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Calif. Prisons Hope To Meet Long-Term Inmate Goal

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- California prison officials said Tuesday they expect to meet a federal court's mandate to reduce the state's inmate population by 33,000, or 23 percent, over the next two years, a goal that could eventually end court challenges that have largely driven prison operations for years.

The state is relying primarily on a controversial new law that will shift responsibility for tens of thousands of lower-level offenders to local sheriffs and probation offices beginning Oct. 1.

California will fall just shy of meeting the court's first deadline at the end of the year, the officials said in a court filing Tuesday, but their long-range plan to transfer jurisdiction over many criminals to counties is on track.

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation projects the law will reduce the population of the state's 33 adult prisons by 9,200 inmates in time for the initial Dec. 27 deadline, about 800 inmates short of the court mandate. It expects to meet the second deadline by removing 20,000 inmates by next June.

"At this point ... there appears to be no need to implement additional measures or to ask that the benchmark dates be extended, when defendants' best projections show they that they will achieve the June 2012 benchmark on time," attorneys for the department said in their court filing.

That conflicts with a report from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office earlier this month that urged the department to seek an extension of the deadlines. It projected that the state will miss all the deadlines and urged Gov. Jerry Brown's administration to keep more inmates in private prisons in other states.

Corrections spokesman Oscar Hidalgo said the analyst's report was based on old projections and that seeking a delay is premature until the department sees actual numbers from the realignment law that Brown sought and signed into law.

"Overall we see this as progress toward regaining control and ending some of the litigation before us," Hidalgo said. "The numbers give us some hope that that will be sooner rather than later."

Michael Bien, a lawyer representing mentally ill inmates in a major court case, said attorneys want to run their own numbers before projecting whether the state can meet its deadlines.

"They're correct that this is a major change in California sentencing policy, so no one knows exactly how the numbers are going to come out," he said.

Federal judges ruled that reducing prison crowding is the only way to improve inmates' medical and mental health care, conditions that led to the appointment of a federal receiver with control over prison medical care. The ruling also has driven billions of dollars in new construction and higher salaries for prison medical and mental health workers.

Though Brown's realignment law is set to begin Oct. 1, some county law enforcement officials and Republican lawmakers are worried about counties' ability to pay for their new responsibility in the years ahead.

"If there's an opportunity to resolve the lawsuits, that's wonderful," said Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Roseville, who opposed realignment for fear that it could overwhelm county jails and force the release of lower-level offenders. "The question is, is there going to be enough funding for them to fully implement realignment?"

California State Sheriffs' Association spokesman Nick Warner said law enforcement officials are taking a tough situation and making it work as well as possible with no major hiccups so far.

Aside from inmates in the 33 adult prisons, California also houses about 9,600 inmates in private prisons in other states and about 7,900 inmates in fire camps and private prisons in California.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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