RIVERSIDE, Calif.—In a passionate plea for enhanced public safety measures, Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin called for changes to one of California’s criminal justice reform laws—known as the Public Safety Realignment Act of 2011—during a press conference in downtown Riverside April 12 alongside other California officials.
“We’ve had enough,” Hestrin told reporters. “We cannot protect our public, we’re getting no help from Sacramento, the laws don’t back us up.”
Over a decade ago, then-Governor Jerry Brown signed then-AB 109 into law, in an attempt to de-crowd state prisons as required by a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that determined California’s prison overcrowding was unconstitutional and that the state must decrease its prison population by 46,000 inmates.
Under AB 109, offenders convicted of non-serious, non-violent, and non-sexual crimes, as well as some low-level drug offenders, are now housed in county jails instead of state prisons. Counties were given funding to manage these offenders and provide rehabilitation programs to reduce recidivism.
The law also created a program, which allows eligible offenders to serve their sentence in the community instead of being sent to state prison.
But officials along with Hestrin—including Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward, Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco, and Riverside Police Chief Larry Gonzalez—argued Wednesday the legislation has resulted in the early release of violent criminals, who then go on to commit more crimes, and that the law may no longer apply regarding reducing the inmate population as the state is moving to close several correctional facilities.
During the press conference, Hestrin pointed to Winchester resident Timothy Bethell, who he deemed “the poster child” of the law, as an example of its consequences. According to Hestrin, Bethell committed a series of burglaries at several businesses beginning in 2021 racking up 39 felony charges in Tulare County, about 200 miles north of Riverside.
He was sentenced to four years in state prison and two years of probation in September 2021, but was instead released to a recovery program, and failed to report to probation in 2022.
Within a week, Hestrin said, he committed more crimes in the county and then went on to burglarize and vandalize businesses in Riverside County where he was sentenced and re-released due to jail crowding.
“This case … is indicative of life in California in 2023,” Ward, the Tulare County District Attorney, said during the press conference.
“It epitomizes the dysfunction caused by the passage of soft on crime policies coming out of Sacramento, and this defendant and others like him day in and day out, they prove one thing, that if and when they’re allowed to remain free from jail custody, they will victimize [people] and our communities will suffer.”
Bethell’s burglaries caused more than $20,000 in theft, damages, lost revenue, and wages in Tulare County, according to Ward’s office.
A restitution hearing, which is when a judge determines the amount of money a defendant must pay to a victim to compensate for losses suffered as a result of the defendant’s criminal activity, for Bethell is scheduled for April 19.
Hestrin said the law needs an amendment to account for repeat offenders like Bethell.
“We don’t have to repeal it, we have to add an amendment or add a law that says that habitual offenders can go to state prison,” he said. “Under current law, no matter how many crimes Mr. Bethell commits … we can never send him to state prison. And in Riverside County, that means he'll never do any significant amount of time beyond just a few days.”
In the past 10 years, a third of the space in five Riverside County jails has housed inmates who would have previously been sentenced to state prison, but were instead diverted to those facilities. That has created jail overcrowding which has forced sheriff’s officials to release tens of thousands of prisoners before they have completed their sentences or resolved their cases, according to Riverside County officials.
A federal court mandate requires the sheriff to ensure that every inmate has a bed or authorities have to release detainees to create space for new ones.
According to Gonzalez, the chief of the Riverside Police Department, compared to this time last year, Riverside has seen a 31 percent increase in commercial burglaries.
“A career criminal ... has been arrested and convicted of felonies repeatedly the last several years, but each conviction is met with early release due to overcrowding the jail system,” he said during the press conference.
Bianco, the Riverside County Sheriff, said the law, along with Propositions 47 and 57, are experiments that are part of the state’s “political and philosophical agenda.”
“When someone is sentenced to that many years in state prison, it should be in state prison. It shouldn’t be a county jail,” he said. “There’s a reason why we have state prisons.”
Proposition 47, passed by California voters in 2014, significantly reduced certain nonviolent offenses such as drug possession and theft of property worth less than $950 from felonies to misdemeanors.
The aim of the measure was to, again, reduce the state’s prison population, save taxpayer money, and redirect resources toward prevention, treatment, and education programs. The proposition also allowed for the resentencing for fewer years of those who were previously convicted of the offenses and were serving long sentences in state prison.
Proposition 57, passed by voters in 2016, expanded parole eligibility for those convicted of nonviolent crimes and gave judges more discretion in deciding whether to try juveniles as adults.
“We are here unable to maintain a very low level of public safety because our government is making it impossible,” Bianco said.
Officials urged constituents to call their local assemblymembers to urge them to make an amendment to the law.
