The county’s jails are inhabited by more serious offenders than
a few years ago, along with a disproportionately high number of
minorities, according to data released Monday to The Dispatch by
the Department of Corrections.
The county’s jails are inhabited by more serious offenders than a few years ago, along with a disproportionately high number of minorities, according to data released Monday to The Dispatch by the Department of Corrections.
Recently given good marks by a Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury investigation during routine monitoring of all county jail operations, the three county jail facilities are changing in the type of criminal they house, said Mark Cursi, Department of Correction’s spokesperson.
According to Cursi, the county’s Main Jail, located on Hedding Street in San Jose; the Elmwood Correctional Facility, located in Milpitas; and the Correction Center for Women, also located in Milpitas, are all seeing a change in type of prisoners they hold mostly due to recent legislation surrounding drug laws.
Cursi said that because of state Proposition 36 – the initiative enacted in July 2001 allowing first-and second-time, non-violent, simple drug possession offenders the opportunity to receive substance abuse treatment instead of incarceration – population rates in the county’s prison system have declined. But with the decline in minor drug offenders, the percentage of violent criminals has grown.
“The type of inmate we have now is different from even a few years ago,” Cursi said. “The security level is much higher now.”
While felony drug offenders still make up the largest chunk of the county’s prisoners at 23 percent, inmates serving time for other types of crimes are growing. Violent offenders now account for 18 percent of the prison system, while people serving time for misdemeanors account for 20 percent of the population.
People housed in the county’s jail system generally are sentenced to less than a year behind bars, although capital criminals waiting for trial often spend more than a year in county jail, Cursi said.
Cursi also credits Proposition 36 with helping the county keep its inmate population below capacity.
On Monday morning, 4,047 prisoners (3,530 men and 517 women) were housed in the county’s 5,200-bed jail system, according the Department of Corrections.
Before Proposition 36, county inmates often pushed capacity, Cursi said.
“The difference is that people committing lesser crimes are not as likely to be held,” Cursi said. “People used to be arrested for public drunkenness. Now they work it off outside (the prison system).”
But while the county jails have seen the types and numbers of criminals change, ethnic disparity among inmates continues, mirroring prison systems across the country.
Currently, nearly three quarters of the county’s inmates are minorities, and the number of Latinos and African Americans incarcerated is much higher than each groups’ respective population percentage in the county.
On Monday morning, Latinos made up 50 percent of the 3,530 males incarcerated in county jails, while only making up 32.4 percent of the county’s total population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. African American males accounted for 15 percent of the county’s inmates, although they make up just 6.7 percent of the county’s total population.
On the other hand, only 25 percent of the county’s prisoners are white, despite the fact that 46.7 percent of the people in the county are white.
Ethnic demographics for women prisoners in the county are similar, although Latinas make up only 43 percent of inmates and white women equal 32 percent. The Department of Corrections separates its numbers for men and women to meet state standards.
Cursi said ethnic disparity has not changed much in the last few years or since the passing of Proposition 36, and declined to comment on the disproportionate number of minorities in the county’s jails.
