Public Safety Realignment - ACLU of Northern California

e released on their own recognizance, or making pretrial defendants eligible for existing homedetention programs previously available only to sentenced inmates.Only two of the county plans clearly specified an actual budget allocation for pretrial programs:Fresno and Sacramento. A third, San Joaquin, allocates $70,000 from the AB 109 training andimplementation grant to implement a Pretrial Assessment tool for the Court to utilize in determiningwhich individuals are appropriate for release. However, the plan does not provide for any pretrialservices or programming beyond theassessment tool.The 17 remaining counties eithermade no mention of the pretrialpopulation, or per functorilyacknowledged that supervisedrelease and alternatives to custodywere authorized for the pretrialpopulation under AB 109 withoutmaking any commitment to institutethem.California’s average pretrialpopulation (71 percent of the totaljail population) is significantlyhigher than the national average (61percent). 82 All but five of the Big 25counties struggle with pretrial jailpopulations exceeding the nationalaverage. Of the remaining twentycounties, all but four exceed eventhe bloated state-wide average.(See Figure F). California countiesought to be aggressively pursuinginnovative strategies to reduce theirpretrial populations, rather thanseeking to expand jail capacity.In early 2012, the proportion ofcounty jail populations in Californiathat were pretrial began to fall notbecause the pretrial populationdeclined, but because the number ofsentenced inmates increased,24