LAKE COUNTY >> Following a 2011 Supreme Court order to reduce California”s prison population, another effort to remedy the issue of overcrowded state prisons is being proposed to voters with Proposition 47, an initiative that will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot and seeks to reduce penalties for and reclassify some non-serious, non-violent crimes.
If passed, Proposition 47 would amend the state penal code to reclassify seven categories of nonviolent drug and property crimes as misdemeanors, unless the criminal has a prior conviction for a serious or violent offense or for any registerable sex offense.
The categories up for reclassification include shoplifting, grand theft, receiving stolen property, forgery, check fraud and petty theft where the value or amount involved does not exceed $950, as well as drug possession for personal use. Currently, all seven categories can be charged as either a felony or a misdemeanor at the discretion of the court and are known as “wobblers.” Misdemeanors have a maximum sentence of one year in county jail.
Additionally, it would allow re-sentencing criminals currently serving felony sentences for the offenses reclassified in Proposition 47 as misdemeanors. Some offenders of these crimes who have already served their sentences could also apply to the court to have their convictions changed to misdemeanors.
The California Analyst”s Office (LAO) projects that with the implementation of Proposition 47, state savings would be in the low $100 millions annually, deposited into a special fund titled “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Fund”; 65 percent of savings would go to mental health treatment, drug treatment and diversion programs to reduce crime, 25 percent would be allocated to K-12 public schools to reduce truancy and support students who are at risk of dropping out or are victims of crime and 10 percent to trauma recovery centers providing services for victims of crimes.
However, the proposition comes at the heels of the Public Safety Realignment Act (AB 109), which went into effect Oct. 1, 2011 and allowed for newly-convicted, low-level offenders without current or prior violent offense to serve their time in county jails. As of October 2013, California prisons have reduced their population by 25,000 inmates under Realignment, which is 9,600 prisoners short of the reduction ordered by the Supreme Court, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).
Following the passage of the Realignment Act, Lake County”s jail has received 124 inmates that would have previously been sent to prison, Lake County Sheriff”s Office (LCSO) Public Information Officer Lt. Steve Brooks stated.
While the LCSO is opposed to Proposition 47, it “would help with the lengthy sentences given to some AB 109 inmates,” Brooks added.
With Lake County”s jail rated bed capacity of 286 inmates, the facility count has not been below 330 inmates “in some time” and the facility recently had approximately 395 inmates in custody, according to Brooks. As the jail has been at or above maximum capacity since October 2011, a jail expansion project to the tune of $20 million is currently in the works.
Of all the inmates in Lake County”s jail, 33 appear to be eligible for re-sentencing under Proposition 47, Brooks stated.
While Chief Probation Officer Rob Howe is supportive of the diversion of funds to rehabilitation and crime prevention programs, his biggest concern is that he doesn”t know how the proposition would end up effecting his department as it struggles to keep up with Realignment”s effects on the county.
“We”re still in the mode of trying to increase staffing to deal with the changes made under AB 109, so to add something else to our load could stretch us pretty thin,” Howe said. “The problem is we don”t know how many people we”d be dealing with and we don”t know how the court will deal with sentencing practices.”
With an approximate probation officer to probationer rate of 1 to 80, the Probation Department is already in a hiring process to support the amount of court-ordered supervision that has been exacerbated by AB 109.
District Attorney Don Anderson is also concerned that the proposition would make it harder to punish criminals and take sentencing control out of the court”s hands.
“Some of the smaller felonies Proposition 47 addresses are minor crimes and committed by people without substantial history, but we take that into consideration already when making offers and giving sentences,” Anderson said. “With Proposition 47, it takes a lot of that discretion out of our hands.”
The U.S. leads the world with the highest incarceration rate of any country and since 1980 the U.S. rate of imprisonment has more than quadrupled, according to a National Research Council report. During the past 30 years, the number of people California incarcerates grew more than eight times faster than the general population, according to a study titled “Winners and Losers: Corrections and Higher Education in California.”
However, Anderson maintains that “there are more people that should be in jail than we have room for.”
“It”s not as if other countries don”t have the same crime issues as we do, it”s that they don”t catch as many criminals as we do,” Anderson added.
Although county officials remain wary, long-term benefits of Proposition 47 may be underlying reasons for its passage. The California Budget Project (CBP), an independent fiscal and policy analysis group that has not taken an official position on the proposition, offers an overview of the measure and cites research that shows promising benefits with its passage.
Notably, CBP”s analysis addresses the proposition”s potential in improving recidivism rates. The report notes that individuals with felony convictions are subject to stigma and legal restrictions that both hinder them from reintegrating back into communities and contribute to recidivism. Felony convictions can make an individual”s ability to obtain housing, employment and social services significantly harder, while impairing their voting rights, parental rights and immigration status.
Additionally, the report appears to support the philosophy that enhanced funding for community-based interventions for nonviolent crimes could lower crime rates while reducing criminal justice spending. For example, from early 2003 to late 2004, San Francisco mental health court participants were 26 percent less likely to be charged with new crimes and 55 percent less likely to be charged with violent crimes after 18 months in the program, compared with nonparticipants. Likewise, meta-analysis indicate that drug courts reduce recidivism by up to 26 percent among participants compared to nonparticipants. San Francisco”s drug courts have resulted in an estimated $48 million in savings over 13 years from lower case-processing costs and reduced recidivism among participants.
In the larger conversation, studies have sought to show the approximate correlation between mass incarceration and crime rates, a task that has proven to be highly complex. However, multiple reports suggest that increasing prison populations fails to significantly reduce crime.
A study by the Sentencing Project shows that between 1991 and 1998, states that increased incarceration at rates that were less than the national average experienced a larger decline in crime rates than those that increased incarceration at rates higher than the national average.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, California currently sits at number 20 in ranking states by their incarceration rates with 439 prisoners per 100,000 people. But the source of its overcrowding problems could be found in a few policies specific to the state.
According to an article titled “How California stands apart on lifer parole policies” by the Daily Journal, a quarter of California”s 135,000 prisoners are sentenced to serve up to life with the possibility of parole while the national rate is only 7 percent. In 1990, however, “lifers” accounted for 8 percent of the state”s prison population.
Since then the three strikes law has been passed, which increases prison sentences for people who have been convicted of committing two or more felonies and differs from other state”s similar laws by not relegating the “strikes” to violent crimes. Between 1994 and 2005, “the broad nature of California three strikes statue was responsible for over 87,500 second- and third-strike convictions,” according to a Student Pulse article.
Additionally, in 1988, the governor became authorized to block parole grants in cases involving murder under Proposition 89. Gov. Pete Wilson turned down one-third of parole boards grants, Gov. Gray Davis approved only two of the board”s 232 grants and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reversed or requested secondary review of three-quarters of 2,050 prisoners, according to the Daily Journal. Gov. Jerry Brown has allowed more than 80 percent of the parole board”s grants to stand.
