If county governments do not find alternative ways to deal with crime and punishment other than mass incarceration, the same problems Gov. Jerry Brown currently faces with federal oversight of the state’s prisons could be coming, according to an opinion column in the Sacramento Bee.
“Two fixes would go a long way to increase safety and reduce waste in local and state justice systems: fixing the Penal Code and enhancing county innovation,” suggests Lenore Anderson in her op-ed item.
The large number of new sentencing laws since 1980 have resulted in keeping offenders locked up for longer periods, making the number of people locked up increase more than 14 times faster than California’s general population, according to Anderson.
Since 1981, the bloating prison population shot taxpayer cost up by 1,500 percent—more than $10 billion annually, the report states. “This decreased available funding for health, social services and education—and wastes justice resources on low-risk people instead of serious and violent crime.”
Shifting offenders from doing time in state prisons to county jails merely shifts the state’s overcrowding problems to county governments that now have to deal with potential lawsuits alleging the same illegal conditions of incarceration, the item points out. “In other words, county and state tax dollars could increasingly go to litigation and settlements rather than vital government and community needs.”
By 2016, California will have built more jail beds than beds in state prison, according to expert projections of the impact of the Realignment plan shifting low-risk prisoners to county jurisdiction.
To de-populate the state’s overcrowded lockups, the item suggest lawmakers should overhaul the Penal Code so that jails and prisons would be reserved for those who most dangerously jeopardize public safety.
Specific suggestions include developing effective re-entry programs, utilizing assessment tools that access risk so some low-risk defendants could await trial under supervision instead of jail, and requiring offenders to do some of their time in jail and the rest under supervised probation.
To view the Sacramento Bee article go to; http;//sacbee.com/2013/01/18/5123238/modernize-penal-code-or-face-more.htm#storylink=cpy