point of what is the most likely be to reduce the recidivism of those in front of a spirit second, we would like to create new positions. what we are calling alternative sentencing planners. this is a new area of work for the district attorney's office. this is not a position that our office or other district attorneys offices have had historically, but we think again that this is the time that we really need internal capacity to think outside the box and how we prosecute cases and how we settle them. we would have alternative plan is on staff that would work with prosecutors to develop potential outcomes for cases that prosecutors would be able to feel comfortable supporting, and that alternative sentencing planning -- planner would be a liaison for not only our victim and witness division and the victims of crime, but also being intimately familiar with alternative programs in san francisco and becoming familiar with and understanding the risks and needs of offenders through

information provided by the defense bar and probation department. we are looking to bring on alternative sentencing planners with the support of the realignment plan. the third is in addition to expanding our capacity to become familiar with alternative sentencing approaches, focusing on recidivism reduction. we also think this is the time to look for ways to improve efficiencies in the criminal- justice system overall. we already have something in place that we call the early resolution calendar. we think there may be an opportunity to expand the calendar, look for ways to increase the speed with which we are able to move through cases, given that we will have bigger caseloads and more responsibility locally. the fourth is that we know through the leadership that san francisco now has become this assessment that the probation department is going to be using and is in the process of now rolling out to assess the risk

and needs of offenders so there is accurate and helpful information at the time of sentencing. we think that this is also information that may be helpful early on in the process so we will be working with the probation department to see an ss -- and assess the viability of the department getting involved early in the process. this is the first time our office has had a unified place within the office where all of our staff who work on the programs are working together, and the reason that the district attorneys did that is because we believe that collaborative courts are a way forward to protect public safety, reduce recidivism, and resolve cases more effectively. in that vein, we will be continuing to advocate for collaborative core programs.

we think this is the moment in history where they should not only be supported and funded but also expanded. we think they are an effective way to resolve cases, and we would like to see them grow and will continue to work to do that. supervisor mirkarimi: with the collaborative course focus on misdemeanor or felony? >> there are collaborative courts that deal with both. they include everything from drug courts, behavioral health courts, community justice center, prop 36, probation alternatives, as well as the neighborhood courts initiative we recently launched to deal with as many nonviolent misdemeanor an infraction cases before charging. and then the sixth -- we think this is also a time to assess the gaps and look for places where we need additional programming to deal with certain areas where we think offenders may do better in different

programs. many of the note we have a program called back on track started by attorney general harris in 2006. the program has an excellent track record reducing recidivism for first-time non- violent drug sellers. we think this program is increasingly important, and it has elements of programs that we think could be replicated for other categories of offenders, especially those who are economically driven to engage in crime. that is the overview of what the district attorney's office has been working on. we have been really honored to work with chief still, and our community justice and criminal justice partners. thank you. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you. i do not believe there's any questions right now. thank you to the district attorney's office. public defender's office, please. >> good morning, supervisors. i am the director of specialty

courts and reentry programs at the public defender's office. the public defender's primary role is to safeguard the due process rights and the liberty interests of the individuals that will now be served -- that will be affected by this new law. as the other departments have been impacted, our department will be impacted as well. the plan we have created involves a realignment team consisting of an attorney, a social worker, and a criminal justice specialists. the realignment team will work within the existing reentry units. the public defender's office has a reentry unit that has a social work component, and the clean slate program. the social work program provides high-quality clinical work and advocacy. the social workers place hundreds of clients on a yearly

basis and hundreds of clients on community-based programs and social services. the goal -- the reason the realignment team will work within the office's reentry unit is so that we can build on prior successes. we conducted a study in 2009 that evaluated our program, and the evaluation showed -- and i provided you a copy of the evaluation -- that almost every client that had a social worker and an attorney working as a team together -- almost 98% had a favorable legal outcome, and they were placed in community- based programs and residential programs and in treatment services. the goal at this point with realignment is to expand on programs that are successful,

and that is the point of having the realignment team working through an existing successful program. so that the realignment team will design alternative sentencing strategies and conduct training is within the office. they will identify and advocate for appropriate collateral to and community court referrals, and that is a really important point here -- a corporate collaborative -- appropriate collaborative and community court referrals. we have drug court. we have community health court. we have other courts that exist. we have folks of a similar background of the folks that will part of this -- that will be part of this realignment population. the goal will be to expand the criteria and increase the

capacity of these alternative programs, and that is something that the team would be working on. we intend to collaborate very closely as we do now with the attorney, with the probation department, sentencing planners, the post-release community supervision so that we can achieve these goals because the successes we have seen thus far have been a result of the collaboration of the different units and departments. we will also coordinate efforts and community justice agencies and departments. there are some concerns -- there are some outstanding legal concerns that exist that i want

to bring up, and they do involve due process and liberty issues. one is the flash incarceration. the way it stands now is that the probation department is the entity that would be irresponsible for flash -- that would be responsible for flash incarcerating individuals without a hearing, and that is something we would be looking into and seeing whether that is a violation of the persons due process rights, and it would be our intention to raise those concerns at the appropriate time. if the flash incarceration cannot occur on this automatic way, then it will increase the work load. there will be more hearings for even the minor offenses. the other issue is that the mayor's office -- we appreciate the fiscal constraints that everyone is working on -- is

that the preliminary budget recommendation proposed by the mayor's office does not adequately fund the various departments to perform their duties and does not allow for the needed increase in capacity for treatment and housing, and the population we are talking about -- this is what we need to do, is we need to have housing available, have treatment options available, and if we do not increase the capacity, then what is going to happen is we will simply continue to incarcerate these individuals and not address the underlying causes for their coming into the system in the first place. thank you. supervisor mirkarimi: is there anything -- i'm curious since we understand the intrinsic relationship with district attorney and public defender -- it also sounds like the dea and public defender are kind of on the same page with regard to trying to access more of the collaborative court their version programs, etc.

is there anything about that has been described so far that you may not feel that local secret city in the approach towards realignment? >> i think there is a lot in common that we have that we share. we do have a relationship of collaboration, and i think that time will tell, and we will see whether these expansions are going to occur and whether there is going to be a commitment. thus far, most recently, we worked together in expanding the drug court criteria. the drug court recidivism rate in san francisco is approximately 26%, as opposed to somebody on probation who might have a 60% or 70% rate. san francisco already uses best practices, is innovative, is creative, has successful programs, and we do not even need to go outside the county's.

it is the relationships of the various departments that allows that to happen. there is always more that can be done, and that is the role that we will play. we will make sure that the individuals that find themselves before the court in this new era, that they are getting the advocacy that they are entitled to, and that is what the public defender's office is prepared to do. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you very much. thank you to the public defender's office. i would like to bring up the superior court, followed by the department of health and the police department. >> i am director of collaborative courts, standing in for our ceo. i just wanted to support chief still's comments earlier.

about $17 million will be coming to -- statewide to the judicial courts essentially to fund hearing officers. some of these officers will be shared by other superior courts. this whole issue does not affect the current court's downsizing. this is something that we can handle quite well through the superior court. supervisor mirkarimi: it has been well reported in the press how saturated and distressed the court system is now, so this might be a good time to kind of address that sense i think anybody walking away from this conversation would automatically think that this is just more

pressure added to the responsibilities of the court system. how do you manage that? >> as i said, we are in great shape, as others have said. our collaborative courts -- we work so well with each other. all of our partner agencies. we are far superior to kind of other programs around the country. basically, the foundation is there. i feel like we can work with whatever comes our way for this new population. supervisor mirkarimi: there was a grant that had been procured by the state to stack the city's first reentry court not that long ago. does this have any relationship to what we were talking about? >> it could conceivably. at the moment, we have about 60

clients in that program. i think that having id under way -- having it under way, ape -- operationalizing it, that could be something important. it could be we combine perhaps the probation alternatives with -- we are just playing it out. we need to get together and see how all this can be brought together in greater efficiency. supervisor mirkarimi: all right, thank you. we will consider that an early report. >> the short answer is we are doing fabulously well. supervisor mirkarimi: we love to hear that from this perch. department of public health.

>> good afternoon, supervisors. i am the director of community behavioral health care for barbara garcia -- here -- here for barbara garcia. when i look at the work the health department did, it was done with a lot of current knowledge. i come to my current job after having 25 years working within the criminal justice system and health services. we also know that 85% of the current cdcr population has substance abuse issues, and 20% have serious mental illness. so if you look at as getting 700, about 600 of those individuals will have substance abuse issues, and 140 will have serious mental illness. i also recognize that a lot of

that 140 will be represented within the 600 because they do have co-occurring disorders. also, when i look to cdcr and the services they are providing to the substance abuse population, right now, there's only about 2700 people in substance abuse services, so that tells me that the individuals that are in our prison population are not receiving the appropriate services. undershare of -- undersherriff dempsey said right now that they are at capacity. we are bursting at the seams. for an individual to get into one of our treatment programs, it can take four months. for them to get into our substance abuse treatment program, it can take about five weeks. we also recognize that most of

this population will not need residential treatment services, but certainly some will. we know that this population has a very complicated health issues, high levels of hepatitis c, diabetes -- they also have high levels of trauma. these are all issues that need to be addressed when they come back to the community said that they are successful in their reentry to the community. the area of services that we propose is care at our community programs, our health clinics. outpatient therapy for both mental health and substance abuse. residential for both mental health and substance abuse.

supportive housing services for those that have a lower care of needs, and, of course, medication management. do you have any questions? supervisor mirkarimi: the growing population that we have taken notice over the last few years, as it intersects with the department of public health and the criminal justice system are those with mental health needs. it seems to sometimes be a political football as well as a budgetary one, about how san francisco will deal with -- and the department of public health and san francisco general and law enforcement -- to deal with that population that are often associated as part of the homeless population or quality of life or even up the escalated criminal-justice food chain of those who are committing offenses, of still mental health needs, and it seems that pressure is being sort of centered on department

of public health to help us deal with that. the state is not able to deal with that specific population. maybe you could speak to that a little bit. >> well, there are several things to speak to. one is that it is an ever growing expanding need for individuals that have mental health issues that wind up somehow in contact with criminal justice. whether it is just police contact or whether they end up going to prison, to jail, it is growing. the undersheriff said that the jail population is down. that is not true for the mental health population in the jail. i think that in itself -- you know, when the general population goes down, the percentage, the numbers of mentally ill stays high. supervisor mirkarimi: that is

sort of a complicated demographic because you do not expect that that population is able to then be rehabilitated because of their own mental needs. it will require some level of specialized intervention, and that will have to come from x to deal with that growing population, correct? >> that is correct. both on the mental health substance abuse side as well as physical health. we currently have one clinic in the bayview that works with the reentry population, but we want to be able to have these patients go to a clinic in their own neighborhood. one of the things we are looking to do is expand the services of the physician that is running a clinic in the bayview and have her train the doctors in our

other clinics as to how to be more engaging, how to be more welcoming, and exactly what disease patterns to look for in the population. how does that affect a multilingual community with regard to an immigrant community and those that are kind of in and out of the justice system? because of however way they are being processed, but especially those that do not have that level of trust in their relationship with the city because they are immigrants or not being able to speak english -- that is also adding, i think, to be challenged. if you could speak to that a little bit. >> it is always a challenge to provide culturally competent, linguistically appropriate services to any population, but when you talk about the criminal justice population, you are adding the complexity because, again, as i stated, they had

serious physical disease as well as mental health and substance abuse disease. so we need to make sure that there are enough providers in the community that can provide these services. also remember when someone has been incarcerated for an extended time or routinely incarcerated, their trust level of providers becomes very low. we have to learn how to work with the population, and we also have to engage them in a way that they will trust us. if you add language complications, that will make it even more complicated. if you also look at the statistics of the people that go to prison, most of them are african american. as you know, we have a health disparity in this city for our

african-american population. again, we would need to make sure that no matter what ethnic group they came from, they received appropriate services. supervisor mirkarimi: what about the notion of setting public health -- first of all, we welcome the department of public health becoming a member of the reentry council. the larger question of the realignment body -- i think that is a long time coming, so that is a good thing, but it is the same population that is the predominant population in our jail system. that returns back to supervisor cohen's district and mine, to supervisor campos' district's predominantly. in the hopes of them returning hopefully rehabilitated and less likely to repeat their crimes, of us having public health programs in our district, actually the on site kind of

intervention that might help folks that might be harder population to assist. >> that is certainly one of our goals. it certainly is the appropriate way to provide care. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you very much. i would like to invite the police department to come up, please. that afternoon, supervisors. i think we have passed the noon hour. -- >> good afternoon, supervisors. i welcome the opportunity to address you this afternoon. our participation to date has been with our community partners through the stewardship of chief still. we have had a seat at the table throughout the development of the plan so we have been able to voice many of our concerns regarding the realignment process. the chief, along with the rest of the departments, really hope for successful outcomes for this population that is returning to our community.

participation in the various programs you have heard about today would be a major part of that. we are, however, realists. we realize the recidivist rate is there and that the police department will be having to interact with a lot of these individuals as they come back into the community. some of the strategies that we are hoping to further are still in the development stage, and it will be participating with our partners in the adult probation and with the sheriff's department and serving either as a force multiplier for them when it comes to attracting -- to tracking or dealing with some of the people who are out of custody, and probably mirroring some of the things we do in the current reentry program. we participate in the distribution of the resource guides that you are familiar with, as well as trying to push -- that is not the right word.

offer or direct them to the programs that are out there before they find themselves on the wrong side of the law. if it comes to enforcement issue, however, we will be prepared to take enforcement strategies where necessary and fill gaps as they arise. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you, captain, for being here. appreciate your patience and everybody else's. we just finished the city's budget process. we just end up lessing a budget to the police a part of about $450 million -- almost half a billion dollars -- to the police department. for every four people that the police department arrest in terms of felonies, three are now repeat offenders. how do we sort of reconciled that reality, when the police

department is actually being used in this kind of repetitive way to help deal with the primary responsibility of public safety in dealing with repeat offenders? how could we possibly do something with this opportunity to make sure we are able to get to a place where we are lowering the statistics of you having to do with that level of population of repeat offenders? >> my initial thing would be to have successful outcomes in all these programs that have just been outlined to you. in other words, the resources -- housing has been thrown out there. the police department -- we do not have resources. you brought up the budgetary numbers. we are not sharing in any of the budgetary numbers. we will make do with the budget you have so generously supplied us. supervisor mirkarimi: i am only bringing this in stark contrast that in some ways we are keeping

this in supply to do something on the front end that is constantly being fuelled by something on the back end. the police department is the primary responder, right? it is dealing with the response needs of the heavy repeat offender population. i think it is a question of we could probably even calculate a way to maybe help adult probation even more for the sheriff's department or others because the police department really is the one responsible for keeping safe the community itself, but also, you are dealing with vp population. there has to be some break in that cycle. >> correct. i have been in discussion with the undersheriff, and i have some meetings