Month: August 2011

Wall Street Journal: Santa Clara County Prepares for Influx of Inmates Into Jails

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The not so good news: WSJ reports that Santa Clara County sends more people to prison than any other Bay Area County. The good news: Our County is going through a process to relieve ourselves of that distinction, and other counties from across the state are watching to see how transformative we can be in our local criminal justice strategies, particularly over the next couple months…

Santa Clara County officials hope county-run services such as this San Jose support group aimed primarily at women on probation will reduce the likelihood that participants will wind up incarcerated.

Bobby White, August 4, 2011

Santa Clara County is hastily drawing up plans to accommodate about 3,000 new inmates and parolees slated to move to county supervision from the state’s control this fall under a major shake-up of the California prison system.

Gov. Jerry Brown last month signed into law a bill that calls for jailing offenders who commit low-level crimes in county lockups instead of state prisons. The law, which also requires counties, rather than the state, to supervise newly released low-level inmates, was prodded by a Supreme Court ruling in May ordering California to sharply reduce prison overcrowding.

While all California counties face the mandate starting in October, Santa Clara sends more inmates to the state prison system than the Bay Area’s other counties—and thus will see more inmates move to its jurisdiction from the state. The shift means Santa Clara will now play a far larger role in housing and supervising offenders. Continue reading →

San Francisco Chronicle: Two strikes have large impact on prison population — Expensive to incarcerate state’s repeat offenders

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California is currently going through a Supreme Court mandated process to reduce its prison population, but experts ask whether they are looking at the most burdensome sentencing schemes, and the most bloated inmate populations, like two strikers…

July 31, 2011| By Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writer

Jeff Adachi, San Francisco Public Defender

California’s “three strikes” law is best known for locking up career criminals for life, but the vast majority of offenders serving prison time under the sentencing mandate were actually charged under the less-noticed second-strike provision.

These 32,390 inmates are serving sentences that were doubled as a strike-two penalty, and they account for nearly 20 percent of the state’s prison population. Yet most efforts to reform the law have focused exclusively on the third-strike provision, which carries with it a mandatory 25 years-to-life sentence.

As prison costs in California continue to grow, and the state faces a Supreme Court order to reduce its inmate population by more than 30,000 over the next two years, the tens of thousands of second-strikers appear to pose a bigger challenge to state officials attempting to rein in prison costs than the 8,700 people serving time for a third strike. Continue reading →

Upcoming forum to re-imagine incarceration//re-entry policies

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On August 3rd at 2pm Board of Supervisor Goerge Shirakawa will be hosting a Re-Entry Network meeting to gather input on how the county will adopt policy changes for California’s re-alignment — the mandate to lower the prison population. While there are a number of questions as to what exactly realignment will look like, what we do know is that counties, including SCC, is supposed to have a plan in place by the beginning of October. The plan should include how the county is going to house and provide services for a still undetermined number of current prison inmates that will be transferred to county care, and also a strategy on how the County is going to reduce numbers of people being sent to prison from our county.

So all in all: alot of questions and a short time frame. What is certain is that realignment represents a rare opportunity to offer a new vision for our county’s criminal justice system — and a real possibility that vision can become reality.

Keep reading for the details in the meeting and the agenda… Continue reading →

Advocates Balk as San Jose Police Consider Fed Surveillance Program

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SAN JOSE, Calif. — Only weeks after the San Jose Police Department (SJPD) announced the addition of two federal immigration officers, officials say they are now considering participation in a new program calling on local police and residents to report to the FBI, Homeland Security and a host of other federal enforcement agencies.

Participation by local police departments in the Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative is optional. In advance of making a final decision, SJPD Chief Chris Moore held a forum at Pioneer High School for community representatives and city officials to learn about the program from federal officials and give input on San Jose’s potential involvement. Continue reading →