Last month, the ACLU of California released a report with specific suggestions geared toward state lawmakers telling them what they should do in order to comply with the terms of a Supreme Court prison population reduction order without overcrowding county jails with low-level offenders.
The state’s prison population reduction plan is called realignment. It is premised on the counties’ willingness to implement evidence-based practices that will reduce recidivism, limit incarceration costs and investing criminal justice resources more efficiently. However, the report finds that since the new legislation does not establish systematic data collection or evaluation, the state has missed the opportunity to successfully measure the effectiveness of its realignment plan.
Of the 53 counties that the report examined, it found that too few explicitly allocated funds to make even the most “well-intentioned plans to institute evidence-based alternatives” to incarceration.
“Among the counties that allocated funds specifically for evidence-based programming, such as job counseling, family reunification, behavioral therapy, and mental health and substance abuse treatment, the allocations were all too often insufficient to carry out the stated plans or fail to provide access to the estimated number of individuals in need,” according to the report.
The following recommendations were made:
• Mandate standardized data collection and analysis
• Revise the realignment allocation formula
• Enact statewide sentencing reforms
• Amend statewide pretrial detention laws
• Require counties to submit new or revised realignment plans each year
• Halt or significantly reduce jail expansion and construction plans
• Create and fund concrete plans for community-based alternatives to detention
• Implement and fund new local pretrial release policies
• Review the impact of immigration status and immigration detainers
• Ensure that community corrections practices are based on evidence
• Encourage local courts to utilize realignment’s new sentencing options
