“Realigning” Criminal Justice in California: Real Reform, or Shifting the Deck Chairs?

[marmar]

from Dissent magazine:



“Realigning” Criminal Justice in California: Real Reform, or Shifting the Deck Chairs?
Elliott Currie - October 31, 2011


On October 1 the state of California launched a much-anticipated plan to “realign” the state’s criminal justice system by shifting thousands of so-called “non-non-non” (non-serious, nonviolent, non-sex) offenders from the state prison system to the custody of county authorities. As state officials take great pains to point out, the realignment does not affect prisoners who were incarcerated in the state’s swollen prisons before October: the aim is to slow the future flow of low-level offenders into the system. This includes technical parole violators, whose constant “churning” into and out of the state prison system has long been a major source of California’s outsized prison population and, accordingly, of prison spending. Almost two out of three new prison admissions in 2009 were parole violators, and only about a fifth of those had actually committed new crimes.

The realignment has been ballyhooed by its promoters as nothing less than a “revolution” in criminal justice—a “sea change” in the way California handles its crime problem. It’s claimed that under the new approach it will be possible to devote considerably more resources to the rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners into the community, services that the state system has proved incapable of reliably providing. At the same time, large sums of money would be saved by devolving responsibility to the local level, where prisoners will be closer to home. The hope is that the result will be a reduction in the state’s startlingly high rate of recidivism, which hovers in the neighborhood of 70 percent over the course of three years.

Indeed, under different economic and political circumstances, the realignment could be at least the beginning of a real change in the way California deals with crime, and one that could offer important lessons to other states. But though there is much to be said for diverting less dangerous offenders from state custody, as things stand it’s unlikely that realignment can be much more than shuffling the problem from one strapped and ineffectual level of government to another. Realignment might save the state some money, but probably not as much as its supporters hope. And in the absence of more fundamental changes that are nowhere on the horizon, it cannot accomplish much more. Realignment will leave intact a crisis of crime and punishment that is much more entrenched and much more severe than current rhetoric suggests.

ON PAPER at least, the realignment represents a fortunate marriage between fiscal imperatives and penological common sense. In fiscal year 2010, California spent nearly $10 billion on state prisons, up from around $610 million (in constant dollars) in 1980. That roughly 1,500 percent increase was driven by repeated increases in the length of sentences, of which California’s notorious “three strikes and you’re out” law is only the best known, as well as dramatically increased chances (nearly doubled between 1987 and 2007) of offenders going to prison for a given offense in the first place. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=554

[the other one]

1. Stop probation violations for drug tests.

That will help. If a person isn't sentenced to prison it seems out of proportion to send them there if they fail a urine test.