Sacramento county jails will receive more than 400 new inmates over the next three months, as a result of new state legislation that goes into effect Saturday – but Sacramento County Sheriff representatives say there’s no room for them, and no money to make room.

“It’s too soon to implement it,” Sheriff’s Department Spokesman Jason Ramos said Wednesday, referring to Assembly Bill 109 (AB 109), the new state realignment plan that shifts responsibilities for lower level offenders, adult parolees and juvenile offenders from state to local jurisdictions.

“There hasn’t been enough discussion, and funding isn’t guaranteed,” Ramos said.

California state prisons were designed to hold 79,858 prisoners. However, in 2010 they housed approximately 143,000 prisoners, prompting the U.S. Supreme Court to mandate that California must reduce its state prison population by 33,000 inmates by June 2014.

To comply with that mandate, Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB109 and AB111 into law April 4 setting in motion a realignment plan that state legislators hoped would not only reduce prison crowding, but would also save the state nearly $2 billion annually.

Sacramento County will receive approximately $13 million in funding over the next nine months from the state under the new realignment legislation.

“Realignment is a critically important step in reforming our ever more expensive and failed prison system,” State Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) said Wednesday.

Realignment is a shifting of inmates – and responsibility for their care and keeping – from the state prison system over to local government.

Leno said the percentage of the state general fund spent on the Department of Corrections has increased from 5.3 percent to 11 percent in the past decade – but California still has a recidivism rate close to 70 percent.

“This very expensive system is not working,” Leno said.

Ramos said that with more than 400 additional inmates coming into the county system, there will be an increased burden on corrections personnel and a huge impact on public safety.

“Make no mistake about it: crime will increase,” Ramos said. “We have a statistical rate of recidivism, and with more offenders being released into the community, the crime rate will go up.”

All of those inmates won’t arrive at county jail at once, though, and some of the 400 are already in the county jail sentenced to transfer to state prisons that simply won’t get transferred.

Although Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones said he doesn’t want to release some inmates, Ramos said that without alternatives – or room for them – that will likely be the case.

Allen Hopper, an attorney for the ACLU of California, said Wednesday that the key to properly implementing AB109 is a change from a “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” mentality to encouraging counties to employ evidence-based practices to reduce recidivism.

Evidence-based practices are programs that have been proven in other parts of the country to change offenders’ behavior so that they do not become repeat offenders.

Only the lowest-risk inmates – non-violent, non-serious offenders who have committed non-sexual crimes – would be eligible for these evidence-based program sentences, according to Hopper.

According to a report from the ACLU released in June, some successful evidence-based practices have included alcohol and drug treatment services, job training programs and re-entry assistance to help parolees return to society as productive members of their communities.

“The new movement is to be smart on crime instead of just tough on crime,” Hopper said. It’s more than throwing an offender in jail – it’s about making it less likely that they will commit crimes again once they are released.”

But, Hopper says, the devil is in the details.

“Counties aren’t being provided the funding they really need to do this properly,” Hopper said. “It’s coming at a time of steep budget cuts and staff layoffs, and counties are under deep financial pressure.”

With realignment fully implemented by 2014, Leno said the amount of Department of Corrections spending will be reduced to 7 percent and the state will save $2 billion annually.

Those savings won’t reach the local level before new inmates do, and that creates significant challenges for counties – like Sacramento – where money is tight and empty jail cells are scarce.

Ramos said Sacramento county is considering sentencing alternatives that are already in place – such as in-home detention programs and electronic monitoring of released inmates – with the goal of expanding those options.

The county is also looking at re-opening the facility at Rio Consumnes Correctional Center in Elk Grove that the county closed due to budget cuts in May, Ramos said.

Ramos estimates reopening the Rio Consumnes Correctional Center will take $8 million of the $13 million in funding that the county will receive from the state, and expansion of the in-home detention program will take another $2 million.

“It’s mind-boggling,” Ramos said. “We only get funded for the first nine months, but we own the inmates for a lot longer – five, six or even seven years.”

County Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan said Wednesday that the county is very concerned about the implementation of AB 109, primarily due to the uncertainty of future funding.

MacGlashan said county supervisors believe that state constitutional protections are needed to ensure ongoing, dedicated funding for realigned programs.

“There is a tremendous interest in seeing guaranteed funding,” Leno agreed. “Gov. Brown said he will put a constitutional amendment on the November 2012 ballot, so (funding) will not be left to the vagaries of the budget process.”

Currently, legislation provides flexibility in how the funding counties receive for realignment is spent, Leno said, so counties have discretion to fund “alternative sanctions,” such as electronic monitoring, in-home detention and early parole.

“To the degree that county sheriffs use their funding wisely, they will get better results,” Leno said.

The best approach to implementation would be incremental, Hopper said – addressing the immediate need as counties are planning and starting up evidence-based programs.

“It’s really a matter of changing the mindset,” Hopper said.

“Incarcerating people for a long time is what we’ve done,” Hopper said. “We have to make a collective decision about whether or not we can afford to keep doing that.”

Meanwhile, MacGlashan said, the Board of Supervisors is awaiting the recommendations of the chief probation officer and the sheriff in early October for how AB109 will be implemented in Sacramento county.

Melissa Corker is a Staff Reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.