A third man is behind bars in connection to a carjacking which took place over the weekend, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Hesperia station officials said on Wednesday.

Parolee Robin Vanhaastert, 33, of Hesperia was arrested late Tuesday night at a home in the 9200 block of Sixth Avenue, according to a release.

Authorities received a 911 call on Saturday night reporting an assault and a carjacking, officials said. The victim stated he was attacked and carjacked at knifepoint...

A sweeping plan to make local officials responsible for supervising thousands of released prisoners previously monitored by the state has gotten off to a bumpy start in Los Angeles County.

Many of the ex-criminals are not showing up for counseling appointments, some care centers are not being paid and county bureaucrats are scrambling to correct foul-ups that have caused delays....

For more than thirty years, it's been Barry Krisberg's priority to fight for reforms in California's state juvenile correctional facilities, known as the California Youth Authority (CYA) or Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). And now a change is coming at the DJJ.

Only three of California's state facilities still remain open, holding a total of about 800 to 900 youth, and soon the state will hand down responsibility of juvenile offenders to counties. But Krisberg, the Director of the of Research and Policy at the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute at UC Berkeley's School of Law, isn't so sure that this realignment is the wisest decision. Turnstyle sat down with him to discuss the coming changes to California's juvenile justice system and what they will mean for both the state of California and its counties...

In 2005, California's juvenile prison system got a face lift. The name changed from CYA, short for California Youth Authority, to the Division of Juvenile Justice or DJJ. And many policies began to change along with the name.

Today DJJ's population is just over a thousand wards, or inmates, down from a high of 10,000 in 1996. And of the 11 state facilities, only three remain. Many of the reforms stem from a 2003 ruling by the Superior Court of Alameda County that found the state juvenile justice system to be poorly managed and unsafe, and while no one can argue that today's system is the same as it was a decade ago, many critics argue that state facilities remain unequipped to manage juvenile detention and reform. On top of that, Governor Jerry Brown is pushing to close state facilities entirely in the face of unprecedented budget constraints...

Trinity County supervisors voted unanimously last week to approve a major reorganization of the county Probation Department, adding five new positions to help deal with a caseload that’s rising much faster than predicted under the statewide public safety realignment plan.

Known as AB 109 and in place since last October, the realignment program changed the sentencing requirements for certain non-serious, non-violent and non-sexual crimes from state prison to county jails to reduce overcrowding in the state facilities. The program also shifts parole responsibilities from the state to the counties for those inmates upon release from prison....

The number of parolees arrested for new crimes in Los Angeles County has dropped since Gov. Jerry Brown's realignment plan took effect six months ago, drawing cautious optimism from some state and local officials.

The county Probation Department is currently supervising about 6,200 parolees - officially known as post-release supervised persons or PSPs - who were released from state prisons after Oct. 1.

As a group, PSPs have been involved in 1,600 arrests through mid-March, though only about 700 felony cases have been presented to the District Attorney's Office for prosecution...

Riverside County supervisors are expected to formally accept Tuesday a $100 million state grant that would help expand jails and plan how to pay the 10 percent match.

The board also will discuss how to pay for the proposed expansion of the Indio jail, which could cost up to $237 million, requiring a $130 million commitment of county cash and smaller in-kind matches...

Senate Bill 1351—which would help restore over 200 well-paying jobs in the Central Valley—passed out of the Senate Public Safety Committee with unanimous bipartisan support earlier this morning. This bill clarifies existing law to ensure that employees of public Community Correctional Facilities (CCFs) in California are granted sworn peace officer status and makes them eligible to be rehired upon CCFs contracting with counties.

Four Central Valley CCFs in Delano, Shafter, Taft and Coalinga each employed approximately 60 employees, though all were laid off with the implementation of the current ‘realignment’ plan that shifts many criminal justice responsibilities and costs from the state to individual counties. Each CCF is able to house over 500 inmates. The four affected communities all have high unemployment rates ranging from 15.2% to 37.0%—well above the statewide 11.4% jobless rate...

Signed by California Governor Jerry Brown less than a year ago in April 2011, assembly bill (AB) 109, the realignment process that is shifting low-level, nonviolent offenders from the state prison and parole system to county jails and probation departments only took effect a few months ago. While it is far too early to decide if this is a success or failure, it is clear that one of the major challenges will be for counties to identify long-term funding sources for these new responsibilities. What is also becoming more prevalent are public-private partnerships (P3) where government and private industry collaborate on a project - which is funded and operated through both entities - and which provide tremendous opportunities for both.

Correctional News recently sat down with four individuals from a variety of firms - Nick Warner, managing partner at Warner & Pank LLC, a government relations and legislative advocacy firm in Sacramento, Calif.; Peter Sukalo, vice president, justice group director for the Tutor Perini Corporation Building Group, of which Redwood City, Calif.-headquartered general and engineering contractor Rudolph and Sletten, Inc., is part of; Richard Worthington, president and COO of The Molasky Group of Companies, a real estate development and management firm based in Las Vegas, Nev.; Jeff Bradley, vice president, global justice program director, for HDR Architecture in Dallas, Texas; and Buddy Johns, president of CGL/Capital Solutions, a planning, design, facility finance and management firm based in Atlanta, Ga. All were candid in their thoughts about realignment as it relates to P3 projects and how their companies are and may be affected and benefited...

California counties receiving an influx of low-level convicts are preparing to spend millions of dollars for more jail space in the years ahead, but plans for reducing the number incarcerated are far less concrete.

That is the overarching finding of a new report by the ACLU of California, which analyzed how counties intend to use state money received through the Public Safety Realignment Act...