By Toni McAllister
Murrieta Patch
RIVERSIDE COUNTY, Calif. — The same day that Gov. Jerry Brown’s office released its plan to further reduce California’s prison population, the sheriff from one of the state’s largest law enforcement agencies made a local visit, sharing, among other things, his concerns about an incarceration system bursting at the seams.
“We’re in trouble here in California; a lot if it is directly linked to realignment. It’s great to be very hard on crime, but unless you’re going to pay the freight of keeping those people separated, eventually it comes due,” Riverside County Sheriff Stan Sniff told a crowd gathered at Stadium Pizza in Wildomar during a May 2 Rotary Club of Wildomar meeting. (Watch the attached video to hear some of his comments from the meeting.)
Sniff made his case that AB 109, otherwise known as realignment and signed into law by Brown in 2011, has shifted thousands of inmates from the state prison system into county jails and is placing such a burden on his department that last year he was forced to early release 7,000 offenders as a result of local overcrowding.
“We’re in so much in trouble in this county. What really killed us all was AB 109 realignment,” he said. “One of the first things that happened is the jail system here in Riverside County burst at the seams.”
Full story: Sheriff Sounds Alarm On Inmate Overcrowding: ‘We’re In So Much Trouble In This County’