Jail Population Management Strategies in a Post-Realignment Era

“In 2011, California adopted AB 109 Public Safety Realignment requiring counties to assume responsibility for low-level offenders. In a post-Realignment California, counties must implement population management strategies that reserve bed space for high-risk individuals and efficiently allocate resources. This fact sheet lists four available deliberate interventions that counties can employ to alleviate jail bed space and improve public safety outcomes” (p. 1). These recommendations may also be useful for other jails looking to reduce their own bed space. Strategies for decreasing the need for bed space while ensuring public safety are: expand county use of split sentences; limit county compliance for non-mandatory Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hold requests; develop and expand alternatives to pretrial detention; and create and use community-based supervision alternatives.