Since taking effect in October 2011, prison realignment in California has been a success at reducing the prison population, but county correctional systems still face significant challenges in the transition, according to a study released Monday.
Prison realignment stemmed from a federal court order to reduce overcrowding in the state’s prison system, shifting the long-term incarceration, treatment and supervision of lower-level offenders to county jails instead of state prisons.
In its first year, realignment reduced the state prison population by 17 percent, from 160,800 prisoners to 133,400. But the reduction did not meet the court-ordered mandate until November 2014, when Proposition 47, which reduced penalties for certain property and drug offenses, was approved by voters, according to the report, “Public Safety Realignment: Impacts So Far,” released Monday by the Public Policy Institute of California, a San Francisco-based think tank.
And while reducing the state prison population, realignment caused the jail population in California’s 58 counties to soar to historical highs for more than three years before dropping by 10,000 inmates following the passage of Proposition 47 in 2014. Still, the county jail populations did not increase as much as the prison population fell, according to the study.
[For more of this story, written by Joe Nelson, go to http://www.sbsun.com/general-n...as-prison-population]
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