Nt1310 Unit 3 Assignment

Long 1

Safe Assign 3 The Realignment Act, which is also known as AB 109, was passed in 2011 and implemented in October of the same year. First and foremost this legislation was passed to reduce the large prison population in the state. There was a landmark case in the Supreme Court that stated the need to reduce it. According to Kathleen Nye Flynn in an article from the Golden State

University Law Review, it’s been a “long road” (Flynn, 2013) to this legislation. The first try at the issue at hand began with the “Probation Subsidy Act” (Flynn, 2013) that tried to help the probation department. Next was the Supreme Court decision of “Brown v. Prata” (Flynn, 2013) in which the state was told to lessen its’ prison numbers.

This means that the punishment will take place in jails. Another key provision of AB 109 is the county probation department will be taking over a portion of released offenders from state parole departments. This is due to paroled offenders are now under a new program called the

“Post-Release Community Supervision” (County of Kern) or PRCS. As part of this program, offenders that violate their terms of release will also receive jail time. Another key provision of

AB 109 that falls under the PRCS program is how violators will go before a judge to determine what kind of sanctions will be imposed for violations of their release. Other key provisions of AB 109 include inmates in the county jail system will receive more days earned for shorter incarceration times for good behavior and the “Electronic Monitoring

Programs (EMP)” (County of Kern) changing to allow more offenders to utilize the EMP to be out of jail and in their homes or communities. One last provision is the state wants the counties to utilize “alternate sanctions and evidence based policies” (County of Kern) to deal with offenders and their problems and high rates of “recidivism.” (County of

Another reduction was seen in parole violators and that they had “decreased by 87%.” (Petersilia, 2014)

Another benefit that AB 109 has is it wants to “promote rehabilitation” (Petersilia, 2014) and utilize “community-based services.” (Petersilia, 2014) These types of programs are aimed to help the offender get treatment that he or she may need to become successful in the community and hopefully not re-offend because of the goal of reducing recidivism that AB 109 has. The challenges that might face AB 109 is the overall cost of this legislation that has been placed on the local level such as the counties and subsequent agencies within those counties.

Along with the cost placed on different agencies, these agencies like probation may be overwhelmed with caseloads and may not provide the supervision needed to help the offender and keep society safe. Another challenge that can occur is job loss. During the time of implementation of AB 109, I was able to talk with a state parole officer and it was apparent