Alameda County Prepares for Influx of Inmates as State Reduces Prison Population
How counties will pay to house the new inmates remains a question
In May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that overcrowding in California’s 33 prisons has caused conditions that amount to “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The ruling ordered California to reduce its prison population by 32,000 over the next two years.
A process called “realignment” could satisfy this mandate by keeping future inmates convicted of nonviolent, nonsexual, non-serious crimes in county jails instead of sending them to state prison. In the meantime, some current inmates will be permanently shifted from federal prisons to local jails. These inmates will serve out their entire sentence in local jails, while other inmates with low-offence violations will be released early to ease the burden on the penal system.
California Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation OK’ing the realignment plan in April, but the state legislature has not yet funded the plan, which requires tax extensions and shifting public safety services to the local level, where most of the inmates would be housed. On Tuesday, California the governor’s office must provide the Supreme Court an action plan for how the state will reduce overcrowding.
Alameda County currently has 4,800 beds in its Dublin and Oakland jails, and an average daily population of 4,000. The county estimates its share of new inmates will range from 300 to 800 total in the next 18 months.
“We’ve tried to reduce our jail counts by attrition of inmates and reduction of citations,” said Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern. “Now we’ll be in a position where we can have an additional 800 inmates housed in our facilities.”
Ahern also said the county has managed to create space its jails by consolidating inmates’ living quarters and getting them to bunk with more people per cell.
But how counties will pay to house the new inmates remains a question. “We are concerned about funding,” said Ahern. “The initial funding that was reported to us was not adequate enough to house the inmates, let alone provide reentry programs.” Reentry programs, ranging from drug rehabilitation to job training and counseling, are used to help reintegrate offenders back to the community after having served a prison or jail sentence.
In the latest round of negotiations with the state, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation offered to reimburse counties around $68 a day to house inmates who have been shifted from federal facilities to local jails. Currently, the CDRC pays counties on contract $77 to house out of county inmates—or those who were arrested and cited in other counties—which covers essentials like housing, food, medical care and staff costs. But both the $77 and $68 figures leave out a budget for reentry programs. Along with other county officials, Ahern is working to get the state to dole out at least $84 a day per inmate when the shift of supervision goes in effect starting in July.
But where that money will come from is uncertain. Money would be shifted from CDCR to counties, but as part of a budget-saving effort, not all of it would be transferred; some would instead be used to balance out other parts of the state budget. “That part I understand,” said Alameda County Probation Chief Probation Officer David Muhammad, referring to the state’s need to save money, “But it’s got to be a reasonable amount where we can do the job, and the state can save some money.”
Governor Brown’s realignment plan supports administering justice locally, which Muhammad says can help lower the state’s 70 percent recidivism rate for all crimes. Realignment supporters hope having inmates closer to home and family will help make their transition from jail to the community smoother. Alameda County has launched a reentry program over the last couple of years, which is a network of community-based programs that are working to provide released inmates with more individualized social services than the state can often provide. “I think locals can do a much better job then what has happened through the state system,” Muhammad said. “But we have to get the appropriate funding.”
Probation departments across the state say they need more officers to supervise the thousands of low-level offenders coming their way, and more access to job training programs, education and housing for parolees to keep them from reentering the prison system. Counties like Alameda are expecting a billion dollars a year for five years from the state to fund the bigger population they expect to have after July. They say need the money to expand facilities and staff.
“The local systems are already significantly strained,” Muhammad said. The majority of Alameda County’s 15,000 adults on probation do not have a designated probation officer, Muhammad said. This is common across California county probation departments and jails, he said, which are operating below capacity due to a lack of funds to fully staff and maintain them.
Many county law enforcement officials knew it was only a matter of time before they’d have to keep more low-level offenders in county jails and to supervise more of them after they’re released. The state’s been talking about such a move since 2007 when a three-judge panel first met to consider reducing California’s prison population. The panel recommended that California continue working on prison reforms and rehabilitation programs to reduce the particularly high number of parolees returning to prison.
The Supreme Court did not specify how the state should reduce its prison population. Now counties with full jails are after state realignment money that would allow them build new local jails to house incoming inmates.
In 2007, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced—and the legislature passed—AB 900 to lease revenue bonds to build tens of thousands of new prison and jail cells, increase out-of-state transfers which would let California prisoners be housed elsewhere, and expand programming to reduce recidivism.
Then earlier this year, Governor Brown introduced—and the legislature passed—two more assembly bills to give counties additional flexibility to access funding to increase local jail capacity, including AB 94, which lowers the amount that counties have pay in order to tap into state jail-construction money. Under the amendment, counties will only have to put up 10 percent of a jail’s overall cost, rather than 25 percent.
Without a threat of surpassing capacity in the future, Ahern said AB 900 is not as appealing for Alameda County as it for other counties with over-crowded jails. Even with up to 800 new inmates arriving in July, the county’s jails will still have room, and Ahern said they don’t have a need to build new facilities for now.
But Emily Harris with Californians United for a Responsible Budget, a coalition that advocates for reducing state inmate populations through crime prevention programs and the elimination of the “three strikes” law and mandatory minimum sentencing, said she hopes that these assembly bills do not ignore the need to fund reentry services by spending money on building more jails. “This is an opportunity to provide better, more local services to people on parole,” she said about the court-ordered prison reduction. “We hope that it’s not just shuffling overcrowding from state prison to the county jail, but instead used as an opportunity to support community-based, independent services as [inmates] come home.”
When the governor’s office reveals their prison population reduction plan to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, shifting inmates from state to local facilities will be an important part of that plan. Local law enforcement officials will continue to be in negotiations with the state to determine how much funding they need to adequately supervise each person on probation in the community.
But in the meantime, Muhammad is optimistic that realignment is the right move for a bloated prison system. “I think the locals can be far more innovative and creative then the state has been,” he said, “which is already a low bar.”
voltairesmistress
"Probation departments across the state say they need more officers to supervise the thousands of low-level offenders coming their way, and more access to job training programs, education and housing for parolees to keep them from reentering the prison system."
Of course they do. To actually reform the parole system in California would mean fewer parole officers, not more.
Low level offenders do not need to be on probation. They do often need access to job-training, education, and housing. Let's stop funding a bloated probation system that sends parolees back to jail for missing meetings and failing to uphold strict parole guidelines. Not getting yourself straight is a personal tragedy, but it's not a reason to send someone back to prison. The only reason for that is if a parolee commits a crime against someone or someone's property.
Let's stop citing people, mostly young people without means, for marijuana possession when the cops suspect them of greater criminal intent but don't have evidence yet to support an arrest.
We will not solve the problem of overcrowded prisons unless we deal with needless types of drug "crime" enforcement and an overactive parole system. These two forms of policing waste our resources.
Phillips Claire
Another naive individual perpetuating the myth of the "low level offender." Almost all of our state inmate population have failed probation numerous times before being sentenced to prison. All are paroled to their county of last legal residence and are eligbile to transfer to another county if they have family or an offer of employment. Almost all of the parole agents reside in the county they supervise - just like probation officers. Difference is ALL parolees, with exception of the recently passed "non revocable parole" parolees, are actively supervised by a Parole Agent. And no parolees are being returned to prison for their 1st, 2nd or even 3rd dirty test or failure to report. Californians need to ask themselves if they have a meth addict on parole with a history of burglaries who not only refuses multiple offers of treatment, but will not even report to his parole agent, what do you want to do with this individual? Do we have to wait for him to be caught victimizing another individual, resulting in his return to prison on a new term? Do we wait for him to drive while U/I meth and plow into an innocent family, resulting in a new prison term? Or do we intervene before he has the opportunity to kill or victimize yet another innocent victim? If you want to turn state prisoners over to probation, who does not/will not have the resources to provide proper supervision, treatment, and incarceration, then be prepared for a return to crime levels of the decades past.
voltairesmistress
Not naive, realistic. What is the point of parole if it's just expensive babysitting for the meth user you refer to? Just keep that person in prison or jail for the full length of his sentence, regardless of whether it's classified as low level or high level. Either the sentence was a fair one when issued or it was not. The whole parole thing just doesn't make much sense to me.
Phillips Claire
Is sending inmates to county jail the solution to state prison overcrowding? In Los Angeles and much of the rest of California, the answer is no. As part of a reduction of California’s prison population ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court last week, counties are likely to be asked to accept thousands of new inmates. Los Angeles, where one-third of the state’s prisoners originate, could have to take up to 10,000 inmates.
But L.A.’s largest jail has a long history of overcrowding, unsanitary and unsafe conditions, and inadequate medical care for inmates. Many of the same criminal justice advocates who supported the lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court ruling are now warning that Los Angeles and other local jurisdictions are unprepared to deal with the aftermath of this landmark legal victory. The 5-to-4 ruling held that overcrowding in the California’s 33 prisons have caused conditions that amount to “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The decision, which upheld a 2009 ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, came in two consolidated class-action lawsuits dating back to 1990 that challenged the prison system’s treatment of patients with mental illness and other medical conditions.
In response to the 2009 ruling, the state had already begun reducing its prison population (from nearly 162,500 in 2006 to around143,400 this past May), in part by sending 10,000 inmates out of state. But if the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) hopes to meet the court-ordered goal—a prison population not to exceed 137.5 percent of capacity—it must cut another 33,630 prisoners over the next two years. The Supreme Court, which did not specify how the state should makes these cuts, has asked the CDCR to present a full plan of action by June 6. The CDCR and Governor Jerry Brown are advocating for what is known as the Public Safety Realignment Plan, in which future inmates guilty of nonviolent, nonsexual, non-serious crimes would be kept in county jails instead of being sent to state prison. Brown signed legislation OK’ing the realignment plan in April, but its implementation is contingent upon a constitutional amendment guaranteeing necessary funding, which is currently being considered by the Legislature for inclusion on an upcoming ballot.
Criminal justice advocates see many benefits in keeping low-level, short-sentence offenders in local jails. Staying close to home makes it easier for them to keep in touch with their families and to create reentry plans for their release—both of which help reduce recidivism. What’s more, transporting and processing low-level inmates into state prison is costly and inefficient, especially for those serving short sentences.
“It is a long, expensive bus ride from the county jail to the prison just to just to say, ‘OK, time’s up, bye-bye,’ and return them to the streets,” says Jeanne Woodford, former San Quentin warden and former acting head of the CDCR, who recently became the executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Focus. “They have a higher recidivism rate because there is nothing thoughtful about the process.”
In 2009, 47,000 state prison inmates were serving terms of 90 days or less. “We’ve got to stop this churning in and out of state prison. Realignment is meant to address that revolving door,” says Terry Thornton, spokesperson for the CDCR. “Offenders aren’t just the state’s responsibility, not just cities, not just counties—they are everybody’s problem.”
But some complain that the realignment plan merely passes the buck. “It’s kicking the can further down to the county level,” says Emily Harris with Californians United for a Responsible Budget, a coalition that advocates for reducing state inmates through prevention programs and the elimination of Three Strikes and mandatory minimum sentences. “The fear is that it will go from one big mess in one system to 58 [county] systems that will need whole new overcrowding lawsuits.”
Unlike the prisons, many county jails are operating below capacity, due to a lack of funds to fully staff and maintain them. Counties are vying for state realignment money that would allow them to open all of their jails. But even with jails running at full capacity, counties still won’t be able to accommodate all 30,000-plus inmates being cut from the state prison system. In Kern County, for instance, which sends approximately 4,600 inmates to state prisons a year, jails are currently operating at 87.6 percent capacity. But pushing capacity to 100 percent would only add 334 beds.
Other county jail systems are already over capacity, including San Diego (at 103.6 percent), the second-largest supplier of inmates to state prisons. In order to house inmates locally, more jails will have to be built. “If it’s, ‘Let’s just expand county jail, let’s just hire more county sheriffs, let’s just create more space to lock people up,’ all we do is recreate the dynamic that led to the Supreme Court case,” says Craig Gilmore, co-founder of the California Prison Moratorium Project. “That’s how the state got into the problem it is in now.”
Of all the counties, Los Angeles County will play the most significant role in the realignment program, since one-third, or nearly 57,000, California state prisoners originate from that area. L.A. County jails, which house an estimated 19,500 inmates daily, have 5,000 unused beds. The Pitchess Detention Center north of Santa Clarita, for example, houses only two inmates. (Those two inmates serve to maintain the jail’s open status, to avoid any upgrades that would be required if the jail were to close and reopen.)
Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy D. Baca, whose department oversees the jail system, is welcoming the potential influx of prisoners in part because he hopes they will bring in as much as $90 million in funding from Sacramento to reopen shuttered areas of jails, invest in technology like GPS and ankle bracelets for parolees and improve education programs for inmates. “Our proposed jail plan is solid. The plan needs funding and that is the if,” says Steve Whitmore, spokesperson for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. “No money, no jail plan. No money, no extra beds. It is real simple.”
But according to prison watchdog groups, even with additional funding, the Los Angeles jail system will still be too crippled to handle the influx. While sections of the jails lie empty, elsewhere inmates are kept in conditions plagued with overcrowding, violence, unsanitary conditions and a lack of proper medical care. Of particular concern is the city’s—and the nation’s—largest jail, Men’s Central Jail (MCJ), home to an average 5,000 inmates a day. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been battling the sheriff’s department since 1978, when the group successfully sued on behalf of MCJ inmates, challenging their living conditions as “cruel and unusual punishment.”
The litigation led to temporary improvements, but the jails are still not in compliance with court orders and the case remains active. In 2006, a federal judge ordered a cut in the number of inmates at Men’s Central, saying the jail’s conditions were “inconsistent with basic human values” and had “defaulted to the lowest permissible standard of care.” Five years later, the jail remains "archaic, obsolete, dangerous, overcrowded and permeated with violence,” says Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney of the organization’s Southern California office. “The idea that the sheriff’s department is capable of dealing with an influx of new prisoners from the state is laughable.”
The ACLU receives six to seven complaints a week about unprovoked abuse, retaliation for filing complaints, sub-par mental health care and unsanitary conditions in the L.A. jails, all of which it blames in large part on overcrowding. Inmates are denied showers, outdoor recreation, and phone calls. There are plumbing leakages, poor ventilation, and dorms with more than 140 prisoners in bunk beds that are so close together that it is difficult to move between them. Even if all the beds are made available, it is unlikely that Los Angeles would be able to handle more inmates immediately. “That new capacity presumes keeping Men’s Central Jail open, but it is so decrepit that the whole jail needs to come down,” Gilmore says.
Meanwhile, the county says it can’t move inmates from the decrepit MCJ to empty jails like Pitchess because it’s a more expensive facility to run and it’s too costly to transport inmates 40 miles to courts in downtown Los Angeles. In order to deal with a $128 million budget cut in the current fiscal year, the Los Angeles sheriff’s department has already decreased its jail population through incarceration alternatives such as electronic bracelet monitoring and improved education within prisons, but these measures are still not enough. “Counties are going to be faced with a need to be able to create alternatives at the same time that there are cut backs on many other funding streams,” says San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, who was formerly an assistant police chief in Los Angeles.
“Particularly in counties like L.A. where you already have terrible overcrowding in the jails, people are going to re-offend because there isn’t going to be any meaningful community-based supervision,” Gascón says. “Those folks aren’t going to be able to go back to state prison and those jails are already packed.”
Most prison reformers argue that the state needs to come up with ways to reduce the overall inmate population through better reentry and rehabilitation programs proven to reduce recidivism as well as more prevention programs.“If the thought is we just have to have this many people incarcerated, and if they can’t be incarcerated in the state system, they need to be in the county system,” says Eliasberg, “then we are missing a great opportunity to do some of the hard looking that other states and jurisdictions have done.”
Frank DeFelice
Clair's response has a lot of good points. I seriously question the math used to compute the cost of incarceration. If you build a prison, and staff it with 100 CO's, that's a sunk cost. If you start adding inmates, the cost per inmate drops. If you stuff 100,000 inmates into a small prison, then the cost per inmate is extremely low. If you give CO's good pensions, and lots of overtime, then the cost per inmate increases again. Maybe we should take a good look at CO's salaries. Let's initiate more work release programs, and community service. Inmates can work for utilities like PG&E, and water supply. Think of the savings to the community. Moreover, inmates will have jobs waiting for them on their release.