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Third Of SD County Jail Population Would Have Been In State Prison Before Realignment

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published February 7, 2014 at 2:50 PM PST

This story was published more than 10 years ago.

Third Of SD County Jail Population Would Have Been In State Prison Before Realignment

GUESTS:Mack Jenkins, Chief of Probation, San Diego County Cynthia Burke, Ph.D., Director of Criminal Justice, SANDAG

A new report shows more than one-third of all the inmates in San Diego’s county jails are now offenders who previously would have served their time in state prison.

Cynthia Burke conducts regional public safety research for the San Diego Association of Governments. She said crime has been falling since 2008, but the state’s realignment strategy to relieve prison overcrowding is having an impact on the jail population.

“They are more likely to need higher level custody,” she said, “and in terms of their demographic, they are starting to get a little bit older and they are staying there much longer.”

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Burke said previously offenders never stayed in jail longer than a year, now offenders are serving sentences in jail of up to 16 years.

The San Diego probation department is also affected: 15 percent of those on probation would have been in prison or on parole before realignment. They are significantly more likely to re-offend and end up back behind bars.

Realignment began in October 2011 in response to a court ruling that requires California to reduce prison overcrowding.

Corrected: December 14, 2024 at 7:41 PM PST

KPBS' Maureen Cavanaugh, Patty Lane and Peggy Pico contributed to the Midday and Evening Edition segments.

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Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.