Sheriff's substation prepares for release of criminals

The Fallbrook Sheriff’s substation is prepared to accommodate its share of the 4,000 criminals that will now fall under the supervision of the San Diego County Probation and Sheriff’s departments after the County Board of Supervisors approved Assembly Bill 109 (AB 109), the Criminal Justice Realignment Act.

The act, which took effect on Oct. 1, changes over 500 state laws and permanently shifts the responsibility of thousands of felony offenders from the state to the county.

“Our plan efficiently uses the limited funds available by building on the successful strategies of the local criminal justice community to reduce crime and recidivism while keeping the community safe,” said county chief probation officer Mack Jenkins.

Once the realignment is complete, San Diego County jails and the Probation Department are expected to absorb an additional 4,000 offenders each year who would previously have remained in the state prison and parole systems. The Sheriff’s Department estimates that its local jails will reach capacity within eight months of start-up and 1,000 to 2,000 more jail beds will be needed by the fall of 2013, the report states.

“While one benefit of realignment is the reduction of inmate populations in California’s prisons, which are operating at nearly double their capacity, the overarching concern of many is that any benefit could be undermined if the state underfunds its mandate to county public safety agencies,” SANDAG Director of Criminal Justice Research Dr. Cynthia Burke said.

The county will receive an initial allocation of $11 million for the immediate needs of supervision, custody, and intervention services. The county’s implementation plan has five main components: enhance pre-trial processes to more effectively utilize current jail capacity; improve and streamline felony settlement; encourage the use of evidence-based practices into sentencing for felony offenders; employ alternative custody options and in-custody programming; provide evidence-based supervision and intervention services for post-release offenders.

Approximately half of the criminals are post-release offenders who would have been supervised by state parole upon release, but will now be supervised by the County Probation Department. The other half includes non-violent, non-serious, non-sex offenders who will serve their sentences in County jails instead of state prison.

“We were definitely aware that this was coming, and we have a great plan in place. We have a program for tracking known offenders (TKO), which is done on a weekly basis,” said Fallbrook Sheriff substation commander Lt. Robert Haley. “We use our data-driven policing techniques, and if there are more crimes and burglaries when [the criminals] are out, we will make more appropriate searches.”

The local substation has not been told how many criminals will be moving into this particular community. According to Haley, no new staff will be added to the team covering Fallbrook.

“We want to keep crime low; there is no excuse for crime going up,” said Haley.

“We hope that these individuals can become functioning members of society. The Sheriff has jail programs available for inmates instead of having them kill time. They can receive an education or job skills so that when they get out, they are more likely to stay out.”

Haley stated that the county would have a roving enforcement team, which would include a sergeant and eight deputies, to specifically address any concerns brought up by the influx of criminals.

“That is a great resource that we may use in certain things,” said Haley. “We will continue to use the technology and information available to us. We will run details to work on this, and do regular checks to see who is on probation and parole. If we see spikes in certain areas, we tie them in.”