By Andrew Creasey
Appeal-Democrat
MARYSVILLE, Calif. — It’s been about three years since California turned the justice system on its head and told counties that many of the prisoners they usually sent to the state would have to stay put.
It was called realignment. It was meant to help balance the state budget after the recession gutted California’s economy. And while the state’s budget appears to be bouncing back, realignment has created a mountain of additional costs for county jails and probation departments — costs the county is being asked to bear on its own.
Realignment has stressed the county prison system. It’s heightened the danger to the guards, nurses and other inmates as hardened, life-long occupants of the correctional system have staked out their turf, with violent intentions to keep it, in county jails as opposed to state prisons.
This new breed of inmate is one the counties, historically, doesn’t see. They’re inmates with a long history of violence, or mental health issues, or a drug addiction that needs long-term care.
They’re inmates that, in some cases, have spent an adult lifetime learning the ins and outs of the prison system, identifying the loopholes and gaps in the system and endeavoring to exploit them.
Before realignment, it was rare for the county to keep a prisoner for more than a year. Now, sentences can approach 15 years.
It’s placed expectations on county jails that were never there before and swollen the jail populations.
In short, realignment has cost money. And while the state allocates the counties money every year to compensate for the extra responsibilities, it’s not enough during a time of tight budgets with little to no capacity to bear increasing costs.
“There’s just not enough money,” said Jim Arkens, Sutter County administr tive officer. “County jails have never been structured with the intent to provide long-term housing units for these people. Now, we have that burden.”
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At the end of the day, there’s no line item in the county budget that reads “realignment costs.”
Figuring out the impact of realignment on county coffers means aggregating a host of different expenses spread across several departments, and, even then, the total cost can be hidden.
But it amounts to millions of dollars, and it’s not covered by the state.
“Intangibles is a good word to use for those other impacts and costs you don’t see in a line item,” said Jim Arkens, Sutter County administrative officer. “A lot of the costs that aren’t covered by realignment funding are costs that aren’t in the budget and have to do with overall increase in demand to general services.”
The county gets $2.1 million from the state to cover realignment costs. But Arkens said the county has had to expend almost that same amount, at the bare minimum, from its own funds to cover all the costs of realignment.
Much of the hidden costs are in staff time — more trips to take inmates to the hospital, more time to investigate prisoner grievances filed by inmates who know how to exploit the system and build a paper trail in case of a future lawsuit, and more rearrangements of the increasingly swollen prison pods as the sheriff department struggles to keep rival gangs from mixing and erupting in violence.
Other costs are known.
The hardest hit budget has been jail medical costs.
Last year alone, it went up $800,000, Arkens said.
Before realignment, jail medical costs hovered around $1.5 million. Last year, the cost was $2.8 million.
Much of the increases stem from longer prison sentences in the county jails. More time spent in a jail cell means more time for something to go wrong, particularly for a population that is not healthy to begin with, said Tom Sherry, Sutter County human services director.
“We have a large portion of the jail population on medication. We’ve had some folks in need of dialysis,” Sherry said. “That’s a very expensive process, and it’s time consuming for the sheriff’s office to get them to a treatment center. But you have to provide medical service. You can’t just not do it.”
The increased population and the new presence of more hardened inmates has also led to increases in prison fights, Sherry said.
“That means you have people with broken hands or jaws that need surgery,” Sherry said. “There’s a lot of medical issues that come up when you have more people housed locally for longer periods of time.”
Two additional nurses and a correctional officer dedicated to moving prisoners back and forth to the medical area have been hired.
The county hired an officer to accompany a nurse when they make rounds to ensure they’re not harassed, an escort that wasn’t necessary until realignment brought in veteran prisoners who are more demanding and know how to push the boundaries, Arkens said.
Salary and benefits costs have increased from just under $1 million in 2010-11 to a recommended $1.6 million in 2014-15 as a result.
Overall, the county jail budget increased by about $1.6 million since realignment was introduced in 2011. The probation department budget has increased by about $1.2 million.
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While realignment has caused some dramatic changes in Sutter County, the effect hasn’t been as marked in Yuba County.
Yuba County receives $2.6 million in funding to cover realignment costs. It is split 50-50 between the sheriff and probation departments.
Undersheriff Jerry Read said realignment has increased costs because prisoners are staying longer, but couldn’t put a number to the increase.
“We haven’t really put pencil to paper to know what it costs,” Read said.
One difference between the counties is that Yuba County has not had to increase jail staff, because its jail usually ran full even before realignment, Read said.
“Since we’re running full all the time, running full doesn’t do much,” Read said.
The probation department has not experienced any issues with realignment, said Jim Arnold, chief probation officer.
“Some counties have screamed, saying it’s inadequate funding, but we haven’t experienced that on the probation side,” Arnold said.
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It’s called a green light, but is more commonly known as a hit.
It means the go ahead, or green light, to take violent retribution on someone who has slighted a gang member, and it’s been authorized on several Sutter County correctional officers by higher-ups in gang hierarchies, said Sheriff J. Paul Parker.
It’s something that would never have happened before realignment turned county jails holding inmates on short-term sentences into prisons holding inmates with a history of violence for years at a time, Parker said.
And it’s increasing costs.
“The whole psychology of the jail changes when you have people staying here for five years,” Parker said. “People want to establish turf and try to run the place. That has increased costs and training. It’s increased costs of officers getting hurt on the job and worker’s comp — things that are very hard to pin down.”
Jail staff has always tried to keep rival gang members separated, but it’s something the officers have to pay even more attention to since realignment. As the stays of gang members in the jail have increased, so has their potential to resolve gang rivalries through violence, Parker said.
“Back in the old days when it was a county jail, everyone wanted to get along, bide their time to make sure they got out on time and take care of it on the street,” Parker said. “Now people have to establish their turf or their dominance. That creates a housing nightmare.”
Staff members do what they can, but about 85 percent of the jail is multi-person housing, and inmate-on-inmate violence is increasing, Parker said.
“We shake the jail down more frequently to make sure people don’t get shanked, which has increased costs,” Parker said. “But they can still go at it with their fists. That has a cost factor, and we have to fix that.”
General jail costs are up as the jail routinely holds about 30 to 40 more inmates than usual before realignment, Parker said.
The jail has 356 beds, but Parker said any time the population is at 300, the jail is, for all intents and purposes, full.
“Once we get to 300, you can just feel the tension of the jail rise,” Parker said. “There’d be times, in the past, where we’d peak around 300 and then it would dwindle down. We’re not seeing that downstroke now. I’m afraid the normal population could creep up to 320 and stay there.”
And while realignment was designed so that only non-violent and non-sexual offenders would stay in county jails instead of being shipped to state prisons, it hasn’t work out that way.
An inmate could be charged with embezzlement and stay in county jails under the rules of realignment and still have a history of committing dangerous crimes, Parker said.
“The jail used to be filled with brawlers, petty thieves and shoplifters, but it’s totally flipped around,” Parker said. “These are dangerous people.”