Last spring, the Supreme Court ruled that overcrowding and poor conditions in state prisons violated inmates’ constitutional rights and, in a first, ordered a state to rapidly decrease its inmate population. Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature approved a plan that would place many more offenders in the custody of individual counties.  Under the plan, inmates who have committed nonviolent, nonserious and nonsexual offenses will be released back to the county probation system rather than to state parole officers. Those newly convicted of such crimes will be sent directly to the counties, which will decide if they should go to a local jail or to an alternative community program. And newly accused defendants may wear electronic monitoring bracelets while they await trial.  “This is the largest change in the California state system in my lifetime,” said Barry Krisberg, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has watched the state prisons for decades and testified in the Supreme Court case last year. “Given that what we had was completely broken and was the most expensive, overcrowded and least effective in America, there’s some hope that this will change it.”  The shift of prisoners to county facilities began Monday, and state officials expect to satisfy the Supreme Court’s mandate by June 2013 — at which time they must have reduced the state inmate population of 144,000, which put the prisons at 180 percent capacity, to 110,000, or 135 percent of capacity. First, though, they must reach the initial court-ordered benchmark by reducing the prison population to 133,000 by December.  In what the state calls a realignment of the criminal justice system, the plan places more responsibilities on the counties, and some local officials say they are unprepared and underfinanced to get the job done. But state officials say that keeping inmates closer to their communities will increase the chances that they can be rehabilitated, rather than in and out of state prison.  For the last several years, state parole officers would often catch criminals on technical parole violations, sending them back to prison for several weeks at a time — a practice many derided as a revolving door.  The constant influx of new and former inmates also sharply increased the cost for the state, because it must pay for a medical evaluation and several other assessments every time an inmate enters the system.  Matthew Cate, the secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the state hoped that the counties would concentrate on rehabilitating prisoners and helping them reintegrate into the community, something the state system was never able to do. Figures show that nearly 70 percent of inmates in California prisons end up there again.  “The catch-and-release way we had before was not working — I don’t know how anyone could disagree with that,” Mr. Cate said. “The only alternative we had was just a massive release of people from prison. Nobody seemed to want to talk about that.”  But some city and county officials say that the changes are likely to overwhelm local law enforcement agencies and that the state has not given them enough time or money to prepare. Last week, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and the city’s police chief, Charlie Beck, said they would have to reassign 150 police officers to help monitor the former inmates.  Sheriff Scott R. Jones of Sacramento County has been one of the most outspoken critics of the plan, saying it is likely to drive up crime. He called it a “collision course with disaster,” because there is not enough money for the counties.  “To do all the things that they are asking everyone to do will cost an enormous amount of money, and we don’t have it,” Sheriff Jones said. “If this doesn’t work, it’s not like we get to go back and try again — we’re going to be stuck with the consequences.”  Sheriff Jones said the state might have been better off simply releasing 10,000 inmates, so it could use the extra time to figure out how to get more money or create a more comprehensive system for counties. “It’s not like we’re ready, because we’re not, and it’s not like we know what is best, because we don’t,” he added. “The only thing that is driving this is a court demand.”  But Mr. Cate dismissed the criticisms, saying the state had no other choice and had been coordinating plans for months.  “Everyone just wants to inoculate themselves from any kind of crime increase and blame it on realignment,” Mr. Cate said. “This is some massive change. It’s going to be subtle and happen over time.”  Counties across the state have been working “feverishly” to figure out their plans to handle the new responsibilities, said Sheriff Mark Pazin of Merced County, president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association.  “It’s a little tiring that we’re finally at the point where we have to do something and people start to react by just hitting the panic button,” Sheriff Pazin said.  Studies show that reduced sentences do not cause drastic increases in crime, he said, and many counties are working on alternative programs. “We need to be concentrating on what works best and how we can actually turn things around,” he said.  Sheriff Pazin said Mr. Brown had reassured him that the state would consider changing the way money is allocated to individual counties. Officials hope that five years from now, they will be able to determine which counties have been most effective at reducing the recidivism rate.  But several advocates for prisoners say they worry that the state is not doing enough to ensure that the counties will consider alternatives to jail, and several counties have said they will deal with the influx simply by adding more beds to their jails. Many of the county jails across the state are already overcrowded, and the Los Angeles County jails are being investigated by the F.B.I. over accusations of inmate abuse by deputies.  “There are no kind of guiding principles or oversight or monitoring,” said Donald Specter, the director of the Prison Law Office, which argued for the prisoners in the Supreme Court case. “I think there will be extreme variations, where some counties just will use the money to lock them up with no support and others who really try to figure out real solutions.”  Any violent crime committed by one of the former inmates is likely to grab headlines, but it will be years before the state can measure the impact of the change.  “We don’t have a lot of options,” Mr. Cate said. “The question years from now will really be: Did we avoid a disaster?”
In what could be a far-reaching change, the state is shifting inmates to county jails and probation officers.