Examining Realignment: How Will We Know if it’s Working

Join the Association for Criminal Justice Research for its 75th Semi-Annual Conference March 22-23 at the Lion’s Gate Hotel in Sacramento (McClellan Campus). The theme is Examining Realignment: How Will We Know if it’s Working? Speakers include: Matt Cate, Diane Cummins, sheriffs, chief probation officers, DAs and judges, representatives from the LAO, PPIC, RAND, the Senate and many other organizations. For complete program information, scholarship applications, and registration, please contact Rebecca Blanton at rblanton@library.ca.gov.

Mendocino Snuffing Medical Marijuana Experiment

Yesterday’s NPR story on Mendocino County’s medical marijuana regulations is an especially good illustration of the practical effects of the conflict between federal, versus state and local, criminal laws.

“All of it left County Board Chairman John McCowen exasperated. ‘It means it’s going to go back underground. It’s going to become more dangerous. It’s going to become more profitable for the black marketers,’ he says. ‘I just don’t see that this represents progress.'”

CCC Opposes SOPA and PIPA

The California Correctional Crisis Blog joins the struggle against Internet censorship, and will therefore not offer new content today.
Tell your representatives that you oppose SOPA and PIPA and be one more voice on behalf of freedom of information.

Fresno County Jail Frees Parole Violators

http://m.fresnobee.com/fresno/db_271104/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=94xC336S
Fresno & Valley News
No room in Fresno Co. Jail for parole violators
Posted: 11/26/2011 10:29 PM

In another sign that Fresno County is struggling to manage more criminals, the sheriff has ordered that state parole violators no longer will be held at the county jail.

The parolees, who were once sent to state prison if they got into trouble, are now sent to local jails instead – part of the state’s recent realignment of the penal system. But in Fresno County, where the jail already is crowded, the Sheriff’s Office has determined there’s no room for the former convicts.

State parole officials, acknowledging counties are being asked to do more under the realignment, say they’ll try to find other ways to deal with problem parolees.

Orders to not lock them up began Thanksgiving Day. While the jail has long been releasing inmates early because of the lack of space, the directive to turn away parolees only reinforces concerns that criminals aren’t serving the time they should.

“They’re out in the community and they’re violating their parole, and when there’s no consequence for violating, that’s going to be a public safety issue,” said Kelly Keenan, chief assistant district attorney for Fresno County.

Prison plan sways prosecutors in filing charges

Check out yesterday’s piece in the Chronicle about prosecutors’ reactions to realignment. In particular, this scary quote:

“After all, it doesn’t matter what prosecutors charge a person with if they don’t have the evidence to win a conviction, said California District Attorneys Association Chief Executive Officer Scott Thorpe.”

Whole article:

Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley’s office handles about one-third of California’s felony convictions, making this single county critical to the success of Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to reduce prison overcrowding by sentencing nonviolent felony offenders to county jails.

Cooley, however, is a Republican who adamantly opposes the Democratic governor’s plan and is training his staffers to do everything they can to work around it – including pushing for the most serious charges to ensure that as many offenders as possible are sentenced to state prison. In a recent interview, Cooley said he is trying to mitigate the “public safety nightmare” that realignment will bring – particularly in a county like Los Angeles, where the jails are overcrowded and the sheriff regularly releases offenders early.

“It is going to lead to an increase in crime, which is unfortunate, because Los Angeles is at a 60-year low,” he said. “There is no place for them to serve their sentences.”

Cooley and his senior staff said the office may take this training to other counties as well.

A greater stake

Brown’s realignment plan, which took effect Oct. 1, changes the way California locks up criminals: Those convicted of nonviolent felonies – such as drug possession and auto theft – serve time in county jail instead of state prison, and will be supervised by county probation departments rather than state parole officers. The program is a response to a U.S. Supreme Court order to reduce the state’s prison population by 33,000 inmates by 2013.

The plan is supposed to give local officials, including prosecutors, a greater stake in the outcome of criminal cases in their counties. For prosecutors, that could mean more incentive to pursue probation and other alternatives to incarceration in low-level cases, because the cost of caring for that inmate now falls to the county, rather that state.

But even in liberal cities such as San Francisco, some defense attorneys say they are not seeing changes in the way prosecutors handle low-level cases. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón supports realignment but argues that some offenders are not good candidates for staying in local jails or serving probation because of past crimes.

Prosecutor reaction

Though most of the attention surrounding realignment has focused on how sheriffs’ departments, which run jails, and probation agencies, which will be supervising far more offenders, will handle that workload, experts say the way prosecutors react to the change in law could have a huge impact on the program’s ability to reduce the state prison population and curb the state’s 67 percent recidivism rate.

UC Berkeley criminologist Barry Krisberg noted that offenders convicted in Southern California counties make up the majority of the state prison population, and leaders there tend to be the most skeptical of the realignment plan. If prosecutors in those counties do not change the way they approach and charge cases, he said, the state prison population will continue to rise.

“The heart of the matter is, ‘Is there any commitment to use realignment as a way to advance rehabilitation?’ Clearly some places are doing that – Santa Clara and Alameda, and San Francisco will make a good effort,” he said. “But the larger question is, once you get to the jurisdictions that are dubious about realignment, that have not bought into rehabilitation as the main goal of the justice system, are we just going to see people gaming the system?”

‘Scouring’ records

Cooley said his office is teaching its lawyers to “scour” criminal records to make sure they note any prior offenses when they file new charges, and to make sure that new charges include offenses categorized as serious, violent or sexual when possible.

“We are trying to create awareness among law enforcement,” he said. “They don’t all realize how devastating and disastrous this will be.”

It’s unclear how much impact these charging decisions will have on convictions, and ultimately, the prison population. After all, it doesn’t matter what prosecutors charge a person with if they don’t have the evidence to win a conviction, said California District Attorneys Association Chief Executive Officer Scott Thorpe.

“It goes back to an individual district attorney’s philosophy (and) charging decisions,” he said. “There are certain things that obviously disqualify you from realignment, but if you look at a case and say, ‘Here are our charging choices,’ there is discretion and clearly counties will apply it differently. But discretion is only as broad as the evidence.”

Some prosecutors have publicly embraced the goals of realignment, including Gascón. He is sponsoring legislation to create a San Francisco sentencing commission, is in the process of hiring a sentencing analyst to work with prosecutors, and said he has been “talking to staff for months now about how we can do everything we can to actually make this work, and to do it in a way that that creates better outcomes for the community.”

Making it work

“My philosophy is that we want to be creative, we want to work within the system and we want to make it work – but obviously, we are always looking out for public safety,” Gascón said. “But there are some people that are not going to qualify for realignment, because they have a history of violence or sex crimes.”

One of those people, he said, is Jason Collins, a 30-year-old man who will be sentenced Monday for selling 0.19 grams of crack to a police officer. He is facing up to 11 years in state prison.

Qiana Washington, Collins’ public defender, said he has a long history of drug abuse but has never been offered treatment. Washington said Collins was offered a plea deal of three years in state prison in the most recent case, but elected to go to trial because he denied selling the drugs and claimed he was beaten by the arresting officers.

“To me, it seems like prosecutors are going for more state prison – I have another case where the offer before realignment took effect was one year in county jail, and now, after realignment, they want three years in state prison. It’s not like the case has changed in any way,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to be in line with what the citizens of the state want to happen (to drug offenders), and it doesn’t seem like it will do a lot of good.”

But Gascón spokeswoman Stephanie Lee said Collins was convicted of robbing an 83-year-old man in 2007 – a violent offense that automatically disqualifies him from a county-jail sentence. Washington argued that prosecutors could have moved to strike the prior offense from his record. The district attorney’s office disagrees.

“Mr. Collins had the chance to accept responsibility and plead guilty and he chose not to and went to trial,” Lee said. “He attacked an 83-year-old man … that is not a nonviolent offense.”

Gascon said that his office is “looking at one case at a time,” to determine what is best for both an offender and the community.

“We really are trying to look very globally at an offender as opposed to just their offense,” he said. “Safety is always the overarching concern.”

E-mail Marisa Lagos at mlagos@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A – 1 of the San Francisco ChroniclE.

RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Supervisors approve plan to charge inmates

(from The Press-Enterprise)

BY DUANE W. GANG

STAFF WRITER

dgang@pe.com

Published: 09 November 2011 04:08 PM

Riverside County supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to introduce a law requiring those convicted of crimes and sentenced to county jail to pay for their stays.

It costs an average of $142.42 per day to house someone in a jail. In order to collect the money, the board must have a formal ordinance in place.

The measure, sponsored by Supervisor Jeff Stone, is expected to come back before the board next week for final adoption.

With the ordinance, County Counsel Pamela Walls said the county does have the legal authority to seek reimbursement. But in a memo to supervisors, she said collecting the money may be difficult.

The courts must first determine whether a defendant has the ability to pay, Walls wrote. And the county isn’t first in line to get money from prisoners. Restitution to victims, state surcharges, fines and other charges are ahead of the county.

Walls said Tuesday the ordinance in no way creates a debtors jail and only applies to those convicted of crimes. Going after the money would only be done through a civil court action, she said.

Let’s Build Us Some Jailz!

Prison officials open up $600 million for jail construction to 25 counties

State officials have invited 25 counties to apply for a total of $602 million to construct new jail beds, after narrowing the list in recent days.
The bond funding, available under a 2007 law known as AB900, will be awarded by March and will allow a number of counties to expand their jail capacity. It comes as the state implements “realignment” the governor’s plan to address overcrowding in state prisons by letting thousands of low-level offenders serve their time in local jails instead of state prison. Advocates for prisoners oppose the release of funds.
The counties given the green light to apply for the funds are: Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange, Sacramento, Santa Clara, Fresno, Stanislaus, Tulare, Monterey, Yolo, Sonoma, Placer, Kings, Shasta, Sutter, Madera, Imperial, Napa, Siskiyou and Tuolumne. Additonally, Kern, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara, Amador and San Benito counties are being asked whether they would like to forgo earlier AB900 funds awarded to them and instead reapply for this round of bond money.
Leslie Heller, an official with the Correction Standards Authority, said the majority of the state’s 58 counties expressed interest in the money, and that the counties invited to apply were chosen solely on the increased number of prisoners they are expected to be housing under realignment.
“We knew with realignment there would be a lot of interest, and we know there is not enough money to go around to all the counties, so we thought, ‘Let’s find out how many are interested, then pick an appropriate number from that to go through the application process, so they don’t expend their resources unnecessarily’,” she said.
She added that there is “absolutely not” enough money for all 26 counties, and that some may not ultimately choose to submit an application.
For more information on AB900 funding, visit this website.

Jail expansion: Counties seek millions from state

Check out today’s SF Chronicle cover story, “Jail expansion: Counties seek millions from state,” and especially its ending:

Lenard Vare, director of Napa County’s Department of Corrections, said he agrees with advocates that incarceration isn’t the only answer. But the rural county also anticipates an increase of at least 70 inmates per year – and its jail is already over capacity.

“The old adage ‘If you build it, they will come’ is true, because law enforcement in general – police officers – come with the mind-set to fight crime, and arresting people is one of the ways to fight crime,” he said. “Unless we decide to simultaneously work on our overall criminal justice system … we are not going to make a difference. Locking someone up 50 times does not deter them from committing crimes, because it becomes a way of life.”

CJ Racial Discrim Starts in Schools

We knew the school-to-prison pipeline starts in schools, but a report published this month shows the criminal justice system’s racial discrimination starts in schools too. On Wednesday, October 5th, the Dignity in Schools Campaign, National Education Policy Center (NEPC), and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform hosted a press briefing at the National Press Club for the release of the report “Discipline Policies, Successful Schools and Racial Justice.” The report, authored by Daniel Losen of The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto de Derechos Civiles at UCLA, analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and found that more than 28% of Black middle school boys had been suspended at least once, compared with 10% of white males nationwide.

Brown Vetoed Anti-Shackling AB568

When a pregnant woman goes into labor in California prisons, guards chain her up, transport her to a medical facility in chains, and then chain her to a bed for the entire birthing process. This practice is a disgusting outrage, and would have been ended by this year’s AB 568. Yesterday Governor Brown decided to veto this legislation. Unbelievable.

Expert Alicia Walters has more info here.