Gov. Jerry Brown’s state budget plan would shift duties for housing low-level inmates and monitoring parolees to counties, which some officials say would undoubtedly impact city police resources.
“For the city of Glendale...it represents a major concern for us to have these individuals come back to our communities without supervision, without conditions and without any real accountability for their behavior,” Glendale Police Chief Ron De Pompa told a group of community leaders last week.
Inmates released under the proposed plan would be transferred to county facilities once the fiscal year commences, said Oscar Hidalgo, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The corrections system, he said, houses 50,000 to 60,000 inmates who are serving 90- to 100-day short-term sentences.
Having to accommodate those inmates has not only backed up the prison system, but diminished the chances that inmates will be able to reintegrate into society upon release, Hidalgo said.
Pulling low-level inmates from their communities to serve short-term sentences in highly volatile prison environments can increase their chances of recidivism, he added.
Implementing the new plan would allow the corrections system to do what it was designed to do, which was to serve longer-term, serious and violent offenders, Hidalgo said.
The process would likely be fully implemented by 2014-15, and counties would receive about $705.1 million to fund housing and services for offenders, according to the California Department of Finance.
Local communities, Hidalgo said, have a better understanding of, and access to, services that could best serve their inmates.
“The locals can do that better than the state,” Hidalgo said.
