Despite a forceful argument that federalism relieved the state of the added responsibilities, the U.S. Supreme Court persisted in making life more difficult for Brown. The justices refused to reconsider a decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which requires the state of California to ensure disabled prisoners in county jails receive the “reasonable accommodations” specified in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In an unusual move for high-ranking Democrats, Brown and state Attorney General Kamala Harris wanted the Supreme Court to consider that the 9th Circuit’s demands infringed on states’ 10th Amendment right to delegate power to local governments.

At stake is more than an important legal principle. Substantial expenditures are on the line. As the Associated Press reports, California could now be held liable for damages incurred in buildings not owned by the state. At the same time, state officials would have to wait until sued by parolees to gather any idea of how much money might have to be paid.

What’s more, Sacramento could be required to retrofit county jails — a costly, time-intensive process. Although neither the courts nor the plaintiffs involved raised that issue, California is technically vulnerable to a future ruling that demands exactly that. Brown’s and Harris’ resort to the 10th Amendment suggests that they take the possibility seriously.

A lasting burden

Brown’s struggles with the courts are exacting a measurable toll on his governorship. He faces an uphill battle on incarceration issues both with voters and fellow Democrats in the Legislature.

Although Brown has now broken even in public opinion polls on his treatment of crime. For instance, 46 percent still disapprove of his record on prisons, according to a recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.

In Sacramento, uncomfortable wrangling over proposed prison funds has now set in as well. Along with California’s county sheriffs, Brown wants $500 million in new bond money to expand the jails where prisoners affected by the 9th Circuit’s ruling will be held.

The push is part of Brown’s larger effort to manage another of the Supreme Court’s adverse rulings. Convinced that crowding in California prisons was so extreme as to be unconstitutional, the court’s decision drove Brown to implement a so-called “realignment” policy, shifting inmates out of state prisons and into county jails.

But that initiative has inspired a tug of war over how the bond money meant to smooth its way will be spent. AP reports that Senate Democrats want $85 million more than Brown would allocate to go toward mental illness programs for officers and guards.

Mental illness

In part, legislators are pivoting off the fear of untreated mental illness, heightened by the recent shootings in Isla Vista.

Additionally, the federal government is complicating Brown’s aims in yet another way. A recent Justice Department report is fueling demand for more mental illness spending. In a scathing review, Los Angeles county jails are accused of violating the Constitution by failing to afford mentally ill inmates an adequate level of care.

Although much of the report focuses on inmate suicide and suicide risk, general conditions in some jails were described as “deplorable,” Reuters reports.

From the standpoint of those currently calling the shots in the judicial and executive branches of the federal government, California’s prison system must be reformed, whatever the cost, until it passes constitutional muster. From the standpoint of Brown, however, the pressure to accelerate reform is making it harder to implement durable solutions.

Yet Brown faces an unofficial deadline of his own. If he is unable to turn around public opinion on prisons well before November, he will hand a fresh set of talking points to Republican opponent Neel Kashkari, who is hungry for a political issue that will unite Republicans and resonate with Californians regardless of party registration.

Alexis Garcia interviews John Phillips on Gov. Jerry Brown’s prisoner release program.

NOTE: The opinions of guests on CalWatchDog.com do not necessarily reflect the opinions of CalWatchDog.com or its editors and reporters.

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

While the state of California has been letting thousands of criminals out of prison since 2009 under Gov. Jerry Brown’s realignment law, California lawmakers are simultaneously proposing dozens of new gun control laws. Looked at separately, the two issues don’t appear necessarily connected. But closer scrutiny shows a dangerous correlation meant to undermine the state’s Three Strikes law, while disarming California citizens.

Instead of focusing on the more than 20,000 criminals released the last two years under AB 109, California’s Prison Realignment law, and the subsequent crime wave, the California Legislature has attempted to divert citizens’ attention by taking up dozens of gun control bills.

AB 109 was the prison “diversion” law that dumped thousands of criminals from state prisons onto local jails, many subsequently being released into the general public and committing crimes.

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

Despite the success of the Three Strikes law, and the substantial immediate decrease in California crime rates after passage, Democrats in the state Legislature are working to undo all of the good which came from the tough-on-crime law.

Study after study has shown that between 6 percent and 10 percent or criminals are responsible for up to 70 percent of all crimes committed.

School shootings

The worst deadly massacre at a school in American history was not the Newtown shootings, or the Columbine shootings. The worst school massacre took place before there was even a television in every home — in Michigan in 1927.

“A school board official, enraged at a tax increase to fund school construction, quietly planted explosives in Bath Township Elementary. Then, the day he was finally ready, he set off an inferno. When crowds rushed in to rescue the children, he drove up his shrapnel-filled car and detonated it, too, killing more people, including himself,” according to Lenore Skenazy, author of the book, “Free-Range Kids,” about how to raise self-reliant kids.

While the media and politicians respond purely emotionally and opportunistically, they have ignored that these incidents are not new, and are certainly not indigenous to America.

Despite media claims that these types of mass killings are on the rise, the facts simply don’t bear this out. Experts who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common or on the rise, the New York Daily News reported.

“There is no pattern, there is no increase,” said criminologist James Allen Fox, of Boston Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.

“The random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest,” Fox said. “Most people who die of bullet wounds knew the identity of their killer.”

Society moves on, he says, “because of our ability to distance ourselves from the horror of the day, and because people believe that these tragedies are one of the unfortunate prices we pay for our freedoms.”

But the media will not allow people to move on. And politicians have jumped on the opportunity as well.

Three strikes, you’re out of prison!

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics under the U.S. Department of Justice, during 2011, the 688,384 releases from state and federal prisons exceeded the 668,800 admissions.

Additionally, there were 21,663 fewer sentenced inmates in 2011 than in 2010. Seventy percent of this decrease was due to California’s Public Safety Realignment program, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

In 2011, California released 15,493 prisoners, a decline of prison population by 9.4 percent, and the highest in the entire country. The state let 6,213 prisoners out in 2009-10.

The BJS report showed that during the first three quarters of 2011, 98 percent of releases were conditional mandatory releases to parole, compared to 1.5 percent for unconditional releases due to expiration of prison sentences.

But in the fourth quarter, only 46 percent of releases were conditional, while 52 percent were unconditional, meaning they were without post-release stipulations.

Overall, unconditional releases increased by 691 percent from 2010 to 2011, while conditional releases decreased 20 percent. All types of admissions to California state prisons decreased in 2011, with readmissions of parole violators down 22 percent.

However, Brown and state Democrats have ignored that nearly half of these “non-violent offenders” had previously been incarcerated for serious crimes, which is what led to convictions under the Three Strikes Law in the first place. 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.

As the Huffington Post reported on March 20, “Recent shootings in the LA area have police wondering if a new California law is to blame for the outbreak of gun violence.

“LA County jails assumed supervision of thousands of non-serious felons from California in 2011 when the state legislated ‘inmate realignment’ to deal with state prison overcrowding. The realignment left county jails across the state so overcrowded that low-level inmates have been released early to be rehabilitated on the streets as parolees.”

It’s also unclear how crime will be affected by Proposition 36, which voters passed last November. It lessened the Three Strikes Law from the third strike being any kind of felony, to mandating a life sentence only if the third strike is a serious or violent felony. Within a year we should know if crime has gone up.

 California lawmakers want your gun 

There is little doubt the recent mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., is the motivation behind the large number of gun-control measures moving rapidly through the state Legislature.

SJR 1, by Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, is a resolution passed by the state Senate which urges the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama to enact a comprehensive gun violence prevention policy, including prohibiting the sale of military-style assault weapons and “high-capacity magazines.” It also encouraged strengthening criminal background checks.

The Senate also recently passed SB 140, by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, which would allow the Department of Justice to take illegal firearms away from convicted felons, the mentally unstable and parolees. But existing laws already ban guns for such people.

The California Department of Justice has identified 19,784 Californians who illegally own firearms. The new bills would do nothing to help reduce that number. Instead, law-abiding Californians would be prosecuted for defending themselves.

There are bills proposed to drastically tax ammunition, and bills to ban ammunition and gun replacement parts. Said Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, author of AB 48, the bill to ban ammunition and gun parts, “bullets are the very thing making guns deadly.”

AB 760, by Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, would charge 5 cents on every round of ammunition sold in California.

The Assembly Public Safety Committee, led by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, voted to kill AB 249 by Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Hesperia, to repeal the ban on open carry of firearms. AB 249 would have merely restored a right, matching California law to those of 43 other states that allow open carry.

The same committee voted to kill AB 871, by Assemblyman Brian Jones, R-Santee, which would have provided “good cause” to the conditions for the issuance of a concealed carry permit license. Many studies have shown that granting concealed carry permits to law-abiding citizens has reduced crime by making criminals wary of assaulting decent people who might be armed.

Gun control hurts law-abiding citizens

Gun-control laws only impact the gun owners who follow the law. There are no statistics to show reductions in crime when guns and ammunition are restricted. While 12 of California’s elected sheriffs have taken a stand against gun control, the Legislature forges ahead on unnecessary restrictions in an effort to gin up emotion and opposition, while putting criminals back on California streets.

“People should have as much access to a weapon as a criminal does,” said Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, at the Public Safety hearing.

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.”