California's Prison Realignment: a brief explainer infographic

In Fault Lines' episode "Women in Prison", Fault Lines producer, Sweta Vohra (@svohra), and correspodent, Anjali Kamat (@anjucomet), went to California, the state with the second highest women's prisoner population, to find out why the prison population in that state is so high.

So high in fact, that California is currently under a mandate from the Federal Three-Judge Court (affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court) to reduce its prison population to 137.5% of its design capacity. 

In response to that order to reduce the inmate population, California has adopted what is known as Realignment, "the cornerstone of California’s solution for reducing the number of inmates in the state’s 33 prisons". However complex, this piece of legislation is intended to do three things: have low-level offenders serve out prison sentences in county jails rather than state prisons, transfer parole supervison responsibilities for low-level offenders from the state to the counties, and require that low-level offenders who violate the conditions of their parole be returned to county jails rather than state prisons.