Above: Margaret Dooley-Sammuli from the ACLU and Chief Mack Jenkins, head of the San Diego County Probation Department, speak to Evening Edition about the realignment program.
By Beth Accomando, Adriana Alcaraz
and Erik Anderson
It’s been six months since California started shifting low-level prison inmates and funding from state to county jails, and a new report from the ACLU looks at how the program is going so far.
Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, a senior policy advocate for the ACLU, spoke to KPBS about the report.
She said San Diego County compares “fairly favorably” to other counties. It has one of the lower non-sentenced jail populations, but is third highest in pre-alignment felony probation workload, according to the report.
The county was given $25.1 million for its realignment program and plans to spent 20 percent of it on probation, 12 percent on health, treatment and services and 11 percent on the sheriff’s department.
The county will also spend $200,000—1 percent of its total funding—to expand the East Mesa Detention Facility.
All counties should spend money in ways to prevent future crime, not on expanding jails, Dooley-Sammuli said. That leads to problems the state prison system already faces.