required the state to lower its prison population by 33,000 inmates by June 2013.

Last week, Brown pledged he would provide continuous funding support for local officials via a ballot measure.

He called on state lawmakers to place a measure on the November 2012 ballot to ensure a protected funding source to counties.

"We can't overturn the Supreme Court's decision," Brown said in a statement. "But we can work together to fix our broken system and protect public safety."

The legislature has until summer 2012 to place such a measure on the November 2012 ballot.

—Bay City News