Not only has it been a disappointing year for the lawmakers and civic leaders behind the recent push for sweeping reforms of California’s criminal justice system, their achievements are under harsh fire in Los Angeles County.

Last December, Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, and state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Los Angeles, proposed to largely scrap cash bail on the grounds that it wasn’t essential to getting people to show up for their trials, was destructive of individuals’ lives and would sharply reduce costs and crowding at county jails. But while one of the two related bills the lawmakers introduced passed the Senate on mostly party lines, the other stalled on the Assembly floor, only getting 35 votes in support. The bail bonds industry has strong relationships with both parties, especially in urban areas where bail bond agents are often significant donors.

On Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown and Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye announced their support for the measure – but for review and passage in 2018, not the remaining few days of the current legislative session.

The support of Brown and Cantil-Sakauye was depicted as good news by Bonta and Hertzberg. But the governor’s and chief justice’s delay in getting on the bandwagon and the Assembly’s coolness to the concept showed that bail reform never enjoyed as much support as two other recent criminal justice reform measures. Adopted by state voters in 2014, Proposition 47 reclassifies several nonviolent crimes as misdemeanors instead of felonies for those without criminal records involving crimes of violence or related to guns. Approved in 2016, Proposition 57 made it easier for those guilty of “nonviolent” crimes to win parole.

Reforms face intense blowback in L.A. County

Now, however, enthusiasm for these reforms has faded in the largest county in the state and nation.

In Los Angeles County, some law enforcement and women’s groups are upset with Proposition 57 over how many of the crimes it considers “nonviolent” involve considerable violence, including types of sexual assaults.

But many local leaders, politicians, law enforcement members and citizens are furious over the effects of Proposition 47. They say it amounts to a “get out of jail free” card for drug addicts who no longer face incarceration for their crimes but who face no punishment when they don’t honor requirements they meet with drug counselors. Anecdotes about addicts being arrested over and over and over without consequence have been common in police circles for more than two years. Similar stories abounded in a harsh October 2015 Washington Post analysis of the early effects of Proposition 47. It concluded the well-meaning state law kept addicts out of jail, but not out of trouble.

These concerns led Los Angeles County supervisors to vote 3-0 on Aug. 15 to set up a commission to examine “the challenges and opportunities” created by Propositions 47 and 57 and AB109, a 2011 state law that “realigned” criminal justice by having those convicted of many “low-level” crimes serve their sentences in county jails instead of state prisons.

The reforms have been the focus of anger over two gun murders on Feb. 20 in Los Angeles County, allegedly committed by convicted felon Michael C. Mejia – one of a family member, the other of Whittier police Officer Keith Boyer. Mejia had been released from state prison 10 months before the killings and the Los Angeles gang member reportedly committed several parole violations without being sent back to state prison before Feb. 20.

After the killings, Whittier Police Chief Jeff Piper and the Los Angeles Police Protective League blamed AB109 and Proposition 47 for making it easier for Mejia to avoid being returned to state prison for breaking parole.

Reformers said Proposition 47 had nothing to do with Mejia’s treatment. They said that while AB109 changed how Mejia was treated after being released from prison, it did so by assigning responsibility for his oversight to the Los Angeles County Probation Department – not the state corrections department.

But the argument that the county was blaming state reforms for its own failings never took hold. The day after officer Boyer’s death, Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell said state reforms were “putting people back on the street that aren’t ready to be back on the street.” He said his jail system had so many dangerous inmates that it amounted to a “default state prison” – undermining claims that reforms would have positive or benign effects on local communities.

By Katy Grimes

You’ve heard of the Millionaire Next Door? Now meet the Criminal Next Door.

In what appears to be a nod to the powerful prison guards union, California is shunning sending prison inmates to lower cost, out-of-state prisons to reduce the overcrowded prison population. Instead, it’s releasing “non-violent,” “non-sexual,” “low-level” criminals out onto the streets and into minor parole programs.

In the 2006 class-action case Coleman vs. Schwarzenegger, a three-judge U.S. District Court ordered a large cut in the prison population. It found that overcrowded prison conditions were the cause of severely inadequate inmate health care. The order also imposed a population cap on California’s prisons.

Under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California sent prisoners to prisons in other states. The out-of-state prison cost savings over what it costs per bed in a California prison was significant. But since Gov. Jerry Brown was elected, this practice has been curtailed. Outsourcing of the state’s prisoners on a large scale apparently is not a politically feasible option for the Brown administration.

“Prison realignment” has been in the news since 2010, the year Brown was elected. In office, he immediately was faced with an ongoing federal court order to deal with California’s overcrowded prisons. But what exactly is prison realignment, what was it supposed to do, and is it working?

“Realignment” shift in thinking

In 2011, AB 109, the prison realignment law, was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Brown. AB 109 was supposed to shift “low-level,” “non-violent,” and “non-sexual” inmates from state prisons to county jails. Many inmates then were shifted to county probation departments for post-release supervision.

But AB 109 also required some felons released from prison be placed on post-release community supervision instead of state parole. A largely ignored result of AB 109 is that nearly half of these “non-violent offenders” had previously been incarcerated for serious crimes. But parole supervision is now based entirely on an inmate’s current conviction, not on cumulative crimes for which he had served prison time in the past.

Before the realignment law was passed, parole violators were transferred to state prisons, where they faced up to a year in custody. This no longer happens under prison realignment.

Release versus out-of-state prisons

Instead of releasing prisoners, California could reduce its corrections costs significantly by transferring inmates to lower-cost facilities out of state. “Expanding this strategy by transferring an additional 25,000 low- to medium-security inmates to such facilities—5,000 per year for five years—would result in an estimated savings of between $111 million and $120 million for the first year of the prisoner transfer plan, and between $1.7 billion and $1.8 billion in savings by the end of year five,” according to a study by the Reason Foundation.

The study continued, “Based on correctional partnership experiences across the nation and the globe, California could reasonably and conservatively expect to realize cost savings of between 5 and 15% from outsourcing its correctional services. Applying this savings range to the state’s current (Fiscal Year 2009-10) corrections operating budget of $8,233,620,000 yields estimated savings of between $412 million and $1.24 billion per year….

“The potential savings may be even greater than this. First, California prison guards’ salaries and benefits are higher than those of their counterparts in other states, so contracting should realize greater personnel cost savings (particularly from fringe benefits) than in other places.

“Second, there is a large discrepancy in CDCR’s self-reported average costs per inmate per day and other data the agency has reported on its operational budget and inmate population, suggesting that the state may be underreporting its true per diem costs. California’s self-reported average cost per inmate per day is $133, but the cost calculated by simply dividing the correctional operating budget by the number of inmates is $162. By contrast, as noted above, the per diem rate received by private firms in recent contracts ranges from $60 to $75.”

Yet, California sends a much higher percentage of repeat offenders back to prisons and jails than other states.

Releasing prisoners has not worked

Fast forward to last week. Rather than using out-of-state prisons to help reduce California’s prison population, Brown’s administration told the federal court that the state Legislature would have to agree to dramatically restructure California’s corrections system.

Brown, under a threat of contempt of court by the federal judges if he did not implement a plan to meet the prison population cap by December, submitted a late-night report.

“In a 46-page brief filed shortly before midnight Thursday, state officials outlined how they would reduce the prison population by about 10,000 inmates over the next year, hoping to satisfy a three-judge panel that last month blasted the governor for failing to comply with a 2009 order requiring California to reduce its prison population to about 110,000 by this summer,” the San Jose Mercury News reported.

California’s 33 prisons currently house 119,506 inmates. But the prisons were designed for 79,959 inmates. The federal court has ordered another 9,500 inmates cut by Dec. 31.

Brown recently filed a motion to vacate or modify the reduction order, but it was denied by the federal court.

Some rapists, molesters doing little or no time

Brown signed AB 109 only two years ago to “stop the costly, ineffective and unsafe ‘revolving door’ of lower-level offenders and parole violators through our state prisons.”

Republicans fought realignment, and now are focused on the many serious problems caused by it.

Due to sweeping changes in California’s criminal justice system, paroled rapists, molesters and other sex offenders statewide are often doing little or no jail time for violating the terms of their release, according to state records and interviews with parole agents, according to Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber.

The law also prevents habitual criminals convicted of new felonies such as assault, auto theft, drug dealing, identity theft, fraud and commercial burglary from receiving prison sentences. Instread the offenders are get sentences in overcrowded county jails, probation or “treatment” in county-managed rehabilitation programs, according to the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

Mentally ill inmates

On Tuesday, Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, told reporters he wanted more money spent on the Integrated Services for Mentally Ill Parolees program. But his plan would not be considered by the District Court as part of the overcrowding order. The program is run by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which oversees the prison system.

“Fifteen hundred and two individuals have been enrolled in the program,” Steinberg said. “Only 359, or 24 percent, are re-incarcerated or rearrested.”

Steinberg’s plan also calls for more money to be provided for mental health services in the community, including 2,000 crisis treatment beds in a neighborhood setting, KCRA Channel 3 reported.

Steinberg said the funding would come from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare); California’s Proposition 63, the 2004 initiative that increased mental health spending; and the state general fund.

Early release or transfers to out-of-state prisons?

It appears that the Brown administration is ignoring the viable option of transferring prisoners to out-of-state prisons. Steinberg’s plan to address the important issue of prisoners with mental illness is an important component to prison overcrowding, and should be considered by the federal court as addressing the overcrowding issue.

Brown’s administration has to submit a report by July 30 on what actions have been undertaken to identify inmates who might be candidates for early release or are unlikely to re-offend.

However, the federal judges stated that if California does not reduce the prison population to the mandated level by the July 30 deadline, “this system will permit defendants to nevertheless comply with the order through the release of low-risk prisoners.”

By Katy Grimes

The current buzz around the Capitol City is Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, will run for Sacramento District Attorney in 2014.

Steinberg, 53, has worked as an Employee Rights Attorney for the California State Employees Association prior to running for public office in 1992. Since then, he’s spent all but two years holding political office: Sacramento city council member, 1992-98; state assemblyman 1998-2004, then the state Senate from 2006 until now. He’s term-limited out of office in 2014. It’s the common musical-chairs routine, staying in office but switching seats because of term limits.

The CSEA, a public employee labor union, is affiliated with the SEIU, and represents more than 141,000 state employees.

His biography says, “Prior to state public service Steinberg worked for ten years at the California State Employees Association as an employee rights attorney, and as an Administrative Law Judge and mediator.” But the dates are not listed.

His bio on the Sacramento Bar Association reads differently: “For the six years prior to his election to the Assembly in 1998, Darrell Steinberg balanced his duties on the Sacramento City Council against the demands of his legal career, first as an employment lawyer and later as an administrative law judge and as a private arbitrator and mediator.”

“When Steinberg was elected to the City Council in 1992, he cut his time at CSEA to half-time in order to meet the demands of public service,” the Bar Association bio says. “In 1994, he left CSEA to become an administrative law judge for the State Personnel Board. Two years later, Steinberg joined Mackenroth, Ryan & Fong, a Sacramento law firm in which one of his law school friends, Rob Fong is a partner. While on the City Council, Steinberg maintained a private arbitration and mediation practice at the firm. Since being elected to the Legislature, Steinberg has remained of counsel there.”

Steinberg’s professional history has little of the relevant experience usually expected of a District Attorney.

Sacramento’s current District Attorney, Jan Scully, “worked as a deputy district attorney in the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office. “Five years later, Jan became a supervising attorney, supervising various prosecution teams including Adult Sexual Assault, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse, Felony Trials, and Research and Training,” her bio says. Scully was and is the real deal.

With the significant rise in crime across the state thanks to Gov. Jerry Brown’s prison realignment law (AB 109), Sacramento needs a tough-on-crime DA, and not a political office placeholder, waiting for higher office.

It is important to note Steinberg also has taken out a committee to run for Lieutenant Governor. It is obvious that he is not going back to the private sector, either way, despite his affiliation with Mackenroth, Ryan & Fong.

The music is playing and we’ll soon see where he tries to sit down.

By Troy Anderson

In the early morning hours of Dec. 2, 2012, four people were found brutally shot and killed just outside an unlicensed boarding home in Northridge.

Not long afterward, four suspects allegedly involved in the crime were arrested at the Silverton Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, according to a Los Angeles Police Department statement.

The primary suspect was Los Angeles resident Ka Pasasouk, 31, who was under the supervision of the Los Angeles County Probation Department, according to a motion Los Angeles County supervisors Michael D. Antonovich and Zev Yaroslavsky filed on Dec. 11 requesting a comprehensive report on the case.  Pasasouk, according to the LAPD, was charged with murder.

“Pasasouk is one of over 11,000 post-released supervised persons currently under the supervision of the Probation Department pursuant to [Gov. Jerry Brown’s] Public Safety Realignment program — AB 109,” Antonovich and Yaroslavsky wrote. “Absent AB 109, Pasasouk would have been the responsibility of the state and under the supervision of a parole officer instead of being the responsibility of the county and under the supervision of a probation officer. Counties across the state have been grappling with the enormous burden shifted to them under AB 109 since it took effect on October 1, 2011.”

Pasasouk, the supervisors wrote, “has a long criminal history, including robbery and drug-related offenses.”

“AB 109 was supposed to shift ‘low level’ offenders to counties; in reality, it shifts high and ultra-high risk offenders because it ignores the offender’s prior criminal history, including serious and violent offenses, and only considers the last offense,” Antonovich and Yaroslavsky wrote. “It has been reported that Pasasouk repeatedly failed to comply with the terms and conditions of his release, resisted rehabilitative programs, and was arrested multiple times over the past 11 months.”

Criminals freed

Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, says Pasasouk is one of many potentially dangerous criminals freed as a result of AB 109 — the law Brown signed in April 2011 to “stop the costly, ineffective and unsafe ‘revolving door’ of lower-level offenders and parole violators through our state prisons.”

“[Pasasouk] was a realignment baby,” Rushford says. “A 46-year-old mother was stabbed to death in Fresno in September by a guy free because the state will no longer take people to prison for violating parole. I can go on and on with the anecdotes. Local law enforcement officials are reporting the crime increases in the double-digits, but the official numbers won’t come out until this summer.”

Dumped on counties

Former state Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, says AB 109 “dumped the state’s criminal justice problems on our counties and cities and has unleashed an unprecedented crime wave.”

In response, Nielsen, who expects to be elected to the state Senate following a runoff election in January, says he plans to introduce legislation next year to correct problems created by realignment.

“There are a number of problems undergirding AB 109 that have to be addressed and corrected,” says Nielsen, the longtime chairman of the California Board of Prison Terms. “That’s why we anticipate legislation or an initiative will be necessary to correct this tragic course that is occurring in public safety in California.”

It’s now been more than a year since AB 109, a bill Brown described as a “landmark law that realigns certain responsibilities for lower-level offenders and parolees from state to local jurisdictions,” went into effect on Oct. 1, 2011. Shortly before that time, Brown issued a statement saying the law would give local law enforcement “the tools to manage offenders in smarter and cost-effective ways. AB 109 will help reduce recidivism, ease prison overcrowding and save taxpayers’ dollars.”

The law followed a U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering California to reduce its prison population from 143,000 to 110,000 inmates by 2013. Realignment provides for a reduction in the state prison population over time.

Population reductions

“The whole point behind realignment is to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court-affirmed population reductions in California’s 33 prisons,” says Dana Simas, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “The U.S. Supreme Court said we have to get down to 137.5 percent of our designed capacity, which is approximately 110,000 inmates.

“If we don’t do that by the court-ordered date of June 2013, then the court can order the wholesale, early unsupervised release of state prisoners.  That means anyone due for release in a specified amount of time is free to go. There is no supervision, no follow-up. We won’t know where these people are. They will get out of prison early. That is what is facing California if we don’t follow this court order.”

The law, according to a recent report by the Public Policy Institute of California, redirected 30,000 recently convicted offenders who would have gone to state prison to county jail, shifted the after-prison supervision of about 50,000 offenders from state parole agents to county probation departments and revised procedures dealing with sentencing, good-time credits and parole.

“Altogether, these changes represent the most significant shift in California corrections policy in decades,” author Dean Misczynski wrote. “Proponents of realignment believe that counties can achieve higher levels of offender rehabilitation, correspondingly lower levels of recidivism, and less (or at least not more) crime — and all for a lower cost than accomplished by the state.”

However, the law has generated a great deal of controversy. While some officials have touted it as a great success, others have warned “the streets are going to run with blood” as a result.

Supervision

The law, according to the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, requires that some felons released from prison be placed on post-release community supervision rather than state-managed parole. The law also prevents habitual criminals convicted of new felonies such as assault, auto theft, drug dealing, identity theft, fraud and commercial burglary from receiving prison sentences, instead requiring that they receive sentences in overcrowded county jails, probation or “treatment” in county-managed rehabilitation programs, according to CJLF.

Law enforcement officials throughout the state have expressed concerns that counties don’t have the jail capacity or the resources to house or supervise the thousands of repeat felons they are now required to deal with, according to the CJLF.

“It’s still too early to really see what realignment is going to do, although we certainly are seeing increases in crime because people who would have been incarcerated previously are not in custody because the county jails don’t have room for all the types of people who can go to county jails — whether it’s pre-conviction or post-conviction,” says Scott Thorpe, the chief executive officer of the California District Attorneys Association.

But Simas claims critics of Realignment are misconstruing how it works.

“Well, first off, there is no one being released under realignment that would have been released anyway,” Simas says. “CDCR can’t hold anyone past their court-ordered release date. So there are no early releases.  The biggest fallacy is that there is this notion that people are out in the community that should have been behind bars. No one has been released early because of realignment. The only difference is who is supervising them. If they are serving a term for a nonviolent, non-serious, non-sex offense, then they report to county probation for their post-release community supervision.”

$1.3 billion saved

In a June report examining the first eight months of realignment, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice found a 41 percent reduction in new prison admissions and a drop of 28,300 in the prison population, which stood at more than 144,000 prior to realignment. At an average cost of $46,000 to imprison one inmate for a year, the authors wrote the decline in the prison population should reduce prison costs by more than $1.3 billion.

“Overall, the state prison population is declining according to expected projections,” the authors of the CJCJ report wrote. “Generally, counties that have historically over-relied on state prison are experiencing larger reductions in their imprisoned populations and new commitments to state prison.

“In addition, it appears the reductions are occurring specifically within the low-level offender categories, rather than the more violent, serious offenders, which alleviates many public safety concerns. The decreased reliance on state incarceration should also produce significant cost savings for California taxpayers.”

Despite these savings, officials throughout the state are expressing growing concerns about Realignment’s impact on crime rates.

In its recent report,  “Corrections Realignment: One Year Later,” the PPIC report wrote that preliminary data indicates some communities around the state are experiencing an increase in property crime, particularly burglary and motor vehicle theft.

“Unfortunately, the cause and effect relationships within these communities are confounded by a prolonged recession and severe budget cuts to local law enforcement and social service programs,” according to the PPIC report. “Crime rates and realignment need to be closely monitored and carefully analyzed.”

Matt Cate, executive director of the California State Association of Counties, notes crime rates are up nationwide.

The Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in October that violent crime rose 18 percent last year — the first year-to-year increase in nearly two decades — and the number of property crimes also jumped by 11 percent.

“California crime numbers have not come in yet,” Cate said. “But no criminologist worth his or her salt will be able to tell you whether realignment has a cause and effect relationship with crime going up or down. It’s very complicated. It’s really difficult to correlate crime rates with a change in certain policies.”

One year later

In a December report by the CJCJ, “One Year into Realignment: Progress Stalls, Stronger Incentives Needed,” author Mike Males noted that, while “some law enforcement and prison interests have cited anecdotes and selective local offenses to charge that managing tens of thousands of formerly imprisoned criminals at the local level has brought a new wave of violent crime … the latest statistics reveal no evidence of such a trend.

“New prison admissions for violent and other sex and serious offenses — which are still allowed under realignment’s guidelines as in the past — were actually slightly lower in the 3rd quarter of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011. In particular, new imprisonments for murder, robbery, rape, and most sex offenses showed modest declines from the 1st to the 3rd quarters of 2012, while assaults showed slight increases ….”

In a prepared statement, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich says recent data from the county’s Probation Department revealed that the state is releasing mentally disordered offenders to the counties — threatening public safety and adding to the county’s fiscal burden.

The state, Antonovich says, is decertifying mentally-disordered offenders just prior to release from prison to place them under local supervision instead of state supervision. In addition, several mentally-disordered offenders that were released from prison directly to a state hospital were later decertified by the state hospital and, again, shifted to local supervision instead of remaining on state supervision.

By decertifying mentally-disordered offenders prior to release from prison, who are ineligible for local supervision by county probation departments under Realignment, Antonovich says the state is effectively relieving itself from the obligation to supervise them.

“We see this as a significant concern because mentally-disordered offenders have to meet certain criteria to be certified as such, one of which is to have a severe mental illness,” says Anna Pembedjian, Antonovich’s justice deputy.

“These types of individuals require intensive care and supervision and they require a lot of resources. So this is a significant concern, which our board will discuss publicly in the coming weeks and potentially seek necessary legislative changes to prevent it from happening.”

New legislation

To address these and other issues, Rushford says Nielsen and other lawmakers are expected to introduce legislation in 2013.

“I know there is a move afoot to demand a repeal of the bill,” Rushford says. “There are groups around the state who are working on reforms. We have put together a working group. The idea is to repeal the measure and replace it with something that makes public safety a priority.”

But Rushford doesn’t expect quick legislative action given that Democrats now control two-thirds of the seats in both the Senate and the Assembly.

“This is going to be an issue for a long time,” Rushford says. “The state is broke and we really can’t take these guys back unless we spend more money on prisons. We are going to go forward with the $6 billion bullet train and we don’t have space in our prisons. They are going to have to drop other priorities and put this one back on top or, as former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley says: ‘The streets are going to run with blood.’

“When this first started — when I first heard about this bill running through the Legislature, I called Cooley. He said: ‘You won’t be able to stop them.’ He said, ‘It will be like it was back in the 70s. There is going to have to be so much crime that the public insists on a new policy.’ I don’t want it to get that bad again. I was around during that period and the train is running in that direction now.”