County Inmates Will Be Released, Put on Electronic Monitoring

Through the Public Safety Realignment Act (AB 109) Santa Cruz Country Jail will soon swell in size to accomodate lower-level inmates who would have previously been sentenced to state prisons. But county administrators have found one solution to stymie the ballooning population.

Starting Oct. 26, 80 to 100 minor crime offenders in Santa Cruz will be released into the community through electronic monitoring, according to Corrections Bureau Chief Jim Hart.

These are “low-end offenders,” said Hart, who spend one day to one year behind bars. To participate in the program, the jail will first assess their risk of reoffending. If it's deemed low, they will be placed outside of jail on careful watch, on home detention with electronic monitoring, GPS monitoring and transdermal alcohol and proximity monitoring. On a case-by-case basis, some jail sentences will be replaced with volunteer service.

, county facilities were already 120 to 125 percent past capacity at any given time, according to Hart. There are 448 total beds, and there are usually 480 to 580 post and pre-trial inmates in them.

“Can we do business as it has been and house 100 new inmates? Absolutely not,” said Hart, referring to the new inmates expected to come into the county over the next next year through the legislation.

Scott MacDonald, a Santa Cruz County Chief Probation Officer, is in favor of the new legislation, feeling that it will reduce recidivism through the alternatives to jail time being introduced. He is one of the chief authors of the  “Santa Cruz County Public Safety Realignment and Post Release Community Supervision 2011 Implementation Plan.”

“AB 109 represents a remarkable opportunity for our county to improve public safety outcomes for our residents, to better meet the needs of victims of crime, and to hold offenders accountable while facilitating their successful return to a productive role in the community,” stated the plan, which was presented to the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors on an Oct. 4 meeting.

Steve Pleich, a board member of the Santa Cruz Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, was cautiously optimistic about the plan's ability to reduce recidivism.

"We're just hopeful the program will teach prisoners to come back into society," he said, "and regain the dignity they often loose when they're incarcerated."

Furthermore, Pleich said many of the inmates who do remain behind bars will have less of a chance of returning to jail once their sentence is over due to increased access to friends and family.

Until April 2012, MacDonald and his group of plan co-authors, which includes Watsonville Police Chief Manny Solano and District Attorney Bob Lee, will be working to identify other “alternatives to incarceration,” stated the plan.

Santa Cruz County is receiving $1.66 million from the state for the nine-month period from Oct. 1, 2011 through June 20, 2012 for the entire realignment plan. Throughout California, only those who have been sentenced after Oct. 1 will go to county instead of state prisons. An exception will be made for violent and sex offenders, who will continue being sent to state prisons. Those in state prisons will remain there.

The funds are intended to pay for all aspects of the prisoner population shifts, including the transfer of the low-level offender population, the county’s new supervision responsibilities for state prison inmates released to post-release community supervision, and “sanctions for those on post-release community supervision who are revoked,” according to the plan.

Hart doesn’t feel that the funding will be enough to cover the costs of the new inmates. If there are 100 new inmates this year, he said, who cost $85 a day to house, the grand total will come to $3.1 million.

Still, “the funding stream is not fixed right now,” he said, adding that Gov. Jerry Brown may author a new ballot measure for the next fiscal year to augment the amount of money that counties receive.