How Do We Put Fewer Californians in Prison?
From Texas and Mississippi to New York and Georgia, Other States Are Finding Alternatives to Incarceration
In 2009, overcrowding in California’s prisons had gotten so bad—140,000 inmates crammed into prisons built to house just 80,000—that federal judges ruled it violated prisoners’ civil rights. Under order to reduce the state’s prison population, Governor Jerry Brown introduced public safety realignment in 2011, a plan to send nonviolent inmates to county jails and probation departments rather than prison.
This year, a federal court gave California two more years to reduce the inmate population of its 33 prisons to 112,100. Along with shifting responsibilities to the county, the state is looking …
