Sonoma County is bucking a statewide trend that is threatening to undo efforts to relieve prison overcrowding by sending away fewer inmates convicted of second felonies and parole violations.
The number of "two-strikers" sent to prison in Sonoma County in the fiscal year ending in June dropped by about 30 percent, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
At the same time, the state's 58 counties sent 20 percent more serious, violent or sex offenders convicted of a second felony to prison, the department said.
Because they serve double sentences, second-strikers are a concern as prison officials try to meet a federal court mandate to reduce its 117,000-inmate population by 2016. The trend comes on the heels of a 2011 restructuring of the criminal justice system that shifted responsibility for lower level criminals to counties.
Now, it appears many counties are responding by sending more two-time felons to prison than expected.
But Sonoma County is among a handful of mostly Northern California counties that are not doing that. The reason is not clear but some have theorized it could reflect a tendency toward lighter sentences.
Prosecutors and judges may be exercising discretion to overlook previous convictions, sentencing inmates to county jail instead.
Or it could be part of a decline in violent crime that has been reported in jurisdictions nationwide. Local officials couldn't put a finger on it.
"I really think it could be multiple reasons," Sonoma County presiding Judge Ken Gnoss said.
Gnoss said judges are not handing down lighter sentences to meet prison reduction goals.
Bob Ochs, the county's chief probation officer, said Bay Area counties always tend to send fewer people to prison. San Francisco, Marin and Mendocino counties were among those leading the decline.
But he said he couldn't be sure of the cause.
"You wonder about the connection of this trend and more conservative counties," Ochs said. "Are they responding to realignment by changing practices? I have no idea."
District Attorney Jill Ravitch, who questioned the validity of the statistics, said she has not changed her approach since the shift known as realignment.
But she pointed to judges, who she said overlook previous strike convictions that can lead to longer sentences for a significant number of felons. In a recent case, she said a judge granted probation to a man who committed a new offense after serving time for killing five family members in a car crash.
"These court determinations are frequently opposed by the DA's office," she said in an email Friday.
Statewide, counties sent more than 6,000 second strikers to prison in the fiscal year ending in June, up from about 5,000 the previous year. Riverside County in Southern California had the highest numerical change.
San Francisco made the largest numerical shift in the other direction, followed by Sonoma County.
Sonoma County sent 26 inmates compared to 37 in the fiscal year ending in June 2012.
Lake, Napa and Humboldt counties were among the counties sending more.
With a few exceptions, the counties that sent fewer second-strikers were smaller counties, said Jeffrey Callison, a state prison spokesman.
Counties with larger populations send more.
He would not speculate about the reasons. But he said the trend is reversing an initial decline in the prison population brought by realignment.
"One thing driving that is a steep increase in the number of second-strikers being sent to prison," Callison said.
(You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@poressdemocrat.com.)
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