Police Analysis

Police Analysis
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Introduction
The State of California, the most Populous State, is found on the West Coast of America. Its neighbors include Nevada to the east, Oregon to the north, and Arizona to the southeast. According to Caffiero (2013), the Supreme Court ordered the State of California to moderate unconstitutional prisoner overcrowding. Consequently, the State reviewed ideas such as the transfer of prisoners to other States, building more prisons, and realigning of the prison policies as possible solutions to the problem. Different aspects of the solutions were analyzed. For instance, Caffiero (2013) reveals that the building more prisons would be uneconomical because California has pressing financial responsibilities. Thus, the best alternative to the problem was the prisoner realignment plan because it would reduce the number of criminals in state prisons at cheaper costs. This paper analyzes the issue of overcrowding in State prisons of California and the prisoner realignment plan as the main solution to the problem.
Describing the Prisoner Realignment Plan
California faces a problem of overcrowding in prisons, which began since the inception of State prison systems. As an evidence of this, the California prison system was created in 1851, yet 600 prisoners occupied 62 cells by 1858 (Abarbanel et al., 2013). One and half decade later, the State of California was housing more than 170,000 criminals in 33 prisons that were designed to hold an approximate capacity of 85,000 inmates. It is critical that the California criminal justice system consists of state correction, which contains county jails, local law enforcement, probation departments, prisons, and parole. Further, the spending on corrections has risen from $ 345.6 million to almost $ billion since 1977. As a result, it accounts for more than 25 per cent of State and local criminal justice spending. In May 2011, the State of California was ordered by the Supreme Court to tackle the problem of overcrowding because it was a key source of death and endless suffering among prisoners.
The Prisoner Realignment Plan as a Legislative Policy
The prisoner realignment plan is a legislatively initiated policy owing to the fact that a bill was passed to control the problem of overcrowding in California state prisons. Simply put, the State of California together with its 58 counties began implementing the Assembly Bill 109 on October 1, 2011. The bill shifted responsibility for a considerable number of non-violent, non-sexual, non-serious felony offenders from the state to its counties. The AB 109 bill, commonly denoted as the prison realignment plan is perhaps the leading transformation on the adult corrections system after the inception of determinate sentencing. Therefore, the reform is expected to move an estimated 30,000 low-risk offenders from state prisons to substitute form of societal corr...