Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca authored this editorial Wednesday regarding the California budget:
How the STATE OF CALIFORNIA budget affects Los Angeles County public safety
by Sheriff Lee Baca
Our economic problems and California’s budget crisis has impacted every level of government: state, county, and city. Painful cuts have been and will continue to be made in all areas. Inevitably up and down the state, counties and local governments are looking at another year of reduced budgets and additional cuts. I write this to share with you what impacts these cuts will have on public safety and on our communities.
Legislators wrote and passed Senate Bill 18 (SBX3 18) which took effect Monday. This measure was written as a way for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to decrease its budget by cutting the amount of time sentenced inmates serve in prison by increasing sentencing credits for jail and prison inmates. It also removes certain prisoners who would normally be released on a “supervised parole”, meaning the parolee would have a parole agent and a detailed program of re-entry and places them on unsupervised parole better known as “summary parole.”
While a firm number of parolees in Los Angeles County eligible for the unsupervised parole is not yet known, CDCR is reviewing over 7,000 Los Angeles County parolees. When the release occurs, the offender will be unsupervised, released without a plan or program for proper and safe re-entry into our communities and with no accountability. Fortunately, for the residents of Los Angeles County, we are working together with the Board of Supervisors, various county public health and human services departments, and other local law enforcement agencies in attempting to reach out to these parolees and letting them know of the services that are out there to help them and give them the support they need. This is by no means an adequate replacement for supervised parole but it’s better than providing no help at all.
Unfortunately, in the state’s 2010-11 budget and a Federal Court Panel’s mandate, there are plans for even more serious cuts to the CDCR budget that will have an immediate negative impact on the public safety of our communities. Under the budget proposal, at least 11 current crimes in which a person could be convicted of a felony and sent to state prison, including such crimes, as grand theft, receiving stolen property, possession of methamphetamine, and auto theft, would be changed to an “administrative felony” in which the person would still be convicted of a felony, but he or she would be sentenced to 366 days and placed in the county jail. Thus, the proposal shifts the responsibility of these inmates from the state onto the local county jail system.
While this will certainly create a savings for the state, it is irresponsible to shift the costs to counties.
Additionally, this will have a serious negative impact on public safety. The Los Angeles County Jail system is already a severely overcrowded system that has population controls placed on it by a federal court. If the Governor’s proposal were in fact to become law, as of today, this would mean the Los Angeles County Jail would have to house approximately 1,900 additional inmates that would currently be sentenced to state prison. Since we are already at capacity, this would force me to comply with the federal court order and reduce the amount of time one spends in jail to a fraction of what they were sentenced to. Again, the state’s proposal clearly shifts the state problem onto counties and local communities.
Over the last decade, I and other local law enforcement leaders have worked closely with the Governor and legislature to deal with various public safety issues and I fully expect to continue that stance this year. However, I am increasingly concerned about proposals related to parole, county jails and increased local responsibility at a time when we are struggling to fund and manage our current responsibilities and inmate populations. We urge careful scrutiny of these proposals and that the Governor and legislature weigh fiscal benefit against public safety impact before making further changes this year.
maybe our prisions and jails would nt be so crowded if your deputies did more police work rather than setting up raids and planting evidence in raids on probationers and creating these problems. most of these deputies are out to search and arrest rather than helping these individuals and maybe letting some just change their lives. this report from baca is just another scare tactic to the public to increase funding to a department that does nothing but try to increase its cash flow through housing and transporting low level criminals. while rapist and murders run loose in the streets. i was set up by your deputies and was in jail over something that was planted during their search . so i was housed in your disgusting jail for two months for not even committing a crime ! i am a asset to my community by working and paying my taxes and being a success !
Unfortunately the parole issues are going to get worse for many in the public as well as parolees. It has been stated that Governor Brown and Sheriff Lee Baca and other county Chiefs are working on legislation to have the Sheriff depts. / Counties take over Parole Supervision which will be funded by the state. You know that there is no current analysis if this is in the public best interests. Just some propaganda stating this would benefit the state with revenue savings , however the truth is that it will overload if not break the current judicial court system, over crowed the county detention centers and then again overload the state prison system. It will cause multiple lawsuits to local counties and then lawsuits to the state for not fully disclosing all potential liabilities to the counties. I was always taught to beware of politicians baring gifts. I hope everyone will become aware of this potential travesty before it happens and communicate with there local representatives. Who knows maybe common sense still exists.