Under a bill recently signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, tens of thousands of lower-level state inmates will be transferred to county jails over the next few years, and counties are scrambling to figure out where to put them.
With April’s passage of Assembly Bill 109, up to 50,000 state inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes could be moved to local jails over the next three years, resulting in an estimated savings to the state of $500 million annually. The new law only affects inmates sentenced after July 1, and according to the governor, those currently in state custody won’t be released early. Criminals who have been convicted of more serious offenses—including violent crimes and sex offenses—will still go to state prison.
“For too long, the state’s prison system has been a revolving door for lower-level offenders and parole violators who are released within months—often before they are even transferred out of a reception center,” Brown said in his AB 109 signing statement. “Cycling these offenders through state prisons wastes money, aggravates crowded conditions, thwarts rehabilitation, and impedes local law enforcement supervision.”
In Santa Barbara County, where the main jail is already bursting at the seams, the law could ultimately mean a gradual increase of approximately 300 inmates who otherwise would’ve been locked away in the state system, according to Sheriff’s Department spokesman Drew Sugars.
“We don’t have the space,” Sugars said. “We’d have to figure it out.”
The jail currently houses about 900 inmates, and 160 are serving alternative sentences, including house arrest and work release. Un-sentenced inmates—typically those convicted of serious crimes and awaiting entry into the state system—currently take up 75 percent of
jail space.
Sugars said the county recognizes the state is having similar space problems, but without a constitutional amendment guaranteeing continuous funding for such a change, it wouldn’t be able to accommodate the 30 percent increase to its jail population.
“The quality of inmate that we have in there is not the type of inmate you can just release,” Sugars said. “You have a much smaller segment there that we could maybe release, but we’ve done that. We’ve been doing that for 20 years.”
Since signing AB 109 into law on April 4, Gov. Brown has stressed the measure won’t go into effect until there’s enough funding available for local jails to take on the influx of inmates, as well as to establish a community corrections grant program.
To assist county jails with the transfer, state lawmakers also passed AB 111 in April, which allows counties easier access to state bonds to fund building new jails and increasing capacity. In signing the bill, Brown said he would ask lawmakers for more legislation to cut local governments’ cost matching requirement from the current 25 percent to 10 percent.
However, Sugars said, the move would do nothing to cover the estimated $15 to $18 million cost to run another jail in Santa Barbara County. With the 2010 passage of AB 900, a nearly $8 billion bill to fund additional jail beds, the county received a $56 million grant to build a new jail in the North County. However, Measure S, a county tax initiative that would have provided continual funding for its operation, failed in November.
AB 111 could secure about $12 million more for the project, but according to Sugars, if the county were to go after it, there’s a possibility it would have to go through the entire grant process again—this time with no guarantees.
“It’s kind of a bird in the hand, two in the bush thing,” Sugars said. “There were counties that did not get funding for AB 900, so in a sense we were winners. If we decide to give up that award, we could end up losers. That’s a very real possibility.”
In recent statements, Brown has also promised to prevent reductions to public safety through a constitutional guarantee. According to Sugars, the funding would have to be continual to be sufficient.
“The Sheriffs’ Association was adamant that the funding could not be a one-time deal,” he said. “It has to be built in with a constitutional amendment so they don’t have to fight every year for that money. They need to know it’s going to be there so they can move on and do what they need to do.”
Gov. Brown said he would work closely with local police, sheriffs, and district attorneys to ensure any funding bill passed by the State Legislature will be enough to satisfy AB 109’s conditions. According to Sugars, none of those discussions have taken place yet. For now, counties are taking a wait-and-see attitude.
“Once [the money] gets on the table, then we can start to have the conversation about how we’re going to do this,” Sugars said. “Right now, we can only guess.”
Contact Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 12-19, 2011.
