NORA Overview
Proposition 5, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act (NORA), offers common-sense solutions to California’s prison overcrowding crisis. The measure will appear on the Nov. 4, 2008, statewide ballot. NORA’s major components are:
1 Treatment diversion programs for adults. NORA creates a unified system of care and provides $385 million per year to pay for drug treatment and related costs. Nonviolent drug offenders would be placed in one of three different levels of care and supervision, based on their criminal history and drug problem severity. NORA motivates participants to complete t reatment and rehabilitation through an appropriate mix of incentives, rewards, sanctions and consequences. Participants who fail at the lower levels could be moved up to the more intensive levels, or could be jailed for noncompliance. Completing the prescribed course of treatment can lead to the participant’s drug offense being dropped from his or her criminal record.
2 Prison system and parole reforms. NORA makes rehabilitation a real priority for the state prison system and restructures the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to further that goal. The measure creates a new post of Secretary of Rehabilitation and Parole to supervise the transition, and places a new “rehabilitation warden” at each facility. The measure saves prison beds by requiring local sanctions, not prison, to punish minor parole violations by nonviolent offenders. Parolees and former parolees would get rehabilitation services to help them stay clean and to return as productive members of society. An independent oversight panel would have authority over major aspects of implementation.
3 Youth programs. NORA commits about $65 million per year to drug treatment and other support programs for at-risk youth, creating a system of care for young people under the age of 18 where no services exist now. Additional money for youth treatment would come from fines paid for possession of marijuana, an offense which, for adults and for minors, would be reclassified from a misdemeanor to an infraction. Young people under the age of 18 would be required to attend a drug education class if found guilty of possessing marijuana.
Proposition 5 would sharply limit the incarceration of nonviolent offenders, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO). The LAO projects that the measure would require spending about $1 billion in total each year, offset by savings of $1 billion or more each year in prison and parole costs. According to the LAO, the state would see additional net savings of $2.5 billion over several years as prison-construction costs would be reduced by NORA’s reforms.