How Much of Your Jail Sentence will You Really do in Los Angeles County Jail?

There is a tremendous overcrowding problem at the Los Angeles County Jail, and our Wallin & Klarich criminal attorneys in Los Angeles have taken a different approach to the handling of crime cases pending in the county. This problem has been caused by a major change in the laws which changed the penalty for many crimes from a state prison commitment to doing your time in county jail. This change in the law occurred on October 1, 2011.

As a result of this law change, the state prisons are now less crowded than they were before. The federal courts had ordered California to lower the state prison population because the living conditions were so poor for those in state prison. So the good news is inmates who go to state prison are doing their time in less crowded prisons (in most cases).

However, the bad news is that the LA County Jail is a total and complete mess. They are only allowed to keep a set number of inmates in custody. When that number is reached they must release those serving jail sentences even if that means the inmate will do much less time that the court ordered.

If you are sentenced to county jail in California, you are required to do 50% of your sentence prior to your release. However, in many of our clients cases they are doing as little as 10% to 15% of their actual sentence. We have had clients serving very short sentences that tell us they show up and go through the intake process and are released within 24 or 48 hours.

Nobody knows how long this will continue to exist. What this does mean is that when we represent our clients accused of crimes in Los Angeles, we take an entirely different approach to the handling of these cases. While we often seek out alternative sentencing for our clients facing possible jail sentences in other counties, in Los Angeles County we normally recommend the accused to agree to do a small amount of jail time because until things change, we realize that this likely means our client will do little time in custody and then will be free and will not have to do home confinement or work release.

IF you are facing a criminal charge in Los Angeles, you need an experienced Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer fighting for you. Wallin and Klarich has been winning cases for our clients in Los Angeles for over 40 years. Feel free to call us toll free 888-749-0034 24/7. We will be there when you call!