{"id":388035,"date":"2010-03-04T01:05:54","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T06:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c630a53ef0120a8f79efe970b"},"modified":"2010-03-04T01:04:46","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T06:04:46","slug":"baca-says-early-inmate-releases-inevitable-if-budget-crisis-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/388035","title":{"rendered":"Baca says early inmate releases &#8216;inevitable&#8217; if budget crisis continues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said Wednesday it was &quot;inevitable&quot; that nonviolent inmates in county jails would be released early if the budget crisis persists.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Currently, inmates in County Jail convicted of nonviolent offenses serve 80% of their sentences.\u00a0 But that\u00a0 could drop to 50%, department officials said.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>&quot;The discussion has moved to the forefront,&quot; department spokesman Steve Whitmore said.\u00a0 &quot;It has become another tool that we are looking at.&quot;<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Earlier this week, Baca said the department was examining a number of budget-cutting measures, including moving hundreds of deputies from administrative duties to street patrol and slashing overtime payments.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>But he told reporters at a news conference Wednesday that early releases may also have to be used to cut costs.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>For a period in 2004, Baca <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2004\/mar\/25\/local\/me-jail25\" >released petty criminals early<\/a> to save money. The move was criticized by other law enforcement officials.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>William J. Bratton, who was Los Angeles Police Department chief at the time, said the early releases undercut the LAPD&#8217;s so-called broken-windows strategy. The strategy is based on the idea that punishing lesser offenses leads to reductions in more serious crime.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>&#8212; Andrew Blankstein and Robert J. Lopez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said Wednesday it was &quot;inevitable&quot; that nonviolent inmates in county jails would be released early if the budget crisis persists.Currently, inmates in County Jail convicted of nonviolent offenses serve 80% of their sentences.\u00a0 But that\u00a0 could drop to 50%, department officials said.&quot;The discussion has moved to the forefront,&quot; department [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4622,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4622"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}