tv [untitled] April 21, 2011 11:30am-12:00pm PDT
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supervisor mirkarimi: good morning. welcome to the public safety committee. thank you for the slightly delayed start. we believe supervisor campos will be joining us shortly. would you please read the first item? >> item 1, resolution authorizing the department of emergency management to retroactively accept and expend a grant in the amount of $750,000. supervisor mirkarimi: ok, this
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is a resolution from the department of emergency management. please. >> good morning. the accept and expend before you today is for the amount of $750,000 from the u.s. department of justice from their program designed to upgrade the technology of law enforcement agencies nationwide. san francisco is going to use the money to upgrade some of our public safety radios to a new standard that would allow us to talk to police and fire and other public safety agencies in other jurisdictions besides san francisco. both during a disaster and day to day when we need to offer each other mutual aid, we will be able to talk to each other, which is not a capability we have now. this is a much larger project. we are funding it until we get the money, and we were able to get $750,000 from doj. we are going to work order
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about $95,000 to department of technology for installation and programming. the grant creates no new positions, and there are no matching funds required. i'm happy to answer any questions you may have. supervisor mirkarimi: any comments or questions? seeing none, i think we are fine. any public comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. can we take this without objection? so moved. thank you very much. anything else to add? ok, thank you. please read the next item. >> item two, hearing on assembly bill 109, regarding criminal justice realignment. supervisor mirkarimi: excellent. i had called for this particular hearing because we have been hearing a great deal about this issue in the press for some months now. it is related to governor brown and the state pose a desire to
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realign our state prison population -- the state's desire to realign our state prison population. it asks the state to return a certain amount of prisoners, state population back to the municipality of san francisco. there have been random reports of what that number actually looks like, and that seems to be couched in the question of what kind of funding would be attached for the return of that prison population. based on that funding and resources, we would hope to -- based on that funding and resources we would hope to expect from the state, based on a number of questions about a municipality like san francisco's ability to receive the population and to do so not just expecting incarcerations but expecting alternative means of supervision and monitoring for that population, it is not
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being well-received by many municipalities or counties in california. others are actually looking forward to it in some respect as long as they have the kind of control and support from the state that they would hope to get. it presents, i think, to the and discerning public -- to the un- discerning public is very schizophrenic picture, which is why i asked for this hearing, so we can get a better handle as to what san francisco is in store for. i have asked a number of people from our criminal justice partners in san francisco to be able to elaborate on the negotiations and on the updates -- status updates as to what we can expect from san francisco -- expect for san francisco over the next couple of months. what seems to be certain is that this will happen, but it is not clear to what degree and what volume it will happen in terms of what the exact population is
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$40 attached because of the state -- what the exact population is or the dollars attached because of the state of the budget. so i invite mr. henderson -- paul henderson from the mayor's office of criminal justice. the chief from adult probation. we have ms. dempsey from the sheriff's department. we have jessica from the reentry council, and a number of other folks as well. mr. henderson, if you would like to start this off. welcome. >> thank you. this is kind of a fait accompli. it was going to happen no matter what. in terms of our planning,
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preparing for the realignment, one of the newest things that happened is the grant that san francisco just one. the good thing is that this is an oversight, a justice strategy reinvestment grant. we just want to review our plan and make sure our plan for realignment is going to be appropriately executed, which is kind of a big deal. this is money associated with that grant in terms of oversight and input in terms of how we are putting our program together here specifically in san francisco. this is one of only seven cities in the united states that received this grand -- grant. rather than going through too many details, i am going to call up our chief of probation, who has prepared a powerpoint that is going to give us the entire overview of a.b. 109 and give you the groundwork of the
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any time you are ready. ok. you might want to use that microphone. yes. >> thank you very much. i appreciate the opportunity to speak to the public safety committee. a.b. 19 -- supervisor mirkarimi: you might want to introduce yourself formally. >> the public safety realignment is built upon the framework of senate bill 678, which is helpful to understand what the elements are of the actual proposal. i talked to the public safety committee earlier about six months ago. it is evidence-based probation supervision.
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the framework of that is to use science and best practices to improve outcomes to reduce recidivism, and to not rely on traditional incarceration and other methods to supervise. to bring in with that risk and needs assessment, individual treatment and rehab plans, and case management. in san francisco, i'm happy to report that we implemented, as did all the other 57 counties in the state, and we were collectively able to reduce the state prison population by 6000. if you can take that and multiplied by the average rate of incarceration, which is over $50,000, it saved the state a tremendous amount of money. governor brown, with that concept, wanted to take the next step, which is to realign back to the local level the non- violent population. it is prospectively going to
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apply to all those sentenced after july 1, 2011. that is predicated upon the actual funding being available. the governor signed the bill, but he said he also -- he also said it would not go into enforcement or effect until such time that they identified the funding source, so that could be when they sign the budget and identify an allocation that would come to each of the local communities, or it could be on hold until such time they can get some tax approved, and that is a big unknown. the key element is it redefines many felonies, and parole revocation time served in the jail -- supervisor mirkarimi: could you put the microphone a little closer to your mouth? >> it also changes custody credit. for every two days serve, there will be four days custody credits given to the inmates at the local level. that just changed last year.
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last year, there was legislation that changed and eliminated the custody credits. now, it puts it back into effect, which that will impact in terms of reducing the population based upon they will be able to get custody credits. it also authorizes cdc to contract and djj with local counties for the population. it expands alternative funding for the locals. the three elements of the actual population are non-serious, non- violent, non-sex offenders, who are paroled after july 1, who would have normally been supervised by state parole and will now be supervised by community corrections probation supervision. that is one population. under that, they can have serious violations in their background, but their current sentence must be for non-violent
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violations. the second component of it is those that would have previously been sentenced to state prison -- non-serious, non-violent, non-sex offenders and no serious or violent offenses in the background, sentences could have been up to five years, but traditionally, the sentences are 36 months or less. those will now serve their time locally. the proposal is not just to have them serve their time, and it is not funded that way. it relies upon the community to implement evidence-based practices, which are alternatives to incarceration, as well as incarceration. the third component is courts and the revocation process. right now, a parole revocation goes through a hearing process. it basically shift authority to the local and responsibility to the courts to here parole revocations. with the exception of lifers,
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you cannot rebuild and send them back to state prison. they spend their time locally. -- you cannot revoke and send them back to state prison. 412 is what they estimate the adp to be for san francisco. 165 for the jail impact. 64 for the actual jail impact average daily population. all of those numbers are built upon an average daily population. you may have twice that many spending half the time, but that is what they average based upon the history of san francisco. something really important to note also is that we are different from other counties in terms of who we sent to prison in the first place. we are much lower than what the norm is. we have to% of the state's population in total -- we have
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2% of the state's population in total. our population looks different. they are older. we try to do more within our county because the county does have a lot of collaborative courts, a lot of innovative programs. some of the capacity we have begun the framework, but basically, those that have failed out of the programs, relapse, and ended up in state prisons. that is the number of 700 or 800 we are talking about. supervisor mirkarimi: is it ok if we intimately ask questions -- if we intermittently ask questions? would that be one fell swoop for an infusion of the 600 or 700 or 800 prisoners? >> it would be an incremental infusions. there are estimates for the parolees, which would not necessarily impact the jail population overall.
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that would be built up over time. we anticipate that the first entity -- public safety entity that will be impacted will be probation because as soon as they sign and fund the law, that population has the ability to be released. we also know that in state prisons, statewide, there are 47,000 that spent 120 days or less in state prison. that is the turning population they are trying to stop. in san francisco, and i know there is over 500 that spent 90 days or less in state prison -- in san francisco, i know there's over 500 that spent 90 days or less. again, the time that they spend in there was a reduced amount of time. supervisor mirkarimi: if the
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average sentence -- i do not know if "average" is the right marker here -- is 120 days or so that would be sent to the state coming back, if they were part of that delayed or incremental impact to san francisco, would that not normally just cut into the time that they would be serving while waiting to come back, and therefore less in their time -- lessen their time? >> it also depends upon how the sheriff's implements the program because they are staying there for a period of time anyway. what is going to happen is that the time that they would be transported out, go through the processing and come back, that is the time, but the sheriff's office could implement additional electronic monitoring, alternative sentencing programs, residential drug treatment, outpatient, all of those that are authorized
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under this law. while we have the population, we would not necessarily need to have the population in custody in a traditional jail setting, and that is where the sheriff would look to the population. when we get our probationers back, we will look at the severity, what their risk and need level is, and prepare a case plan based upon that. that is something similar to talk about, but the law authorizes a significant number of alternative sentencing programs, even beyond the ones the sheriff already uses a lot, but it gives a broader authority. supervisor mirkarimi: i am under the impression -- just a guess -- that those who were sent to state prison are not for the most part first-time offenders. i would be curious how many of the projected population coming back to us actually are repeat offenders. do we have any idea? since you have been able to
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narrow down the number of what we might be expecting -- between 600 or 700 or so -- do we actually have an understanding of their own personal profile as to who these people are yet? >> i do not have a personal profile of these individuals because it is based upon the average number is running thru the system, but what i do know is based upon our s.b. 678 grand, which are probation violators sent to state prison last year, a majority of them being non-serious, non-violent -- what they look like is they have multiple bites at the apple in terms of going through programming. also jail time, relaxing. we know that they are an older population. -- jail time, relapsing. the average age of our population that we send to jail as compared to other counties is about 10 years older.
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that means san francisco has done a good job trying to work with the population, so we know it will be difficult in terms of complex, having mental health issues, in addition to an addiction issues that they will need to deal with. there will be a variety of cases, but they will have spent some time definitely going through our system, and i would venture to say a low percentage of them would be first-time offenders. supervisor mirkarimi: the onus is on san francisco, through your department and others and through the network, i think, of agencies that would help do their best to try to mitigate their inclinations/propensity to repeat offense again, but would that not necessarily spike our recidivism rate in san francisco by this contributing population? i would think that with this population coming back, it settles us with the responsibility -- it saddles us
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with the responsibility of having to work that much more to dissuade them from repeating that offense. >> i would say absolutely. i can say that with absolute certainty because this population -- san francisco's prison recidivism rate is the second highest in the entire state. that is 77.8%. i think the last time that i look at it. as compared to the overall state recidivism rate is very high, as well, in the high 60's. supervisor mirkarimi: which is a distinction between our county jail recidivism rate. i just want to make sure we have that kind of distinction. but that is still incredibly high. >> it is incredibly high, but again, the type of strategy as we develop and the success of the will determineth
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