Looking Past The Hype: 10 Questions Everyone Should Ask About California’s Prison Realignment

Abstract

DOI 10.1515/cjpp-2013-0011 Calif. J. Politics Policy 2013; 5(2): 266–306 Joan Petersilia* and Jessica Greenlick Snyder Looking Past The Hype: 10 Questions Everyone Should Ask About California’s Prison Realignment Abstract: California’s Criminal Justice Realignment Act passed in 2011 shifted vast discretion for managing lower-level offenders from the state to the county, allocated over $2 billion in the first 2 years for local programs, and altered sen- tences for more than 100,000 offenders. Despite the fact that it is the biggest penal experiment in modern history, the state provided no funding to evaluate its overall effect on crime, incarceration, justice agencies, or recidivism. We provide a frame- work for a comprehensive evaluation by raising 10 essential questions: (1) Have prison populations been reduced and care sufficiently improved to bring prison medical care up to a Constitutional standard? (2) What is the impact on victim rights and safety? (3) Will more offenders participate in treatment programs, and will recidivism be reduced? (4) Will there be equitable sentencing and treatment across counties? (5) What is the impact on jail crowding, conditions, and litiga- tion? (6) What is the impact on police, prosecution, defense, and judges? (7) What is the impact on probation and parole? (8) What is the impact on crime rates and community life? (9) How much will realignment cost? Who pays? (10) Have we increased the number of people under criminal justice supervision? Keywords: prison realignment; California corrections; criminal justice; prisons; probation and parole; Jails; victim’s rights; penology. *Corresponding author: Joan Petersilia, PhD, Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, Co-Director of Stanford’s Criminal Justice Center, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford Law School, CA 94305, USA, e-mail: petersilia@law.stanford.edu Jessica Greenlick Snyder: 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford Law School, CA 94305, USA 1 Introduction On April 2, 2011, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 109, the Criminal Justice Realignment Act of 2011. AB 109, commonly referred to as “rea- lignment,” took effect on October 1, 2011. AB 109 passed the legislature in a matter of hours after being introduced, and without any public input. Despite some mis- leading headlines, the law did not require the state to release anyone currently