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| Tulare County officials plan for jail realignment |
| By visaliatimesdelta.com - DAVID CASTELLON |
| Published: 09/28/2011 |
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Officials with Tulare County's sheriff's and probation departments say they'll be ready to take on extra inmates and parolees from the state after California's public safety realignment plan begins Oct. 1 That plan involves hiring 52 additional staff in Tulare County jails as well as hiring new probation officers — four of whom already have been added — and developing a plan to open unused pods at the county's Adult Pre-trial Facility north of Visalia to house extra inmates that normally would go to state prisons, county Chief Probation Officer Janet Honadle said. "We're getting ramped up," added county Sheriff Bill Wittman during Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting. "We have beds available. We even bought some mattresses." Based on California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation estimates, once the realignment plan is fully in effect, Tulare County would end up housing a daily average of 520 inmates that would otherwise be in state prisons. But county officials don't expect to get that many inmates all at once. Currently, the plan is to open 50-bed "pods" — inmate housing areas — in the Pre-trial Facility as needed. Some of the pods at the jail have never been utilized before due to lack of funding. As part of the realignment plan, the state will give Tulare County more than $5.6 million to fund the public safety portion of the plan here, with about $2.8 million earmarked for the Sheriff's Department, which runs the jails here. The plan is intended to reduce prison overcrowding in California as well as re-assigning some duties normally handled by the state to counties, which includes having county probation officers take over supervision of some convicted felons who normally would be overseen by state parole officers. Read More. |
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