Overcrowding in California prisons could be reduced without early release of criminals

A proposed legal settlement in federal court would vastly reduce overcrowding in California prisons without releasing criminals early, by diverting low-risk offenders to community-based programs and county jails.

State officials, inmate advocates and local law enforcement leaders are considering the draft settlement forged by two mediators appointed by a panel of three federal judges.

The proposed agreement emerged after six months of negotiations with the parties in two high-profile federal lawsuits that were consolidated and are now slated for trial. The three judges are scheduled to meet in 10 days, and are expected to proceed to trial if there is not a settlement by then. They would weigh whether to release prisoners early.

Instead of releasing prisoners early, a controversial step that many state and local officials feared the judges would take, the agreement under discussion would cut the population by reducing the frequent churning of new inmates and parolees through the prisons for months at a time, only to repeat the cycle over and over again. Instead, they would be given treatment and confined locally.

“It became apparent that we had a dangerous revolving door to the state prison system,” California Court of Appeal Justice Peter Siggins, a settlement consultant who was one of the mediators, told reporters today. “And what we were trying to do with the settlement was trade that revolving door for a magnifying glass and really put these folks under scrutiny.”

Those diverted from state prisons would be criminals whose sentences would require them to serve less than a year in prison, and parolees who would be judged as low-risk using an assessment tool devised by state corrections officials.

By removing that group, the state and its opponents would hope to pare back the prison population, which now stands at 171,000, by tens of thousands of inmates, although the precise target would be worked out later. The state would have until the end of 2011 to reduce the population.

Under the proposed settlement, local officials would be given additional state funding for probation services. And inmates would be eligible to receive additional time off their sentences for meeting certain benchmarks, such as completing a degree. Much of the proposal would require legal changes to be approved by state lawmakers this year.

 michael.rothfeld@latimes.com