Muench talks dealing with realignment in Tehama County

Tehama County Chief of Probation Richard Muench called the state prison realignment program "the single greatest change in the criminal system that I have seen in nearly four decades."

Speaking to the Corning Rotary Club on Wednesday, Muench said the county is working to handle the additional 350 men and women who prior to Assembly Bill 109 would have been locked up in state prison, but are now the responsibility of Tehama County's criminal system.

"It has been since October 2011, that the county has been receiving these folks," Muench said. "Since then our Community Corrections Partnership has developed and implemented a plan to deal with the influx of people into our criminal system."

He said due to the public safety realignment program, the state mandates that individuals sentenced to non-violent, non-high-risk sex offenses, and non-serious felonies will serve their sentences in county jails instead of state prison.

"That of course produced a problem for our jail space of 200 beds," Muench said. "We had to create other options to supervise these folks that are no longer allowed in the prison system."

There are 100 inmates in the Tehama County Jail who would have been in state prison.

"That only leaves the jail with just more that 100 beds to house other inmates," Muench said. "So that leaves us with the problem of what to do with the additional 250 individuals related to AB 109 that we are responsible for. These are the people on the street under probation supervision."

He explained the county's corrections partnership has developed programs that allow these individuals to stay at home while being supervised through electronic monitoring, to take part in work programs, and utilize the programs now available at the probation department's Day Reporting Center on Walnut Street in Red Bluff.

"At the day center we have programs to help these individuals get a high school graduation equivalency degree, job training, counseling, we put them on work crews and put them to work doing community service, they meet regularly with their probation officers, and take part in a cognitive behavioral 16 chapter program," Muench said. One of the goals of the corrections partnership is to break the cycle seen in families where criminal activity is common.

"Education is the key here. Working with the Tehama County Department of Education we are working to make sure every child in this county is reading well by the third grade and to provide them with options to the criminal behavior some of them learn in their homes," Muench said.

While some people are career criminals that need to be placed and kept behind bars, Muench said there are those whose criminal activity is related to addictions, and in breaking the addiction you break the criminal activity.

"But whatever the reason for the criminal behavior, if there are children in the homes of these criminals, the children learn from that behavior. That is the cycle we have got to break," said the chief probation officer.

He said such effort made through county programs probably won't be evident for five to 10 years down the road.

"But I truly believe we will see a difference," Muench said.

Funding to make all this happen comes from the state.

In November, state voters approval of Proposition 30 created a constitutional amendment that protected ongoing funding to counties for public safety realignment.

The amendment also prohibits the state legislature from reducing or removing that funding.

For Tehama County, that funding has been $2.2 million.

"One-third is going to the Sheriff's Department to fully staff the county jail, fund the department's auto shop program and other related programs. One third is going to the Probation Department to hire additional probation officers and supervise those individuals who are on the street, and a third went to health services to provide the needed physical and mental services these folks need," Muench said.

The sheriff's auto shop provides a facility where people on realignment supervision work to maintain and fix county department and agency vehicles.

"The auto shop has already saved my department $10,000," Muench said.