Sunday, August 21, 2011

How will California comply with prison population reduction order?

For those interested in how California is complying (or attempting to) with federal court orders to reduce their incarceration levels, the Prison Law Blog had a good basic roundup  recently of a policy that's being dubbed "realignment" (shifting state inmates to county jails) including summaries of what various CA counties are doing in preparation. Adds blogger Sara Mayeux, " If you’re looking for a more comprehensive resource, the ACLU of Northern California has produced a helpful guide (PDF) to the law and how counties can plan for the changes."

1 comment:

Criminal Justice Reforms LLC said...

From the beginning it was a matter of moving numbers from one column to another. The trick will be keeping the county jails under population limit. I could see the state pay a county jail to house inmate X and that county leasing inmate X to another county that has vacancy space. Could counties compete for inmates, some counties with space charging lower costs to receive inmates from the state? I hope they use parole to take care of most of the reduction and reform sentencing to keep the inflow at a reasonable rate.