SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Tens of thousands of felons convicted of nonviolent crimes will serve their time in local county jails instead of state prisons under a law signed by California Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday.
The measure is designed to reduce the number of inmates in California’s chronically overcrowded state prisons and keep low-level offenders closer to home, where drug treatment and mental-health services are believed to be more effective.
“For too long, the state’s prison system has been a revolving door for lower-level offenders and parole violators who are released within months,” Brown said late Monday. “Cycling these offenders through state prisons wastes money, aggravates crowded conditions, thwarts rehabilitation and impedes local law enforcement supervision.”
But Brown’s statement said the program won’t begin until the state has money to fund it. State officials have promised to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to local counties to help defray the costs.
Much of that was expected to come from Brown’s proposed extension of sales and vehicle taxes. The governor’s attempts to get those tax extensions on a ballot for voter approval have so far been unsuccessful.
Opponents, mostly Republican legislators, have referred to the plan as the “get a dog, buy a gun and install an alarm system” bill, arguing some inmates will have to be freed from local jails early to make room for those who would otherwise have been shipped off to prison.
