How Justice System Realign in California: The Policies and Systematic Effects of Prison Downsizing

Under this award the Stanford Criminal Justice Center (SCJC) will assess Realignment outcomes in California. Beginning October 1, 2011, individuals in California convicted of felonies classified as non-serious, non-sexual and non-violent began serving their sentence in county jails instead of state prisons. In addition, California's counties took over parole and probation supervision and began providing rehabilitative alternatives to jail (to the degree available) for those that are eligible. The SCJC will use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to examine the goals and approaches to the various Realignment plans for each California county. Further, the SCJC will examine the discretionary decisions of criminal justice actors (i.e. judges, prosecutors, probation chiefs, defense attorneys, and sheriffs) in response to the new legislative mandate. The research will consist of three complementary projects: Project I: Explaining County Level Variation on Realignment Approaches; Project II: Case Studies of County Implementation of and Variance Created by Realignment; Project III: Scenario Based Studies to Capture the Exercise of Discretion by Key Actors in the Criminal Justice System under Realignment. nca/ncf