Davis/ 2 Senator LaMay

S.B.__

A BILL
To provide rehabilitation programs to nonviolent drug offenders in place of prison sentences.
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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in
Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE
This act may be cited as the Nonviolent Criminal Act of 2015.
SECTION 2. FINDINGS
Congress hereby finds and declares that,
1) 70 to 80 percent of the incredibly harsh sentencing measures are non-violent offenders.
2) A number of innovative strategies can save public funds and improve public health by
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keeping low-risk, non-violent, drug-involved offenders out of prison or jail.
3) During the past ten years, alternatives to incarceration have been imposed for between
15 and 25 percent of federal offenders.
4) Home confinement with electronic monitoring allows for the early release from prison
(between 60 to 180 days) and is used as a condition of parole.
5) Proposition 5 allows inmates to earn additional time off their prison sentences for their
performance in rehabilitation programs.
6) Drug courts seek to reduce drug use and associated criminal behavior by retaining druginvolved offenders in treatment.
7) It costs an average of about $47,000 per year to incarcerate an inmate in prison in California
and over two-thirds of these costs are for security and inmate health care.
8) Five states are investing more in incarcerating offenders for punishment, not rehabilitation,
than they are in innocent youth with a chance to be educated and not follow a path of crime.
9) Over 40% of all people leaving prison will reoffend and be back in prison within three years of
their release.
10) Eight in ten (77%) adults believe that alternatives to incarceration (probation, restitution,
community service, and/or rehabilitative services) are the most appropriate sentence for
nonviolent, non-serious offenders.
11) Traditional sentencing in America by the way of mass incarceration is a failure; it does not 30
deter crime, it institutionalizes the inmates, and it does so at an incredible cost to the state.
12) The Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act is a smart way to solve these problems by
treating violent and nonviolent offenders differently.
13) There is an alternative to jail program that enforces that non-violent offenders be drug tested
and monitored very strictly.
SECTION 3. STATUTORY LANGUAGE
A) Those who are convicted of nonviolent drug related crimes shall be placed into
rehabilitation programs, home confinement programs, or given significantly reduced sentences as
determined appropriately by a judge.
B) This bill shall be administered and enforced through the Department of Corrections and the
Probation Department. Funding for rehabilitation programs shall be appropriated from funds that
previously went to maintaining prisons for nonviolent drug related criminals. Any state that fails
to adopt a similar program within 90 days of ratification shall forego federal funding of crime
prevention centers. Any convicted nonviolent drug offender who does not comply with the
necessary requirements shall be sentenced to 0-3 years in prison.
C) The Nonviolent Criminal Act of 2015 shall take effect on January 1 st, 2016 and shall remain
indefinitely. This bill shall be renewed in 2020.