PUBLIC SAFETY
REALIGNMENT
California

at a Crossroads

A R e p o r t b y the ACLU o f Califo rn ia

California at a Crossroads
It’s time to fix California’s broken criminal justice system

California’s prison system
has become a revolving door.
Evidence-based alternatives
to incarceration will reduce
recidivism rates.1

Most people in California jails
HAVE NOT BEEN CONVICTED OF A CRIME.
More than 50,000 of the 71,000
Californians held in a county jail on
any given day are awaiting trial:

that‘s 71% of county jails’
average daily population.2

Awaiting trial

Convicted

= 10,000 prisoners

In addition to the
human cost, there is a
high financial cost of
pretrial incarceration.
$100 per day
to keep someone
in jail awaiting trial.

$2.50 per day
to monitor people with
pretrial programs.3

1. The Pew Center on the States, State of Recidivism: The Revolving Door of America’s Prisons (Apr. 2011), p. 26. 2. Corrections Standards
Authority, Jail Profile Survey Third Quarter Results (2011). 3. Justice Policy Institute, Baltimore Behind Bars (2010), p. 30

CONTENTS
1

Executive Summary

3

Introduction
5
6

7

Methodology
California at a Crossroads

Realignment In Practice
8
Putting Evidence Into Practice

10 Funding Realignment
12
Improving the Funding Formula
14 Sentencing Reform and County Flexibility
15 Repeating the State’s Mistakes: The High Costs of Jail Expansion
16
State Funding of Massive Jail Expansion
18 Incarcerated Without Trial: The Reality of Jail Overcrowding in California
19
It’s All about Money: California’s Broken Pretrial Detention System
20
A One-Size-Fits All Bail System
21
Money-based Bail: A Discriminatory System
22
Unnecessary Risks to Public Safety
23 Reserving Jails for Public Safety: Alternatives to Pretrial Detention
25
California Models for Pretrial Policies
26
National Models for Pretrial Policies
27
Adopting Pretrial Best Practices
28
Access to Pretrial & Alternative Sentencing Programs for Noncitizens
30 Protecting Communities: Investing in Individual Outcomes
31
Risk and Needs Assessments
33
Programming to Reduce Recidivism
34
Pre-Booking Diversion to Health Services
35
Day Reporting Centers
36
Graduated Sanctions
37
Flash Incarceration
38 Making Realignment Work
38
Joint Planning, Implementation and Accountability
39
Standardized Reporting and Evaluation
40
Adequate and Explicit Funding
41 Recommendations
43 Conclusion
Appendices
Appendix A: County Profiles
Appendix B: Best of the Best: Model Evidence-based programs from County Implementation Plans
Appendix C: “Education and Job Training Programs are Key to a Successful Realignment Initiative”
prepared by the National Employment Law Project and Rubicon Programs
Appendix D: “Drug Courts: Alternatives and Practices” prepared by the Drug Policy Alliance

Public Safety Realignment: California at a Crossroads is a report by the ACLU of California,
written by Allen Hopper, Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, and Kelli Evans.
The report is available online at www.aclunc.org/realignment.
Contributing authors and researchers:
Lillian Chen, Novella Coleman, Angie Junck, Julia Mass, Theshia Naidoo, Michelle Natividad
Rodriguez, Linnea Nelson, Caitlin O’Neill, Laura Saponara, Abdi Soltani, Marie VanNostrand,
Jessie Warner, and Pam Whalen
Layout and design:
Gigi Pandian and Caitlin O’Neill
The authors wish to acknowledge the many individuals who have been instrumental in the
conceptualizing, researching, and writing of this report, including David Ball, Scott MacDonald,
Clarissa Woo and the staffs at the ACLU of Northern California, ACLU of Southern California,
and ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties. The authors also wish to thank the numerous
academics, members of law enforcement and local government officials who provided input and
consultation for this report, and without whom it would not have been possible.
Published March 2012.
This publication was underwritten with support from Nicholas and Susan Pritzker through their
donor advised fund, The Scorpio Rising Fund, at Vanguard Charitable, and by Quinn Delaney
and Wayne Jordan, and by support from other generous donors.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

C

alifornia is at a criminal justice crossroads. After decades of “tough on crime” policies
and draconian sentencing practices, the state correctional system—one of the largest
incarcerators in the largest incarcerating country in the world—finally buckled under its
own weight. Faced with a historic U.S. Supreme Court order requiring the state to reduce
overcrowding, California made a momentous decision: it would no longer take into state
facilities or under state custody most people convicted of low-level, non-violent offenses, instead
tasking counties with dealing with these individuals at the local level.
Legislatively codified as the Public Safety Realignment Act, or Assembly Bill 109 (AB 109),
this major policy shift has put California’s 58 counties in the driver’s seat. Each county will
choose its own path, but their futures are intertwined. Poor implementation in one county will
inevitably affect others. All will affect California taxpayers.
The ACLU has conducted an in-depth review of all 53 available county realignment
implementation plans, and we have analyzed the statutory changes and related state laws and
budget allocations. We have identified four major interrelated themes:
•

A troubling lack of state monitoring, data collection, outcome measurements and funding
incentives to help counties successfully implement realignment.

•

A dramatic increase in spending on county jails—facilitated by billions of dollars in state
funding—particularly in those counties that have historically sent more people to state
prison for low-level, non-violent offenses.

•

A shockingly high number of people who present no real threat to public safety being
held in county jails before having their day in court, incarcerated without trial simply
because they cannot afford bail.

•

A promising commitment—though not yet realized—by many counties to adopt
alternatives to incarceration and evidence-based practices to reduce recidivism. A few
counties are adopting innovative programs and approaches that can serve as models for
the rest of the state, but all too often our analysis revealed few, if any, resources allocated
for such programs.

1

In light of these findings, the ACLU makes the following recommendations to state and local
policymakers:
•

Data Collection. Mandate standardized data collection and analysis across the 58
counties in order to monitor which policies and programs are working to reduce
recidivism and reliance upon incarceration, and base policy and budget decisions on
those findings.

•

Funding Formula. Revise the state funding allocation formula to incentivize counties to
reduce recidivism and incarceration.

•

Sentencing Reforms. Enact statewide front-end sentencing reforms to help counties
implement realignment.

•

Pretrial Detention Reform. Amend statewide pretrial detention laws and implement
new local pretrial release policies to keep behind bars only those who truly pose a risk to
public safety.

•

Alternatives to Incarceration. Create and fund concrete plans to develop communitybased alternatives to detention for both the pretrial and sentenced population.

•

Utilize New Sentencing Options. Encourage local courts to utilize realignment’s new
sentencing options that authorize judges to replace all or part of a jail sentence with
community sanctions or treatment programs.

•

Stop Jail Expansion. Halt or significantly reduce jail expansion and construction plans,
including AB 900 funding and projects.

•

Limit Use of Immigration Detainers. Review the impact of immigration status and
immigration detainers on inmates’ detention to prioritize public safety needs.

2

INTRODUCTION

O

ur criminal justice system is broken. The United States, with less than five percent of the
world’s population, has nearly 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population. 1 The state
of California has long held the dubious distinction of housing one of the largest prison and
jail populations within the U.S. 2 Despite extremely high state and local incarceration rates,
California’s recidivism rate—the rate at which people released from prison are returned to prison—is
among the highest in the nation, at 67.5 percent. 3 At the same time, our state and local governments
are facing the most significant budget disaster since the Great Depression. 4
Unequal treatment in the criminal justice system—especially in drug law enforcement—is one of the
primary drivers of inequality in our society today. A higher proportion of African Americans are
incarcerated in California today than were blacks in Apartheid South Africa. 5 Latinos are now the
largest group incarcerated in California state prisons. 6 The criminal justice system selectively
incarcerates to deal with mental health, drug abuse, and economic and social problems that can never
be solved simply by locking more people behind bars.
With this crisis, though, comes opportunity. The Public Safety Realignment Act (AB 109) and
subsequent amending legislation have tasked counties with implementing the most significant change
in criminal justice in California in more than three decades—indeed, according to some
commentators, since statehood. 7
The state government has officially recognized that we cannot simply incarcerate our way out of this
mess; in the words of the legislature in enacting realignment, “Criminal justice policies that rely on
building and operating more prisons to address community safety concerns are not sustainable, and
will not result in improved public safety.” 8 Realignment is based upon a fundamental
acknowledgement that counties are better positioned to integrate public health and social services as
part of rehabilitation and reentry in ways that the state cannot. 9
Realignment makes fundamental changes to California’s correctional system, shifting from the state
to counties certain responsibilities for most people convicted of low-level, non-violent offenses. The
intent of realignment is to reserve expensive state prisons for individuals convicted of serious
offenses and to encourage counties to develop and implement evidence-based practices and
alternatives to incarceration to limit future crimes and victims—something the state, as AB 109
acknowledges, has failed to accomplish. 10
This momentous policy shift followed a historic U.S. Supreme Court decision (Brown v. Plata 11),
which found overcrowding in California’s prisons to be so severe as to constitute cruel and unusual
punishment. The Plata decision requires California to reduce the state prison population by about
33,000 people by May 2013. 12 Between October 1, 2011, and February 22, 2012, the state prison
population decreased by about 17,000 inmates “primarily attributable” to realignment. 13 In adopting
3

realignment, the state opted against meeting the court mandate through prison construction, prisoner
release, or more modest reforms to its failed parole policies. Should the state fail to meet its total
population reduction targets—or aim to exceed those targets—it will need to implement additional
changes, such as sentencing reform, to further safely reduce overcrowding.
While realignment encourages counties to use alternatives to incarceration, state funding allocations
to the counties thus far send a contradictory message. On the one hand, the state urges counties not to
repeat at the local level the mistakes that led to the state prison overcrowding crisis. On the other
hand, the state has allocated more money to counties that have historically incarcerated the most
people, and on top of AB 109 funding is providing hundreds of millions of dollars more earmarked
for county jail expansion, incentivizing the very practices that led to prison overcrowding in the first
place.
The decisions counties are making right now
about how to implement realignment will have
dramatic and long-lasting impacts on public
safety and on local taxpayers. Will counties
focus on expanding incarceration at the
expense of good public safety policy? Or will
they tackle complex criminal justice challenges
by implementing policies and practices based
upon evidence rather than upon the politics of
fear? Will counties ask only what is to be done
with the realigned population? Or will they ask the broader, much more important question: how
should local public safety systems and structures change to provide the best public safety return on
the taxpayers’ investment?
The ACLU of California produced this report to aid policymakers and policy advocates at the state
and county levels working to implement public safety realignment. We published our first
realignment report, Community Safety, Community Solutions, 14 in August 2011, a month after the
passage of AB 109, just as counties were developing their implementation plans. Community Safety,
Community Solutions provided an overview of AB 109’s legal provisions, twelve guidelines and
recommendations on implementation planning, and real-world examples of safe and effective
alternatives to incarceration. In this new report, the ACLU examines realignment five months after
implementation began to determine how local governments are dealing with it on the ground.

4

Methodology
For this new report, the ACLU reviewed all 53 of the county realignment
implementation plans that had been completed as of late February 2012. We conducted
an in-depth analysis of the realignment plans and funding allocations made in the 25
counties that received the most AB 109 funding in FY 2011-12 (the “Big 25”) (see
Figure A; see also Appendix A for individual profiles of each of these 25 counties).
In addition to reviewing county realignment documents and data that were in the public
domain, we contacted individual counties and submitted Public Records Act requests to
obtain additional information. We also reviewed data published by the state
Department of Justice, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
(CDCR), the state Department of Finance (DoF), the Legislative Analyst’s Office
(LAO), the California State Association of Counties (CSAC), the Chief Probation
Officers of California (CPOC) and other state and local government representatives,
agencies and departments. For each county, our analysis included, among other
elements, reviews of:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

crime rates;
jail population, including pre-sentenced population;
any jail capacity expansion plans;
whether the public was afforded an opportunity to participate in the planning
process;
the local allocation of AB 109 funds between the individual counties’ sheriff’s
department, probation, and public health or social services agencies;
any pretrial detention or release programs;
any programs and strategies being adopted or expanded as alternatives to
incarceration for pretrial, sentenced and post-release populations; and
whether clear performance or outcome measurements are defined and how the
program will be evaluated.

We invite other researchers, advocates, and county or state officials to contact us for
additional information about our methodology.

5

California at a Crossroads
Based upon our review, at least 32 of California’s 58 counties have plans to expand jail capacity
using AB 109 funds or other tax dollars, even though realignment provides more effective and
affordable options for addressing jail overcrowding.
Widespread jail expansion is not
necessary to protect public safety or
hold individuals accountable for
criminal behavior. As discussed below,
counties can choose from a range of less
expensive and more effective
alternatives, including ending
unnecessary incarceration of people
awaiting trial. In this report, we evaluate
early realignment implementation efforts
by counties across the state, bringing to
light innovation as well as ineffective
and costly policies. We identify
necessary alternatives to incarceration
practices, including pretrial supervision
options, and we suggest ways the state
can incentivize evidence-based criminal
justice practices, including by adjusting
the state funding allocation formula to
better reflect the intent of public safety
realignment, by requiring standardized
data collection and analysis across the
state, and by protecting county
flexibility through state-wide sentencing
reform.
California is at a crossroads. Counties
can either cling to past habits and
perpetuate the revolving door that has
given California one of the highest
recidivism rates in the country, or
instead seize the new opportunities
presented by realignment to transform
the way they address crime, public
safety, punishment and rehabilitation.
Counties can see realignment as simply
6

a transfer of incarceration responsibilities and
insist upon business as usual, jailing people
convicted of non-serious, non-violent offenses at
great cost to county budgets and even greater
cost to individuals, families, and communities.
Or counties can take the smarter, evidence-based
path and implement cost-effective alternatives to
incarceration that will reduce recidivism and
improve public safety.
The choice is clear: we can no longer afford to
simply lock people up. It is time for California and its counties to fix our broken criminal justice
system and to take a new approach to keeping our communities safe.

REALIGNMENT IN PRACTICE

O

n October 1, 2011, AB 109 and subsequent amending legislation took effect, shifting
authority over most people convicted of lower-level, non-violent offenses from the state to
counties. The law does not reduce any penalties, but it does allow and encourage counties to
expand alternatives to incarceration in a variety of ways. 15 The state provided $367 million to
counties for the first year of implementation with plans to lock in increased amounts of permanent
funding via a ballot initiative on the November 2012 state ballot. 16
AB 109 makes two key changes to California’s criminal justice administration:
1) Most individuals newly convicted of low-level, non-serious offenses will stay at the county
level. Most individuals sentenced for a non-serious, non-violent, non-sex-registerable felony
offense (a “non-non-non”) and who have no such prior convictions now remain under the
jurisdiction of the county—in jail or under supervision—rather than being sent to state prison. 17
The law encourages counties to develop community-based alternatives to incarceration for these
low-level crimes and grants county sheriffs additional discretion to manage their jail populations
through use of intermediate alternative sanctions other than incarceration or traditional probation
supervision. 18 It is important to note that AB 109 is prospective only from its October 1, 2011,
effective date and does not provide for the transfer or early release of any inmates currently
serving sentences in state prison.
2) Counties will assume greater post-release supervision responsibilities. The new law makes
significant changes to state parole. For many offenses, parole is abolished. Starting October 1,
2011 those released from prison whose convictions were for non‐serious, non‐violent felonies
and who are not deemed high risk sex offenders will be placed on a new form of local monitoring
7

called “post-release community supervision.” 19 Individuals who have completed their sentences
and are released from a state correctional facility on or after October 1, 2011 whose current
convictions were for a “non-non-non” offense and who are not deemed high-risk sex offenders
are placed under the supervision of a county agency (designated by each county’s Board of
Supervisors) 20 instead of being supervised by a state parole agent. 21 (Technical violations by any
individual on supervision, whether by a county or state agency, will be served in county jail.
Only new felony offenses will return an individual to state prison.) Again, AB 109 is prospective
only, and therefore anyone on parole before October 1, 2011 remains under state jurisdiction
until they are discharged. 22
AB 109 required each of California’s counties to assemble an executive committee of its Local
Community Corrections Partnership (LCCP), comprised of the county’s probation chief, sheriff,
district attorney, public defender, presiding judge, a police chief and a public health or social services
department head appointed by the Board of Supervisors. 23 By October 1, 2011, each county was
expected to adopt a formal realignment implementation plan, written by its LCCP executive
committee and adopted by its Board of Supervisors, explaining how the county planned to allocate
funds and manage the new class of individuals now under its supervision. As of late February, 53
counties had made plans publicly available. 24 In many counties, the LCCP continues to hold regular
public meetings to discuss implementation.
The success of realignment implementation will
largely depend upon the ability of the LCCPs and
other local agencies to collaborate effectively, and
upon their combined willingness to abandon past
habits in favor of approaches that are shown to
work and be cost-effective. Joint planning and
implementation, with close coordination and
shared buy-in among probation, the sheriff, the
district attorney, the public defender, courts and
community-based organizations should determine
what policies are adopted, how they are
implemented and to what extent they are revised in
future years based upon data-driven critical
analyses of their results. No one agency will be
responsible for success, but just one uncommitted agency can lead the county to failure.

Putting Evidence into Practice
Public safety realignment represents a sea-change in ways much more significant than simply
keeping more people convicted of low-level, non-violent felony offenses in local rather than in state
facilities. AB 109, as expressed by the statute’s legislative findings and declarations section, 25 aims
to strengthen “locally run community-based corrections” to “improve public safety outcomes among
8

adult felons and facilitate their reintegration back into society.” AB 109 urges counties to “manage
and allocate criminal justice populations more cost-effectively, generating savings that can be
reinvested in evidence-based strategies that increase public safety while holding offenders
accountable.”
That is, the state wants the counties to succeed
where it has failed—both in reducing recidivism
and in wisely allocating limited resources. As AB
109’s legislative findings declare, “[d]espite the
dramatic increase in [state] corrections spending
over the past two decades, re-incarceration
rates…remain unchanged or have worsened…” 26
Indeed, California’s state prison recidivism rate—67.5 percent as of October 2010—is among the
highest in the nation. 27 Prior to realignment’s enactment, more than 10,000 people completed their
sentences and were released from state prison each month in California. 28 And about 10,000 people
each month replaced them. 29 California’s prisons had all but turned the metaphorical “revolving
door” into a literal one. If properly implemented, realignment promises to interrupt this cycle by
preventing crime, limiting future victims and more effectively allocating resources.
AB 109 gives counties broad discretion to implement realignment, while strongly encouraging
counties to rely more on “evidence-based strategies” 30 to reduce crime. Realignment is primarily
focused on reducing re-offending by
individuals already involved in the
criminal justice system—those who
have been or who are at risk of
walking through that revolving door.
Evidence-based policies and
practices are those demonstrated to
reduce recidivism rates, often
dramatically. 31 The message is clear:
counties should break past
punishment-based habits and
develop evidence-based criminal
justice policies that have been
proven to protect public safety and
allocate resources effectively.

9

FUNDING REALIGNMENT

U

nfortunately, the state distributed realignment implementation funds in a way that rewards
those counties that have historically relied most heavily on incarceration. 32 Rather than
allocate funding based on the county’s overall crime rates and public safety needs, or upon
counties’ demonstrated willingness and ability to employ cost-effective alternatives to incarceration,
the state’s funding allocation formula was based predominately on the rate at which each individual
county historically sent people to prison for low-level, non-violent felonies: the higher the past
incarceration rate, the higher that county’s piece of the funding pie.
Sixty percent of each county’s funding allocation was based on the county’s historical average daily
state prison population (ADP) of persons convicted of low-level, non-violent offenses from the
particular county; 30 percent was based on the population of each county; and only 10 percent was
based on each county’s demonstrated success at improving the outcomes of individuals on
probation. 33 (See Figure B).
FIGURE B

Incentive to Incarcerate:
State Funding Allocation Formula for
Each County's Implementation of
Realignment in 2011-12
Probation Outcomes
(SB 678)

10%

Population

30%

Historical rate of
sending "nonnon-non's" to
state prison

60%

This funding formula provided proportionally more dollars to those counties—including Fresno,
Kern, Kings, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Shasta and Tulare—that have historically sent higher rates
of people convicted of low-level, non-violent offenses to state prison. Counties that had historically
relied more on local alternatives to incarceration—including Alameda, Contra Costa, Sacramento,
San Diego and San Francisco—received proportionately less funding. In effect, this funding formula
rewarded those county criminal justice policy choices that contributed most to the state prison
overcrowding crisis in the first place. For example, San Francisco, with a population of about
10

805,000, received about $5.2 million while Tulare, with a population of about half of San
Francisco’s (442,000), received more realignment funding than San Francisco, about $5.9 million.
Similarly, Fresno, with about 930,000 people, received over $9 million—compare that to Contra
Costa, with over a million people, which received about half as much realignment money, about $4.7
million.
Santa Clara Law Professor David Ball has conducted an extensive analysis of the rates at which
California counties have historically sent people to state prison for felony convictions, and developed
a ranking of counties comparing county violent crime rates to the rates at which they sent people to
prison over a ten year period. 34 The counties Ball denotes as “high use” counties have a greater
disparity than other counties between their violent crime rate and imprisonment rate; that is, “high
use” counties sent people to prison at higher rates than other counties with comparable violent crime
rates. These differences cannot be explained by higher or lower violent crime rates—in other words,
it is not a simple matter of counties with more violent crime sending more people to prison, nor is it
that counties achieve lower violent crime rates by
sending more people to prison. For example, Ball
notes that Alameda and San Bernardino Counties
have similar population levels and similar violent
crime levels. Yet, over the past ten years, San
Bernardino sent more than twice the number of
people to state prison as Alameda County. As
Professor Ball points out, “California’s prison
overcrowding is due in large part to county
decisions about how to deal with crime …
California’s counties use state prison resources at
dramatically different rates…” 35
A danger inherent in the wide latitude the state has given counties to implement realignment is that
the counties that have historically sent disproportionate numbers of people to state prison will focus
their realignment implementation efforts on increasing their jail capacity to incarcerate more people
at the local level. The county realignment budgets the ACLU reviewed for this report seem to bear
out this concern. Of the Big 25 counties, 10 were among Ball’s “high use” counties. 36 Those 10
counties spent an average of at least 30 percent of their realignment funds to expand jail capacity,
compared to only 19 percent for the non “high use” counties among the Big 25. 37 (Figure C).

11

FIGURE C

Business as Usual:
Percentage of County Realignment
Allocation Spent to Expand Jail Capacity
30
25
20
15
10

Big 25 Counties Big 25 Counties
that are "high
that are NOT
use"
"high use"

Because AB 109 encourages counties to implement community-based alternatives to incarceration
and evidence-based approaches to public safety without providing a formal mechanism for
accountability, each county is free to spend its realignment implementation dollars as it sees fit. As a
result, despite AB 109’s emphasis on alternatives to incarceration, 24 of the Big 25 counties we
reviewed have plans for jail expansion (all but Alameda County). This business-as-usual approach to
local public safety will not accomplish the shared goals of reducing recidivism and conserving scarce
public safety dollars.

Improving the Funding Formula
There are two levels to local decision making.
First, counties decide how to distribute AB 109
funds among probation departments, sheriff’s
departments, public health, treatment and other
social services, district attorneys, public defenders
and local police departments. Second, counties
decide how the portion of the funds they allocate to
the sheriffs’ departments will be used. These funds
may be used for alternatives to jail confinement,
such as electronic monitoring and day reporting; by
improving jail conditions, such as by enhancing
mental health and medical care; or by expanding jail capacity.
In determining the funding formula going forward, the legislature should better incentivize counties
to adopt evidence-based public safety policies and practices. Eventually, state funding allocations
must be based upon counties demonstrating the sorts of positive outcomes realignment was meant to
achieve; primarily, lower recidivism rates and increased use of cost-effective alternatives to
incarceration, particularly for the pretrial population. This will require counties to collect and report
12

standardized data on public safety outcomes, something that the state should have required in AB
109 but did not. This is an unacceptable omission. Counties cannot be held accountable for
implementing evidence-based practices if they collect no evidence. At the same time, without
standardized, consistent data collection across the state, it will be difficult for the state to identify
successful programs worthy of further study, replication or investment—or unsuccessful programs
that should be discontinued or revised.
The ACLU therefore advocates a multi-phased approach. Beginning fiscal year 2012-13, the state
should provide funding to counties specifically earmarked for data collection and reporting. The state
should mandate standardized data collection and analysis across the 58 counties and partner with
academic institutions, think-tanks and advocacy organizations to develop a robust outcome
measurement program that enables policymakers to monitor which policies and programs are
working to reduce recidivism and reliance upon incarceration. The state should identify data that
counties are required to report, such as recidivism rates (using a consistent statewide definition of
recidivism), pretrial percentage of jail population, and implementation of community-based
alternatives to incarceration. The state also should make clear that in future years, county realignment
funding allocations will be based upon this outcome data; counties that fail to collect and report the
data will miss out on future allocations based on those outcome measurements. 38
Until outcome measurement data is available, the legislature should adopt an interim funding
allocation formula based upon currently-available data, but not driven by past years’ average daily
prison populations (ADP). The funding formula should be based upon risk factors—such as a
county’s crime rate—that measure current and ongoing burdens experienced by local criminal justice
systems. Those counties with higher serious and violent crime rates need more state assistance to run
effective local criminal justice systems and should receive higher amounts of state realignment
funding.
The funding formula also should consider counties’ efforts to adopt cost-effective alternatives to
incarceration. One readily available measurement is county success under SB 678, a program that
provided counties financial incentives for reducing the rate at which felony probationers violated
probation and were sent back to prison. 39 Once realignment took effect, counties could no longer
send individuals to state prison for such violations, meaning that SB 678 effectively ceased to operate
after October 1, 2011. However, data is available for the first nine months of 2011. This factor should
be used as one variable for an interim funding allocation formula and should be weighted more
heavily than the mere 10 percent weight it was given in the first year’s allocation formula. Similarly,
the interim funding formula might factor in the counties’ past years’ felony probation work-loads;
again, this data is readily available and is indicative of the extent to which counties are utilizing
probation rather than incarceration in state prison—precisely the sort of outcome the state should be
incentivizing with realignment funding allocations.
When realignment was enacted last year, the legislature and the governor made the political decision
to delegate creation of the realignment funding allocation formula to the California State Association
13

of Counties (CSAC). Because county cooperation was essential to making realignment work, the
state government placed a premium upon leaving the counties considerable flexibility and autonomy
in deciding how to allocate the funding and implement realignment. While it makes sense for the
state to consult with CSAC to determine the realignment funding formula, the legislature and
governor are ultimately responsible to taxpayers and should modify the funding formula to maximize
public safety return for taxpayer investment. It appears overly optimistic of the legislature and
administration to assume that counties will adopt meaningful criminal justice reforms on their own
without any state mandates, incentivizes, or oversight. The incarceration habit is deeply engrained
and the politics and practice of change across multiple local agencies are difficult.

SENTENCING REFORM AND COUNTY FLEXIBILITY

B

eyond data collection, outcome measurements and funding incentives, there is yet another
fundamental way in which the state can improve the counties’ ability to successfully
implement realignment: sentencing reform. For far too long, California has locked up too
many people with excessive sentences for low-level offenses. Rolling back draconian penalties for
low-level offenses is essential to provide counties the flexibility to manage their local criminal justice
populations.
A primary example is reducing drug possession crimes to misdemeanors. As this report was going to
print, State Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) had introduced Senate Bill 1506, which would
revise the penalty for possession of a controlled substance for personal use from a felony, which is
punishable by up to three years behind bars, to a misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to a oneyear jail sentence. This common sense reform would bring California into line with the federal
government, the District of Columbia, and 13 other states that already punish these offenses as
misdemeanors. The new legislation would help alleviate overcrowding in state prisons and county
jails and ease pressure on California’s court system. The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO)
estimates this single sentencing reform will
save counties about $159 million annually, in
addition to $64.4 million in yearly savings for
the state. 40

Senator Leno has pointed out that, “There is no
evidence to suggest that long prison sentences
deter or limit people from abusing drugs. In
fact, time behind bars and felony records often
have horrible unintended consequences for
people trying to overcome addiction because
they are unlikely to receive drug treatment in
prison and have few job prospects and
14

educational opportunities when they leave. This legislation will help implement public safety
realignment and protect our communities by reserving prison and jail space for more serious
offenders.” 41
Additional examples of sentencing reform the state should enact to make realignment work better at
the local level include reducing some low-level property crimes to misdemeanors; reforming
marijuana laws (the LAO estimates that legalizing marijuana could save tens of millions of dollars
annually); and requiring sentencing judges to consider specified information about the likelihood of
recidivism and the costs of available sentencing options when deciding which sentence to impose. 42

REPEATING THE STATE’S MISTAKES: THE HIGH COSTS OF
JAIL EXPANSION

C

ounties that have chosen a path of jail expansion—as many of the Big 25 county realignment
plans indicate they have—are trying to solve the wrong problem. They seek to absorb the
realigned population without changing their local approaches to public safety. Left
unchecked, these counties will build larger jail systems that will cost more tax dollars than they do
now and hold more people than they do now. Such counties, however, cannot reasonably expect to
see any improvement in public safety or reduction in recidivism because, as the legislature
acknowledged in enacting AB 109, continually increasing our capacity to incarcerate over the past 30
years has simply not worked. 43 We cannot incarcerate our way out of this problem. Overuse of
incarceration is itself a large part of the problem.
According to the county realignment
implementation plans reviewed by the ACLU,
approximately $45.1 million in realignment
funding provided to the Big 25 counties has
already been allocated for jail capacity
expansion costs, including 7,002 new jail beds
and 722 new corrections-related staff.
Given the incomplete and sometimes vague
county realignment plans produced thus far,
these figures are conservative. We only counted
funding for new jail beds and new corrections-related positions where these were explicitly
designated in one of the 25 county implementation plans we studied. This almost certainly results in
an underestimation of the extent to which AB 109 funds are being used to increase jail capacity.
For instance, Orange County clearly intends to use AB 109 funds to expand jail capacity, but because
no specific amount is budgeted in the county’s implementation plan, we did not include any amount
15

from Orange County in arriving at the $45.1 million figure. 44 San Bernardino has set aside $350,000
for jail remodeling, but it is unclear whether this will result in additional beds. Solano identified
currently shuttered jail space that may be reopened if the need arises. 45 Similarly, in San Francisco,
millions of dollars may go toward re-opening and operating a currently shuttered 360-bed facility but
it is unclear how much funding will come from AB 109 and how much will come from San
Francisco’s general fund. 46 None of these amounts are included in our calculations.
The $45.1 million figure only begins to scratch the surface in terms of the total amounts being spent
to expand incarceration capacity throughout the state using other government funding streams. For
instance, Los Angeles plans to add 4,234 beds under its realignment plan, but also is separately
considering a $1.4 billion plan to replace one jail and expand another, adding 400 additional beds.
The county is first in line to receive a $100 million award under a state jail and prison construction
bond program, Assembly Bill 900 (AB 900), but the award would still leave the county to bear the
remaining $1.3 billion in construction costs—not to mention ongoing costs to maintain and staff the
expanded facilities in perpetuity. San Mateo county plans to spend its own county taxpayer dollars to
increase its jail capacity by more than 500 beds. The Board of Supervisors has approved construction
of a new jail at a cost of $145-160 million to be completed in 2014. 47 Annual operating costs of the
new facility are estimated at about $30 million.

State Funding of Massive Jail Expansion
Despite the state’s recognition that relying heavily on incarceration has failed to improve public
safety, it is nonetheless subsidizing massive incarceration at the local level. Of the Big 25 counties
(which received $327 million, or 92 percent of the total state allocation), only one, Alameda County,
has completely forgone expanding its jails. The remaining twenty-four counties have either
designated realignment dollars for jail capacity expansion or hope to tap into separate state funds
earmarked for jail construction through AB 900—or both.
AB 900 authorized the issuance of up to
$7.3 billion 48 in state revenue bonds to
finance the construction of new state prisons
and county jail facilities, as well as to
renovate or build state correctional
facilities. 49 With interest on the bonds
factored in, the total cost to taxpayers of this
massive jail and prison expansion project
will likely be over $19 billion. And if any
county defaults on its payments under these
bonds, taxpayers throughout the state—not just in the individual county—will be stuck with the
bill. 50

16

By November 2009, eleven counties had received Phase I AB 900 awards. 51 Nearly $7 million was
distributed to these counties to create an estimated 5,185 new jail beds. At least six of the 11 counties
plan to tap into both realignment and AB 900 state funds to expand local jail capacity—and these six
are among the Big 25 counties. 52 All but one (San Bernardino) of these six counties also have explicit
plans to add additional jail beds using AB 109 funding. 53 Five Phase I construction projects have
already broken ground, or have an estimated construction start date in 2012. 54
As of January 11, 2012, twenty counties had applied for AB 900 Phase II funds. 55 San Benito and
Santa Barbara are seeking to exchange their Phase I awards, which require the counties to match 25
percent of the construction costs, for Phase II awards, which require a match of only 10 percent.
Madera was awarded $30 million in Phase I awards and has applied for $3 million more in Phase II
funds. As this ACLU report was being finalized, the Board of the Corrections Standards Authority
(CSA) was scheduled to hear recommendations on Phase II awards (on March 8, 2012) and to
announce the awards shortly thereafter. 56
Although invited by the state to apply for as much as $100 million in AB 900 jail construction funds,
Santa Clara County recently refused the state’s offer, citing concerns about the decades-long
ramifications that such a decision would have on county criminal justice policies. County Supervisor
Dave Cortese explained, “It’s not only a lot of money, but it’s going to literally cement in a direction
that you know will be relatively irreversible for probably three decades.” 57 While rejecting new jail
construction, however, Santa Clara did budget nearly $5 million of its realignment allocation to add
jail capacity (about 40 percent of its overall realignment funds).
Jail overcrowding is a serious issue—for the health, safety and humane treatment of those in jails,
and for the safety of the staff, as well as for effective criminal justice administration. Indeed, at least
twenty counties already operate under court-ordered population caps. 58 But expanding jail capacity is
not the answer. Simply building new jails or re-opening and re-staffing previously closed jail space
treats the symptom but not the
underlying disease. Constructing
new jails requires significant
financing through bond measures
and tax increases. Once a jail is
built, it must be maintained and
staffed, which poses significant
long-term costs to taxpayers.
Similarly, reopening shuttered
facilities also imposes significant
staffing and maintenance costs. For
example, in Sacramento County, it’s
estimated that reopening a
previously-closed jail will cost the
county $700,000 per month. 59
17

Instead of taking extraordinary and expensive measures to finance jail construction, maintenance and
staffing or to open closed facilities—especially in a time of fiscal crisis with critical social services
and education funding being cut across the board—counties would do better to implement smart,
effective policies that reduce the number of people unnecessarily taking up expensive jail space. Jail
beds should be reserved for those who present a significant threat to public safety. Counties should
not be spending the lion’s share of AB 109 funding to expand jail capacity. The state should either
suspend all AB 900 funding until such time as less costly and more effective community-based
alternatives have been fully implemented, or expand the AB 900 grant criteria to allow counties to
use AB 900 monies for non-jail community sanctions and alternatives to incarceration.

INCARCERATED WITHOUT TRIAL: THE REALITY
OVERCROWDING IN CALIFORNIA

OF

JAIL

B

ecause the state will no longer take most
people convicted of low-level felony offenses
into state facilities, there is a common—but
mistaken—perception at the local level that jail
construction is essential. Indeed, as noted above, all but
one (Alameda) of the Big 25 counties intend to add jail
capacity, and of those all but three dedicated some
portion of AB 109 money to do so. 60 However, efforts
to create new jail capacity not only ignore the utterly
failed state prison expansion and overcrowding
experience; they also turn a blind eye to the reality of
jail overcrowding in California and to the new powers
given to counties to better manage their jail
populations. Rather than expand jail capacity, counties
should implement evidence-based practices to manage
both pretrial and sentenced populations.
As sheriffs have readily admitted, county jails are not full of individuals who have been convicted of
crimes, or even individuals thought to present a high public safety risk to the community. Rather,
most of those filling up scarce and expensive jail beds are individuals waiting for their day in court
but unable to afford bail. It is hard to overstate the severity of this crisis. Years before the enactment
of realignment, the California State Sheriffs’ Association bemoaned the fact that there was “no room
for sentenced inmates” in county jails due to the rising pretrial detainee population. 61
California far exceeds the national average of 61 percent of jail space occupied by pretrial jail
populations. 62 More than 50,000 of the 71,000 Californians held in county jail on any given day have
not been convicted of a crime but rather are awaiting trial—71 percent of county jails’ average daily
18

population. 63 The percentages of non-sentenced and sentenced detainees were roughly equal in
California’s county jails throughout the 1980s. 64 However, the proportion of pretrial detainees in jails
began rising in the 1990s, and since 1995 has risen by twelve percentage points. 65 (See Figure D).
State policymakers should adopt reforms to ensure that no person remains incarcerated simply
because they are cannot afford to post bail.
FIGURE D

Growing Percentage of
California County Jail Population
Who Are Awaiting Trial
75
70
65
60
55
50
1995

1997

1998

2000

2002

2006

2008

2009

2011

Jail overcrowding due to the pretrial population is likely, in part, an unintended consequence of three
factors: rising bail amounts, courts’ lack of information on defendants’ public safety risk (or lack
thereof), and the limited authority of sheriffs to address this issue. Prior to realignment, sheriffs were
required to detain defendants in county jail until their court date if the defendants were denied bail or
failed to post bail—regardless of the individual’s assessed risk level and the availability of jail
beds. 66 In some circumstances, misdemeanor defendants could have their bail eliminated if they
participated in pretrial diversion programs. This option, however, has not been available in all
counties. 67
High rates of pretrial detention are a threat both to public safety and civil liberties. People with
financial resources are able to get out of jail and return to their jobs, families, and communities.
People who are unable to pay for bail or raise the necessary collateral, however, must stay in jail
awaiting a trial date that could be months away. Or, they may more readily decide to accept a plea
bargain as a means of getting out of jail. These results have nothing to do with public safety. They
have everything to do with wealth and poverty. People with money are able to buy their freedom
while poor people cannot.

It’s All about Money: California’s Broken Pretrial Detention System
Anyone charged with a crime is entitled to a number of important legal rights under federal and
California law. First and foremost, those charged with crimes are presumed innocent until proven
guilty. They have a right to counsel, a right against self-incrimination, a right to due process of law, a
right to equal protection under the law. They also have a right to bail that is not “excessive.” 68
19

Bail is some form of property, usually money, that a defendant deposits or pledges to the court in
exchange for being released from jail pending trial. Bail is the court’s collateral against the risk that,
once released, a defendant will fail to appear for trial. If the defendant fails to appear, he or she
forfeits the entire amount of bail posted or
pledged to the court. California operates on what
is known as a “money-based” bail system.
County courts set their own bail schedules,
assigning dollar amounts to various crimes. The
result is a patchwork of 58 divergent bail
schedules across the state.
Those who do not have enough money to post
bail—virtually everyone accused of a crime in
county courts—may choose to post a surety bond
(known as a “bail bond”) with the court instead.
The defendant pays a fee of approximately 10-15
percent of the total bail amount to a bail
bondsman who, in turn, posts or pledges the full bail amount to the court. If the defendant fails to
appear, the bail bondsman is held responsible and may be required to forfeit the entire bail amount to
the court.
According to a 2010 investigative series by National Public Radio, in California and across the
country, however, bail bond companies routinely fail to pay counties when their clients do not show
up for court. The series reported that, in California, bonds companies owed counties $150 million. 69

A One-Size-Fits All Bail System
California law requires that judges take a number of considerations into account when setting bail
and deciding the terms of pretrial release of defendants, including public safety, ensuring the
defendant’s appearance at trial and the impact of pretrial release on victims. 70 California’s moneybased bail scheduling system, however, has warped into a presumptive bail system, in which judges
commonly fix the amount of bail according to the county schedule without meaningfully considering
the specific circumstances of the individual defendant or the alleged crime including for example,
low risk to public safety and low flight risk.
Outside of California, some courts have held that such presumptive bail practices violate the due
process rights of defendants. 71 Additionally, as noted above, the bail schedules set among California
counties vary widely. For example, for simple drug possession the presumptive bail amount is $5,000
in Fresno and Sacramento, $10,000 in Alameda and Los Angeles, and $25,000 in San Bernardino and
in Tulare. 72 (See Figure E).

20

Under the money-based bail system, bail bondsmen and insurance industries earn profits on virtually
every bail bond posted to the court. Unsurprisingly, the bail bonds industry opposes most of the
pretrial alternatives that would do the most to alleviate jail overcrowding in California. One lobbying
organization for the industry states on its website, “For decades government sponsored pre-trial
release programs have been expanding beyond their mandated purpose. These programs have
become the direct competition of surety bail. We are steadily losing bail premium dollars to a
government agency that is working within the jail and court facilities.” 73

Money-Based Bail: A Discriminatory System
Defendants with little money or collateral to post for bail,
but with stable employment, strong community ties and
no history of violence or other risk-predictive factors may
nonetheless be forced to remain for weeks or even
months in jail pending trial simply because the local bail
schedule dictates a bail amount beyond their means.
By definition, the money-based bail system discriminates
against the poor and working class. The mortgage crisis
has further exacerbated this problem. Historically,
21

individuals and families used their homes as collateral to raise funds to pay for bail. However,
bankruptcies, foreclosures, and plunging home values mean that fewer people are able to use their
homes as collateral. 74
The financial terms of bail also result in disparate outcomes based on race and ethnicity. Latino and
black defendants are more likely than white defendants to be held in jail because of an inability to
post bail. 75
Furthermore, pretrial detention makes it
more difficult to mount an adequate defense
in court. It is difficult to meet with defense
attorneys while detained in jail, and the
disruption of incarceration to family,
employment, and community ties
stigmatizes defendants. 76 Defendants who
are detained pending trial are more likely to
plead guilty and receive longer sentences if
convicted, compared to those released
pending trial. This is true even controlling
for other relevant factors, such as current
charge, criminal history, and whether
represented by appointed or retained counsel. 77

Unnecessary Risks to Public Safety
Most importantly, California’s money-based bail system fails to accurately assess and manage risk
among pretrial populations. There is no evidence that a defendant’s ability to afford bail correlates to
their risk of committing a new crime while out on bail, or even their likelihood of appearing in court.
Pretrial risk assessment research over the past 30 years, however, has identified common factors that
do accurately predict court appearance and/or danger to the community. These factors include: 78
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Current charge
Whether the defendant had outstanding warrants at the time of arrest
Whether the defendant had pending charges at the time of arrest
History of criminal convictions
History of failure to appear in court
History of violence
Residence stability
Employment stability
Community ties
History of substance abuse.
22

The money-based bail system, with bail amounts determined by pre-set, one-size-fits-all schedules,
fails to take any of these risk factors into account. Not only do many people who present no public
safety or “failure to appear” danger remain unnecessarily behind bars pending trial, but sometimes
people who do present a public safety risk are nonetheless released simply because they are able to
afford to post the scheduled bail amount.
The tragic story of Maurice Clemmons in Washington state is a poignant example. In November of
2009, Clemmons killed four police officers in the city of Lakewood after having been released on
bail twice for charges of assaulting police
officers and rape of a 12-year-old girl.
Following this incident, the International
Association of Chiefs of Police aptly stated,
“A suspect’s release or detention pending trial
currently is not based on an informed
assessment of whether or not he or she is a
danger to society [and/or] is likely to return to
court for trial, but on whether the suspect has
enough money to bail himself or herself out of
jail.” 79
Each day in California, hundreds of bail determinations are made according to bail schedules and
without the benefit of individualized assessments of risk to public safety or likelihood of returning to
court.

RESERVING JAILS FOR PUBLIC SAFETY: ALTERNATIVES TO
PRETRIAL DETENTION

A

B 109 directly addresses the systemic crisis of pretrial over-detention by giving county
sheriffs (subject to approval by the Board of Supervisors) new authority to manage their
pretrial population and to reserve detention for those individuals who pose a risk to the
community or for failure to appear in court. Specifically, AB 109 added a section to the
California Penal Code that permits home detention for pretrial inmates in lieu of bail. 80 This means
that even if a defendant does not have enough money to post bail, counties have new authority to
keep those who do not pose a significant threat to public safety out of jail pending trial, under some
less costly form of supervision, such as day reporting or electronic monitoring with or without GPS
tracking.
Despite this new authority and despite high pretrial detention rates, only nine 81 of the Big 25 counties
committed in their realignment plans to better manage or reduce their pretrial population—for
example, by implementing a pretrial risk assessment tool for determining whether defendants should
23

be released on their own recognizance, or making pretrial defendants eligible for existing home
detention programs previously available only to sentenced inmates.
Only two of the county plans clearly specified an actual budget allocation for pretrial programs:
Fresno and Sacramento. A third, San Joaquin, allocates $70,000 from the AB 109 training and
implementation grant to implement a Pretrial Assessment tool for the Court to utilize in determining
which individuals are appropriate for release. However, the plan does not provide for any pretrial
services or programming beyond the
assessment tool.
The 17 remaining counties either
made no mention of the pretrial
population, or per functorily
acknowledged that supervised
release and alternatives to custody
were authorized for the pretrial
population under AB 109 without
making any commitment to institute
them.
California’s average pretrial
population (71 percent of the total
jail population) is significantly
higher than the national average (61
percent). 82 All but five of the Big 25
counties struggle with pretrial jail
populations exceeding the national
average. Of the remaining twenty
counties, all but four exceed even
the bloated state-wide average.
(See Figure F). California counties
ought to be aggressively pursuing
innovative strategies to reduce their
pretrial populations, rather than
seeking to expand jail capacity.
In early 2012, the proportion of
county jail populations in California
that were pretrial began to fall not
because the pretrial population
declined, but because the number of
sentenced inmates increased,
24

because pursuant to AB 109, individuals sentenced for low-level, non-violent felonies were no longer
being transferred to state correctional facilities. In light of AB 109’s impact on newly-sentenced jail
populations, it is now more essential than ever that counties address their failed pretrial policies and
reserve jail space for people who pose a risk to public safety.
Allowing greater numbers of low-risk individuals to be released, with monitoring where necessary,
pending trial will improve public safety outcomes and cost less than incarceration. In addition to
freeing jail space for those who present the highest public safety risk, expanded pretrial release
policies allow defendants to maintain employment and provide family support, minimizing the
disruption to individual lives and communities that all too often leads to further destabilization and
crime.

California Models for Pretrial Policies
Some forward-thinking counties took steps to manage their jail populations through pretrial
alternatives well before realignment. Napa and Santa Cruz counties provide models of best practices
that other counties should adopt.
Napa County’s Day Reporting Center
Like almost all California counties, Napa County faced a jail overcrowding and associated fiscal
crisis by 2000. After determining that more than 80 percent of their jail population were individuals
awaiting trial, the sheriff, district attorney and courts began working together to develop pretrial
alternatives to incarceration. 83 Instead of constructing a costly new jail, Napa built a “Community
Corrections Service Center,” which serves as the headquarters for all risk-assessment, supervision
and services for those released from jail pending trial, or who have been released on probation. The
programs and services provided through the Center include day reporting, drug screening, electronic
monitoring, various substance abuse and mental health treatment services and other classes and
training designed to address the needs that have been shown to drive criminal behavior. 84 A decade
later, the county’s pretrial detention rate has dropped below the state-wide average to 65 percent.85
Santa Cruz County’s Pretrial Services Program
Santa Cruz County’s Main Jail was over capacity soon after opening its doors in 1981. By 2004,
overcrowding reached such proportions that a Grand Jury Report deemed the jail dangerous for
inmates and staff alike. 86 After analyzing its jail population, Santa Cruz County found that many
low-risk pretrial defendants were likely unnecessarily occupying jail beds. In 2005, the probation
department began working with the sheriff’s detention staff to introduce a validated risk assessment
tool to identify whether pretrial defendants posed significant risks to the community. They
recommended that the courts release low-risk defendants on their own recognizance, without
requiring bail. Probation staff also developed a supervision program and reporting rules for those
released pretrial. After two years, Santa Cruz found that fully 92 percent of supervised pretrial
participants did not re-offend, and 89 percent made all of their court appearances. 87 Ninety jail beds a
day were saved (a 25 percent reduction in average daily population), thus amounting to significant
25

cost savings to the county. 88 In 2011, Santa Cruz’s pretrial detention rate was 56 percent, far below
the state-wide average. 89 Santa Cruz County’s realignment implementation plan calls for no
expansion at all of jail capacity; in fact, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff has repeatedly informed the
county CCP that he has been able to reduce his jail population after realignment by expanding the use
of electronic monitoring.

National Models for Pretrial Policies
Jurisdictions outside of California have had to contend with severe jail overcrowding and fiscal
crises, and many have looked to pretrial reform as a workable solution that protects public safety and
ensures appearances for court dates while managing jail populations.
•

Baltimore, Maryland. A Justice
Policy Institute report on the City of
Baltimore’s Pretrial Release
Services Program found that of the
6,000 to 7,000 pretrial defendants
supervised by the program annually,
ninety-six percent (96 percent) of
supervisees are not arrested on new
charges while awaiting trial. 90
Additionally, ninety-four percent
(94 percent) of supervisees appear
for their scheduled court date. 91
Monitoring a pretrial defendant
through the program costs the city only $2.50 per day, as opposed to $100 per day to
incarcerate the same person. 92

•

Camden County, New Jersey. The Camden Correctional Facility in Camden, New Jersey
endured chronic jail overcrowding for more than 20 years. By 2004, it was operating at 142
percent of its designed capacity. 93 The severe overcrowding problem prompted a class action
lawsuit, which ultimately resulted in the implementation of a jail reduction initiative. After
analyzing its jail population, Camden found that adopting validated risk assessment tools and
alternatives to incarceration for low-risk pretrial defendants could significantly ease the
burden on its system. Camden made a number of changes to its management of the jail
system, the pretrial programs chief among them. As a result, the average daily jail population
fell by 21 percent over one year, amounting to a cost avoidance of over $9 million annually. 94

•

Washington, D.C. The problems of the money-based bail system were perhaps more glaring
in Washington, D.C. than in any other jurisdiction. Even as early as 1963, commentators
criticized the discriminatory nature of the bail system and its failure to reduce public safety
risks. 95 Over the next four decades, the D.C. Pretrial Services Agency instituted the gold
26

standard for pretrial programming—validated risk assessments reported to courts in
preparation for bail decisions, programming for those released pending trial, and effective
pretrial supervision. As a result, by 2008, 80 percent of all defendants were released without
a money bond (as opposed to the previous rate of 80 percent being held in jail, as is the case
in many California counties). Fifteen percent are typically held by the court without bail.
Only five percent have financial bail. None are released on commercial surety bail (bail
bonds). 96 Furthermore, the high non-financial release rate has been accomplished without
sacrificing the safety of the public or the appearance of defendants in court. Agency data
show that 88 percent of released defendants make all court appearances, and 88 percent
complete the pretrial release period without any new arrests. 97

Adopting Pretrial Best Practices
California counties have a wealth of research and experience to draw from in developing and
implementing pretrial detention policies. The Pretrial Justice Institute (PJI), formed by the U.S.
Department of Justice, has published best practices with regard to local administration of pretrial
justice. 98 Counties must prioritize and fund these proven methods to manage jail populations, protect
public safety and ensure a fair and functioning criminal justice system. Drawn primarily from PJI’s
best practices, the ACLU recommends that all California counties take the following steps to address
pretrial detention at the local level:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Adhere to consistent principles when using assessment tools to make bail decisions based
on risk, not just the charged offense;
Implement pretrial diversion programs to address drug addiction and mental illness
through special courts; 99
Employ cite and release programs to address those charged with misdemeanors; 100
Increase appearance rates among released defendants using cost-effective tools, including
court date reminders; 101
Ensure legal representation at initial appearances where bail is set; 102
Supervise defendants based on individualized conditions and, where appropriate,
intermediate sanctions short of incarceration; 103and
Define and measure performance outcomes. 104

In addition to these county-level reforms that can dramatically reduce the pretrial jail population, the
ACLU recommends simple but effective statewide pretrial reforms that will greatly assist the
counties in reducing jail populations, such as:
•

Create a presumption of release on own recognizance (“O.R. release”) for felony charges that
are non-violent, non-serious, and non-sex offenses (the “non-non-nons”) unless a judge finds
that the defendant presents a risk of flight or danger to the community pretrial.

•

Provide direction to courts concerning the factors to be considered when ordering release,
determining whether or which conditions to require, and setting bail, focusing upon imposing
27

conditions of release other than monetary bail that will reasonably assure appearance for
court proceedings and public safety;
•

Include best practices and evidence-based factors in pretrial investigation report to provide
the court more and credible information by which to determine release, monitoring and/or set
bail.

The legislature’s inclusion of pretrial alternatives in AB 109 reflects a growing national consensus
that there are simply too many low-risk, non-sentenced people behind bars. As U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder recently noted, “Almost all of these [non-sentenced, pretrial] individuals could
be released and supervised in their communities—and allowed to pursue or maintain employment,
and participate in educational opportunities and their normal family lives—without risk of
endangering their fellow citizens or fleeing from justice.” 105
Improving California’s pretrial system matters now more than ever to policymakers and the public,
not only because of the system’s risks to public safety and discriminatory effects, but because
reducing the number of people held in
jails who are awaiting trial is one of the
most immediate and cost-effective
ways for counties to reduce jail
overcrowding and ensure successful
implementation of realignment.
Pretrial custody reform also can
significantly improve public safety and
court efficiency by accurately
assessing individuals’ risk of failing to
appear and individuals’ likelihood of
committing offenses if released from
jail pending court appearances.

Access to Pretrial & Alternative Sentencing Programs for Noncitizens
As discussed above, California’s overreliance on a flawed and inequitable bail system and a lack of
pretrial alternatives have contributed to overcrowded county jails. Jail crowding is further
exacerbated by counties’ unnecessary use of limited jail beds and law enforcement resources to carry
out federal immigration policy.
Rapid expansion of immigration enforcement in the criminal justice system coupled with widespread
confusion and misunderstanding among California law enforcement agencies regarding their legal
obligations to cooperate with the Bureau of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) has resulted
in widespread bias against immigrants in the criminal justice system. It has resulted in a two-tiered
system of justice, in which noncitizens who would otherwise qualify are routinely denied bail, jailed
for longer periods, and disqualified from alternative release programs.
28

Counties can free up jail beds by taking simple steps to reduce the number of inmates in county jails
who are held based on discretionary detainers or ICE holds. An ICE hold or detainer is a request that
a law enforcement agency, such as a jail, notify ICE prior to release of a noncitizen so that ICE can
arrange to assume custody for the purpose of arresting and removing the individual. Contrary to
common perception by law enforcement officials, enforcement of ICE holds is not mandatory. ICE
holds are merely requests, enforceable at the discretion of local officials. 106 Constitutional separation
of powers prohibits the federal government from coercing any state or local agency into utilizing its
own resources for the purpose of enforcing a federal regulatory scheme, such as immigration.
At least two California counties have adopted policies limiting enforcement of ICE holds in order to
minimize costs and preserve public safety by building community trust with immigrant communities.
In June 2011, San Francisco adopted a policy that significantly curtails enforcement of ICE holds. 107
San Francisco does not submit to ICE holds issued for inmates who are arrested for infractions and
cite-eligible misdemeanors and who have not been previously convicted of two misdemeanors or a
felony. 108 In addition, San Francisco will not enforce holds for individuals arrested for non-citable
misdemeanors if the charges are subsequently dismissed. 109 San Francisco has tailored its policy to
reflect local enforcement priorities by incorporating more stringent requirements for the release of
domestic violence arrestees who are subject to ICE holds. 110
In October 2011, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors adopted a policy providing that the
county would not submit to ICE hold requests for any person until the county is fully reimbursed for
the costs associated with ICE holds. 111 If the county is reimbursed by the federal government in the
future, it will exercise its discretion to enforce ICE holds against those individuals who have been
convicted of a violent or serious felony as defined in the California Penal Code. 112 The policy also
provides that “ICE agents shall not be given access to individuals or be allowed to use county
facilities for investigative interviews or other purposes, and county personnel shall not expend county
time or resources responding to ICE inquiries or communicating with ICE regarding individuals’
status or release dates.” 113
In addition to limiting the enforcement of ICE detainers, counties can further reduce costs and
improve public safety by ensuring that immigration status does not preclude individuals from
participating in pretrial release or alternative sentencing programs. It is a common but faulty
assumption that persons with ICE holds will be deported (and, therefore, are flight risks) and that
counties should not expend the resources offering alternative detention programs to such individuals.
In fact, people with ICE holds may not be deportable at all, may have a defense to deportation, or
may return to the community while their immigration case is pending for months and even years.
Because their reentry to the community is possible, their participation in rehabilitative programs at
the outset is critical in order to reduce recidivism and increase public safety. Allowing low-level
offenders with ICE holds to participate in these programs will also cost counties less money than
incarceration and free up jail bed space for higher-risk individuals.

29

PROTECTING COMMUNITIES: INVESTING IN INDIVIDUAL
OUTCOMES

I

n addition to expanding county discretion in how to address the pretrial population, realignment
also gives counties new options for holding individuals accountable once they have been
convicted of committing a misdemeanor or low-level felony offense. AB 109 encourages
counties not to repeat the state’s failed policy of relying upon incarceration. Instead counties are
urged to implement community sanctions and programs that both conserve limited resources
(including jail space) and improve the outcomes of individuals within the criminal justice system—
which means less crime and fewer future victims.
The new law explicitly provides that, “Consistent with local needs and resources, the [realignment
implementation] plan may include recommendations to maximize the effective investment of
criminal justice resources in evidence-based correctional sanctions and programs, including, but not
limited to, day reporting centers, drug courts, residential multiservice centers, mental health
treatment programs, electronic and GPS monitoring programs, victim restitution programs,
counseling programs, community service programs, educational programs, and work training
programs.” 114

Realignment also creates important new opportunities for counties to expand alternative-toincarceration policies. County sheriffs now have broadened discretion to manage those in their
custody with alternatives to jail incarceration such as home detention or work release programs.
Courts may continue to sentence individuals to
jail or to probation in lieu of incarceration;
alternatively, they may now sentence an
individual convicted of a non-non-non offense to
a “split sentence,” under which the individual is
committed to county jail for the first part of the
term and then placed under the mandatory
supervision of the local probation department for
the concluding portion of the term.
AB 109 encourages counties to expand the use of
“community-based punishment,” and provides
specific examples such as intensive community
supervision; home detention with non-GPS
electronic monitoring (such as telephone checkins) or GPS monitoring; community service;
restorative justice programs such as mandatory victim restitution and victim-offender reconciliation;
work, training, or education in a furlough program, or work in lieu of confinement; day reporting;
30

residential or nonresidential substance abuse treatment programs; mother-infant care programs; and
community-based residential programs offering structure, supervision, drug treatment, alcohol
treatment, literacy programming, employment counseling, psychological counseling, mental health
treatment, or any combination of these and other interventions. 115 Alternatives like these can hold
people accountable for their actions and reduce the likelihood of future criminal behavior, and cost
dramatically less than incarceration.
The ACLU has analyzed the extent to which these types of evidence-based alternatives to
incarceration for sentenced offenders were included in the county realignment implementation plans.
While we found some promising developments, we also found that many of the plans lack specific
commitments, including financial commitments, to ensure that alternatives to incarceration actually
are implemented. The lack of uniformity in structure, depth and detail among county plans made
systematic comparative assessments difficult. 116
Despite a lack of consistency and transparency making it difficult to ascertain exactly what counties
are doing with taxpayer funds awarded under AB 109, some clear findings emerge. Most county
realignment plans express little more than an intention to move toward evidence-based practices,
including alternatives to incarceration for both pretrial and sentenced individuals. The plans claim
commitment to these principles, but provide few details on how funds will be allocated or how these
proposals will be operationalized, including project timelines, reporting requirements or outcome
measurements. The lack of detail provided in many of the plans, and especially the absence of data
collection and outcome measurements, means that counties may be paying more in lip service to jail
alternatives than in the actual funding and genuine institutional support necessary for their success.
No county realignment plan includes all of the evidence-based practices that could be utilized; all
counties have significant room for improvement. Only a handful of realignment implementation
plans include significant attention to the elements discussed below. These include the plans from
Butte, Colusa, Del Norte, Madera, Merced, Napa, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and
Tuolumne. (See Appendix B for an overview of some of the best elements from the 53 available
county implementation plans). Far too many counties’ plans fail to meaningfully include any of these
practices, or to specify how they will be funded, operated and evaluated.

Risk and Needs Assessments
According to their realignment implementation plans, most counties intend to adopt (or expand the
use of) an evidence-based risk and needs assessment instrument. Risk assessment tools are used to
assess the level of risk to public safety posed by an individual and can be used for both the pretrial
and sentenced populations. A needs assessment tool assesses what types of supports or programming
an individual needs to succeed—that is, to reduce the chance of recidivism and increase the chance of
successfully exiting the criminal justice system. Needs assessments typically are reserved for the
sentenced population. 117

31

The county realignment plans vary considerably in addressing risk and needs assessment tools.
Twenty-four of the Big 25 counties (all but Kings County) at least indicate the possibility that some
form of a risk and needs assessment will be conducted for those under post-release community
supervision. 118 However, only eight of these counties indicated in their plans that they will use some
form of risk assessment for the pretrial population to determine the suitability of lowering bail,
releasing the defendant on his or her own recognizance, or placing the defendant in some form of
alternative to incarceration. 119
In San Diego County, for example, according to its realignment plan, probation agents will employ a
risk and needs assessment tool throughout individuals’ experience within the criminal justice
system. 120 For the pretrial population, the tool will be used to determine who may be safely released
to await trial and, if so, whether they will be released with conditions, such as home detention,
electronic monitoring, alcohol monitoring, GPS, work furlough or residential drug treatment. The
results of the assessment will also be made available to all parties at sentencing in order to encourage
“evidence-based sentencing.” Once sentenced, the county plans to use an assessment tool to
determine where best to hold that individual accountable—in jail, on work release, on home
confinement or under some other arrangement.
In Madera County, according to its realignment plan, probation staff will administer a risk and needs
assessment tool to every person being released to community supervision after completing a jail term
for a low-level, non-violent felony offense. 121 The tool will be used to develop an individualized plan
for each individual that will include supervision intensity, program referrals and case management
efforts.
When effectively employed, risk assessment tools can play an important role in determining whether
individuals charged with an offense should remain incarcerated before trial or can be released on
their own recognizance or with some more limited form of supervision. Similarly, for the sentenced
population, risk and needs assessment tools can provide guidance concerning whether an individual
should remain in jail, or, if they do not pose a significant risk to public safety, whether they can
complete their sentence in home detention, on work furlough or other appropriate supervision in the
community. Case managers and supervisors can use these tools to develop individualized plans that
span the period of incarceration and the period of post-release supervision and ultimately reentry into
the community. This kind of “end-to-end” case management can ensure that the resources counties
dedicate to rehabilitation have the greatest impact possible on reducing recidivism rates.
It is critical to remember that not all risk assessment tools available to counties are statistically
validated by research, nor are they necessarily created with a pretrial population in mind. The
National Institute of Corrections offers the following guiding principles for use of risk assessment
tools: 122
•

A pretrial risk assessment instrument should be demonstrated through research to predict risk
of failure to appear and danger to the community pending trial;
32

•
•

•

The instrument should equitably classify defendants regardless of their race, ethnicity,
gender, or financial status;
Factors utilized in the instrument should be consistent with applicable state statutes—that is,
bail statutes and pretrial services acts should be consulted to ensure that factors included in a
pretrial risk assessment instrument are allowable for the purposes of bail consideration; and
Factors that are often considered for sentenced offenders, such as those related solely to
recidivism or needs, which do not demonstrate a relationship to predicting pretrial risk (court
appearance or danger to the community), should not be included in pretrial risk assessment
instruments.

A number of risk and needs assessment tools exist, but counties must be mindful that some tools are
better than others and that all tools have limitations. Unless counties carefully select risk and needs
assessment instruments and provide adequate training for those tasked with conducting assessments,
counties may be wasting precious money and time on inaccurate tools.

Programming to Reduce Recidivism
Some county realignment plans include promising discussions of programming aimed at reducing
recidivism; however, they often suffer from a lack of explicit (or adequate) funding allocations and
evaluation measures. Evidence-based correctional practices call for individualized programming for
people at all stages of their incarceration and supervision in order to reliably reduce their chances of
recidivism. Research consistently supports the finding that improved access to housing, employment
and other basic resources—not a lengthy jail sentence—reduces the likelihood that individuals
convicted of low-level, non-violent offenses will commit new crimes. 123 (See Appendix C, Education
and Job Training Programs are Key to a Successful Realignment Initiative, prepared by the National
Employment Law Project and Rubicon Programs).
Comprehensive, evidence-based programming includes:
• Education programs, especially GED and remedial studies
• Career and job opportunity development
• Drug and alcohol services
• Mental health treatment
• Domestic violence and anger management counseling
• Family and community networking
• Motivational interviewing
• Cognitive behavioral therapy.
Within the criminal justice system, recidivism reduction programming should be made available as
soon as possible, whether the person is behind bars or being supervised in the community.
Programming that begins while individuals are in custody should continue if they move to an
alternative custody program—that is, both for those individuals who have been sentenced by the
court to serve time in the county jail, as well as to those on post-release community supervision who
33

have completed their sentence. Some counties (San Diego, for example) plan to require participation
in programming as a condition of release for some of the pretrial population.
Effectively operating these programs is no easy task. That is why many counties have contracted
with or are otherwise working in partnership with community-based organizations and/or vendors
with expertise in providing evidence-based programming designed specifically to reduce recidivism.
Alameda County, for example, plans to install a transition center in its Santa Rita Jail. 124 According
to the county’s realignment plan, the transition center will be staffed by personnel from probation,
the county’s health services agency, its social services agency, and possibly community-based
organizations that offer relevant services. Through these newly formed partnerships, the sheriff’s
department will create a support network to connect program recipients with community-based
organizations and outside service providers upon release. This continuum of support and services
will allow program recipients the opportunity to create a bridge of contacts to improve their
likelihood of success post-release.
Similarly, in Butte County’s realignment plan, the sheriff’s department proposed a partnership with
other county departments, community-based organizations and/or vendors with expertise in
providing evidence-based programming designed to reduce recidivism. 125 The plan states that
programming will begin while inmates are in custody and continue during an alternative custody
program. The program will include GED and remedial studies, employment assistance, drug and
alcohol treatment services, mental health treatment and a variety of additional life skills trainings.

Pre-Booking Diversion to Health Services
Some counties currently employ diversion programs which allow defendants charged with certain
offenses to be “diverted” into drug treatment or other programs, but only after the defendant enters a
guilty plea. These programs save the county money by avoiding the expense of further court
proceedings. Additional savings could be realized, however, by allowing some defendants to enter
the very same programs, but before being charged (pre-filing diversion) or even before being booked
into the jail (pre-booking diversion). Although novel sounding in the criminal justice system, in
practice, this is the approach used by colleges, universities, private high schools and upper middle
class families to deal with people with drug problems every day.
Only four of the county plans the ACLU reviewed make any mention of pretrial diversion. These
plans are from San Diego, Tulare, Santa Barbara, and San Mateo. 126 Only two of the county
realignment implementation plans we reviewed (Napa and Siskiyou) included any mention of prefiling diversion programs. 127 None of the plans we reviewed indicated a willingness to explore prebooking diversion programs as a means of reducing jail populations and improving recidivism.
Counties should seriously consider such programs. Pre-booking diversion would have a significant
impact on the rates of incarceration for drug offenses. California already has a program that allows
34

individuals arrested for drug possession to be diverted to court-supervised probation; if they
successfully complete probation, the case is dismissed. (This program, set out in Penal Code 1000, is
separate and distinct from the state’s post-conviction treatment-instead-of-incarceration law,
Proposition 36.)
A new program in Seattle, Washington provides a workable model to take the diversion idea a step
further. The city’s pre-booking diversion program called Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion
(LEAD)—a collaborative effort that includes law enforcement, defense attorneys and social services
among others—aims to reduce the number of people entering the criminal justice system for a lowlevel drug law violation by providing linkages to community-based treatment and support services. 128
Trained law enforcement officers have the discretion to call a social worker rather than book an
individual into jail for certain low-level, drug offenses. The social worker directly connects that
individual with an assessment and services, thus allowing the individual to access supports without
acquiring a criminal record.

Day Reporting Centers
Day Reporting Centers (DRCs) serve as hubs of supervision, programming and services for
individuals who are being monitored in the community, whether as an alternative to incarceration or
after having completed their sentence. Creating one central location for accessing services,
particularly those that are required as a condition of release, has a significant positive impact on
individuals’ compliance and success. 129 It reduces the time and cost required for compliance and
reduces interruption with other important activities that help reduce recidivism, including childcare,
employment and education.
A number of counties plan to build or expand DRCs, including Sacramento, which plans to serve up
to 600 individuals annually through its DRC; 130 Butte County, which hopes its DRC frees up 100 jail
beds; 131 and Merced County, which incorporated a DRC in 2008. 132 Other counties that included
clear DRC plans in their realignment strategies include Kern, Lake, Madera, Napa, Orange, San Luis
Obispo, and Yuba counties. 133
Humboldt County allocated the largest portion of its AB 109 funds (39 percent) toward the
development of a new DRC. At full implementation, Humboldt’s DRC is expected to serve an
average daily population of 150 formerly incarcerated individuals. According to the county plan,
“Depending on the offender’s assessed needs, the four phase program can last between 9 to 12
months with aftercare for up to an additional six months. The DRC includes drug testing, cognitivebehavioral treatment classes, referrals to community-based organizations, and access to employment
training and placement.” 134
Tuolumne County decided against adding new jail capacity with realignment funds; instead, the
centerpiece of Tuolumne’s realignment plan is the creation of a new DRC. 135 According to the
county’s plan, the day reporting center will have services to access basic personal needs such as
35

housing, food, transportation, clothing, education, and employment. All current inmates in the county
jail whose most serious conviction is a misdemeanor will be shifted into alternatives to incarceration,
such as community corrections supervision and programming, in order to make room in the jail for
individuals convicted of more serious offenses.
Graduated Sanctions
Another cost-effective evidence-based practice employs the use of graduated or intermediate
sanctions against those who violate their terms of probation or other post-conviction release. Instead
of automatically returning someone to jail if they commit a minor violation, which can significantly
disrupt the very aspects of their lives most linked to positive outcomes (such as stable employment),
case managers and supervisors should use their judgment or create formal policies to employ
sanctions short of incarceration in appropriate instances.
These graduated sanctions can include community service, mandatory residential or outpatient
substance abuse treatment, or electronic monitoring with or without GPS. Realignment also allows
short-term incarceration to be used as an alternative to being returned to custody to complete one’s
sentence. (See discussion of “flash incarceration below.)
Few county plans mention specific information about utilizing graduated sanctions. San Francisco’s
plan states that graduated sanction are a key component of effective supervision. Santa Cruz
County’s plan notes that even before AB 109 implementation began the County was already
employing graduated sanctions with probationers through the California Risk Assessment Pilot
Project. Santa Cruz will expand the use of graduated sanctions during Phase 2 of its AB 109
implementation from October 2011 to March 2012.
Madera County provides perhaps the most detail concerning its planned use of graduated sanctions.
Madera’s probation department will employ graduated sanctions before revoking PRCS. The
implementation plan goes into great detail about this: the probation department has been in the
process of reviewing various graduated sanctions programs and processes, and will be collaborating
with probation departments in the Central Valley to determine the best sanctions matrix system
utilized by other agencies across the state and nation. The department is currently reviewing systems
and sanction matrix’ currently used by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, the Oregon
Department of Corrections and the Napa County Probation Department. The Madera plan specifies
that its graduated sanction strategies for violating supervision conditions will include: imposition of
up to 10 days jail (flash incarceration); increased supervision and reporting requirements, increased
drug and alcohol testing; and referrals to community service, self-help alcohol and drug treatment,
and inpatient programs.

36

Flash Incarceration
Although graduated sanctions may include short-term incarceration for people who commit minor
violations of the terms of their release, such “flash incarceration” raises serious due process concerns
when individuals are subjected to imprisonment without having an opportunity to dispute the facts
and findings of the supervising authority. Any deprivation of liberty, even for a short time, must be
accompanied by sufficient due process protections to ensure the fairness and accuracy of underlying
fact-finding determinations.
To comply with the minimal requirements of constitutional due process, there must be a prompt
probable cause hearing by an “independent officer”—an objective individual within the parole
authority or county supervising agency who was not involved in the initial decision to detain the
individual. Counties should incorporate written guidelines to limit the discretion of decision-makers
in determining whether the jail sanction is appropriate for a given violation, and, if so, for what
length of time. Counties should also provide a process by which those who are subjected to a jail
sanction may obtain some form of appellate review. Even if, as a practical matter, the period of
incarceration may have already been served before the review process can be completed, review
should be available in order to mitigate potential future adverse consequences, beyond the
incarceration itself, flowing from an inaccurate factual finding and improper imposition of a term of
incarceration.
Sonoma County’s realignment plan provides for the rights of individuals to request a formal court
revocation hearing in these instances. 136 Other counties should integrate similar due process
protections into their use of this sanction, if they intend to use it.
Merced County has also proposed an innovative solution to the due process problems of “flash
incarceration.” Merced’s realignment plan envisions a reentry or “progress” court, which would add
an intermediate layer of supervision, referral to services, and accountability between the supervision
and return-to-incarceration phase. 137 Should someone be found in violation of the terms of release, he
or she will be eligible for referral to this court. The court will require the individual to appear
regularly to provide an update on his or her progress. When not in compliance, the court may impose
further alternatives to jail sanctions or order the individual returned into custody for a period of
confinement.
In addition to due process concerns, once in practice, “flash incarceration” may become popular
among supervising agents and have a significant negative impact by taking up jail space. Research
has demonstrated, for example, that individuals in some drug courts have spent more time behind
bars while in drug court than they would have if they had received traditional sentencing. 138 Indeed,
in a Baltimore drug court, participants were incarcerated more often than a control group of
probationers—and served just as much time behind bars—generally for program violations. 139

37

Counties that use this incarceration sanction are advised to do so sparingly, to gather data on its use,
and to monitor its use by supervising agents. Policies should state clearly when and how severely this
sanction is to be used (including length of stay). Keeping the use of “flash incarceration” in check
will require cooperation between agencies and a shared commitment to investing in outcomes, rather
than simply continuing a mentality some described to us as “trail ‘em, nail ‘em, and jail ‘em.”

MAKING REALIGNMENT WORK
Joint Planning, Implementation and Accountability

T

he first year’s realignment planning occurred quickly, with counties having only the time
from the July enactment to the October 1 effective date to do most of their planning. Though
not currently explicit in the realignment legislation, it makes sense for, and the state should
require, counties to submit new or revised plans for each annual budget cycle, making changes in
light of past years’ practice and additional time and thought for research and program development.
The state should specify questions and plan elements that each county should consider, even if the
state does not mandate uniform adoption of all of these elements. Santa Cruz County’s plan explicitly
provides for such ongoing implementation planning, and should serve as a model for other counties
in this respect. 140
As noted above, the success of alternatives to incarceration largely depends on the ability of various
agencies to collaborate effectively in the administration of the criminal justice system. Joint planning
and implementation, with close coordination and shared buy-in among probation, the sheriff, the
district attorney, the public defender, courts and community-based organizations will largely
determine whether these alternatives will work. Only a handful of counties indicate such an intent or
capacity in their realignment plans.
Santa Cruz County’s realignment plan, for example, describes a joint risk assessment pilot program
between the court and probation department.141 District attorneys and courts have an important role
to play in reducing recidivism by requesting and handing down sentences that include alternatives to
jail time in cases where other forms of supervision and programming are more likely to reduce future
offenses. Validated risk and needs assessments can inform the court’s sentencing decisions if they are
administered before the sentencing phase, as is planned in Santa Cruz.
In the San Francisco plan, the local community corrections partnership (LCCP) noted that the district
attorney will need to develop creative and effective sentencing approaches based on risk and needs
assessments of defendants, and the district attorney is rolling out a plan to equip prosecutors with a
“Recidivism Reduction Approach” to assessing sentencing options. According to the plan, the district
attorney will organize staff trainings on alternative sentencing and develop tools prosecutors can use
to identify sentencing strategies most likely to reduce recidivism. The district attorney also aims to
38

create new “Alternative Sentencing Planner” staff positions to help develop potential alternatives to
both pretrial detention and jail or prison at sentencing.
Alameda discusses an innovative post-release initiative in its realignment plan. 142 The district
attorney will create an “Ambassador Team” of representatives from multi-disciplinary agencies to
reach out to the business community, job training programs, educational institutions, and other
relevant organizations, to create a network of private programs that will engage, employ and create
opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals. Notably, Contra Costa’s plan includes funding
for a “Clean Slate Paralegal” in the public defender’s office who will help eligible individuals
expunge their criminal records. 143 Expungement removes barriers to gainful employment for people,
thereby addressing a significant risk factor for criminal activity: lack of employment. Contra Costa’s
plan also funds a social worker in the public defender’s office, who will prepare pre-sentence needsassessments to facilitate appropriate sentencing.
These counties’ plans exemplify the kind of partnership among local criminal justice working
groups—across actors, agencies and functions—necessary to the success of evidence-based
alternatives to incarceration.

Standardized Reporting and Evaluation
AB 109 clearly spelled out the need for evidence-based practices to reduce recidivism, limit
incarceration costs and invest criminal justice resources more efficiently. However, the realignment
legislation fails to establish any systematic data collection or evaluation. The state has missed an
important opportunity to support its own call to put evidence into practice.
This is cause for great concern. How will California know whether it is in fact fixing its broken
system if there is no coordinated data collection, analysis or reporting among the counties?
Several counties lay out clear plans for measuring the success of their programs under realignment.
The state can support counties in this effort by establishing, with input from counties, standard
reporting across the state so that counties will be able to identify both promising and less successful
practices from other jurisdictions. 144
Placer County, for instance, spells out a very detailed vision for evaluation in its realignment plan. 145
Because its realignment implementation strategies fall under the management of distinct county
departments, each of these departments will be expected to collect and report relevant data to assure
that programs are implemented successfully and in alignment with evidence-based practices. Each
program or agency will be required to uniquely identify the realignment population as distinct from
existing populations and to report on over a dozen data points specified in Placer County’s plan.
Contra Costa is involving community-based organizations in its evaluation process. 146 Contra Costa
convened a Community Advisory Board (CAB) of 12 community members who live or work in
39

Contra Costa County and have expertise in the realignment population. Four of the 12 CAB members
are formerly incarcerated individuals who have successfully reentered the community. The CAB will
review data on outcomes, provide input on community needs and assessments of implementation,
and advise the county on community engagement strategies.

Adequate and Explicit Funding
Even the most thorough, well-intentioned plans to institute evidence-based alternatives will fail in the
absence of adequate funding and staffing. Too few counties’ realignment plans explicitly allocate
funds to makes these programs work. Among the counties that allocated funds specifically for
evidence-based programming, such as job counseling, family reunification, behavioral therapy, and
mental health and substance abuse treatment, the allocations were all too often insufficient to carry
out the stated plans or fail to provide access to the estimated number of individuals in need.
For example, the Probation Department in Orange County plans to open “several regional adult day
reporting centers, as collaborative and evidence-based one-stop delivery sites” to serve 50
supervisees each, but the plan allocates only nine percent of the programming budget to contract with
service providers, or one-sixth that of the sheriff’s allocation. Kings County’s plan acknowledges that
“live in drug treatment programs will be essential to help reduce overcrowding in the jail” and that
mental health staffing must be increased, but allocates a paltry two percent of its total AB 109
programming budget to health, treatment, and other services—less than the allocations made to both
the Human Resources and the County Counsel. This is in stark contrast to counties like Alameda,
Placer, San Joaquin, Santa Clara, Shasta, and Solano, which allocate anywhere from a quarter to a
third to such programming.
The widespread lack of detail and specific funding for alternatives to incarceration is glaring in light
of the nearly uniform plans among the Big 25 counties to dedicate substantial state funds to
expanding jail capacity. Counties with jail expansion plans have explicitly allocated anywhere from
16 to 88 percent of their realignment funds to increase jail capacity, while their budget allocations for
evidence-based alternatives remain unacceptably opaque.
Counties can, and must, both do more to implement evidence-based practices and be more specific
about how they will fund them, especially in light of the billions of dollars in state funding that has
recently been awarded to counties to build new jails or otherwise expand jail capacity. 147 The breadth
of innovative and validated programs discussed in many county plans is promising, but a close
analysis of where most of the money is going (to expand jails) belies these promises. As discussed
above, the state should suspend all AB 900 funding until such time as less costly and more effective
alternatives have been fully implemented and exhausted.

40

RECOMMENDATIONS

I

t’s time to fix California’s broken criminal justice system. California is far from the only state
experiencing the confluence of fiscal crisis and prison overcrowding. But realignment has
created a unique opportunity to take California’s public safety policies down a new path. There
has never been more public, political or financial support for counties to reduce reliance on
incarceration in favor of evidence-based public safety practices.
As the architect of realignment, the state has a responsibility to support its successful
implementation. To this end, the state should:
•

Mandate standardized data collection and analysis across the 58 counties and partner with
academic institutions, think-tanks and advocacy organizations to develop a robust outcome
measurement program that enables policy-makers to monitor which policies and programs
are working to reduce recidivism and reliance upon incarceration, and to base policy and
budget decisions on those findings.

•

Revise the realignment allocation formula that determines how billions of state dollars will
be divided among the counties over the coming years; the funding formula must be used to
incentivize counties to reduce recidivism and increase use of cost-effective alternatives to
incarceration, particularly for the pretrial population.
o Once county-level outcome data is being collected and reported throughout the state
on a regular and uniform basis, the funding formula should be based upon that data
and should create incentives for counties to adopt the policies and programs that are
working best.
o Before such data is available, the formula should be based upon currently available
data that measure actual risk factors and burdens experienced by local criminal justice
systems that are not merely the result of policy choices some counties have made to
disproportionately incarcerate low-level offenders.

•

Enact statewide front-end sentencing reforms to expand county flexibility to manage jail
space and to support successful reentry. Examples of sensible reforms include revising
penalties to make low-level, non-violent drug and property crimes misdemeanors instead of
felonies, reforming marijuana laws, and requiring sentencing judges to consider the
likelihood of recidivism and the costs of available sentencing options when deciding which
sentences to impose.

•

Amend statewide pretrial detention laws to keep behind bars only those who truly pose a
risk to public safety while increasing the number of people released on their own
41

recognizance or under community-based supervision without necessarily requiring money
bail.
•

Require counties to submit new or revised realignment plans each year, making changes
in light of previous years’ practice and additional time and thought for research and program
development. The state should specify questions and plan elements that each county should
consider, even if the state does not mandate uniform adoption of all of these elements.

•

Discourage further county jail expansion and construction plans. The state should either
suspend all AB 900 funding until such time as less costly and more effective communitybased alternatives have been fully implemented in each county seeking AB 900 funds, or
expand the AB 900 grant criteria to allow counties to use AB 900 monies for non-jail
community sanctions and alternatives to incarceration.

As the frontline implementers of realignment, counties have the discretion to develop and adopt
policies that most wisely allocate resources and best protect the public’s safety. To fulfill this role,
counties should:
•

Halt or significantly reduce jail expansion and construction plans. Counties should
consider expanding jail capacity only as a last resort after first implementing pretrial release
programs and evidence-based alternative approaches to managing their pretrial and sentenced
populations.

•

Create and fund concrete plans for community-based alternatives to detention for both
the pretrial and sentenced populations. Research and experience clearly point toward the
factors that successfully reduce re-offending by people at risk for repeat petty crime and for
cycling in and out of jail: housing, employment, drug and alcohol treatment, mental and
physical health care and other stabilizing influences.

•

Implement and fund new local pretrial release policies to reserve expensive jail space for
those who truly pose a risk to public safety while increasing the number of people released on
their own recognizance or under community-based supervision without requiring money bail
while they await trial. Whenever possible, allow individuals to remain employed and with
their families while awaiting trial.

•

Review the impact of immigration status and immigration detainers on inmates’
detention to prioritize public safety needs. Limit voluntary enforcement of immigration
detainers and do not use immigration detainers or perceived immigration status to deny
access to pretrial release and alternative sentencing.

42

•

Ensure that community corrections practices are based on evidence by collecting and
analyzing data, by identifying best practices from other jurisdictions, and by adjusting both
policy and budget decisions based on those findings.

•

Encourage local courts to utilize realignment’s new sentencing options that authorize
judges to replace all or part of a jail sentence with community sanctions or treatment
programs, in order to hold people accountable for their actions while supporting their
successful reentry to the community. Successful reentry means less crime and fewer future
victims.

CONCLUSION

C

alifornia is at a crossroads. At best, counties will meet realignment with a commitment to
reducing over-imprisonment, to protecting public safety, and to wisely allocating limited
resources. At worst, counties will react to realignment as a mere transfer of authority over
bodies—and simply incarcerate people convicted of non-serious, non-violent offenses at the local
level now that they cannot be shipped off to state prisons. Despite spending millions of taxpayer
dollars on jail expansion, those counties will quickly see the same inexorable overcrowding and high
recidivism rates that the state prison system has produced.
California must not go down that road. The state has an important role to play in facilitating the
successful implementation of realignment. But it must act now, ahead of the first full year of
realignment implementation. State government leaders must show commitment to this public safety
policy by incentivizing and encouraging best practices through state financial support and oversight.
Counties have the opportunity to demonstrate that it is evidence, not past habits, that will produce the
maximum public safety reform for taxpayer investment. Unfortunately for some unlucky California
taxpayers, it appears that some counties remain committed to the same old failed “tough on crime”
policies. Fortunately for others, some counties are taking the opportunity to set an example. Success
in these counties will demonstrate to the rest of the state that evidence is the way to go. It is time for
California and its counties to fix our broken criminal justice system and take an evidence-based
approach to keeping our communities safe.

43

ENDNOTES
1

See Adam Liptak, Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’, New York Times, April 23, 2008, available at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23prison.html?pagewanted=all.
2

In 2008, the Pew Center on the States reported that California’s overall prison population was second only to that
of Texas, and that, “[r]emarkably, 13 states now devote more than $1 billion a year in general funds to their
corrections systems. The undisputed leader is California, where spending totaled $8.8 billion last year. Even when
adjusted for inflation, that represents a 216 percent increase over the amount California spent on corrections 20
years earlier.” Pew Center on the States, One in 100:Behind Bars in America 2008, available at
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/One%20in%20100.pdf . As of December 31, 2010, California
ranked second in the country in terms of overall prison population, and corrections spending has since reached $10
billion. See Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bulletin: Prisoners in 2010 (Dec. 2011), Appendix Table 1, Prisoners under
the jurisdiction of state and federal correctional authorities, by jurisdiction, p. 14, available at
http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p10.pdf; California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, CDCR Annual
Report (Fall 2011), CDCR Budget Breakdown 2011-12 Budget and Non-Budget Act, p. 11, available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/News/docs/2011_Annual_Report_FINAL.pdf .
3

See California Department of Corrections And Rehabilitation, 2010 Adult Institutions Outcome Evaluation Report,
p. 11, available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Adult_Research_Branch/Research_Documents/ARB_FY0506_Outcome_Evaluation_Repor
t.pdf. See also table comparing state recidivism rates in: The Pew Center on the States, State of Recidivism April
2011: The Revolving Door of America’s Prisons, pp. 10-11 , available at
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Pew_State_of_Recidivism.pdf.
4

See, e.g., Michael A. Fletcher, Governors Plan Painful Cuts Amid Budget Crises Across the U.S. (Feb. 8, 2011),
Washington Post, available at http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/02/08/WP-Governors-Plan-PainfulCuts.aspx#page1 (“Faced with the most severe budget crisis since the Great Depression, governors across the
ideological spectrum are embracing the politics of austerity in a desperate effort to balance the books.”)
5

African-Americans are incarcerated at a rate of approximately 2,121 per 100,000 in California prisons; these
figures do not include those incarcerated in county jails or federal prisons located in California. California
Department Of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Offender Information Services Branch Estimates and Statistical
Analysis Section, Data Analysis Unit, California Prisoners and Parolees, p. 19 (2009) [hereinafter CDCR Estimates
and Statistical Analysis], available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Annual/CalPris/CALPRISd2009
.pdf (last visited August 8, 2011) (48,990 blacks were incarcerated in CDCR intuitions at year-end 2009); U.S.
Census Bureau, CenStats Databases, USA Counties, General Profile California (2010) , available at
http://censtats.census.gov/usa/usa.shtml (last visited August 8, 2011) (there were approximately 2,309,745 AfricanAmericans in California in 2010). Under apartheid South Africa blacks were incarcerated at a rate of approximately
851 per 100,000. Prison Policy Initiative, Section IV: Global Comparisons, Crime and incarceration around the
world: U.S. vs. South Africa, available at http://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/us_southafrica.html (last visited
August 8, 2011); see also Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
pp. 6-7 (2010).
See CDCR, supra note 5 (Hispanics make up 39.3% of the CDCR institution population, while whites, blacks and
others represent 25.6%, 29.0%, and 6.1% respectively).

6

7

See, e.g., Roger Warren, Viewpoints: Realignment can boost public safety (Nov. 13, 2011), available at
http://www.courts.ca.gov/partners/documents/realignmentpublicsafety.pdf. The author is a retired 20-year veteran
of Sacramento County trial court and is President Emeritus of the National Center for State Courts.
8

Cal. Penal Code § 17.5(a).

44

9

See., e.g. Marissa Lagos, SG Gate, September 21, 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown promises constitutional amendment to
fund realignment, available at http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2011/09/21/gov-jerry-brown-promisesconstitutional-amendment-to-fund-realignment/, “The governor and other supporters believe that city police and
county sheriffs, probation departments and social service programs will do a better job helping low-level offenders
stay out of trouble.” See also comments from local government officials from around the state concurring that local
governments can do a better job than the state, e.g., at, “Keeping individuals closer to the community, keeping them
closer to their families, and connecting them with community-based resources that they're going to need to be
successful when they get out, because they are going to get out.”
10

Cal. Penal Code § 17.5. The legislative findings underlying the realignment legislation include the following:
“Despite the dramatic increase in corrections spending over the past two decades, national reincarceration rates for
people released from prison remain unchanged or have worsened. National data show that about 40 percent of
released individuals are reincarcerated within three years. In California, the recidivism rate for persons who have
served time in prison is even greater than the national average.”
11

Brown v. Plata, 131 S.Ct. 1910 (2011).

12

California state prisons were designed to hold 79,858 prisoners. However, they housed approximately 143,000
prisoners at the time of the Plata decision, which ordered California to reduce its prison population by
approximately 33,000 prisoners to 137.5% of design capacity, or approximately 109,800 prisoners. California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, State Responds to Three-Judge Court’s Order Requiring a Reduction
in Prison Crowding (Jun. 7, 2011), CDCR Today, available at http://cdcrtoday.blogspot.com/2011/06/stateresponds-to-three-judge-courts.html; Plata, 131 S.Ct. at 1943-47.
13

Defendant’s January 2012 Status Report in Response to June 30, 2011 Order (Jan 6. 2012), p. 3, available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/News/docs/Jan-2012-Pop-Status-Update.pdf. Updated figures are available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/News/3_judge_panel_decision.html.
14

ACLU of California, Community Safety, Community Solutions: Implementing AB 109: Enhancing Public Safety,
Saving Money and Wisely Allocating Limited Jail Space (Aug. 2011), available at
http://www.aclunc.org/issues/criminal_justice/asset_upload_file85_10684.pdf.
15

See, e.g., the legislative findings codified at Cal. Penal Code § 17.5, which include the following: “California must
reinvest its criminal justice resources to support community-based corrections programs and evidence-based
practices . . . . Realigning low-level felony offenders who do not have prior convictions for serious, violent, or sex
offenses to locally run community-based corrections programs, which are strengthened through community-based
punishment, evidence-based practices, improved supervision strategies, and enhanced secured capacity, will
improve public safety outcomes among adult felons and facilitate their reintegration back into society. Communitybased corrections programs require a partnership between local public safety entities and the county to provide and
expand the use of community-based punishment for low-level offender populations. Each county's Local
Community Corrections Partnership . . . should play a critical role in developing programs and ensuring appropriate
outcomes for low-level offenders.” Section 17.5 defines “community-based punishment” as “correctional sanctions
and programming encompassing a range of custodial and noncustodial responses to criminal or noncompliant
offender activity.” Examples of community-based punishment include: intensive community supervision; home
detention with non-GPS electronic monitoring (such a telephone check-ins) or GPS monitoring; mandatory
community service; restorative justice programs such as mandatory victim restitution and victim-offender
reconciliation; work, training, or education in a furlough program, or work, in lieu of confinement, in a work release
program; day reporting; residential or nonresidential substance abuse treatment programs; mother-infant care
programs; and community-based residential programs offering structure, supervision, drug treatment, alcohol
treatment, literacy programming, employment counseling, psychological counseling, mental health treatment, or any
combination of these and other interventions.

45

16

Information about the ballot intiative, including the official title and summary and links to the full text are
available at http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Jerry_Brown's_California_Tax_Increase_Initiative_(2012).

17

California Assembly Bill No. 117, 2011-2012 Regular Session, Ch. 39 (Cal. 2011). See Cal. Penal Code § 1170.

18

See, e.g., California Assembly Bill No. 109, 2011-2012 Regular Session, Ch.15 (Cal. 2011); Cal. Penal Code §
1203.018 (authorizing counties to offer electronic monitoring for inmates being held in lieu of bail in county jail);
Cal. Penal Code § 3450 (authorizing a range of incarceration alternatives).
19

See Cal. Penal Code §§ 3450-58.

20

See Cal. Penal Code § 3451(a)-(c).

21

See Cal. Penal Code § 3000.08(a)-(c).

22

See Cal. Penal Code § 3000.09.

23

See Cal. Penal Code §§ 17.5(a)(6), 1230.1, 1230(b)(2). The Local Community Corrections Partnerships (LCCPs)
were previously established in Penal Code Section 1230(b)(2). AB 109 and 117 added Penal Code section 1230.1 to
create an Executive Committee for each LCCP, responsible for developing the implementation plan and presenting
it to the county Board of Supervisors for vote and adoption. The remaining members of the LCCP are the county’s
chief administrative officer; the head of the county department of mental health; the head of the county department
of employment; the head of the county alcohol and substance abuse programs; the head of the county office of
education; a representative from a community based organization with experience in successfully providing
rehabilitative services to persons who have been convicted of a criminal offense; and an individual who represents
the interests of victims.

24

As this report was going to print in March, 2012, five counties had not yet released draft plans: Alpine, Amador,
Calaveras, Inyo and Tehama.

25

Cal. Penal Code § 17.5(a).

26

Cal. Penal Code § 17.5.

27

See supra note 3.

28

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Prison Census Data as of June 30, 2011 (2011),
available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/reports_research/offender_information_services_branch/Annual/Census/CENSUSd1106.pdf
29

Id.

30

See Cal. Penal Code § 17.5.

31

See The Pew Center on the States, State of Recidivism: The Revolving Door of America’s Prisons (Apr. 2011), p.
26, available at http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Pew_State_of_Recidivism.pdf.

32

See Dean Misczynski, Rethinking the state-local relationship: Corrections (Aug. 2011), Public Policy Institute of
California, available at http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_811DMR.pdf. See also California Department of
Finance, 2011-2012 State Budget: Enacted Budget Summary (Jun. 30, 2011), available at http://201112.archives.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/Enacted/BudgetSummary/FullBudgetSummary.pdf.

46

33

The last component of the formula refers to Senate Bill 678, also known as the California Community Corrections
Performance Incentives Act, which in 2009 created a fiscal incentive for counties to improve probation outcomes.
See California Senate Bill No. 678, 2009-2010 Regular Session, Ch. 608 (Cal. 2009); Cal. Penal Code §§ 1228,
1233.4; Chief Probation Officers of California, SB 678 Implementation Guide, p. 1, available at
http://www.cpoc.org/php/Information/sb678/sb678guide.pdf.
34

W. David Ball, Tough on Crime (on the State’s Dime): How Violent Crime Does Not Drive California Counties’
Incarceration Rates—And Why It Should, 28 GA. ST. U. L. REV. (forthcoming 2012), available at
http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/facpubs/162/
35

Id.

36

Those 10 counties are Fresno, Kern, Orange, Placer, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara,
Kings and Shasta. Kings County plans to spend an astonishing 70% of its entire AB 109 allocation on expanding
jail capacity, and is also seeking additional state funds under AB 900 for additional jail construction.
37

This 30 percent figure almost certainly underestimates the amounts being spent to expand jail capacity, because it
is based upon specific amounts explicitly identified in the county realignment plans; many of the plans, however, do
not provide specific budgeted amounts for jail capacity expansion despite clear indications in the plans that such
expansion is indeed in the works. The 30 percent figure does not include any amount from Orange County’s plan,
for instance, but that plan allocates to the Sheriff $13.6 million of its overall $23 million (or about 59 percent)
without specifying how much of this will go to expand jail capacity. The plan does note, however, that two facilities
are currently partially closed due to a low jail census and ongoing repair work, and it is anticipated that all jail
facilities will need to be fully operational within 6 to 12 months, which will require additional jail staffing and
resources. Orange County’s plan also contemplates applying for AB 900 funding to support the construction of
approximately 750 new jail beds. See Orange County Public Safety Realignment and Postrelease Community
Supervision 2011 Implementation Plan (Oct. 2011), available at
http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/79-orange-county-plan.html?Itemid.
38

Senate Bill 92 (codified at Penal Code section 6024), one of the pieces of realignment legislation introduced after
AB 109, created a new state Board which will, effective July 1, 2012, replace the Corrections Standards Authority
(CSA). In addition to assuming all of the powers and duties of the CSA, the newly-created Board of State and
Community Corrections (BSCC) is tasked with collecting all of the county realignment implementation plans and
monitoring local implementation efforts. As the LAO has noted in a recent report, however, the precise role and
duties of the BSCC need to be further specified: “The Legislature has defined BSCC’s mission broadly, requiring
that it collect and disseminate data and information, provide technical assistance to counties, and offer leadership in
the area of criminal justice policy. However, the Legislature has not specifically laid out in statute BSCC’s
responsibilities in fulfilling this mission, leaving open a number of questions that need to be addressed. For example,
how should BSCC be structured, what types of data should it collect, what form should its technical assistance take,
and how can it help ensure local accountability and success?” LAO Report, The 2012-13 Budget: The 2011
Realignment of Adult Offenders—An Update p.9 (Feb. 22, 2012) , available at
http://lao.ca.gov/analysis/2012/crim_justice/2011-realignment-of-adult-offenders-022212.pdf.
39

SB 678, supra note 33.

40

See Senator Leno’s announcement of the bill and LAO estimates, available at
http://sd03.senate.ca.gov/news/2012-02-27-leno-bill-revises-penalty-simple-drug-possession.
41

The text of the bill is at: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_15011550/sb_1506_bill_20120224_introduced.html.
42

See September 9, 2009 LAO analysis of Proposition 19, the California ballot initiative that sought to remove
criminal penalties for adult marijuana use and tax & regulate its sale, available at

47

http://www.lao.ca.gov/ballot/2009/090512.aspx. Some states have begun to require sentencing judges to take into
account additional factors such as the comparative costs of the different available sentencing options, as well as
empirical data comparing the likelihood of recidivism under the competing sentencing options. For instance, the
Missouri Sentencing Advisory Commission provides to state judges, attorneys and probation officers empirical data
about the risk of recidivism and the costs of sentences to help identify sentences that have the best chances for
reducing recidivism and are most cost-effective. See Michael A. Wolff, Missouri’s Information-Based
Discretionary Sentencing System, Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law (Col. 4:95, 2006). The author is Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court of Missouri and Chair of the Missouri Sentencing Advisory Commission.
43

See Cal. Penal Code § 17.5(a), which includes the following: “Despite the dramatic increase in corrections
spending over the past two decades, national reincarceration rates for people released from prison remain unchanged
or have worsened. National data show that about 40 percent of released individuals are reincarcerated within three
years. In California, the recidivism rate for persons who have served time in prison is even greater than the national
average. . . . Criminal justice policies that rely on building and operating more prisons to address community safety
concerns are not sustainable, and will not result in improved public safety.”

44

Orange County Plan, available at
http://cams.ocgov.com/Web_Publisher_Sam/mainlist.asp?docid=00000021&docname=Agenda10_18_2011.htm&m
eetdate=10_18_2011&pagendatypeid=1&pisagenda=0.
45

Solano County identified 80 jail beds that it will reopen if it becomes necessary. See County of Solano 2011
Public Safety Realignment Act Implementation Plan (Nov. 1, 2011), available at
http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/95-solano-county-plan.html?Itemid.
46

While San Francisco has not allocated realignment funds to staff the as yet unopened 360-bed San Bruno Jail 6,
the county did allocate $50,938 to the Sheriff for materials and supplies for that facility. See San Francisco Budget
and Legislative Analyst, Executive Summary (Sep. 7, 2011), p. 109, available at
http://www.sfbos.org/ftp/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/bosagendas/materials/bag092011_110907.pdf.
47

See Niko Kyriakou, San Mateo County brews a fresh idea for new jail (Oct. 9, 2011), San Francisco Examiner,
available at http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/peninsula/2011/10/san-mateo-county-brews-fresh-idea-new-jail.

48

Corrections Standards Authority, AB 900 Phase II Construction or Expansion of County Jails Request for
Applications (Oct. 7, 2011), available at http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/CSA/CFC/Docs/Request-for-ApplicationsBackground.pdf.
49

Public Safety and Offender Rehabilitation Services Act of 2007, California Assembly Bill No. 900, 2007-2008
Regular Session, Ch. 7 (Cal. 2007). See also Cal. Gov’t Code § 15819.40.
50

Wayne Lusvardi, Stealth Bonds Building New Prisons (Dec. 16, 2011), CalWatchdog, available at
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2011/12/16/stealth-bonds-building-new-prisons/. Lusvardi explains that AB 900
bonds are lease revenue bonds, rather than general obligation bonds. Among the differences between these forms of
bonds is that in the event of a default of an AB 900 lease-revenue bond, the taxpayers of the specific county would
not be on the hook to repay the bondholders. The legislature—that is, all the taxpayers in the state—would be
responsible to pay off the bonds.
51

Amador, Calaveras, Kern, Madera, Santa Barbara, San Benito, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis
Obispo and Solano. See Corrections Standards Authority, AB 900 Phase I Jail Construction Funding Awards (Nov.
19, 2009), available at http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/CSA/CFC/Docs/AB_900_Phase_I_Funding_111909.pdf.

52

Kern, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Joaquin, and Solano.

48

53

San Diego did not include jail expansion in its original realignment implementation plan but has since amended
the plan to provide the sheriff’s department with $200,000 to take the first steps toward expanding the East Mesa
Detention Facility by 400 to 500 beds. San Bernardino has set aside $350,000 for jail remodeling, but it is unclear
whether this will result in additional beds. See San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, Attachment B,
Realignment Cost Estimates, available at http://cobsire.sbcounty.gov/sirepub/agdocs.aspx?doctype=summary&itemid=194959.
54

Corrections Standards Authority, AB 900 Jail Construction Financing Program Corrections Standards Authority
Project Status Update – Phase I Updated 10/07/2011 (Oct. 7, 2011), available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/CSA/CFC/Docs/AB900_Project_Status.pdf. With $26,387,591 in Phase I funds, Calaveras
broke ground on a new facility for a net gain of 95 beds, while Madera began construction on an additional 144 beds
with a $30,000,000 award. In San Bernardino, $100,000,000 is being spent for a 1,368 bed expansion. San Diego
will begin building a new women’s facility for a net gain of 842 beds at a total project costs of $268 million, $100
million of which is the state’s share. Solano will also begin construction sometime in 2012 on a new 362-bed
facility using a $61,545,000 AB 900 Phase I award, at a total cost of $93 million.
55

Corrections Standards Authority, AB 900 Phase II Jail Construction Financing Program, Applications Received
by January 11, 2012 (Jan. 11, 2012), available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/CSA/CFC/Docs/Applications_Submitted_in_AB_900_Phase_II_1_11_12_for_posting.pdf.
56

AB 900 Phase II RFA, supra note 48, p. 7. As this Report was being printed, the state announced the Phase II
awards. The California Corrections Standards Authority allocated $100 million each to Los Angeles, Orange and
Riverside counties and lesser amounts to Imperial, Kings, Madera, Santa Barbara, Shasta, Stanislaus, Sutter and
Tulare counties. CDCR announcement available online at: http://cdcrtoday.blogspot.com/2012/03/state-awards602-million-to-counties.html.
57

Dave Cortese, Board of Supervisors Meeting, Jan. 10, 2012, video of meeting available at
http://www.sccgov.org/portal/site/scc (follow “Board Meeting Webcasts” hyperlink; then follow “Jan 10, 2012:
Video” hyperlink).
58

Corrections Standards Authority, Jail profile survey: Annual report 2005 (2005), p. 7, available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/csa/FSO/Docs/JPS%20Docs/2005_jps_annual_Report.pdf. “According to the JPS [Jail
Population Survey], of the current 62 jurisdictions, 24 have court-ordered population caps. Those 24 jurisdictions
operate 67 facilities of which 58 have population caps. The 58 facilities with population caps house 66.5% of the
state's ADP.”
59

Sacramento County Community Corrections Partnership Public Safety Realignment Plan Discussion Topic:
Reopening of the Roger Bauman Facility (RBF) at the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center,” prepared by the
Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department and Criminal Justice Research Foundation (Aug. 18, 2011), p. 7
(estimated budget). The estimated cost was calculated by dividing the total nine-month budget for the Roger
Bauman Facility ($6,484,734) by nine months.
60

Two of those counties, Orange and San Diego, plan significant jail expansion using AB 900 funding. The third,
San Mateo, plans to spend its own county taxpayer dollars to increase its jail capacity by more than 506 beds. As
noted above, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors has approved construction of a new jail at a cost of $145160 million to be completed in 2014.
61

California State Sheriffs’ Association, Do the crime, do the time? Maybe not in California: Jail cell shortage is
upsetting the balance (2006), p. 16, available at http://www.calsheriffs.org/resource-center/cssa-library/jailovercrowding-report.html.

49

62

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that at mid-year 2010, 61% of local jail inmates were on unconvicted
status (see Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates at Midyear 2010 - Statistical Tables (Apr. 14, 2011), available
at http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/sheets/jim10st.zip.
63

Corrections Standards Authority, Jail Profile Survey Third Quarter Results (2011), available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/CSA/FSO/Docs/2010_3rd_Qtr_JPS_adp_m_f.pdf.
64

Corrections Standards Authority, Jail Profile Survey Annual Report (2002), p. 12-13, available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/csa/FSO/Docs/JPS%20Docs/2002_JPS_Annual_Report-updated.pdf.
65

Jail Profile Surveys 2011 and 2002, supra notes 63, 64.

66

Cal. Penal Code §§ 1001.51, 1001.53. The sheriff did have some limited authority to release pretrial defendants
under specified circumstances. See Cal. Penal Code § 4000; See also Board of Supervisors v. Superior Court, 33
Cal.App.4th 1724, 1743 (1995).

67

Cal. Penal Code §1001.53.

68

For an overview of the foundations for these legal principles, see: Marie VanNostrand, Crime and Justice Institute
and the National Institute of Corrections, Legal and evidence-based practices: Application of legal principles, laws
and research to the field of pretrial services (Apr. 2007), p. 5-9, available at
http://www.dcjs.virginia.gov/corrections/documents/legalAndEvidence.pdf.
69

Laura Sullivan, Bail Burden Keeps U.S. Jails Stuffed With Inmates (Jan. 21, 2010), NPR, available at
http://www.npr.org/2010/01/21/122725771/Bail-Burden-Keeps-U-S-Jails-Stuffed-With-Inmates.
70

See Cal. Const. art. I, §§ 12, 28(b), 28(f); Cal. Penal Code §§ 1269c, 1275, Clark v. Superior Court, 11 Cal. App. 4th
455, 458 (1992), In re Christie, 92 Cal. App. 4th 1105, 1107 (2001), In re Burnette, 35 Cal. 2d 358, 360 (1939), People
v. Gilliam, 41 Cal. 3d 181, 191 (1974), and Ex Parte Ruef, 7 Cal. 750, 753 (1908); and California Judges Benchguide §
55.3.

71

See Lindsey Carlson, Bail Schedules: A Violation of Judicial Discretion?, Criminal Justice, Volume 26, Number 1
(2011), available at
http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/criminal_justice_magazine/cjsp11_bail.authcheckdam.pd
f, discussing Clark v. Hall, 53 P.3d 416 (Okla. 2002) and Pelekai v. White, 75 Haw. 357 (1993).
72

Obtained from bail schedules available on each county’s Superior Court website.

73

See California Bail Agents Association website, http://www.cbaa.com/.

74

Dawn Wotapka, Underwater and in the Tank: Defendants Find It Tougher to Make Bail as Bond Agents Shun
Homes as Collateral (Apr. 25, 2011), Wall Street Journal, available at
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703648304576265422469205008.html.
75

Stephen Demuth, Racial and Ethnic Differences in Pretrial Release Decisions and Outcomes: A comparison of
Hispanic, Black, and White Felony Arrestees, Criminology, 41 (2003), p. 873-907.
76

Id.

77

Id. See also E. Britt Patterson and Michael J. Lynch, Bias in formalized bail procedures, Race and Criminal
Justice (1991); S.H. Clark and S.T. Kurtz The Importance of Interim Decisions to Felony Trial Court Dispositions,
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 74 (1983), p. 476-518; A. Rankin, The Effects of Pretrial Detention, New

50

York University Law Review, 39 (1964); Caleb Foote, Compelling Appearance in Court – Administration of Bail in
Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Law Review 102 (1954), p. 1031-1079.
78

See VanNostrand, supra note 68.

79

International Association of Chiefs of Police, Law enforcement’s leadership role in the pretrial release and
detention process (2011), available at
http://www.theiacp.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=32EOi2UojO4%3d&tabid=392.
80

Cal. Penal Code § 1203.018. This section additionally specifies that eligible inmates must be held in confinement
in lieu of bail on a misdemeanor charge for at least 30 days and have no holds or outstanding warrants.
81

Alameda, Fresno, Kern, Placer, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Joaquin and Solano.

82

The state’s jail inmate population was 71 percent as of the third quarter of 2011, and the same in 2010. The
percentage of jail inmates nationwide who were unsentenced as of July 2010 was 61 percent, holding steady
between 61 and 63 percent since 2005. Corrections Standards Authority, Average Daily Population, Non-sentenced /
Sentenced Male / Female, California County Jails (for July – Sept. 2011), available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/CSA/FSO/Surveys/Docs/2011_3rd_Qtr_JPS_adp_m_f.pdf. See also Average Daily
Population, Non-sentenced / Sentenced Male / Female, California County Jails (for July – Sept. 2010), available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/CSA/FSO/Docs/2010_3rd_Qtr_JPS_adp_m_f.pdf; Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates
at Midyear 2010 - Statistical Tables, jim10stt07, (Apr. 14, 2011), available at
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/sheets/jim10st.zip.
83

Napa County Executive Office, Adult Correctional System Master Plan – Phase I, Report to the Board of
Supervisors (Nov. 13, 2007), p. 45, available at http://www.calrealignment.org/about-us/september-21stconference.html.
84

Id.

85

Third Quarter Survey, supra note 63.

86

Scott MacDonald and Charlie E. Smith, Addressing Jail Overcrowding: Safe Alternatives to Incarceration
through Justice Partnership (Sep. 21, 2011). Powerpoint presentation at Solving the Crisis: Innovations in
Corrections in California, slide 8, available at http://www.calrealignment.org/about-us/september-21stconference.html.
87

Id. at slide 26.

88

Id. at slide 28.

89

Third Quarter Survey, supra note 63.

90

Justice Policy Institute, Baltimore Behind Bars (2010), p. 30, available at
http://pretrial.org/CostDocuments/Baltimore%20Behind%20Bars%20(JPI%202010).pdf
91

Id.

92

Id.

93

Marie VanNostrand, Luminosity Solutions, Responsible Jail Population Reduction Case Study: Camden County,
New Jersey, available at http://www.luminosity-solutions.com/publications/CamdenCaseStudy_12-21-10.pdf.

51

94

Id.

95

The District of Columbia Junior Bar Association issued a report criticizing the bail system in 1963, and
Georgetown Law School received funding to open the D.C. Bail Project to remedy problems within the bail system.
Pretrial Justice Institute, The D.C. Pretrial Services Agency: Lessons from Five Decades of Innovation and Growth,
Case Studies: Volume 2, Number 1, available at
http://www.pretrial.org/Reports/PJI%20Reports/Case%20Study%202%20-%20DC%20Pretrial%20Services.pdf.
96

For data from 1962 through 1975, see Wayne H. Thomas, Jr., Bail Reform in America (1976), University of
California Press. For 2008 data, see also District of Columbia Pretrial Services Agency, Leading in the Field:
District of Columbia Pretrial Services Agency FY 2008 Annual Report, available at
http://www.dcpsa.gov/foia/PSAfoiaDocuments/PSA-Annual-Report-FY2008.pdf.
97

D.C. Pretrial, supra note 95.

98

See the Pretrial Justice Institute website at www.pretrial.org.

99

For studies and reports, see http://www.pretrial.org/DiversionPrograms/Pages/default.aspx.

100

See http://www.pretrial.org/AboutPJI/Pages/wherewestand.aspx.

101

See http://www.pretrial.org/Pages/increasing-appearance.aspx.

102

Where We Stand, supra note 100.

103

See http://www.pretrial.org/Pages/supervising-defendants.aspx.

104

See http://www.pretrial.org/Pages/performance-measures.aspx.

105

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Attorney General Eric Holder at the National Symposium on Pretrial
Justice (Jun. 1, 2011), available at
http://www2.americanbar.org/sections/criminaljustice/CR203800/Pages/pretrialjustice_holder.aspx.
106

Elise Foley, Detainers are Not Mandatory (Oct. 31, 2011), Huffington Post, available at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/31/dhs-hold-undocumented-immigrants_n_1067558.html?1320087816.
According to internal Department of Homeland Security documents, local law enforcement agencies are not
required to hold immigrants at the request of the federal government.
107

Sheriff Michael Hennessey, Inter-Office Correspondence: Immigration & Custom Enforcement Procedures (May
3, 2011), available at http://www.wbez.org/sites/default/files/San_Francisco_policy_on_ICE_detainers.pdf.
108

Id.

109

Id.

110

Id.

111

Santa Clara Board of Supervisors, Summary of Proceedings, Board Agenda Item 11 (Oct. 18, 2011), available at
http://www.sccgov.org/SCC/docs%2FSCC%20Public%20Portal%2Fattachments%2FBOS%20Summary%2F2011%
2FSummary101811.pdf.
112

Santa Clara Board of Supervisors, Resolution of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Clara Adding
Board Policy 3.54 Relating to Civil Immigration Detainer Requests (2011), available at

52

http://www.sccgov.org/keyboard/attachments/BOS%20Agenda/2011/October%2018,%202011/203452112/TMPKe
yboard203715832.pdf.
113

Id.

114

Cal. Penal Code § 1230.1(d).

115

Cal. Penal Code § 17.5(a).

116

Similarly, the diverse programmatic and budgetary practices among the counties made it nearly impossible to
accurately isolate the amount of realignment funding allocated specifically to community sanctions alternatives to
incarceration. For example, in some counties, the Sheriff’s Department may house the totality of alternative
programs for sentenced defendants, while the Probation Department deals exclusively with the post-release
community supervision population. In other counties, the Probation Department may begin to play an active role in
supervising those who are released into the community as an alternative to serving a jail sentence, in addition to
supervising those released after completing their sentence. Therefore, the funding breakdowns presented in the
county profiles in Appendix A to this report convey only a general sense of how each county has apportioned its
realignment monies to fund alternative sanctions amongst the Probation Department, Sheriff, jail expansion projects,
health, treatment and other services and other law enforcement agencies.
117

See VanNostrand, supra note 68.

118

Crediting some of these twenty-four county plans with including the possibility of risk/needs assessment is
generous; the ACLU analysis erred on the side of inclusivity. For instance, the only mention in the Stanislaus
County plan is this single sentence: “Currently there are five probation officers assigned to work out of the Day
Reporting Center (DRC), with one officer being assigned to work in the adult facilities conducting risk assessments
for potential early release candidates.”
119

Alameda, Fresno, Sacramento, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Solano, and Tulare.

120

See County of San Diego Public Safety Realignment and Post-Release Community Supervision Preliminary 2011
Implementation Plan, available at http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/81-san-diegocounty-plan.html?Itemid.
121

See County of Madera Public Safety Realignment Act of 2011 Local Implementation and Post Release
Supervision Plan, available at http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/46-madera-countyplan.html?Itemid.
122

As part of Second Chance Grant administration, the Bureau of Justice Assistance detailed the “Fundamental
Principles of Evidence-Based Correctional Practice.” The principles emphasize the importance of objective risk and
needs assessment, cognitive behavioral therapy and providing supervision and services that match the identified risk
and needs. Bureau of Justice Assistance, Second Chance Act Adult Offender Reentry Program for Planning and
Demonstration Projects FY 2011 Competitive Grant Announcement (Dec. 16, 2011), p. 26-28, available at
http://www.grants.gov/search/search.do?mode=VIEW&oppId=94833.
123

Jail-based programs that include transition planning and comprehensive services that address housing, substance
abuse, education and employment needs upon release are crucial for successful reentry. For examples of innovative
programs throughout the United States, see Urban Institute, Life After Lockup: Improving Reentry from Jail to the
Community (May 2008), p. 61, available at http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/Final_Life_After_Lockup.pdf.
124

See County of Alameda Public Safety Realignment Act of 2011 Implementation Plan (2011), available at
http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/104-alameda-county-plan.html?Itemid.

53

125

See Butte County Public Safety Realignment and Postrelease Community Supervision 2011 Implementation Plan
(Sep. 2011), available at http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/36-butte-countyplan.html?Itemid.
126

San Diego’s plan calls for expediting cases involving Prop 36 drug diversion and deferred entry of judgment as a
strategy to effectively utilize jail capacity, estimating that since these defendants are released from custody upon
settlement of their case, a minimum of four custody days per case may be avoided for an estimated annual
population of 3,000 potentially eligible offenders. Additionally, the San Diego plan provides that the Probation
Department will use a screening tool to determine who is eligible for diversion or deferred judgment. Tulare’s plan
provides that low-level offenders should be diverted from prosecution “wherever possible,” and that drug and
mental health courts should be seriously considered where diversion is not appropriate. Its pretrial assessment will
consider the offender’s suitability for diversion from prosecution. Santa Barbara and San Mateo only briefly
mention diversion in their plans: Santa Barbara also mentioned Proposition 36 as an option to divert nonviolent
defendants charged with simple drug possession offenses from incarceration into community-based treatment
programs. San Mateo’s plan includes nonprofit recommendations to the CCP, including pre-booking diversion
substance abuse and mental health issues.
127

See County of Napa Public Safety Realignment and Post Release Community Supervision 2011 Implementation
Plan, available at http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/74-napa-county-plan.html?Itemid;
Siskiyou County Public Safety Realignment and Post Release Community Supervision Preliminary Plan (Oct. 11,
2011), available at http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/86-siskiyou-countyplan.html?Itemid.
128

See The Defender Association-Racial Disparity Project, Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD): A PreBooking Diversion Model for Low-Level Drug Offenses (2010), available at
http://www.law.seattleu.edu/Documents/cle/archive/2010/032610%20Restorative%20Justice/215pm%20LEAD%20
concept%20paper.pdf.
129

See, e.g., Bureau of Justice Assistance, Utah: The Utah Day Reporting Center—Success With Alternative
Incarceration, available at http://ucjc.law.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/16.pdf; Charlene Rhyne and Lailah Hamblin,
Multnomah County Day Reporting Center Evaluation (2009), available at
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CF8QFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2
Fweb.multco.us%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fdcj%2Fdocuments%2Fdrc_final_document.doc&ei=0XlFT6K0D
Ya0iQLO85i7Dg&usg=AFQjCNGd9bdyPeaNq2DMyJQvbeFyEVjW5A&sig2=BXhIbChs3zT7SwfZ6uhxAA.
130

See Sacramento County Community Corrections Partnership Public Safety Realignment Plan (Nov. 1, 2011),
available at http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/101-sacramento-county-plan.html?Itemid.
131

See Butte County Plan, supra note 125.

132

See Merced County Public Safety Realignment and Post Release Community Supervision 2011 Implementation
Plan, available at http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/68-merced-county-plan.html?Itemid.
133

See County of Kern Public Safety Realignment Act of 2011 Implementation Plan, available at
http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/77-kern-county-plan.html?Itemid; Lake County
Realignment Implementation Plan, available at http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/65lake-county-plan.html?Itemid; County of Madera Public Safety Realignment Act of 2011 Local Implementation and
Post Release Supervision Plan, available at http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/46-maderacounty-plan.html?Itemid; County of Napa Public Safety Realignment and Post Release Community Supervision
2011 Implementation Plan, available at http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/74-napacounty-plan.html?Itemid; Orange County Public Safety Realignment and Postrelease Community Supervision 2011
Implementation Plan, available at http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/79-orange-countyplan.html?Itemid; San Luis Obispo County 2011 Public Safety Realignment Act Implementation Plan, available at

54

http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/72-san-luis-obispo-county-plan.html?Itemid; AB 109
Yuba County Implementation Plan 2011, available at
http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/87-yuba-county-plan.html?Itemid.
134

See Humboldt County Public Safety Realignment Plan (Dec. 19, 2011), available at
http://www.cpoc.org/php/realign/coplans/humboldt.pdf.
135

See Tuolumne County Public Safety Realignment Act AB 109 Implementation Plan (2011), available at
http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/76-tuolumne-county-plan.html?Itemid. Note that the
county plans to use funding received through a separate piece of legislation, SB 678.
136

See Sonoma County Public Safety Realignment Interim Plan (2011), available at
http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/85-sonoma-county-plan.html?Itemid.
137

See Merced County Plan, supra note 132.

138

See Drug Policy Alliance, Drug Courts Are Not the Answer (Mar. 2011), available at
http://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Drug%20Courts%20Are%20Not%20the%20Answer_Final2.pdf.
139

Denise C. Gottfredson, et al., Long-Term Effects of Participation in the Baltimore City Drug Treatment Court:
Results from an Experimental Study (2006), Journal of Experimental Criminology 2, no. 1, p. 67-98.

140

See Santa Cruz plan at pp. 24-25 (available at
http://www.calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/69-santa-cruz-county-plan.html?Itemid), which
provides for a phased planning process: “Data from the initial cohort of offenders served will be available to help
guide this process as well, so that planning is not solely dependent on archival data sources which may or may not
reflect the nature of the target population. … Phase Four is an evaluation process which will take place concurrent
with all other phases and which continues into the future. This will feature a full review of system and program
interventions; tracking and measurement of recidivism and other outcomes; attribution of outcomes to specific
programmatic components; and assessment of fidelity to EBP delivery throughout the criminal justice system.
Evaluation findings will be incorporated in continuous program improvement and redesign of implementation
strategies.”
141

See Santa Cruz County Public Safety Realignment and Post Release Community Supervision 2011
Implementation Plan (Oct. 4, 2011), available at http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/69santa-cruz-county-plan.html?Itemid.
142

See Alameda County Plan, supra note 124.

143

See Contra Costa County 2011/12 Public Safety Realignment Implementation Plan (Sep. 30, 2011), available at
http://calrealignment.org/component/docman/doc_download/70-contra-costa-county-plan.html?Itemid.
144

See discussion of the newly-created Board for State and Community Corrections (BSCC), its data collection and
monitoring duties, and concerns about its unclear mandate and powers, supra note 38.
145

See County of Placer Public Safety Realignment Act AB 109 2011 Implementation Plan, available at
http://www.placer.ca.gov/departments/~/media/pro/documents/CCP/Final/CCP%20Plan%20final%2012162011.ash
x.
146

See Contra Costa County Plan, supra note 143.

147

For updates on AB 900, see Corrections Standards Authority, AB 900 Local Jail Construction Financing Program
website at http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/CSA/CFC/AB900_Program.html.

55

APPENDIX A
Profiles of the “Big 25” counties that received the largest
realignment funding allocations from the state
for fiscal year 2011-2012
County Profiles are presented alphabetically, and are preceded by an “Information Sources and
Terminology Guide.” Endnotes for specific profiles appear at the back of this Appendix following the
last County Profile.
County realignment implementation plans are available online at www.calrealignment.org.

County Profiles Information Sources and Terminology Guide
Rankings. Each profiled county is ranked from high to low in each category (i.e. County Population,
Crime rate per 100,000, Non-Sentenced Jail Population, Probation Failure Rate, Pre-realignment Felony
Probation Workload), as compared with all 58 counties. For example, the county with the highest probation
failure rate is ranked #1, and the county with the lowest probation failure rate is ranked #58 in that category.
County Population. The county population includes individuals aged 18 to 64. This age group represents
the vast majority of people at-risk for involvement with the criminal justice system. California Department of
Finance, Demographic Profiles, Table 1: Population, Age and Sex Characteristics, April 1, 2010, available
at http://www.dof.ca.gov/research/demographic/state_census_data_center/census_2010/view.php#DP.
Crime Rate per 100,000. The crime rate used for this report combines the violent crime rate and
property crime rate per 100,000 of the county population gathered by the California Department of Justice.
California Department of Justice, Statistics by City and County, Reported Crimes and Crime Rates, 2009,
available at http://ag.ca.gov/cjsc/statisticsdatatabs/CrimeCo.php. The crime rate for some counties was not
available on the Department of Justice website. The rate for these counties was calculated by dividing the
number of reported violent and property crimes by the county's 2009 population, found at California
Department of Finance, E-2. California County Population Estimates and Components of Change by Year —
July 1, 2000–2010, available at http://www.dof.ca.gov/research/demographic/reports/estimates/e-2/200010/view.php.
Non-Sentenced Jail Population. Non-sentenced inmates are those inmates who have not been sentenced
on all charges, i.e. awaiting sentencing on at least one charge. Based on this definition, used by the
Corrections Standards Authority to guide county data collection, inmates re-incarcerated for a probation or
parole violation, as opposed to a new criminal charge, are considered sentenced on all charges. Inmates
subject to an immigration hold are placed into the non-sentenced or sentenced categories depending on the
status of their charges. Although the number of non-sentenced inmates may include individuals sentenced on
some, but not all charges, the majority of this group is believed to be pre-trial, or awaiting sentencing on all
charges. Corrections Standards Authority, Jail Profile Survey, 2011 3rd Quarter Survey Results, Average
Daily Population Non-sentenced / Sentenced Male / Female, California County Jails - For Months Of July September 2011, available at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/CSA/FSO/Surveys/Docs/2011_3rd_Qtr_JPS_full_report.pdf.
Immigration Detainees in Jail. This information was obtained through responses from County
Counsel’s Offices and Sheriff’s Departments pursuant to a November 17, 2011 Public Records Act request
sent by the ACLU of Northern California seeking the average daily population for a specified time period,
and of those inmates, the number and/or percentage who for that time period were federal immigration
detainees. Fourteen counties provided this information. Of the counties that did not provide this information,
reasons for not doing so stated that data pertaining to immigration detainees in custody were not centrally
collected or that to obtain this data would be overly burdensome.

1

State Prison “High Use” Counties. According to a 2012 study conducted by David Ball, Assistant
Professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, 10 of the 25 counties receiving the most in
realignment funding for Fiscal Year 2011-2012 were determined to be “high use” counties – that is, counties
that rely the most heavily on state prison to incarcerate newly convicted felons from their jurisdictions. High
use counties had either an annual coverage rate or a new felon admissions (NFA) surplus, or both, in the top
quartile for at least seven of the 10 years of the study. Both represent the degree to which a county responds
to crime with incarceration. Coverage rates were calculated by dividing the number of new felon admissions
by the number of reported violent crimes in each county. The NFA surplus was calculated by multiplying the
state’s coverage rate for a given year by the number of reported violent crimes in the county that same year
to determine the “crime justified” NFA. These “crime justified” NFA were then subtracted from a county’s
actual NFA to determine the county’s surplus or deficit. W. David Ball, Tough on Crime (on the State’s
Dime): How Violent Crime Does Not Drive California Counties’ Incarceration Rates—And Why It
Should, 28 Ga. St. U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2012), available at
http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/facpubs/162/ (examining the ways in which county governments
contribute to overpopulation in the state prison system).
Probation Failure Rates. Probation failure rates were calculated by the California Department of
Finance (DOF) with data collected for the 2010 calendar year in order to implement SB 678 (the California
Community Corrections Performance Incentive Act) for the 2011-2012 fiscal year. At the end of each
calendar year, DOF determines statewide and county specific probation failure rates. Data for calendar year
2011 are currently being collected and processed. The probation failure rate is calculated by dividing the
number of revocations to state prison by the adult felony probation population. The current probation failure
rate in each county is then compared to a baseline failure rate (a weighted average from calendar years 2006
through 2008). Counties with lower than baseline failure rates are then eligible for a performance grant.
Administrative Office of the Courts, SB 678 Year 1 Report (Jun. 8, 2011), available at
http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/SB678-Year-1-Report-FINAL.pdf.
Ten percent of the AB 109 funding allocation made to each county for FY 2011-2012 was based on its
performance under SB 678. As of October 1, 2011, however, SB 678 has been made obsolete. Because
probation revocations (not involving a new criminal charge) no longer result in state prison commitments,
the criteria for measuring performance have changed. While the same criteria will no longer be useful in
administering high performance grants in future years, probation revocation rates from calendar year 2011
are currently being calculated and will be an essential variable in a revised funding formula.

Pre-Realignment Felony Probation Workload. This is the annual average of individuals making up
the felony probation workload for each county from 2005 through 2009, which is the latest year reported by
the Department of Justice's Criminal Justice Statistics Center. California Department of Justice, Criminal
Justice Statistics Center, Table 7: Adult Probation Caseload and Actions by Level of Offense and Percent
Distribution, available at http://ag.ca.gov/cjsc/datatabs.php (select the “Adult Probation" subcategory of
"Supervision and Corrections").

2

Data for Each County Regarding Budget, AB 109 Jail Expansion, and Alternatives to
Incarceration. Unless otherwise indicated in an endnote, all information provided in the county profiles as
to budget allocations, jail expansion plans, and use of alternatives to incarceration was gathered from each
county’s plan, as passed by the Board of Supervisors, or in its most recent draft at the time of writing this
report. Since county plans varied widely in the amount of detail used to describe specific budget allocations
and which evidence-based programs and alternatives would ultimately be adopted, a conservative
interpretation of the plans was made, and endnotes were provided to offer additional explanation. County
realignment implementation plans are available online at www.calrealignment.org.
Public Safety Realignment funding for FY 2011-2012. This is the county’s AB 109 programs
allocation for FY 2011-2012. Each county was given four separate allocations: one to fund programs, another
to fund District Attorney and Public Defender activities, a one-time allocation for training, and a one-time
allocation for Community Corrections Partnership planning. The “program allocations” comprised the vast
majority of funds received by counties under AB 109, and this is the figure we used; we did not include in the
county profiles the separately-designated DA/Public Defender, training or planning funds. The costs of
Probation, Sheriffs, and other local government agencies were generally paid from this “programs allocations”
funding pot. See California State Association of Counties, Allocation and Population Information: 2011-12 AB
109 Funding, One-Time Training Funds, and Average Daily Population by County at Full Implementation,
available at http://www.counties.org/default_print.asp?id=3202.
Allocation of Each County’s Public Safety Realignment funding for FY 2011-2012:
Each county profile includes a breakdown of the county’s local distribution of its realignment allocation from
the state for FY 2011-2012. We divided each county realignment budget, as provided in the county
implementation plans, into five categories, each explained in more detail below. Each county profile presents
the amount the county budgeted to each of the five categories as a percentage of the county’s overall state
realignment allocation (defined above). We were not able to ascertain with complete certainty all of the county
budget allocations reflected in county profiles because not all county plans included complete budget
information.
To the extent we were able to obtain additional budget information from the counties to supplement the county
plans, we factored such information into the profiles and we have indicated the source of that additional
information in the bullet points below or in the reference endnotes which follow the county profiles. The
percentage breakdowns shown for many counties add up to more or less than 100%, for several reasons. First,
we rounded to the nearest percentage point for each of our five categories, which may result in a variance of a
few points when calculating the sum of those allocation percentages. Also, not all county budget allocations fit
squarely into the five categories we used, and the amounts some counties budgeted are not equal to their total
allocations from the state. Some counties supplemented their program allocation funds from the state with funds
from other sources when creating their realignment plan budget. Many counties did not allocate some portion of
their program funds, sometimes simply designating some portion as “unallocated,” other times designating some
portion as a contingency fund. Specific information explaining these variances is provided in the endnotes or
below:

3

•

Contra Costa County: The County Plan makes allocations that do not fit into the categories we
created; $67,500 was allocated to the District Attorney, and $94,995 to the Public Defender, above and
beyond the separate earmarked state allocation for District Attorney and Public Defender activities.
This results in categorized amounts shown in the profile chart totaling less than 100% of the Public
Safety Realignment allocation amount.

•

Kern County: The County Plan designates $94,256 of its Public Safety Realignment allocation
Realignment funding for “contingencies,” which results in categorized amounts shown in the profile
chart totaling less than 100% of the Public Safety Realignment allocation amount.

•

Kings County: The County Plan makes allocations that don’t fit into the categories we created;
$79,163 to County Counsel, $68,652 to Human Resources and $42,521 to Victim Witnesses. This
results in categorized amounts shown in the profile chart totaling less than 100% of the Public Safety
Realignment allocation amount.

•

Los Angeles County: The County Plan makes allocations that do not fit into the categories we
created; $10,000 to the Chief Executive Office and $500,000 for Provisional Financial Uses. This
results in categorized amounts shown in the profile chart totaling less than 100% of the Public Safety
Realignment allocation amount.

•

Placer County: According to the County Plan, state funding is not anticipated to fully fund county
costs associated with realignment. The Placer County Executive’s Office (CEO) prepared a report that
outlines $1.7 million of gap funding to supplement the realignment funds allocated by the State. The
profile chart reflects the actual amounts budgeted in the plan, which results in categorized amounts
shown in the profile chart totaling more than 100% of the Public Safety Realignment allocation
amount.

•

Riverside County: The County Plan does not include a budget allocation. The total provided in the
county profile, $21,074,467, was obtained from the CSAC website. According to information provided
to the ACLU by the Riverside County Probation Department, however, $21,823,911 in local
allocations were approved by the CCP Executive Committee, resulting in categorized amounts shown
in the profile chart totaling more than 100% of the Public Safety Realignment allocation amount.

•

San Diego County: The original County Plan allocated all of the state realignment funds but didn’t
include jail expansion; it was subsequently amended to give the sheriff $200,000 additional funding to
expand the jail in East Mesa. This results in categorized amounts shown in the profile chart totaling
more than 100% of the Public Safety Realignment allocation amount.

•

San Francisco County: The County Plan supplements its Public Safety Realignment allocation with
an additional $4,800,000 from the county’s general fund, which results in categorized amounts shown
in the profile chart totaling more than 100% of the Public Safety Realignment allocation amount.

4

•

San Joaquin County: The County Plan designates $233,442 of its Public Safety Realignment
allocation Realignment funding for “contingencies” and $31,500 for “transportation,” which results in
categorized amounts shown in the profile chart totaling less than 100% of the Public Safety
Realignment allocation amount.

•

San Mateo County: Because the County Plan had not been finalized at the time of printing this
report, approximate allocations among local agencies were calculated according to proposed budget
allocations for FY 2011-12 distributed at a public CCP meeting on January 26, 2012. (See endnote 10
following the county profiles). The budget document referred to here only allocates $3,966,425; thus,
$256,477 of AB 109 funds for FY 2011-12 are unallocated in the draft budget. This results in
categorized amounts shown in the profile chart totaling less than 100% of the Public Safety
Realignment allocation amount.

•

Santa Clara County: The County Plan allocates money for programs from the separate state
allocations intended to fund District Attorney and Public Defender activities, the one-time allocation
for training, and the one-time allocation for Community Corrections Partnership planning. Essentially,
the county moved funds from those earmarked allocations to supplement its programs allocation. This
results in categorized amounts shown in the profile chart totaling more than 100% of the Public Safety
Realignment allocation amount.

•

Shasta County: The County Plan does not allocate $240,000 of its Public Safety Realignment
allocation Realignment funding, which results in categorized amounts shown in the profile chart
totaling less than 100% of the Public Safety Realignment allocation amount.

•

Solano County: The County Plan does not allocate $195,522 of its Public Safety Realignment
allocation, which results in categorized amounts shown in the profile chart totaling less than 100% of
the Public Safety Realignment allocation amount.

•

Sonoma County: The County Plan designates $134,262 of its Public Safety Realignment allocation
Realignment funding for “contingencies,” which results in categorized amounts shown in the profile
chart totaling less than 100% of the Public Safety Realignment allocation amount.

•

Stanislaus County: The County Plan does not allocate $418,615 of its Public Safety Realignment
allocation, which results in categorized amounts shown in the profile chart totaling less than 100% of
the Public Safety Realignment allocation amount.

•

Ventura County: The County Plan does not allocate $1,443,907 of its Public Safety Realignment
allocation, which results in categorized amounts shown in the profile chart totaling less than 100% of
the Public Safety Realignment allocation amount.

•

Yolo County: The County Plan makes allocations that don’t fit into the categories we created;
$82,000 was allocated to the District Attorney and Public Defender, above and beyond the separate
earmarked state allocation for District Attorney and Public Defender activities. This results in
5

categorized amounts shown in the profile chart totaling less than 100% of the Public Safety
Realignment allocation amount.

Add Jail Capacity. This figure represents the AB 109 funds used by a county to expand either the physical
or operational capacity of its corrections facilities. This includes expenditures associated with the
construction of new beds, re-opening a previously closed wing of the jail, installing bunks to dayrooms, and
hiring new staff for duties relating to custody.
Other Law Enforcement. Included here are the allocations made to the District Attorney and city police
departments from the programs grant to conduct, for example, prosecution activities or random compliance
checks on members of the PRCS population.
Jail Expansion under AB 900. All information in the county profiles related to jail expansion under AB
900 was drawn from the Corrections Standards Authority website at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/CSA/CFC/AB900_Program.html. See AB 900 Phase I Jail Construction Funding
Awards (Nov. 19, 2011), at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/CSA/CFC/Docs/AB_900_Phase_I_Funding_111909.pdf; AB 900 Jail Construction
Financing Program Corrections Standards Authority Project Status Update – Phase I October (Oct. 7,
2011), at http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/CSA/CFC/Docs/AB900_Project_Status.pdf; and AB 900 Phase II Jail
Construction Financing Program Applications Received (Jan. 11, 2012), at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/CSA/CFC/Docs/Applications_Submitted_in_AB_900_Phase_II_1_11_12_for_posti
ng.pdf.

6

Alameda
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State Prison “High Use” County?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#7
(1,001,904)
#4
(2,841.8)
#8
(83%)
Not available
No
#24
(5.54%)
#5
(15,394)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $9,200,000
Probation

Sheriff

Add jail capacity

Health,
treatment,
services
Other law
enforcement

Probation:

$2,500,000

(27%)

Sheriff:

$4,000,000

(43%)

Add jail capacity:

$0

(0%)

Health, treatment, services:

$2,200,000

(24%)

Other law enforcement:

$500,000

(5%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: The County’s plan does not provide for opening additional beds. A Transition Center will be established in order to
“improve and expand the coordination of services, supports, and opportunities for inmates being released from Santa Rita
Jail and coming home to the County.”
AB 900: Alameda has not been awarded any AB 900 funding for new jail construction.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: Yes. Plan calls for creation of a pre-trial electronic monitoring (EM) program to provide alternatives to
incarceration for individuals being held pre-trial but deemed to be a lower threat to public safety, based on a validated risk
assessment. The plan specifies that alternatives will include the use of home detention, electronic monitoring and drug
testing. The budget does not specify how much of the Sheriff’s or Probation’s funding allocation will be required to
implement the EM program.
Sentenced: No. The County’s plan does not discuss any alternatives to incarceration for newly-sentenced non-non-non
offenders, nor allocate any funding for such alternatives. Instead, despite AB 109’s encouragement to counties to use
evidence-based alternatives to incarceration, based on the County’s AB 109 plan, it will continue to rely upon incarceration
as the primary way of supervising individuals who have been sentenced for non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual crimes.
The plan does not discuss or fund, for example, expanded work furlough, community detention, electronic monitoring or
any other alternatives to incarceration for sentenced offenders.
Post release community supervision: Yes. The Probation Department is implementing for the Post Release Community
Supervision population a risk-needs assessment tool which will serve as the bases for an Individual Achievement Plan (IAP).
The IAP will serve as a tool for connecting released offenders to community-based programming.

Contra Costa
County Population/ranking:
Crime rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State Prison “High Use” County?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-Realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#9
#11
#7
7.8%
No
#54
#20

(658,082)
(2,254.9)
(85%)

(1.19)
(3,213)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $4,572,950
Probation
Sheriff
Add jail
capacity
Health,
treatment,
services
Other law
enforcement

Probation:

$1,025,596

(22%)

Sheriff:

$1,141,500

(25%)

Add jail capacity:1

$1,348,250

(29%)

Health, treatment, services:

$895,109

(20%)

Other law enforcement:

$0

(0%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: The county hired five Deputy Sheriffs and re-opened 200 inmate beds in the West County jail as of October 1, 2011.
According to the plan, six additional Deputy Sheriffs are to be hired in the Marsh Creek jail, effective January 1, 2012, to
staff 70 additional jail beds. Thus, the county has used AB 109 funding to expand its jail capacity by 270 beds.
AB 900: Contra Costa has not received AB 900 funding for new jail construction, nor was the county invited by the
Corrections Standards Authority to apply for Phase II AB 900 funds.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: Unclear. Although the County’s plan recognizes that Penal Code § 1203.018 authorizes the Sheriff supervise those
inmates who are being held in lieu of bail by way of electronic monitoring (EM), the plan notes that such a program must be
pre-approved by the District Attorney’s Office and the Superior Court. There is no indication in the plan that such approval
will be sought, or that an EM program for pre-trial inmates is even under consideration, despite the high percentage of pretrial inmates in the county jails.
Sentenced: Yes. The Sheriff’s Office has allocated $864,000 to fund eight new staff positions (two beginning October 1,
2011 and six beginning January 1, 2012) and new equipment to expand the electronic monitoring (EM) component of its
Custody Alternative Facility program. The program will now supervise up to 100 additional offenders. Fees for EM
supervision will be reduced or waived for those who are unable to pay. Additionally, individuals who are sentenced to less
than 30 days will be assigned to the Work Alternative program.
Post release community supervision: Yes. The Probation Department will create a specialized unit to provide intensive
probation supervision to individuals on PRCS (depending on risk-needs assessment). The appropriate level of supervision
will be assessed through the National Council on Crime and Delinquency’s Criminal Assessment and Intervention (CAIS) tool.
Individualized treatment plans will be developed, and the plans will include pre-release services, cognitive behavioral
interventions and collaboration with multiple service providers. There is no mention of a day reporting center or other
innovative program. Instead, the Probation Department will continue to provide the services they have historically
provided, but in a more intensive way.

Fresno
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State Prison “High Use” County?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#11
#7
#4
1.5%
Yes
#17
#11

(559,552)
(2,609.9)
(88%)

(6.83)
(6,831)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012:2 $8,838,368
Probation

Probation:

$2,131,331

(24%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$1,089,500

(12%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$4,166,880

(47%)

Health, treatment,
services

Health, treatment, services:

$1,116,836

(13%)

Other law
enforcement

Other law enforcement:

$333,821

(4%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: The county re-opened 432 previously closed beds on October 1, 2011 and plans to re-open 432 more in April 2012
for a total of 864 beds. Additional beds may also be opened in a different jail due to “security concerns and classification
issues.” Twenty-three Correctional Officer positions were added effective October 3, 2011, and an estimated 23 more will
be added in April 2012. Using the data from the first three months of AB 109 implementation, the Sheriff will complete a
cost evaluation to determine the resources needed for the additional bed space in April 2012.
AB 900: Fresno has not been awarded any AB 900 funding for new jail construction. The county did not apply for Phase I AB
900 funds and, after submitting an interest statement to the CSA, was invited to apply for Phase II funds, but ultimately did
not.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: Yes. The plan calls for the creation of a program to provide alternatives to incarceration for pre-trial individuals
who are deemed to be a lower threat to public safety, based on a validated risk assessment. The plan specifies that
alternatives will include the use of home detention, electronic monitoring and drug testing. The plan also calls for
contracting with a private company for an automated court hearing notification system to notify individuals of upcoming
court dates to reduce failures to appear. The Probation Department will add four positions to implement this pre-trial
program at an estimated cost of $349,418.
Sentenced: No. The County’s plan does not discuss any alternatives to incarceration for newly-sentenced non-non-non
offenders, nor allocate any funding for such alternatives. Instead, despite AB 109’s encouragement to counties to use
evidence-based alternatives to incarceration, the plan indicates that the county will continue to rely upon incarceration as
the primary method of supervising individuals who have been sentenced for non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual crimes.
The plan does not discuss or fund, for example, expanded work furlough, community detention, electronic monitoring or
any other alternatives to incarceration for sentenced offenders.
Post Release Community Supervision: Yes. The Probation Department is implementing for the Post Release Community
Supervision population a risk and needs assessment tool, an Adult Day Reporting Center, a cognitive behavioral program,
motivational interviewing, and telephone and internet reporting.

Kern
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “High Use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#13
#3
#6
4.4%
Yes
#15
#9

(510,113)
(3,002.3)
(85%)

(7.43%)
(7,268)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $10,834,289
Probation

Probation:

$4,310,964

(40%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$2,596,885

(24%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$2,099,780

(19%)

Health, treatment,
services

Health, treatment, services:

$1,655,480

(15%)

Other law
enforcement

Other law enforcement:

$76,924

(1%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: The County plans to reopen three barracks at the Lerdo Minimum Detentions Facility and will use AB 109 funds to
pay for a limited expansion of the Lerdo Pretrial Facility. In total, the Sheriff will open 236 new beds, increasing detention
capacity to 2,862. The plan indicates that $109,520 will pay for new bunk-bed frames and mattresses. In addition, the
Sheriff has requested $3,555,198 in personnel costs; however, the plan does not specify which of the new staffing positions
are related to jail capacity.
AB 900: Kern has received a conditional award of $100,000 for the construction of a new 790-bed facility as part of the
Phase 1 Jail Construction awards. Kern applied for $100,000,000 in Phase II funds.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: Yes. The “Sheriff will establish a home detention program and an electronic monitoring unit. These programs will
be utilized for the management of pretrial and sentenced populations.”
Sentenced: Yes. The Sheriff’s Office will implement a post-sentence electronic monitoring program, as well as expand its
active work release program. “Additional armed Deputy Probation Officers (DPOs) will be added to supervise this
population.” Non-non-nons will receive static risk assessments, which determine the risk of re-offending and the type of
supervision services to be received. Two additional DPOs will be assigned to administer these assessments. The Probation
Department’s capacity to serve offenders through the Day Reporting Center will expand from 50 to 100 offenders at any
given time. The DRC will provide cognitive behavioral therapy, job readiness, substance abuse testing, daily reporting,
sanctions, rewards and supervision in conjunction with BI Inc. and the assigned Deputy Probation Officer.
Post release community supervision: Yes. The Probation Department will utilize a risk and needs assessment tool,
motivational interviewing, and electronic monitoring for the PRCS population. Those offenders shown to have the highest
risk of re-offending will be placed on caseloads of 50 offenders to one Deputy Probation Officer, while other supervisees
will be placed on larger caseloads. An Adult Transition Team will serve an additional 50 supervisees with severe mental
illnesses, using an allocation of $151,086 for the first fiscal year.

Kings
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “High Use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload ranking:

#32
#46
#53
7.5%
Yes
#21
#37

(98,404)
(1,341.3)
(56%)

(6.29)
(1,088)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $2,862,035
Probation

Probation:

$549,669

(19%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$45,666

(1.6%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$1,990,331

(70%)

Health, treatment,
services

Health, treatment, services:

$47,902

(2%)

Other law
enforcement

Other law enforcement:

$65,326

(2%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: Jail capacity will be increased from 361 to 441 inmates by adding bunk beds in designated housing units. The Plan
includes the aggressive pursuit of funding under AB 900. According to a January 11, 2012, article the county has already
3
added 126 bunk beds to day rooms.
AB 900: Kings County requested $30,000,000 for Phase I Jail Construction awards but was unsuccessful. The county
applied for $33,000,000 in Phase II funds and is ranked first to receive the award. Sheriff David Robinson has a jail
4
expansion plan that would allow the facility to add 252 jail beds.

Alternatives to incarcaration
Pretrial: Yes. The Sheriff will administer an electronic monitoring programming for pre-trial inmates. However, the
proposed budget does not indicate how much will be allocated toward the program.
Sentenced: Yes. An electronic monitoring program for sentenced offenders will be operated by the Probation Department
and is expected to expand later in the fiscal year. The plan acknowledges the availability of alternative sanctions and
specialized courts without making a commitment to use them. A live-in drug treat program “will be heavily considered.”
Overall, the plan does not clearly state to what extent, if any, these alternatives will be utilized.
Post release community supervision: No. It is clear that Probation will be responsible for supervising individuals on post
release community supervision; however, the plan does not specify any evidence-based practices to be used with this
particular population.

Los Angeles
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “High Use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#1
(6,350,698)
#22
(2,020.7)
#29
(70%)
Not available
No
#22
(6.21)
#1
(54,841)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012:5 $112,558,273
Probation

Probation:

$8,631,000

(23%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$9,398,000

(25%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$9,018,000

(24%)

Health, treatment,
services
Other law
enforcement

Health, treatment, services:

$5,026,000

(13%)

Other law enforcement:

$0

(0%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: The Plan includes a schedule for re-opening closed or curtailed jail space in order to provide additional jail beds,
beginning October 16, 2011, and culminating on February 26, 2011. The Plan for reopening closed jail facilities will result in
4,234 new jail beds and 471 new personnel if followed. The First Quarter Budget includes $9,018,000 and 234 positions for
the Sheriff Department to re-open approximately 1,700 jail beds to house non-non-nons sentenced to county jail.
AB 900: Los Angeles has applied for, and is ranked first to receive, $100,000,000 in Phase II funds.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: Yes. “There is a [Countywide Criminal Justice Coordination Committee] CCJCC subcommittee comprised of
representatives from the Court, Public Defender, Alternate Public Defender, Sheriff and Probation currently working on
improving and streamlining the Pre-Trial Release Decision-making process.”
Sentenced: Yes. “The Sheriff’s Department currently utilizes CBAC [Community-Based Alternatives to Custody] to manage
the sentenced jail population. Alternative custody options under CBAC include: 1) Station Workers 2) Work Release and 3)
Electronic Monitoring including GPS monitoring.” “An enhancement to the program is the potential implementation of the
Northpointe COMPAS Assessment (Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions) or other
validated assessment tool.” A risk assessment tool may also be utilized to identify offenders for early release “[s]hould the
need arise.”
Post release community supervision: Yes. The Probation Department is implementing for the Post Release Community
Supervision population a risk-needs assessment tool (the Level of Service/Case Management Inventory); an Individualized
Treatment Plan (ITP) including reassessment of treatment to ensure program effectiveness and client compliance; the
Working Alliance Inventory Survey (WAI-SR) to measure working relationship between probation officer and supervisee;
motivational interviewing techniques; GPS or electronic monitoring; and Probation Adult Alternative Work Service
(PAAWS).

Monterey
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State Prison “High Use” County?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-Realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#20
#19
#18
12.0%
No
#10
#21

(259,622)
(2,074.9)
(78%)

(8.72%)
(3,211)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $3,846,989
Probation

Probation:

$2,063,897

(54%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$0

(0%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$1,179,935

(31%)

Health, treatment,
services

Health, treatment, services:

$603,157

(16%)

Other law
enforcement

Other law enforcement:

$0

(0%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: The plan does not discuss the expansion of jail facilities in detail, but mentions the need for a “more functional
facility and higher number of beds.” According to budget summary documents, all of the Sheriff’s allocation will be used to
add jail capacity. That is, $1,093,931 will pay for additional beds, and $86,004 will fund a new full-time Deputy Sheriff with
6
custodial responsibilities.
AB 900: Monterey applied for $80,000,000 in Phase I funding and was denied. However, the County submitted an
application for $80,000,000 Phase II funding, with which the Sheriff proposes building a new facility for a net gain of 160
new beds.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: No. The plan authorizes Probation to employ investigative staff for recommending defendants for own
recognizance release or other pretrial alternatives. However, the plan does not discuss which alternatives will be
considered or how they will be administered. Funds in the budget have not been allocated for any pre-trial programming.
The plan indicates that the District Attorney opposes pretrial release, based on the assertion that pretrial release will result
in fewer dispositions of cases and more new crime.
Sentenced: Yes. In an effort to release low-level offenders from custody to alternative programs, the County will utilize
electronic monitoring, work furlough, and day reporting, as well as makes mention of residential treatment beds,
transitional housing, restorative justice programs, and employment counseling. However, no funds in the budget are
clearly allocated to administer these alternatives. The County will evaluate an inmate’s in-custody behavior, progress in jail
programs, pre-sentence report and court commitment to determine which alternative to incarceration is most appropriate
for the inmate.
Post Release Community Supervision: Yes. The Probation Department will utilize a risk and needs assessment tool, a
system of graduated sanctions, family strengthening and cognitive skill building programs, and has proposed to create a
Reentry Services Center modeled after day reporting programs to supervise the Post Release Community Supervision
population.

Orange
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “High Use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#3
#51
#56
11.8%
Yes
#37
#6

(1,923,896)
(1,256.9)
(53%)

(4.19)
(14,476)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $23,078,393
Probation

Probation:

$6,692,733

(29%)

Sheriff:

$13,616,251

(59%)

Add jail
capacity

Add jail capacity:

Unknown

Health,
treatment,
services
Other law
enforcement

Health, treatment, services:

$2,077,055

(9%)

Other law enforcement:

$692,354

(3%)

Sheriff

Jail expansion
AB 109: The Plan mentions applying for AB 900 funding to support the construction of 750 jail beds. The Central Women’s
Jail with a 352-bed capacity is currently closed due to a low jail census and the Musick Facility is partially closed due to a low
jail census and ongoing repair work. It is anticipated that all jail facilities will need to be fully operational within 6 to 12
months, which will require additional jail staffing and resources to meet operational needs.
AB 900: Orange has applied for $100,000,000 in Phase II funds. The request for Phase I funding was unsuccessful.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: Yes. Plan acknowledges AB 109’s statutory authorization to develop an electronic monitoring program.
Sentenced: Yes. The Sheriff’s Office and jail “will consider in-custody behavior, participation and progress in jail programs
and services, the pre-sentence report and court commitment, eligibility based on current charges and prior convictions, and
availability of the alternatives to incarceration best suited for the prisoner.” The County will administer “the County
Supervised Electronic (Home) Confinement Program as specified in CPC § 1203.016, in which inmates committed to the
County jail or other County correctional facility or inmates participating in a Work Furlough program may voluntarily
participate or involuntarily be placed in a home detention program during their sentence in lieu of confinement in the
County Jail or other County correctional facility.” The Plan notes alternatives to incarceration including “residential
treatment beds, substance abuse services, parenting classes, employment counseling and services, community work
programs and transitional housing.”
Post release community supervision: Yes. The Plan expresses an intent to utilize “the full range of options for community
supervision spanning intensive community supervision, home detention with electronic monitoring, day reporting,
residential substance abuse treatment, outpatient behavioral health treatment (e.g., substance abuse, mental health, sex
offender, batterer’s intervention), urinalysis testing, cognitive behavioral interventions, restorative justice programs,
community service, family strengthening strategies, referral to education, vocational training/employment services and
housing resources.” A validated risk assessment tool will also be employed.

Placer
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “High Use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#22
(209,785)
#39
(1,477.1)
#35
(65%)
Not available
Yes
#27
(5.31%)
#29
(1,866)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $2,986,395
Probation

Probation:

$1,297,628

(43%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$455,495

(15%)

Add jail capacity:

$963,002

(32%)

Health, treatment,
Health, treatment, services:
services

$816,200

(27%)

Other law
enforcement

$154,998

(5%)

Add jail capacity

Other law enforcement:

Jail expansion
AB 109: While the Main Jail has decreased staffing during the last several years, it is expected that the County will need to
re-open the entire jail due to realignment. The estimated cost for new corrections officers is $2,618,556 for FY 2011-12
Positions.
AB 900: Placer applied for but was not awarded Phase I funding for new jail construction. Placer applied for, but is ranked
last to receive, $29,543,863 in Phase II funds.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: Yes. “Most recently, the Placer County Probation Department and Placer County Superior courts have instituted a
program for pre-trial release of un-sentenced inmates using electronic monitoring.”
Sentenced: Yes. “Once an offender has been sentenced or booked into the county jail, jail, treatment and probation staff
will collaborate on possible transition from county jail to an alternative to incarceration, if appropriate.” Current
alternatives include electronic monitoring and work release programs.
Post release community supervision: Yes. For the PRCS population, Probation will employ a risk and needs assessment
and case plan, intensive community supervision, electronic monitoring, residential substance abuse treatment, outpatient
behavioral health treatment, substance abuse and mental health services, batterer’s intervention, urinalysis testing,
cognitive behavioral interventions, community service, and referral to educational, vocational, and housing resources. The
Probation Department will need $1,097,628 to meet its obligations to PRCS supervisees.

Riverside
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail
State prison “High Use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#4
#7
#20
7.1%
Yes
#42
#7

(1,310,947)
(2,119.2)
(76%)

(3.88)
(14,304)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $21,074,467
Probation
Sheriff
Add jail
capacity
Health,
treatment,
services
Other law
enforcement

Probation:

$5,838,954

(28%)

Sheriff:

$6,244,948

(30%)

Add jail capacity:

$3,800,000

(18%)

Health, treatment, services:

$4,142,247

(20%)

Other law enforcement:

$1,042,341

(5%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: The Sheriff’s Department plans to maximize county jail capacity. The five jails have a combined maximum capacity
of 3,904 beds. The Sheriff’s AB 109 Plan, which was approved by the BoS on October 18, 2011, states that “the long term
solution for Riverside County is the expansion of jail bed space and capacity.” The plan attributes an additional 38
correctional deputies to meeting the floor staffing needs created by AB 109. Since 60 correctional deputies are estimated
to cost approximately $6 million, at the cost of $100,000 per correctional deputy, the additional 38 would be $3.8 million.
AB 900: Riverside did not apply for Phase I funding. Riverside applied for $100,000,000 in Phase II funds, and is ranked
second to receive it.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: Yes. Draft plan calls for the use of home detention and electronic monitoring. The Superior Court’s Pretrial
Services Division may play a role in developing the criteria.
Sentenced: Yes. The Sheriff’s Department plans to utilize alternatives to incarceration through the Riverside Alternative
Sentencing Program (RASP). This includes the use of home detention and electronic monitoring, Work Release, and various
Post Custody Support Programs (PCSP) to include but not be limited to Substance Abuse Treatment, Employment
Counseling and Assistance, Social Skills Development, and Transitional Housing.
Post release community supervision: Yes. The PRCS population will receive services consistent with evidence-based
supervision practices which include the following: supervision intake, assignment to supervision based upon assessment
results, development of a supervision case plan, motivational interviewing, Courage to Change curriculum, referral to
services according to criminogenic needs, and graduated sanctions as needed to promote rehabilitation.

Sacramento
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “High Use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#8
#5
#50
13.3%
No
#4
#4

(897,184)
(2,835.0)
(57%)

(10.58)
(18,117)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012:7 $13,140,278
Probation

Probation:

$4,180,332

(32%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$3,001,072

(23%)

Add jail
capacity

Add jail capacity:

$5,984,734

(46%)

Health, treatment, services:

$0

(0%)

Other law enforcement:

$0

(0%)

Health,
treatment,
services
Other law
enforcement

Jail expansion
AB 109: The county plans to re-open 275 beds in the Roger Bauman Facility (RBF) at the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Facility.
39 new custodial staff will be hired for this purpose. As of February 2012, 60 to 75 individuals are being held in RBF.
AB 900: The county did not receive Phase I AB 900 funds in 2009. In 2011, the county applied for $100 million in Phase II
AB 900 funds. Sacramento is fifth in line to receive those funds, and is thus unlikely to receive them in this funding cycle.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: Yes. The county plans to implement a pre-trial release and supervised Released On Own Recognizance (OR)
program though the Sheriff’s Department, to be staffed by 11 new Records Specialists. The county will use the researchbased Virginia Pretrial Risk Assessment Instrument to make the pre-release determination, and expects to screen 135
arrestees daily. An estimated 50-75 defendants in the supervised OR program will be electronically monitored. The FY
2011-12 budget for this program is $582,434. As of March 2012, the program has not yet been put into operation.
Sentenced: Yes. The Sheriff’s Department will supervise individuals convicted of low-level offenses through electronic
monitoring (EM) by GPS or other means, including through alcohol and drug monitoring and face to face contact.
Individuals in this program will be allowed to seek employment and attend school, but must otherwise stay at home during
all times except for pre-approved scheduled absences. The plan notes that up to 75 additional offenders will be supervised
under the expanded EM program, but it is unclear if that additional capacity defendants in the new pre-trial release
program. The county has set aside $2,745,888 for the program, of which the Sheriff’s Department expects to recoup
$800,000 in program participant fees. People under EM supervision who are unable to pay may obtain a waiver of the fee.
Post release community supervision: Yes. The Probation Department is opening a new Adult Day Reporting Center, in
which Intensive Supervision Units will supervise up to 600 people on PRCS annually. Probation staff will use a validated,
risk-needs assessment tool to determine the appropriate level of supervision for each offender and to develop an
individualized case plan. Supervision will include: a cognitive behavioral treatment program; employment training and
placement, including assistance obtaining necessary job documents; graduated sanctions; and Kiosk fingerprint reporting.

San Bernardino
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State Prison “High Use” County?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#5
#13
#14
12.1%
Yes
#8
#2

(1,259,274)
(2,196.8)
(81%)

(9.79%)
(22,351)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012:8 $25,785,600
Probation

Probation:

$21,921,806

(85%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$3,553,668

(14%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$350,000

(1%)

Health, treatment,
services

Health, treatment, services:

$681,754

(3%)

Other law
enforcement

Other law enforcement:

$0

(0%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: The County plan does not discuss jail expansion; however, the budget allocates $150,000 in AB 109 funds for
remodeling the West Valley Detention Center and $200,000 in AB 109 funds for remodeling the Glen Helen Rehabilitation
Center.
AB 900: The County applied for and received $100,000,000 in AB 900 Phase I funds for the expansion of Adelanto Detention
Center. Expansion will result in a net gain of 1,368 new beds to the facility, which currently has only a 706-bed capacity.
Estimated to cost a total of $111,000,000, construction began in February 2011 and will be complete in August 2013. The
County did not apply for Phase II funds.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: No. The plan does not discuss a strategy specific to managing the pre-trial population. The plan describes in detail
alternatives to be used for the sentenced and PRCS populations, and it is unclear both in the plan or budget whether such
alternatives, including home detention with electronic monitoring, will be used for individuals awaiting trial.
Sentenced: Yes. The plan provides for alternative custody programs such as educational, vocational, and counseling
diversion, work release, and home detention with electronic monitoring. The Sheriff’s Work Release unit will expand to
eventually include other alternative programs, including county parole and voluntary work release encompassing
community service and manual labor. However, it is unclear from the budget just how much money will be allocated to the
Work Release Unit or expansion of alternative programs.
Post release community supervision: Yes. The Probation Department plans to establish three Day Reporting Centers the
Central Valley, West Valley, and High Desert. Probation has previously operated Day Reporting Centers for the juvenile
population and will expand this model to supervise the PRCS population. County representatives offering health, workforce,
and transitional assistance will also be located in the DRC. Additionally, officers will use a risk and needs assessment tool,
motivational interviewing and cognitive restructuring techniques, and a system of intermediate sanction to include home
detention with electronic monitoring or GPS, mandatory community service, and assignment to a State Fire Camp.

San Diego
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “High Use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#2
(2,019,720)
#29
(1,754.8)
#40
(62%)
Not available
No
#18
(6.82%)
#3
(19,696)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012:* $25,100,000
Probation

Probation:

$5,000,000

(20%)

Sheriff:

$2,800,000

(11%)

Add jail
capacity

Add jail capacity:

$200,000

(1%)

Health,
treatment,
services
Other law
enforcement

Health, treatment, services:

$3,000,000

(12%)

Other law enforcement:

$333,821

(1%)

Sheriff

*The CCP did not allocate $13,766,179.

Jail expansion
AB 109: San Diego did not include jail expansion in its original realignment implementation plan but has since amended the
plan to provide the sheriff’s department with $200,000 to take the first steps toward expanding the East Mesa Detention
Facility by 400 to 500 beds.
AB 900: San Diego was awarded $100,000,000 in Phase I funding for new jail construction. This consists of the
replacement of the existing women’s detention facility in Santee, constructing 1,270 beds for a net gain of 842 beds. Project
costs are estimated at $268 million, of which the State’s share is up to $100 million. This design-build project has an
estimated construction start date of November 2012 with completion in November 2015.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: Yes. Plan calls for asking the court to consider modifying bail schedules and reducing bail for low risk offenders in
accordance with risk assessment information. Plan calls for expediting the resolution of drug diversion and deferred entry
of judgment cases, use of home detention and electronic monitoring, GPS, alcohol monitoring, work furlough and
residential drug treatment.
Sentenced: Yes. The County’s plan calls for providing risk and needs assessments to all parties, training all parties on
alternative sentencing, work release and work furlough, home confinement and electronic monitoring, and GPS
supervision.
Post release community supervision: Yes. The County will employ risk based supervision according to the offender’s
assessed risk of committing a new crime, individual case plans, intervention services designed to address criminogenic
needs and facilitate behavior change, swift and sure sanctions for violations, incentives for compliant behavior and
community based treatment services. Sanctions may include community services; work projects; home detention;
Electronic or GPS monitoring; referral to Reentry Court; and referral to Drug Court if deemed eligible; and up to 10 days of
flash incarceration.

San Francisco
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State Prison “High Use” County?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-Realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#10
(587,869)
#23
(2,016.4)
#9
(83%)
Not available
No
#43
(3.37%)
#10
(6,849)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012:9 $5,049,838
Probation

Probation:

$4,103,767

(81%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$300,000

(6%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$50,938

(1%)

Health, treatment,
services

Health, treatment, services:

$951,457

(19%)

Other law
enforcement

Other law enforcement:

$0

(0%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: The County operates one intake and release facility and five housing jails, one of which is closed due to low jail
populations. However, the County plans to reopen this 360-bed facility when the others meet capacity.
AB 900: San Francisco has received no AB 900 funding. The County submitted an Interest Statement for Phase II funding,
but was not invited to submit an application.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: Yes. The Sheriff will increase alternatives to incarceration, including involuntary home detention and electronic
monitoring for the pretrial population. The District Attorney plans to hire Alternative Sentencing Planners to help develop
potential alternatives to incarceration for both the pretrial and sentenced populations. Planners will consider input from
Probation, the defense bar, and advocates for victim rights.
Sentenced: Yes. Alternatives to incarceration for sentenced offenders will include electronic monitoring, home detention,
residential treatment beds, restorative justice classes, substance abuse services, parenting classes, the 5 Keys Charter High
School, employment counseling and services, and transitional housing. An inmate’s in-custody behavior, participation in jail
programs, pre-sentence report and court commitment, and prior convictions will be evaluated before placement onto an
alternative. According to appropriations documents, $150,000 in AB 109 money has been allocated to alternatives.
Post Release Community Supervision: Yes. Probation will utilize a range of supervision techniques, including routine
home visits, graduated sanctions, home detention with electronic monitoring, day reporting, residential substance abuse
treatment, outpatient behavioral health treatment, and cognitive behavioral interventions, among others. Notably, the
Sheriff and Probation will provide “pre-release reach-in services” through which staff will start developing a post-release
plan 60 days prior to an inmate’s release, using a risk and needs assessment tool.

San Joaquin
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “High Use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-Realignment Felony Probation Workload/ ranking:

#15
#2
#33
4.9%
No
#33
#12

(413,401)
(3,250.7)
(67%)

(4.47%)
(5,643)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $6,785,908
Probation

Probation:

$2,029,923

(30%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$590,749

(9%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$1,833,046

(27%)

Health, treatment, Health, treatment, services:
services

$2,067,248

(30%)

Other law
enforcement

$0

(0%)

Other law enforcement:

Jail expansion

AB 109: The Sheriff’s Office will use additional staff to increase jail capacity by an additional 210 beds. The plan budget
provides for 10 newly hired correctional officers.
AB 900: The County applied for and received $80,000,000 in AB 900 Phase I funds for the expansion of John J. Zunino
Detention Facility for a net gain of 1,280 beds. However, construction has not begun, as the project has not yet been
through the State Public Works Board approval process as of October 2011. The County did not apply for Phase II funds.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: No. The plan budget allocates $70,000 from the County’s AB 109 training and implementation grant to implement
a Pretrial Assessment tool for the Court to utilize in determining which individuals are appropriate for release. However, the
plan does not provide for any pretrial services or programming beyond the assessment tool.
Sentenced: Yes. The Sheriff’s Office currently utilizes a risk and needs assessment tool to place sentenced individuals on
home detention with electronic monitoring and will use AB 109 funds to expand the program to include GPS and alcohol
monitoring. The Sheriff will also expand an existing Alternative Work Program and reinstitute a parole program by which
eligible inmates are released early. Particularly notable is the County’s commitment, both in the plan and budget, to
community-based pre‐release transitional housing, where inmates receive life skills and employment training, as well as an
opportunity to reconnect with family members.
Post release community supervision: Yes. With a risk and needs assessment tool, Probation will utilize motivational
interviewing, cognitive behavioral therapy, anger management, parenting skills classes, residential and outpatient mental
health and substance abuse treatment, and restorative justice programs to supervise the PRCS population. A system of
graduated sanctions will include home detention with electronic monitoring or GPS, community service, and Re‐entry
Court. Both the plan and budget provide for a Day Reporting Center.

San Mateo
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “High Use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#14
#41
#26
12.3%
No
#26
#14

(462,417)
(1,432.4)
(71%)

(5.38%)
(5,162)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $4,222,90210
Probation

Probation:

$1,163,378

(28%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$0

(0%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$0

(0%)

Health, treatment,
services

Health, treatment, services:

$2,385,502

(58%)

Other law
enforcement

Other law enforcement:

$417,545

(10%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: The Sheriff’s Office has not requested any AB 109 funds for FY 2011-12; however, the county’s draft plan indicates
that for FY 2012-13, the Sheriff’s Office is requesting $3,195,979 to reopen the Medium Security Facility (MSF) in December
2012 at full capacity of 116 inmates.
AB 900: In 2009, San Mateo unsuccessfully applied for $100,000,000 in Phase I AB 900 funding to increase jail capacity by
506 jail beds and was not invited to apply for Phase II funds in 2011. Nevertheless, the Board of Supervisors has approved
11
construction of a new jail at a cost of $145 to 160 million, to be completed in 2014. The new jail is expected to have a bed
capacity of 488 to 552, with an additional 88 transitional beds that may be converted to traditional jail beds, if necessary.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: No. The county has a pre-trial services unit for misdemeanor defendants that is jointly administered by the
Sheriff’s Office and the Probation Department. The county’s draft plan contains no discussion of expanding this program to
include low-level, low-risk felony defendants or to otherwise improve or expand the county’s current pre-trial program.
Sentenced: Unclear. According to the draft plan, the Sheriff’s Office intends to assess sentenced individuals for their
eligibility to be placed in alternative custodial programs, such as Work Release and electronic monitoring. However, no
specific goal is articulated to expand custodial alternatives to non-violent, non-serious, non-sex offenders who will now be
sentenced to time in county jail under AB 109. Moreover, the Sheriff’s Office has not requested AB 109 funds to expand the
currently underutilized electronic monitoring program.
Post release community supervision: Yes. The Probation Department has implemented for the Post Release Community
Supervision population evidence-based practices that San Mateo has historically used for county probationers, including
the CAIS risk-needs assessment tool; a cognitive behavioral program; an intensive, outpatient day treatment program
focused on drug offenders; and motivational interviewing.

Santa Barbara
County Population:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “High Use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#18
#36
#17
15.0%
Yes
#35
#22

(271,450)
(1,532.8)
(79%)

(4.32)
(3,210)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $3,878,876
Probation

Sheriff

Add jail
capacity
Health,
treatment,
services
Other law
enforcement

Probation:

$1,386,366

(36%)

Sheriff:

$1,047,433

(27%)

Add jail capacity:

$759,898

(20%)

Health, treatment, services:

$566,550

(15%)

Other law enforcement:

$60,000

(2%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: The county will re-open 43 beds at the Santa Maria Branch Jail. A total of twelve Sheriff’s Department staff will be
hired for this jail expansion.
AB 900: In November 2009, the county was awarded $56.3 million in AB 900 Phase I funding for construction of a new 304bed facility. The county applied to exchange its award for $80,000,000 in Phase II funds, to construct a new 372-bed jail,
and is ranked third among medium-sized counties to receive those funds. Construction is scheduled to begin in May 2015.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: No. The county’s realignment plan calls for the development of a pre-trial and pre-sentence release program
though the Sheriff’s Department. However, no money is budgeted for such a program. Pre-trial inmates in the county’s
jails are not currently assessed for their flight risk or their risk to public safety using a validated risk tool.
Sentenced: Yes. The county’s plan notes that individuals who have been convicted of low-level offenses comprise the
majority of felony offenders in Santa Barbara. The Sheriff’s Department will expand the capacity of its electronic monitoring
(EM) program and Day Reporting Center. The Probation and Sheriff’s Departments will both use the evidence-based
COMPAS tool to assess inmates for early release under the supervision of the Probation Department’s home detention
program or day reporting center (with EM). 100 additional GPS units will be purchased for use by both the Sheriff and the
Probation Department. The District Attorney will hold staff trainings on alternative sentencing strategies and use of
“recidivism reduction analysis” in sentencing recommendations. The Public Defender will hire an investigative social worker
to identify and locate appropriate treatment programs that may be used to develop alternative sentencing plans for
individual offenders. Four specialized county courts will continue to focus on alternative sentencing strategies.
Post release community supervision: Yes. The Probation Department will assess individuals on PRCS using an evidencebased risk-needs assessment tool. Other aspects of the program include graduated sanctions; creation of a traditional adult
day reporting center; cognitive behavioral services; outpatient behavioral health treatment; sober/transitional housing; and
restorative justice programs. The plan notes the importance of employment assistance and training in re-entry; however,
no funding is allocated for these services.

Santa Clara
County Population/ranking:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail
State prison “High Use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#6
#35
#26
0%
Yes
#16
#8

(1,155,153)
(1,538.6)
(71%)

(7.03%)
(9,888)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012:12 $12,566,312
Probation

Probation:

$5,008,421

(40%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$1,265,469

(10%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$4,986,097

(40%)

Health, treatment,
services

Health, treatment, services:

$3,653,077

(29%)

Other law
enforcement

Other law enforcement:

$0

(0%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: The Implementation Plan does not mention jail expansion. However, the Spending Plan provides for $4,986,097 for
the costs of additional jail beds.
AB 900: Santa Clara did not apply for Phase 1 funding. Santa Clara was invited to apply for Phase 2 funding. On January 10,
2012, the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors decided not to apply for Phase 2 funding.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: Yes. Probation has been trained on the CAIS risk/needs assessment tool to be used with sentenced inmates prior
to reentry and pre-sentenced inmates to guide and support recommendations to the Court for sentencing purposes
(probably not for pretrial release). The plan mentions AB 109’s authorization to use pre-trial release programs but makes
no commitment to using them. The budget makes no allocations for pretrial services or programs.
Sentenced: Yes. Supervised treatment and rehabilitation services will be available to judges at the time of sentencing
offenders eligible for community supervision. The Court will redesign forms, calendars and processes to give defendants
the maximum exposure to the advantages of treatment for substance abuse, treatment for the mentally ill and mentally
challenged, and rehabilitation services. A re-entry team will be established to assist offenders in reintegrating into the
community after serving commitments in county jail. There is a Weekend Work Program for low-risk sentenced offenders.
Participants pay to participate in the program. The participants serve their sentences on weekends, allowing them to retain
their regular employment.
Post release community supervision: Yes. The Probation Department entered into a contract with the National Council on
Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) for the Correctional Assessment and Intervention System (CAIS) assessment tool, which
combines case management classification system, risk and needs assessment, and a web-based data system that supports
quality control. The Probation Department will train staff in Motivational Interviewing. They will use intensive supervision,
a validated risk/needs assessment tool, evidence based programs provided by county agencies and community based
organizations, home detention with electronic monitoring and/or GPS to support alternatives to custody and to enhance
supervision options, community service , random substance abuse testing, cognitive behavioral interventions, substance
abuse treatment, flash incarceration and re-entry courts. The re-entry model for the PRCS population will also include a reentry team.

Shasta
County Population:
Crime rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “High Use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#30
(107,604)
#14
(2,176.2)
#12
(82%)
Not available
Yes
#3
(13.42%)
#25
(2,230)

AB 109 allocation for FY 2011-2012: $2,988,875
Probation

Sheriff

Add jail
capacity
Health,
treatment,
services
Other law
enforcement

Probation:

$1,046,758

(35%)

Sheriff:

$311,468

(10%)

Add jail capacity:

$650,000

(22%)

Health, treatment, services:

$730,649

(24%)

Other law enforcement:

$0

(0%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: Shasta County plans to re-open up to 128 beds in a vacant floor of its jail. Six Correctional Officers and two Public
Safety Service Officers will staff this jail expansion. According to the county’s plan, the Sheriff’s may also contract for jail
beds in other counties and/or contract for fire camp beds while the new jail staff is being trained.
AB 900: Shasta applied for $25 million in Phase I AB 900 funds in 2009, to add 229 jail beds; but the application was
rejected. In January 2012, the county applied for $33 million in Phase II funds; and has been ranked second among small
counties to receive those funds.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: No. Despite the fact that approximately 80% of Shasta’s current jail population are defendants who are being
held pending adjudication of their cases, the county’s plan does not discuss pre-trial assessment or release of those
individuals who may be deemed a low threat to public safety. The plan sets aside $240,000 in undesignated realignment
funding that could be used to create a pre-trial services program, pursuant to AB 109’s encouragement to counties to use
evidence-based alternatives to incarceration. Instead, Shasta County will continue to rely upon incarceration as the primary
way of supervising low-risk individuals who are awaiting trial but cannot afford to post bail.
Sentenced: Yes. The Sheriff’s Work Release Program will be expanded to supervise an additional 200 sentenced individuals
in alternative detention. The Probation Department’s Home Electronic Confinement Program will also be expanded to
supervise up to 100 additional sentenced individuals.
Post release community supervision: Yes. The Probation Department is implementing the STRONG risk-needs assessment
tool for individuals on PRCS. An Assessment Center will be opened and staffed by Probation, Mental Health, and other
service providers. However, the location of the center has not yet been determined, and staffing and programming options
are still being explored by the CCP; thus, operational details for the Assessment Center are still lacking. PRCS programs will
include cognitive behavioral services and motivational interviewing.

Solano
County Population:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State Prison “High Use” County?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#19
(264,962)
#9
(2,468.2)
#16
(80%)
Not available
No
#12
(7.76%)
#18
(3,393)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012:13 $3,807,662
Probation

Probation:

$998,656

(26%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$894,824

(24%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:14

$541,183

(14%)

Health, treatment,
services

Health, treatment, services:

$905,150

(24%)

Other law
enforcement

Other law enforcement:

$212,478

(6%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: According to its plan, the County will reopen an 80-bed module the Claybank Sentenced Detention Facility. Five
correctional officers will be hired for daily housing duties and two correctional officers will be hired for facility operations.
AB 900: The County applied for and received $61,545,000 in AB 900 Phase I funds for the construction of a new 362-bed
facility, called Claybank Facility II. The new jail is estimated to cost $93 million total and expected to open in June 2014.
Construction will begin in June 2012. The County did not apply for Phase II funds.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: Yes. The Sheriff has developed an Alternatives to Custody Program for pre-adjudicated low- to medium-risk
offenders. After arraignment, Probation will interview the individual and make a recommendation to the court on the
appropriateness of an alternative program, including Voice ID, alcohol monitoring, electronic monitoring, and GPS.
Probation will use a validated risk and needs assessment tool in making its recommendation; however, the Sheriff will
ultimately decide which alternative program will be used.
Sentenced: Yes. The Sheriff’s Office currently operates Work Furlough and Work Release programs for sentenced
offenders, and the plan states that sentenced inmates may be subject to home detention with electronic monitoring or
GPS. Additional alternatives, such as residential treatment and restorative justice programs, are mentioned in the plan, but
no commitment is made to using them for the sentenced population.
Post Release Community Supervision: Yes. Probation will employ a Day Reporting Center, motivational interviewing,
cognitive behavioral therapy, and a system of intermediate sanctions for the PRCS population. Intermediate sanctions
include mandatory community service, community based residential programs, home detention, random drug testing, and
compliance checks completed by local police departments.

Sonoma
County Population:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “high use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#17
(310,043)
#48
(1,316.6)
#57
(52%)
Not available
No
#19
(6.41%)
#26
(2,053)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $3,240,562
Probation

Probation:

$ 1,636,800

(51%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$ 682,000

(18%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$ 570,000

(21%)

$ 217,500

(7%)

$0

(0%)

Health, treatment, Health, treatment, services:
services
Other law
enforcement

Other law enforcement:

Jail expansion
AB 109: The County’s plan allocates funding to open an additional unit of 40-60 beds in the North County Detention Facility
15
beginning January 2012. The Sheriff’s Office will add six new custody staff for this purpose.
AB 900: Sonoma County applied for $43,000,000 in Phase II funds. The county is ranked sixth by the Corrections Standards
Authority among medium-sized counties, and thus is unlikely to receive Phase II funds.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: No. Development of a pre-trial release program was recommended by the county’s Criminal Justice Master Plan,
which was released in 2006 in response to jail overcrowding. However, no funding is allocated for such a program during FY
2011-12. Instead, the plan notes “possible implementation” of a limited pilot pretrial release program in July 2012.
Sentenced: Yes. The County will rely upon detention alternatives that are already in place through the Sheriff’s Office,
including work release, work furlough, and county parole. Home detention with electronic monitoring (EM) will also be
reinstated through use of a contractor. Additionally, a new day reporting center will provide supervision as an alternative
to jail custody. Inmates who successfully complete in-custody programming, such as cognitive behavioral skills training,
may be considered for early release into detention alternatives. Individuals who have been sentenced to a split sentence
under P.C. § 1170(h) for low-level offenses are likely candidates to be supervised under the EM program. Despite
significant discussion in the plan regarding the urgent need for alternatives to incarceration in Sonoma County, the amount
of specific funding allocated to detention alternatives is only 5% of the county’s AB 109 budget for FY 2011-12.
Post release community supervision: Yes. The Probation Department is implementing for individuals on PRCS continued
use of a risk-needs assessment tool to create individualized case plans; a new Adult Day Reporting Center with the capacity
to supervise 200 individuals per year; a cognitive behavioral program; a GED program; supervision through EM and alcohol
testing devices; and graduated sanctions. Additionally, multiple county agencies are coming together to fund a 52-week
domestic violence program for indigent offenders that has been shown to reduce recidivism in that population. The plan
also allocates $7,500 for a new methadone treatment program for up to 25 individuals. Finally, the Probation Department
has taken steps to protect the due process rights of individuals under PRCS by creating a Flash Incarceration Authorization
Form wherein the individual can request an administrative appeal of the decision to flash incarcerate.

Stanislaus
County Population:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “high use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#16
#6
#11
17.4%
No
#23
#15

(312,464)
(2,822.9)
(82%)

(6.12)
(4,787)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $6,010,700
Probation

Probation:

$2,256,400

(38%)

Sheriff:

$1,745,990

(29%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$1,245,210

(21%)

Health,
treatment,
services
Other law
enforcement

Health, treatment, services:

$244,485

(4%)

Other law enforcement:

$100,000

(2%)

Sheriff

Jail expansion
AB 109: The county will re-open 150 jail beds using AB 109 funds. Beginning in October 2011, two Deputy Sheriff custodial
positions were added to the county jail along with one Sergeant custodial position.
AB 900: In 2009, Stanislaus applied for and was denied $39.7 million in Phase I AB 900 funding for expansion of the county
jail by 300 additional beds. In January 2012, the county applied for—and will likely receive—$80 million in Phase II AB 900
funds; the Corrections Standards Authority has ranked Stanislaus first among medium-sized counties to receive an award.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: No. The County’s plan does not discuss any pre-trial or pre-sentence release program, despite the fact that—
according to information in the county’s plan—up to 81% of the individuals confined in the county jail are pre-trial
defendants. The plan only briefly mentions the Sheriff’s expanded discretion to use electronic monitoring to supervise pretrial inmates under Penal Code § 1203.018.
Sentenced: Yes. The Sheriff’s Department will use AB 109 funding to expand the Home Detention program to supervise an
additional 200 offenders through electronic monitoring; supervised individuals will be allowed to maintain their
employment or schooling. The Alternative Work Program (AWP) is also described in the county’s plan as a “jail alternative,”
but it is unclear that AWP is an “alternative to incarceration” within the meaning of AB 109. Individuals on AWP perform
daily tasks such as trash clean up and graffiti abatement, but the plan’s description of the program indicates that
participants in the program return to jail at night.
Post release community supervision: Unclear. The Probation Department is expanding capacity of its adult day reporting
center to include an additional 100 individuals on Post Release Community Supervision. Despite AB 109’s clear mandate
that counties spend allocated funds on evidence-based practices, there is no discussion at all of evidence-based programs in
the county’s plan.

Tulare
County Population:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “high use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#21
(256,276)
#8
(2,549.5)
#45
(59%)
Not available
No
#31
(4.56%)
#13
(5,186)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012:16 $5,657,817
Probation

Probation:17

$2,793,717

(49%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$1,260,123

(22%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$1,603,977

(28%)

Health, treatment, services:

$0

(0%)

Other law enforcement:

$0

(0%)

Health, treatment,
services
Other law
enforcement

Jail expansion
AB 109: The Sheriff will open three of five empty 50-bed pods in the Adult Pre-Trial Detention Facility to house realigned
18
inmates and will hire 45 additional correctional officers to do so. The plan also discusses the option, after FY 2011-2012,
of installing prefabricated structures adjacent to existing jail facilities, to house inmates until permanent housing can be
constructed. The plan states that the Sheriff is projected to receive $23.9 million to fully implement AB 109 through 2015.
The $23.9 million will be used to add new jail space, hire correctional staff, and support medical and mental health
expenses for inmates.
AB 900: The County did not apply for AB 900 Phase I funds, but has applied for $60,000,000 in Phase II funds.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: No. The plan does not discuss alternative programs, such as home detention, for the pretrial population. The plan
mentions the need for more inmates to be released from the County’s Adult Pre-Trial Detention Facility, but does not
discuss on what terms, only providing that 5 new correctional officers and a new 8-person van will be needed to transport
released pretrial individuals from the facility’s rural location to Visalia.
Sentenced: Yes. The Sheriff’s Department currently utilizes a Work Alternative Program, residential substance abuse
treatment, manual labor programs, and a Day Reporting Center for sentenced inmates. However, inmates must pay to
participate in the Work Alternative Program. The plan indicates that the Sheriff will consider contracting for reentry
counseling, but there is no budget allocation for such services.
Post release community supervision: Yes. Probation currently employs motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral
therapy, and will expand home detention with electronic monitoring or GPS for PRCS violators, with 50 offenders on home
detention at any given time. However, the plan does not mention a system of graduated sanctions and does not discuss any
guidelines to be used in determining when to place a PRCS violator on home detention. Probation will contract for up to 10
individuals to be placed in community-based transitional housing for up to 60 days, but the plan does not specify any
allocations for this purpose. Similarly, the plan discusses a risk and needs assessment tool, but makes no commitment to
using one for post release supervisees.

Ventura
County Population:
Crime Rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “high use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#12
(515,094)
#54
(1,155.4)
#24
(73%)
Not available
No
#36
(4.28%)
#16
(4,430)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $5,696,790
Probation

Probation:

$1,470,383

(26%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$234,000

(4%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:19

$1,108,284

(19%)

$943,000

(17%)

$320,000

(6%)

Health, treatment, Health, treatment, services:
services
Other law
enforcement

Other law enforcement:

Jail expansion
AB 109: Ventura will add jail beds by placing bunks in the common areas of existing housing sections of the county jails.
The Sheriff’s Office expects to add 270 additional beds by August 2012.
AB 900: Ventura has not been awarded, nor applied for, any AB 900 funding for new jail construction.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: No. The County’s plan does address the pre-trial inmate population in Ventura County at all, despite the fact that
approximately 73% of people confined to the county jail are unsentenced.
Sentenced: Yes, but very little. The Sheriff’s Office will implement an electronic monitoring program for 25 inmates out of
an estimated 440 additional offenders who will be brought under county supervision through AB 109. The plan notes that
alternatives to incarceration such as expanded electronic monitoring and accelerated release are under consideration, but
will not be implemented at this time. Thus, despite AB 109’s encouragement to counties to use evidence-based
alternatives to incarceration and the “general consensus among members of the CCP that realignment will be more
successful if the emphasis shifts from incarceration to alternatives to incarceration,” Ventura County will continue to rely
upon incarceration in the county’s already-crowded jails as the primary way of supervising individuals who have been
sentenced for non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual crimes.
Post release community supervision: Yes. The Probation Department will supervise individuals on PRCS at a ratio of 40:1
per probation officer and in a specialized probation unit. Risk-needs assessments will be performed, although the plan
mentions a validated instrument only for assessing risk to public safety. The Probation Department is also implementing
graduated sanctions. Although the plan notes that probation officers will be trained in evidence-based practices, there is
no mention of cognitive behavioral interventions, motivational interviewing, a day reporting center, or other means of
supervision beyond traditional probation practices. The county’s plan funds contracts with service providers to increase
access for PRCS individuals to housing, vocational training, and education.

Yolo
County Population:
Crime rate per 100,000/ranking:
Non-Sentenced Jail Population/ranking:
Immigration Detainees in Jail:
State prison “high use” county?
Probation Failure Rate/ranking:
Pre-realignment Felony Probation Workload/ranking:

#28
(135,447)
#30
(1,748.3)
#13
(81)
Not available
No
#30
(4.68%)
#17
(3,800)

Public Safety Realignment allocation for FY 2011-2012: $2,974,703
Probation

Probation:

$1,032,218

(35%)

Sheriff

Sheriff:

$602,815

(20%)

Add jail capacity

Add jail capacity:

$869,670

(30%)

Health, treatment,
services

Health, treatment, services:

$88,000

(3%)

Other law
enforcement

Other law enforcement:

$300,000

(10%)

Jail expansion
AB 109: The County will increase jail capacity by hiring staff to support 30 unused beds in the Leinberger facility. Another
option contemplated in the plan is supplementing a federal contract for the use of 25 additional beds.
AB 900: The County applied for and was denied $30,000,000 in AB 900 Phase I funds. The County more recently applied for
$42,225,000 in Phase II funds.

Alternatives to incarceration
Pretrial: No. Management of the pretrial population is not specifically discussed in the plan. It is unclear whether the
alternatives to incarceration currently employed by the Sheriff and Probation, such as home detention and GPS monitoring,
will be used for individuals awaiting trial.
Sentenced: Yes. The Sheriff will expand the use of home detention with electronic monitoring for sentenced inmates. The
Sheriff currently screens sentenced inmates for mandatory victim restitution, community service and work incentive
programs.
Post release community supervision: Yes. Probation currently conducts needs assessment of individual supervisees in
developing a case management plan. The department also utilizes cognitive behavioral therapy, residential substance abuse
treatment, drug testing and alcohol monitoring, a system of graduated sanctions for PRCS violators, and electronic and GPS
monitoring, and assists in operating the County’s Drug Court. Other evidence-based practices such as telephone reporting
and restorative justice programs are contemplated in the plan, but not supported in the budget.

1

The “Add jail capacity” figure was calculated by combining the “custody” line item totals from the Contra Costa
County Community Corrections Partnership 2011/12 Criminal Justice Realignment Plan budget document, available
at
http://64.166.146.155/docs/2011/BOS/20111004_164/9113_CCP%20Budget%20and%20Staffing%20Plan%20104-11_final%209-30-11.pdf.
2
Fresno County Community Corrections Partnership, Attachment B, 2011-12 AB 109 Public Safety Realignment
Budget , available at http://www2.co.fresno.ca.us/0110a/Questys_Agenda/PublishedMeetings.htm (submitted to the
Board of Supervisors at the September 13, 2011 meeting, Agenda Item 8, p. 27-29).
3
Eiji Yamashita, Jail population expected to double in 4 years (Jan. 10, 2012), Hanford Sentinel, available at
http://www.hanfordsentinel.com/news/local/jail-population-expected-to-double-in-years/article_475738fc-3bbd11e1-80aa-001871e3ce6c.html#ixzz1o0oJVHju
4
KSEE News, Kings County Sheriff Proposes Jail Expansion to Solve Overcrowding (Jan. 3, 2012), available at
http://www.ksee24.com/news/local/Kings-County-Jail---AAS-136628123.html.
5
The figures below are for the first quarter of FY 2011-2012 only, the budget for which was $37,519,424. At the
time this report went to print in March, 2012, the county’s realignment budget for the entire fiscal year was not
available.
6
See FY 11-12 Budget Summary accompanying the approved plan, available at
http://publicagendas.co.monterey.ca.us/MG101415/AS101434/AS101435/AI105971/Documents.htm
7
It appears that $25,860 was added to the budget from the one-time start up allocation. Therefore, the sum of the
numbers below is greater than the programs allocation that appears here.
8
There is a short narrative describing increased costs, but no budget in the County plan, so all funding amounts
below were gathered from San Bernardino Community Corrections Partnership, Attachment B, FY 2011-12 Cost
Estimates, available at http://cob-sire.sbcounty.gov/sirepub/agdocs.aspx?doctype=summary&itemid=194959.
9
The amounts allocated to Probation and the Sheriff add up to more than the AB 109 allocation for programs
because San Francisco divides the sum of the programs grant ($5,049,838) and the training and retention grant
($356,325) between the Sheriff and Probation. The County plan doesn’t explain this, but the Board of Supervisors
Appropriations do, see San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Appropriating State Assembly Bill 109 Realignment
Fund to Support Expenditures at the Adult Probation and Other Departments for FY2011-2012, available at
http://www.sfbos.org/ftp/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/bosagendas/materials/bag092011_110907.pdf.
10
Because the county plan had not been finalized at the time of printing this report, approximate allocations among
agencies were calculated according to proposed budget allocations for FY 2011-12 distributed at the Community
Corrections Partnership (CCP) meeting on January 26, 2012. San Mateo County Community Corrections
Partnership, Appendix 2A, Summary of AB 109 LIP Budget FY 11-12/FY 12-13 (Jan. 20, 2012) (distributed at San
Mateo County CCP meeting on January 26, 2012).
11
See Niko Kyriakou, San Mateo County brews a fresh idea for new jail (Oct. 9, 2011), San Francisco Examiner,
available at http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/peninsula/2011/10/san-mateo-county-brews-fresh-idea-new-jail.
12
The plan budget exceeds the county’s AB 109 programs allocation; SB 678 grants will also be utilized.
13
All budget data, except for “add jail capacity” is gathered from Solano County Community Corrections
Partnership, Attachment E Appropriation Summary, available at
http://solano.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=991831&GUID=882D64EF-BD69-41B7-98DEBAFB5F36892B.
14
The “Add jail capacity” figure calculated using Solano County Community Corrections Partnership, Attachment B
Stakeholder Funding Request, available at
http://solano.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=991831&GUID=882D64EF-BD69-41B7-98DEBAFB5F36892B. The Sheriff will reopen one module at the Claybank Detention Facility for a net gain of 80 beds,
where $112,881 was proposed for “additional costs for 80 inmates” in the reopened module for 8 months, including
food and clothing. An additional $428,302 was proposed to hire 7 correctional officers for daily housing duties and
facility operations in the reopened module.
15
Brett Wilkison, Sonoma County says shift of state prisoners starts smoothly (Nov. 1, 2011), The Press Democrat,
available at http://www.petaluma360.com/article/20111101/community/111109996?p=all&tc=pgall stating that the
new unit will have 40 to 60 jail beds).
16
There is no budget contained in the county plan. The funding allocations below were drawn from a supplemental
document submitted by Probation to the Board of Supervisors along on the day the plan was approved, available at
http://bosagendas.co.tulare.ca.us/MG317466/AS317491/AI317712/DO317713/DO_317713.pdf.
17
A portion of this allocation includes health, treatment, and other services. The funds allocated to Probation will
create an Adult Supervision Unit with 16 new full-time employees (FTE), but will also fund 2 FTE within the

Mental Health Department for a Multidisciplinary Assessment Team, 3 FTE within the District Attorney’s Office
for a Victim-Offender Reconciliation Team, and 5 FTE within the Public Defender’s Office to address the realigned
populations.
18
Staffing costs for these 45 positions were not specified in either the county plan or its approved budget.
Therefore, the estimated cost for these positions was based on a nine-month budget for the average salaries of a
Correctional Deputy, Detention Services Officer, and Corrections Sergeant, obtained here:
http://agency.governmentjobs.com/tulare/default.cfm.
19
The budget within the county plan did not specify the cost of adding jail capacity. As a result, this figure is an
estimate based on salary costs, averaged from a salary range provided in the plan, of hiring additional Sheriff’s
Office staff for the Electronic Monitoring program and inmate services. The cost of new staff for the Electronic
Monitoring program and inmate services are not included in this figure. However, due to a lack of detail in the
budget, this figure may include a portion of funds used for health and vocational services for inmates.

APPENDIX B
Best of the Best:
Model Evidence-based Programs
from County Implementation Plans

Best of the Best:
Model Evidence-based Programs from County Implementation Plans
Risk and Needs Assessments
Butte County: Sheriff will use an evidence-based risk assessment protocol to determine the eligibility of
sentenced individuals for release into alternatives to incarceration and for pre-trial release of “reasonable
risk” defendants.
Del Norte County: Sheriff and Probation will partner to ensure that the STRONG risk-needs assessment is
administered to every qualified sentenced individual in jail, in order to facilitate a smoother transition into
probation supervision and to assist with re-entry.
Sacramento County: Sheriff is adapting the Virginia Pretrial Risk Assessment Instrument in order to
determine the eligibility of defendants for the county’s new pretrial release OR program.
San Mateo County: Probation will continue to use the validated, evidence-based Correctional Assessment
and Intervention System (CAIS) instrument to assess probationers and individuals on PRCS.
See also page 32 of this Report for a discussion of the use of risk-needs assessment in San Diego County and
Madera County.

Programming to Reduce Recidivism
In Butte County, the Department of Employment and Social Services (DESS) will hire two new staffers to
provide comprehensive re-entry employment preparation services, including preparation of an individualized
employment plan for offenders re-entering the community.
El Dorado County will hire a full-time Health Education Coordinator to manage contracts with community
based organizations to provide comprehensive substance abuse treatment for detainees in jail, as well as
residential treatment, outpatient treatment and transitional living for those released from jail custody who are
in need of such services.
Humboldt County’s realignment plan recognizes that “the need for vocational and job readiness supports is
paramount” for people re-entering the community after receiving a felony conviction. The County will
implement an employment assistance program that includes “work-readiness assessment, scheduled, routine
classroom instruction, as well as staff assisted self-paced daily activities, one-on-one vocational coaching,
assistance in all aspects of a job search, and vocational training workshops.”
Madera County’s plan provides funding for evidence-based programming for individuals detained in the
county jail, including cognitive behavioral therapy, GED preparation, employment readiness skills, business
etiquette, and problem solving. The Forensic Assertive Community Treatment (FACT) approach to treatment
services will be used; this approach lasts a minimum of 12 months, and is proven effective in the county to
reduce recidivism among mentally ill adults with substance abuse problems.
1

Mendocino County is focusing heavily on evidence-based supervision practices for individuals convicted of
low-level felony offenses and who are on PRCS. The Probation Department will use the STRONG riskneeds assessment instrument in order to develop individualized supervision case plans that may include
graduated sanctions, cognitive behavioral therapy, random drug and alcohol testing, home visits, and
referrals to services as needed. Deputy Probation Officers will track and report outcomes for each case.
Napa County will expand its current Jail Education and Employment Program (JEEP). Through JEEP,
county jail inmates are given the opportunity to participate in evidence based programming which includes
cognitive behavioral therapy, GED preparation, employment readiness skills, business etiquette, and problem
solving. Lake County will also implement JEEP, for the first time, through the county’s realignment
planning.
San Bernardino County will spend $1.8 million of its AB 109 funds to provide transitional housing for
individuals released from jail.
San Joaquin County will use AB 109 funds to create a Re-Entry Court for individuals on PRCS. The new
specialty court is intended to reduce recidivism, minimize revocations, and maximize effective use of
evidence-based substance abuse and rehabilitation services.
Based upon objectives identified in its preliminary draft realignment implementation plan, San Mateo
County is investing heavily in evidence-based practices to supervise low-level felony offenders sentenced to
county jail and individuals on PRCS. The County will also take an active role in identifying local
employment partners for housing and employment programs geared toward formerly incarcerated
individuals. The Sheriff’s Office plans to develop individual reentry plans for inmates convicted of low-level
felony offenses in order to provide services to inmates prior to their release from jail.
Santa Cruz County will continue to reduce recidivism through the Recidivism Reduction through ResearchBased Reentry and Rehabilitation (R5) project, which targets high-risk young adult offenders with a history
of violence and above-average rates of recidivism. The project is a collaboration between nine partner
organizations to provide a combination of intensive supervision, substance abuse treatment, reentry
mentoring, employment readiness and paid job experience, gang desistance mentoring, educational
advocacy, and case management.
Sonoma County’s plan provides for a broad variety of evidence-based programming for individuals on
PRCS. The Probation Department will continue to use a risk-needs assessment tool to create individualized
case plans, and services to be provided include: a new Adult Day Reporting Center with the capacity to serve
200 individuals per year; a cognitive behavioral program; a GED program; supervision through electronic
monitoring and alcohol testing devices; and an enhanced system of graduated sanctions and incentives.
Additionally, the Probation Department, Superior Court, Public Defender, and District Attorney combined to
fund a 52-week domestic violence program for indigent offenders that has been shown to reduce recidivism
in that population.
2

Trinity County’s realignment plan includes specific provision of transitional housing for individuals on
PRCS, noting that “one of the largest and most challenging” obstacles for successful re-entry after prison is
the need for suitable housing. Transitional housing is also essential for participation in the county’s EM
program. $10,000, or 7% of the county’s realignment budget, will fund this initiative.
See also page 34 for a discussion of Alameda County’s Santa Rita jail transition center and the Butte County
partnership among county departments to reduce recidivism through evidence-based programming.

Pretrial Diversion
Napa County’s plan states that pre-filing diversion programs will be reviewed and implemented as needed.
Siskiyou County has allocated part of its realignment funding to create an evidence-based pre-filing
diversion program that will be developed and implemented by the District Attorney’s Office. Candidates will
be assessed for participation prior to the filing of charges.
Sonoma County provides pretrial diversion and outpatient treatment services through a program called
Project Intercept (PI), which is designed for most misdemeanor offenders. Criminal charges are dismissed
upon successful completion of the program.

Pretrial Services
In Butte County, the Sheriff’s Office will implement a pretrial release program for defendants who are
determined to be a “reasonable risk” to be released into supervision through phone call-in or electronic
monitoring. The District Attorney will work with the Sheriff and Courts to develop release criteria. The
program is expected to free 75 to 100 beds in the county jail.
Fresno County is implementing a pre-trial program to provide alternatives to incarceration for defendants.
Arrestees will be evaluated for the program based upon a validated risk assessment tool. The Probation
Department will add four positions to implement this pre-trial program at an estimated cost of $349,418.
Defendants in the program may be supervised through home detention, electronic monitoring, drug testing,
and an automated court hearing notification system.
The Kern County Probation and Sheriff Departments will expand the county’s current electronic monitoring
(EM) program options to include pre-trial defendants. The cost the county is $5.25 per day to supervise an
individual through EM, versus $77.17 per day for incarceration in the county jail.
Humboldt County will implement a pilot jail pretrial release and supervised Own Recognizance (OR)
program, to be administered collaboratively between the Sheriff’s Office, Probation Department, and
Superior Court. All people booked into the county jail will be assessed for the program, and staffers will
prepare a report and recommendation for the Court. At full implementation, it is expected that Humboldt
County will have an average daily population of 20-40 defendants on supervised OR release.
3

Madera County’s plan will create a full-service pretrial program that will incorporate a validated risk
assessment of arrestees, based on the Virginia Pretrial Risk Assessment Instrument, to assist judges regarding
the release, monitoring, and supervision of defendants. The Pretrial Services Unit will prepare a written
report based upon the risk assessment and verified community ties of the defendant. Judges will “use this
information to determine suitability for Own Recognizance (OR) and Supervised Own Recognizance (SOR)
releases, as well as to establish bail, and determine probable cause to detain.”
The San Diego County Sheriff will use the discretion newly granted under PC § 1203.018—in collaboration
with the District Attorney and with authorization from the county Board of Supervisors—to use home
detention, electronic monitoring, alcohol monitoring, GPS, or work furlough in lieu of jail for pre-trial
offenders. Conditions of release for a defendant may also include participation in mental health or substance
abuse treatment.
San Francisco County continues to operate a robust pre-trial release program. 541 defendants participate in
the Pretrial Diversion Program, 340 in the Own Recognizance Project, and 116 in the Supervised Pretrial
Release Program.
San Luis Obispo County is developing a pre-trial services program to be operated jointly between the
Probation Department, Superior Court, and District Attorney. Two Probation Officers will gather and present
information about newly arrested defendants and available release options to assist the Court in determining
a defendant’s pretrial custody or release status, and to supervise released defendants. It is expected that 50-60
defendants per month will participate in the program.
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department is actively implementing a pre-trial release and supervised
Own Recognizance (OR) program. The county has adapted the research-based Virginia Pretrial Risk
Assessment Instrument to assist in release determinations. Screening for pre-trial release through interviews
and information verification will be conducted around the clock to process an average of 135 arrestees per
day. Eleven new staff positions have been created for this program.
The Solano County Sheriff has developed the Alternatives to Custody Program for low- to medium-risk
defendants. The Probation Department will interview the individual and, using a validated risk-assessment
tool, make a recommendation to the Court regarding the appropriateness of release on OR or into alternative
supervision such as Voice ID, alcohol monitoring, electronic monitoring or GPS.
The Trinity County Sheriff will use the discretion granted by AB 109 to release defendants held in lieu of
bail into an electronic monitoring program, subject to rules and regulations prescribed by the Sheriff,
Probation Department, and District Attorney.
In Yuba County, the Sheriff will use the discretion granted by Penal Code § 1203.018 to release pre-trial
prisoners into home detention and electronic monitoring programs. The Sheriff’s Department and District

4

Attorney may work together to develop specific eligibility criteria for the program, which will be approved
by the Board of Supervisors.
See also page 25 for a discussion of Santa Cruz County’s Pretrial Services Program.

Day Reporting Centers
In Colusa County, the Probation Department will develop and implement a Day Reporting Program (DRP),
which will include cognitive-behavior services for supervised individuals.
Kern County will expand its current DRP to an additional 100 high risk offenders. The DRP uses the
STRONG risk-needs assessment tool to create individualized case plans that may include cognitive
behavioral therapy, job readiness, substance abuse testing, daily reporting, and a graduated rewards and
sanctions.
In Lake County, the LCCP unanimously supported the creation of a DRP. The DRP will offer risk-needs
assessments; cognitive behavioral services; discharge planning and aftercare; employment and education
services; substance abuse treatment; and supervision through electronic monitoring and in-person reporting.
Madera County will create a DRP based on a “nationally recognized evidenced-based supervision model”
that emphasizes evidence-based practices including the use of a validated assessment tool, graduated
sanctions, and cognitive behavioral therapy interventions. The program will expand capacity to an additional
25 individuals under supervision in the criminal justice system.
Merced County will utilize AB 109 funds to expand its current DRP, which was first implemented in the
county in 2008. The DRP is shown effective in reducing recidivism; 85% of participants who successfully
completed the DRP were not rearrested within the 18 months following program exit. Individuals on PRCS
will be screened using a risk/needs assessment tool. Services offered by the DRP will include employment
readiness, cognitive behavioral therapy, and substance abuse treatment.
The Sacramento County Probation Department is opening a new Adult Day Reporting Center (ADRC) for
individuals on PRCS. It is expected that, annually, up to 600 offenders will utilize the services of the ADRC.
Probation staff will use a validated, individualized, assessment tool to determine the appropriate level of
supervision (among three levels) for each offender, and an individualized case plan will be developed on that
basis.
San Luis Obispo County is implementing a new DRP, which will operate as a “one-stop” center for adult
offenders to receive an integrated “menu” of supervision, case management, drug and alcohol treatment,
cognitive behavioral treatment, job search guidance, and other supports for reintegration into the community.

5

The Yuba County Probation Department will open a new DRP to be funded jointly by Probation and the
Sheriff’s Department, and which may operate as an alternative to incarceration. The STRONG assessment
tool will be utilized for individuals on PRCS. DRP supervision will be conducted through home visits; home
detention with electronic monitoring; day reporting; outpatient behavioral health treatment; urinalysis
testing; cognitive behavioral interventions; community service; referral to educational and employment
services and housing resources; and imposition of flash incarceration.
See also page 25 for a discussion of Napa County’s Day Reporting Center; and page 35 for a discussion of
Day Reporting Centers in Butte County and Tuolumne County.

Graduated Sanctions
In Butte County, the Probation Department will utilize graduated sanctions prior to long-term incarceration
when a supervised individual violates his or her conditions of probation or PRCS. Intermediate sanctions will
include community service, mandatory residential or outpatient substance abuse treatment, electronic
monitoring, and flash incarceration. Other county plans that specifically discuss graduated sanctions include:
Kern, Madera, Mendocino, Santa Clara, and Yuba.

Joint Planning, Implementation and Accountability
In Butte County, the District Attorney will develop expertise in alternative sentencing and work with other
county agencies, including the Public Defender, to “develop creative and effective sentencing options which
will preserve jail bed space to enforce meaningful sanctions on those who resist modification of their
criminal behavior.” An important component of this effort will be the use of alternative court programs such
as specialized drug courts, domestic violence courts, community courts, family treatment courts, DUI courts,
mental health courts, peer/youth courts, and homeless courts. A new part-time attorney in the Public
Defender’s Office will design alternative sentences, identify clients who are eligible for these programs, and
train other attorneys on alternative sentencing strategies under AB109.
The Del Norte County plan demonstrates a high degree of collaboration between the Sheriff’s Department
and Probation Department to implement several alternatives to incarceration. The Plan notes that “[i]t is
universally agreed upon that incarceration is largely an ineffective approach to rehabilitate offenders, and is
one the most costly sanction options.” Accordingly, both county departments will advance a joint effort to
expand alternative custody programs including county parole, home detention with electronic monitoring
(GPS and alcohol monitoring), and work furlough.
El Dorado County’s Behavioral Health Court (BHC) is a collaborative effort between the Superior Court,
Sheriff’s Office, Health Services, Mental Health, Probation Department, and the Offices of the District
Attorney and Public Defender. Representatives from these county agencies will work together to create

6

alternative sentencing strategies for people with mental disabilities who have been convicted of low-level
offenses.
The Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) will assemble “MultiDisciplinary Teams” (MDTs) of representatives from DHHS, the Probation Department, and the Sheriff’s
Office to provide employment assistance, cognitive behavioral treatment, mental health services, and
substance abuse treatment to low-level felony offenders and individuals on PRCS. These cross-agency
teams will operate within the county’s Day Reporting Center program. “Individualized Treatment Plans” will
be developed by the MDT upon completion of a standardized assessment.
San Mateo County’s draft plan provides for a high degree of collaboration among county agencies through
creation of “multi-disciplinary teams” that will work together to provide re-entry services for sentenced
individuals who are set to be released from the county jail.
Santa Barbara County plans a high degree of cooperation among county agencies to support alternatives to
incarceration. The Probation Department will utilize an evidence-based tool to assess inmates for early
release under the supervision of the Probation Department or Sheriff Department’s home detention program
or day reporting center. The District Attorney will organize staff trainings on alternative sentencing
strategies and use of “recidivism reduction analysis” when deciding sentencing recommendations. The
Public Defender will hire an investigative social worker to identify and locate appropriate treatment
programs that may be used to develop an alternative sentencing plan.
Santa Clara County is developing a Re-Entry Team comprising staff from the Probation and Sheriff’s
Departments, and Health and Behavioral Health, to assess and supervise low-level felony offenders
(including people on PRCS) both before and after release from incarceration. The plan notes that a “case
supervision management protocol with procedures designed to incorporate the principles of evidence based
practices will be utilized.” The protocol will include the use of cognitive behavioral strategies and graduated
sanctions.
See also page 38 for a discussion of the joint risk assessment pilot program in Santa Cruz County; the
District Attorney’s alternative sentencing approaches in San Francisco County; the innovative post-release
initiative “Ambassador Team” program in Alameda County; and the Public Defender’s Clean Slate Program
and pre-sentence needs-assessments program in Contra Costa County.

Standardized Reporting and Evaluation
In Colusa County, the Probation Department will research and implement a new Case Management System
by June 2012 in order to measure the effectiveness of probation programs (including several cognitivebehavioral interventions). A Legal Secretary will be hired to process data and maintain reporting.
Madera County will evaluate the effectiveness of county realignment planning through data gathering
beginning in October 2011. Data analysis will follow a specific timeline and will be compiled in a report and
7

submitted to the CCP. The compiled data will be used “as much as possible to establish programming for
fiscal year 2012-13.” The county will contract with the National Council on Crime and Delinquency
“develop and implement the outcome measures tracking system and prepare an annual report due October 1
of the subsequent fiscal year.”
Plumas County has assigned specific responsibility to the Probation Department and to the District
Attorney’s Office for researching data design, collecting data from different county agencies, and reporting
on outcomes. “The CCP Chair will present this data along with implementation and planning updates to the
CCP committee on a quarterly basis. The same type of data and status reporting will be presented to the
Board of Supervisors on a semi-annual basis.”
Santa Clara County has developed an Evaluation Design and Policy Research and Data Analysis Work
Group that will “promote the implementation and long term sustainability of data collection and analysis,
track outcomes, and determine the effectiveness of our policies, programs and practices in effecting offender
behavior change, reducing recidivism and enhancing public safety.”
In Sutter County, a new full time Deputy Probation Officer will be responsible for research, planning,
implementation, database support, data analysis, and reporting of the outcomes of realignment programs and
the impact of realignment upon county agencies. The DPO will develop research designs and collect data and
be proficient in statistical analysis software. Statistical software will also be purchased in order to update the
“archaic JLAN case management system.”
See also page 39 for a discussion of data evaluation planning in Placer County and the Community Advisory
Board in Contra Costa County.

A Wide Range of Alternatives to Incarceration
San Francisco County offers a significant number of programs that serve as sentencing alternatives,
including: electronic monitoring, home detention, residential treatment beds, restorative justice classes,
substance abuse services, parenting classes, the 5 Keys Charter High School, employment counseling and
services, and transitional housing, which may be used in combination with one another. The county’s plan
also notes that the District Attorney will hire staff to develop potential alternatives to incarceration for both
pre-trial and sentenced individuals, collecting input from probation, the defense bar, and advocates for victim
rights.

8

APPENDIX C
Education and Job Training Programs
are Key to a Successful Realignment Initiative
Prepared by the National Employment Law Project
and Rubicon Programs

National Employment Law Project

Education and Job Training Programs are
Key to a Successful Realignment Initiative
A key component of a successful community supervision plan for those with criminal records—that will
lower the incarcerated population or save state funds in the long-term—must include education and
workforce training, and access to resources to find and maintain employment. Community-based
Correctional Education, U.S. Dept. of Educ. (2011) at 3, available at
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ovae/pi/AdultEd/cbce-report-2011.pdf
The Report of the U.S. Reentry Policy Council, “Charting the Safe and Successful Return of Prisoners to the
Community,” includes policy statements and recommendations (1) to teach inmates functional, educational,
and vocational competencies based on employment market demand and public safety requirements and (2) to
provide inmates with opportunities to participate in work assignments and skill building programs that build
toward successful careers in the community. Council of State Governments, Report of the Re-Entry Policy
Council: Charting the Safe and Successful Return of Prisoners to the Community (Jan. 2005) at 211-226,
available at http://reentrypolicy.org/publications/1694;file.
1) Research has demonstrated that employment is a key factor in reducing recidivism and ensuring
positive public safety outcomes.
a) In one study of former prisoners in Ohio, Texas, and Illinois, researchers found that inmates who
held a job while in prison and those who participated in job-training programs while incarcerated had
better employment outcomes after release. In addition, inmates who were employed and earning
higher wages after release were less likely to return to prison the first year out. Christy Visher, Sara
Debus & Jennifer Yahner, Employment after Prison: A Longitudinal Study of Releasees in Three
States, Justice Policy Center Research Brief (Oct. 2008), available at
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411778_employment_after_prison.pdf
b) The Justice Policy Institute (JPI) compared state-level employment rates with crime rates and found
that, on average, those states with the highest levels of unemployment had higher violent crime rates
than states with lower unemployment levels. Conversely, increased employment and increased
wages are associated with lower crime rates. Aliya Maseelall, Amanda Petteruti, Nastassia Walsh &
Jason Ziedenberg, Employment, Wages and Public Safety, Justice Policy Institute (Nov. 2007) at 2-4,
available at
http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/07_10_REP_EmploymentAndPublicSafety_AC.pdf.
c) In a review of evidence-based adult corrections program (including only rigorous evaluation studies),
researchers found that in 16 evaluations of community-based employment training, job search, and
job assistance programs for adult offenders, there was a statistically significant reduction in
recidivism. Steve Aos, Marna Miller & Elizabeth Drake, Evidence-based Adult Corrections

Programs: What Works and What Does Not Work, Washington State Institute for Public Policy
(2006) at 6, available at http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/06-01-1201.pdf
d) According to a study in Illinois that followed 1,600 individuals recently released from state prison,
only 8% of those who were employed for a year committed another crime, compared to the state’s
54% average recidivism rate. American Correctional Association, 135th Congress of Correction,
Presentation by Dr. Art Lurigio (Loyola University) Safer Foundation Recidivism Study (Aug. 8,
2005).
e) In a rigorous evaluation using a random assignment design, the Center for Employment
Opportunities model developed in New York State, which pairs transitional jobs with job coaching
and assistance from job developers, demonstrated reductions in recidivism over a two year period. In
2011, CEO began programs in Oakland and San Diego to replicate the CEO model in California.
Cindy Redcross, Dan Bloom, Gilda Azurdia, Janine Zweig and Nancy Pindus, Transitional Jobs for
Ex-Prisoners Implementation, Two-year impacts, and Costs of the Center for Employment
Opportunities (CEO) Prisoner Reentry Program (August 2009), available at
http://www.mdrc.org/publications/529/overview.html
2) Research has also shown that providing educational opportunities for inmates has a positive social,
economic, and public safety benefit.
a) In a review of evidence-based adult corrections program (including only rigorous evaluation studies),
researchers found that seven rigorous evaluations of programs that teach remedial educational skills
to adult offenders when they are in prison, on average, reduce the recidivism rates of program
participants. Steve Aos, Marna Miller & Elizabeth Drake, Evidence-based Adult Corrections
Programs: What Works and What Does Not Work, Washington State Institute for Public Policy
(2006) at 6, available at http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/06-01-1201.pdf
b) In a study designed to compare correctional education participants and non-participants in three
states (Maryland, Minnesota, and Ohio) and assess the impact of correctional education on
recidivism and post-release employment, the researchers found that the correctional education
participants had statistically significant lower rates of re-arrest, re-conviction, and reincarceration. In
fact, reincarceration was 29 percent lower among education program participants than among
nonparticipants. Steurer, Stephen J. and Linda G. Smith, Education Reduces Crime: Three State
Recidivism Study, Correctional Education Association (2003) at 12, available at
www.criminologycenter.fsu.edu/p/nationalDataClearinghouse/Publications%20Reports/3%20states%
20executive%20summary.pdf. Wages were higher for correctional education participants compared
to nonparticipants for every year of post-release follow-up, which generally indicate that individuals
are better able to support themselves and their families. Id. at 14, 17.
3) Jail-based programs that include pre-release transition planning and links to community programs
reduce recidivism and contribute to successful reentry and reintegration.
a) Jail-based programs that include transition planning and comprehensive services that address
housing, substance abuse, education and employment needs upon release are crucial for successful
reentry. For examples of innovative programs in place all over the United States see Life After

Lockup: Improving Reentry from Jail to the Community (May 2008) at 61, available at
http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/Final_Life_After_Lockup.pdf
b) Though few jail reentry programs have been rigorously evaluated, when reducing crime is the goal
research suggests that the reductions in recidivism that result from jail-based programming more than
offset the cost. John Roman and Aaron Chalfin, Does it Pay to Invest in Reentry Programs for Jail
Inmate?, The Urban Institute Justice Policy Center (2006) at 2, available at
http://www.urban.org/projects/reentry-roundtable/upload/roman_chalfin.pdf
c) As part of Second Chance Grant administration, the Bureau of Justice Assistance detailed the
“Fundamental Principles of Evidence-Based Correctional Practice.” The principles emphasize the
importance of objective risk and needs assessment, cognitive behavioral therapy and providing
supervision and services that match the identified risk and needs. BJA FY 11 Second Chance Act
Adult Offender Reentry Program for Planning and Demonstration Projects Competitive Grant
Announcement, Second Chance Grantees: What You Need to Know to Ensure Your Program is Built
on Principles of Effective Practice, Appendix at 26-28. available at
http://www.grants.gov/search/search.do?mode=VIEW&oppId=94833

For more information contact:
Jessie Warner
Reentry Legal Services and Policy Director
Rubicon Programs Inc.
101 Broadway Street
Richmond, CA 94804
510-412-1753 phone
510-232-2271 fax
jessiew@rubiconprograms.org
www.rubiconprograms.org

Michelle Natividad Rodriguez
Staff Attorney
National Employment Law Project
405 14th Street, Suite 1400
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 663-5705 tel
(510) 663-2028 fax
mrodriguez@nelp.org
www.nelp.org

APPENDIX D
Drug Courts: Alternatives and Practices
Prepared by the Drug Policy Alliance

Drug Courts: Alternatives & Practices
January 2012

In March 2011, the Drug Policy Alliance released Drug Courts are Not the Answer: Toward a HealthCentered Approach to Drug Use, i which found that drug courts have not reliably demonstrated cost savings,
reduced incarceration, or improved public safety. Reports by the Justice Policy Institute ii (2011) and the
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers iii (2009) each, based on extensive independent research,
raised very similar concerns about drug courts. And, in another recent report, the Government Accountability
Office finds that only about half of drug courts it reviewed could demonstrate statistically significant lowered
re-arrest rates. iv
Moreover, we found that the real problem is the fact that drug courts exist within a drug war framework.
Drug courts attempt to treat drug use as a health issue, but they cannot because they are required to enforce
laws criminalizing drug use – and therefore punishment ultimately trumps treatment. As a result, drug courts
have actually made the criminal justice system more punitive toward addiction – not less. For example,
although relapse is a common and predictable occurrence during treatment, drug courts often punish people
who suffer a relapse by pulling them out of treatment and putting them in jail for several days or weeks. By
contrast, in a medical setting, relapse calls for intensified treatment.
Therefore, it is critical when counties establish drug courts (1) to also develop many other interventions
besides drug courts and (2) to adopt drug court practices and policies that will reduce the role of punishment
in responding to drug use.
Encouraging pre-arrest/pre-conviction interventions
To keep costs down and produce the best offender outcomes, it is in counties’ best interests to develop and
expand alternatives to incarceration other than drug courts. Drug courts are expensive, small programs that
suck up more resources than other alternatives and that can handle only a tiny fraction of potentially eligible
people. Drug courts may also drive incarceration, since they depend (often quite heavily) on jail sanctions
and ultimately send “failed” participants to serve time behind bars.
Recommendations for more appropriate, cost-effective alternatives:
•

•
•
•

Reduce drug arrests by, for example, allowing law enforcement officers to issue a warning and/or
treatment referral to an individual in possession of a small amount of an illicit substance who does not
pose a substantial risk to public safety, or by assigning case workers and services to some of the
individuals most often arrested for these same petty offenses [See Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted
Diversion (LEAD) v and San Diego’s Serial Inebriate Program (SIP) vi];
Implement and expand pre-plea and pre-conviction diversion programs for people arrested for a lowlevel drug offense in order to prevent the collateral consequences that hinder those with a past
conviction, including barriers to employment vii, public housing, welfare and student loans viii;
Create a continuum of interventions – from pre-arrest, pre-plea and pre-conviction diversion and
advancing to post-conviction diversion (Prop 36) – in order to reduce criminal justice involvement and
stretch limited resources the furthest ix;
Leverage all available resources to expand access to treatment, for example, by:
o allocating a sizeable percentage of realignment funds to support services, including drug
treatment;

•
•
•

o including alcohol and drug treatment services in your county’s healthcare reform plans x;
o directing federal Byrne Justice Assistance Grants and/or
o diverting civil asset forfeiture funds to drug treatment xi;
Expand access to alcohol and drug treatment outside of the criminal justice system and for pre-arrest,
pre-plea and pre-conviction diversion, in order to reduce costs to the criminal justice system and allow
health systems to more effectively manage these health issues xii;
Expand and protect access to demonstrated alcohol and drug treatments, including medication-assisted
treatments (such as methadone and buprenorphine), where medically indicated xiii; and
Reserve drug treatment for those who need it and tailor treatment approaches based on individual
needsxiv; make a variety of other interventions and non-incarceration sanctions available for people
arrested for a low-level drug offense or who have a positive drug test but do not need treatment.

Improving drug court practices
It’s critical that counties implement policies that protect the rights and improve the outcomes of individuals
in the criminal justice system. For counties, this translates into more effective and cost-effective policies.
Recommended policy improvements to drug and other “problem-solving” courts:
•

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reserve drug courts for the people who commit more serious non-drug offenses that appear to be
motivated by addictive-behavior xv – not the people who commit simple felony drug possession offenses
– and for those who pose a higher risk to public safety or who have lengthier criminal histories xvi [to cut
incarceration costs significantly and to keep more serious offenders under close supervision, rather than
those with a history of only petty offenses like drug possession];
Adopt objective admission criteria and reduce the prosecutor’s role as gate-keeper xvii [to prevent cherry
picking and promote equal access];
Use a pre-plea rather than a post-plea model xviii [to prevent the barriers that accompany a criminal
record];
Limit the use of incarceration, including “flash incarceration,” as a response to low-level drug offenses
and positive drug tests, and provide services or other sanctions instead, in order to reduce costs and
improve outcomes for people convicted of drug offenses xix;
Ensure due process protections and enhance the role of defense counsel xx;
Evaluate individuals’ success based on several measures (including stability, employment, and family
participation); do not use drug tests as the singular measure of “success” or “failure” xxi;
Improve data collection, research rigor, and implementation of demonstrated best practices xxii;
Improve overall treatment quality and employ opioid maintenance treatments and other evidence-based
therapies;
Use drug tests as a treatment tool, not as punishment;
Empower treatment professionals in decision-making;
Reduce turnover of trained and experienced court, probation and treatment staff to improve program
continuity and consistency;
Ensure that punishment for “failing” the program is not worse than the original penalty for the offense;
and
Work to establish other local alternatives outside the drug court for those who want and need access to
treatment but do not warrant intensive court resources (e.g., probation-supervised treatment).

In conclusion, counties should develop alternatives to the expensive and boutique drug courts and to reserve
drug courts for more serious offenders while improving those courts’ practices.

i

Drug Policy Alliance. Drug Courts are Not the Answer: Toward a Health-Centered Approach to Drug Use. March 2011.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/drugcourts
ii
Justice Policy Institute. Addicted to Courts: How a Growing Dependence on Drug Courts Impacts People and
Communities. March 2011. http://www.justicepolicy.org/drugcourts
iii
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). America's Problem-Solving Courts: The Criminal Costs of
Treatment and the Case for Reform. September 2009. http://www.nacdl.org/reports/
iv
Government Accountability Office. Studies Show Courts Reduce Recidivism, but DOJ Could Enhance Future Performance
Measure Revision Efforts. December 2011. http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-53
v
The Defender Association-Racial Disparity Project. “Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD): A Pre-Booking
Diversion Model for Low-Level Drug Offenses.” Seattle, WA: 2010
vi
San Diego Police Department. “Serial Inebriate Program” http://www.sandiego.gov/sip/
vii
Natividad Rodriguez, Michelle and Maurice Emsellem, 65 Million “Need Not Apply”: The Case for Reforming Criminal
Background Checks for Employment, National Employment Law Project, March 2011.
viii
The Sentencing Project. Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment, eds. Marc Mauer and
Meda Chesney-Lind. January 2002. http://www.sentencingproject.org/detail/publication.cfm?publication_id=1
ix
Justice Policy Institute. Addicted to Courts: How a Growing Dependence on Drug Courts Impacts People and
Communities. March 2011; and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, America’s Problem-Solving Courts: The
Criminal Costs of Treatment and the Case for Reform, Washington D.C.: NACDL, 2009.
x
California Society of Addiction Medicine. Expansion of Substance Use Disorder Treatment Within Reach Through Health
Care Reform. April 2011. http://csam-asam.org/pdf/misc/CSAM_HCR.pdf
xi
Drug Policy Alliance. Federal Byrne Grants: Drug War Funds Available for Drug Treatment. September 2010.
xii
Justice Policy Institute. Addicted to Courts. March 2011.
xiii
Kleber, Herbert D., M.D., “Methadone Maintenance Four Decades Later: Thousands of Lives Saved But Still
Controversial,” Journal of the American Medical Association 300, no. 19 (2008): 2303-230. O’Donnell, Colleen, and Marcia
Trick, Methadone Maintenance Treatment and the Criminal Justice System, Washington D.C.: National Association of State
Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors, Inc., April 2006.
xiv
Lutze, Faith E., and Jacqueline G. van Wormer, “The Nexus Between Drug and Alcohol Treatment Program Integrity and
Drug Court Effectiveness: Policy Recommendations for Pursuing Success,” Criminal Justice Policy Review 18, no. 3 (2007):
226-24
xv
Drug Policy Alliance. Drug Courts Are Not the Answer. March 2011.
xvi
Stevens, Alex, Tim McSweeney, Marianne van Ooyen and Ambros Uchtenhagen, “On Coercion,” International Journal of
Drug Policy 16 (2005): 207-209.
xvii
NACDL. America’s Problem-Solving Courts. September 2009.
xviii
Ibid.
xix
See Goldkamp, J., “The Drug Court Response: Issues and Implications for Justice Change,” Albany Law Review 63
(2000): 923-961; Gottfredson et al., “The Effectiveness of Drug Treatment Courts,” Harrell, Adele, “Judging Drug Courts:
Balancing the Evidence,” Criminology and Public Policy 2, no. 2 (2003): 207-212.
xx
Boldt, Richard, “Rehabilitative Punishment and the Drug Treatment Court Movement,” Washington University Law
Quarterly 76 (1998): 1205-1306; Miller, Eric J., “Embracing Addiction: Drug Courts and the False Promise of Judicial
Interventionism,” Ohio State Law Review 65 (2004): 1479-1576; NACDL, America’s Problem-Solving Courts.
xxi
Sung, Hung-en, and Steven Belenko, “Failure After Success: Correlates of Recidivism Among Individuals Who
Successfully Completed Coerced Drug Treatment,” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation 42, no. 1 (2005): 75-97; Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies, Employment Status and Substance Abuse
Treatment Admissions: 2006
xxii
Belenko, Steven R., Research on Drug Courts: A Critical Review (2001 Update), New York: National Center on
Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, 2001; Fischer, B., “Doing Good with a Vengeance: A Critical
Assessment of the Practices, Effects and Implications of Drug Treatment Courts in North America,” Criminal Justice 3, no. 3
(2003): 227-248; United States General Accounting Office, Drug Courts: Overview of Growth, Characteristics, and Results;
United States General Accounting Office, Drug Courts: Better DOJ Data Collections and Evaluation Efforts Needed to
Measure Impact of Drug Court Programs; King, Ryan S. and Jill Pasquarella, Drug Courts: A Review of the Evidence,
Washington D.C.: The Sentencing Project, April 2009.

ACLU of Northern California
39 Drumm Street
San Francisco, CA 94111
415.621.2493
www.aclunc.org

ACLU of Southern California
1313 West Eighth Street
Los Angeles, CA 90017
213.977.9500
www.aclu-sc.org

ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties
PO Box 87131
San Diego, CA 92138
619.232.2121
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