Evaluating the Impacts of Californias Criminal Justice Realignment Thesis

Evaluating the Impacts of Californias Criminal Justice Realignment - Thesis Example The results indicate that realignment has led to the reduction of felonies in prisons by 17%. Crime rate has also increased in the state; while there is lack of sufficient resources. Numerous problems such as overcrowding in jails have resulted from the relocation of criminals to jails. The lack of a solution to this problem may render realignment to be an ineffective solution to overcrowding in California. The state of California developed the criminal justice realignment legislation in May 2011. The state developed the realignment program following an order to reduce the number of inmates in prisons from the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court required the state to reduce the number of inmates from 180% to 137.5% of the capacity of the prisons by May 2013 (Green, 2014). This meant that California had to reduce the number of inmates in state prisons by 25,000. In response to the Supreme Court’s order, the state developed the prison realignment reform under Bill 109 and Penal Code 1170h in 2011. Bill 109 transfers the responsibility of imprisoning non-violent offenders from state prisons to county jails (Green, 2014). According to this bill, non-violent offers are those who commit crimes that are ‘non-serious,’ and ‘non-sex related (Hunter, 2013).’ This means that the prisoners who commit serious, violent, and sex-related crimes will be incarcerated in state prisons instead of county jails. The penal code 1170h, on the other hand, states that individuals who are realigned in county jails must undergo compulsory supervision; while out of custody. County probation officers conduct the Post Release Community Supervision (PRCS) (Caffiero, 2013).The code also requires those who disobey the mandatory supervision to be imprisoned in county jails instead of prisons. This is different from probation, which requires prisoners who are released from state