September 15, 2011
CA Budget Project releases report: “State Corrections Spending in California”
California Budget Project
September, 2011
California’s correctional system is on the verge of profound change. Beginning October 1, 2011, counties will assume responsibility for incarcerating, supervising, and rehabilitating “low-level” offenders – a change that is intended to divert, over the next few years, tens of thousands of men and women from the state’s correctional system to county custody and supervision.
This historic “realignment” of responsibility from the state to the counties was prompted by a number of factors, including rising state corrections expenditures, the costly cycling of low-level offenders through the state’s prison system, and a recent federal court order requiring the state to significantly reduce prison overcrowding over the next two years. Shifting low-level offenders to county supervision has the potential to substantially reduce state spending on corrections, thereby reversing the trend of recent decades, in which an increasing share of the state budget has gone toward state prisons and parole.
This Budget Backgrounder provides a snapshot of the state’s correctional system, highlights the increase in state corrections spending over the past generation, examines some of the factors that have driven the growth in corrections spending, and describes the major components of the criminal justice realignment that will take effect beginning in October...
For more, please click on link below to read entire report.
