AB 109
California's criminal justice system is undergoing significant changes as a result of realignment AB 109. The legislation realigns from the state to local level responsibility for supervising people convicted of certain felony crimes.
This means that thousands of less-serious felony offenders now face at worst jail and out-of-custody supervision (similar to probation), while before they would have been eligible for state prison.
Realignment makes huge changes in California criminal law, with more than 500 statutes being amended. However, for the most part realignment does not change how things prison. Realignment AB 109 transfers responsibility for supervising certain kinds of felony offenders and state prison parolees from state prisons and state parole agents to county jails and probation officers. Realignment came about in early 2011 through enactment of California Assembly Bill 109. AB 109 works by
If you are convicted of one of about 500 felony crimes in California that are considered "non-serious, non-violent and non-sex-related," you will be sentenced to county jail and/or non-custodial mandatory supervision , where before you could have been sentenced to California state prison. Also if you are currently serving a prison sentence for a realignment crime, when you are released you will be supervised by county probation officers under a new program called Postrelease Community Supervision (PRCS) instead of by state parole agents. Supporters of realignment AB 109 believe that low-level offenders can be best rehabilitated through local, community-oriented and evidence-based practices instead of state prison. The basic idea behind realignment AB 109 is to punish low-level felony offenders with local jail or out-of-custody "mandatory supervision" instead of prison. Because jails and probation departments are run at the county level, the law thus shifts from the state to the local level responsibility for dealing with