Parolees: AB 109's
under-funded liability
By David Marsh
Tulare County - Only three months into the state's experiment with housing long-term inmates in overcrowded local jails, the 250 long-unused jail beds that have provided Tulare County with a temporary buffer from the chaos of AB 109 are steadily filling.
According to sheriff's Capt. Robin Skiles, the jail had 120 empty beds as of last Friday. AB 109's prison-diverted inmates have been filling them at a rate of about 43 beds per month during each of the first three months of realignment.
County supervisors last week gave their blessing to Sheriff Bill Wittman's plan to seek $60 million from the state to build a new 200- to 300-bed jail facility in the Porterville area. But the proposed new jail, with an expected completion date of 2016, is at best a long-term, partial solution for an increasingly short-term crisis for Tulare County corrections officials.
Early releases of county jail inmates were once a closely guarded 'secret' of jail officials, a tool almost universally but discreetly exercised as a means to manage local jail populations. With the Oct. 1 kick-off of AB 109 and its resulting flow of low-level offenders and parole violators to county lockups, corrections officials up and down the state are openly announcing inmate releases in an attempt to focus attention on the overcrowding in their jails.
Under AB 109, the state is diverting thousands of low-level offenders to county jails, as well as many thousands more to the supervision of county probation departments, while keeping only those considered at high risk of re-offending under state parole supervision. For many counties, radical changes in the parole system are the fly in the ointment.
Prior to Oct. 1 parole violators faced a return to prison of up to a year for violating the conditions of their parole. With the roll out of AB 109, parole violators are diverted to county jails for a maximum term of 180 days. With the new half-time credits for county jail inmates, they are released after ninety days.
Under the economics-driven formula the state devised for reimbursement to the counties for costs related to AB 109, the counties receive money for only the first thirty days of a parole violator's revocation term. The state had projected that parole revocation terms would average 30 days.
Three months into AB 109, the reality is that parole violators are flooding into county jails in numbers far exceeding the state's projections. In addition, the sentences that most of the violators are receiving are double what the counties had expected. In Tulare County, the average parole violator is serving about 61 days, tying up critical bed space much longer than officials had expected.
On Thanksgiving day Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mimms announced that Fresno County was joining the growing list of counties throughout the state that no longer will accept parole violators. Kern County announced the early release of approximately 150 parole violators. Kings County also announced an early release of parole violators from their overcrowded jails.
The economic realities of AB 109 and jail overcrowding are becoming clearer: the offenders deemed at the highest risk of re-offending are also becoming those most likely to avoid incarceration, fueling the argument of AB 109 critics who forecast an inevitable explosion in the state's current historically low crime rates across all major categories.
Gordon McClaskey, the parole district administrator for a number of Central Valley counties including Tulare County, said that his office is already seeing a rise in property crimes as a result of AB 109.
“The public is totally naïve as to what's really happening under AB 109,” McClaskey said recently, “but they'll get their eyes opened. Once jails reach their capacity, it's just going to become a revolving door. There's no accountability for someone's actions.”
McClaskey said that his department is grateful for the extra jail space that Tulare County had going into the realignment plan, but he expects changes when those beds fill up.
“We're just kind of sitting in a real good spot for Tulare County right now. Eventually the beds will fill up and the pot of money will run out, then they're going to be faced with the same set of issues as everyone else,” said McClaskey.
For the time being, Tulare County
jail officials aren't saying what changes in their policies regarding
parole violators might come about when the jail reaches capacity.
Said Skiles, who heads the jails division for the sheriff's office: “For
now, we are still studying options such as electronic monitoring and alternative
sentencing in addition to expanding our SWAP (sheriff's work alternative
program) and DRC (day reporting center) programs.”
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