A year and several months after California's prison realignment program went into place in order to alleviate inmate overcrowding, state Governor Jerry Brown announced January 8 that the prison crisis in California is over. He said it is time the federal government remove its cap on state prison populations and end its oversight on the mental health services offered to inmates at the lockups, the Orange County Register reported.

California has made improvements to the prison system, and it's time the federal government return control to the state, Brown said. The issues of overcrowding and mental health care conditions at the prisons, which caused the feds to intervene in California, are now "distant memory."

“There’s no question that there were big problems in California prisons,” he said, according to the Register. “[…] But after decades of work, the job is now complete.”

The state's realignment program took non violent prison inmates and transferred them to local county jails. This caused added pressure on local county jail systems to provide more jail beds and probation and health services for inmates. Under the realignment, local officials like those at the Orange County Jail have seen inmate populations steadily increase. The Orange County Sheriff's Department said from October 2011, when realignment took effect, to September 2012, more than 2,200 prisoners from state facilities were released and placed under Orange County's supervision, the Register reported. The average sentence for those at the county jail also increased from 113 days 165, the article stated.

Brown rejected claims that realignment strained local resources and released dangerous criminals back into the community.

“In terms of realignment, I reject the notion that this has contributed to anything but the public interest," he said, according to the Register. "People commit crimes in the local community, and they are now, to a greater degree, being supervised, being rehabilitated or being incarcerated locally. We’re transferring billions of dollars to achieve that goal. I think it’s very sound.”

Five years ago, the state prison population topped 170,000 inmates. A federal court in 2099 ordered the state to reduce its population by 40,000 inmates within two years, Southern California public radio station KPCC reported.

Prison rights groups continue to lobby for further reductions in populations as some facilities remain over capacity, the article stated. Despite this, Brown said there is no need to do more to reduce prison populations. State lawyers have filed papers to challenge the targets set by the U.S. Supreme Court.