Realignment: Will California Confront Its Incarceration Crisis?

If properly implemented, realignment can be part of the solution for reversing decades of over-reliance upon incarceration, improving public safety and saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

The new realignment law (AB 109) calls on policymakers to confront California's recidivism problem – the fact that nearly 70% of the people who we incarcerate will return to prison or jail after being released – and to reconsider the practice of locking up people who have committed non-violent offenses and pose very little threat to public safety.

In the summer of 2011 before AB 109 took effect, a statewide team of ACLU attorneys and researchers began providing specific guidelines and recommendations on realignment planning and implementation to California counties, as well as concrete examples of cost-effective, proven alternatives to incarceration.

The ACLU of California is analyzing every county implementation plan that has been made publicly available and sharing the results of this analysis with policymakers, county leaders, and law enforcement agencies. Please return to this page for the latest reports, and contact Caitlin O'Neill of the ACLU’s Criminal Justice and Drug Policy team for more information and materials: coneill@aclunc.org

Each of us has a stake in creating a smarter and more effective criminal justice system, one that keeps our communities safe and preserves taxpayer dollars for other pressing local needs.