Inmates sent to Fresno County jail say they would rather serve their sentences in state prison, reports KQED. The jail is seeing an influx of prisoners due to the state’s realignment plan, which began shifting nonserious and non-violent offenders from state to county control in October 2011.
“There are no programs here. No school, no education, there’s no jobs,” Fresno County jail inmates told reporter Michael Montgomery.
The county is currently fighting a lawsuit claiming it provides inadequate health care to its inmates — similar claims that forced the state into realignment, says a report by the Public Policy Institute of California.
Realignment is Gov. Jerry Brown’s response to a federal court order forcing California’s overcrowded prisons to be reduced to levels that do not violate the U.S. constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Some counties, like San Francisco, Alameda, and Santa Cruz, are using the opportunity to expand community-based alternatives to incarceration. But Fresno County, which has historically sent high rates of people convicted of low-level, non-violent offenses to state prison, is spending most of its realignment money on more jail beds and law enforcement instead of rehabilitation services, according to a report by the ACLU.
Fresno County is spending 47 percent of its realignment funds on new jail beds. Health, treatment and services only receive 13 percent of the money. Probation, sheriffs and other law enforcement agencies get the remaining 40 percent, according to the ACLU.
The Citizens United for a Responsible Budget gave Fresno County a failing mark on its realignment plan, criticizing its plan to reopen another floor of its jail.
