One year after the prison realignment plan took effect in California, diverting inmates from state-run facilities to local lockups, counties are reporting jails are not only overpopulated but also more dangerous.

According to a North County Times article, the realignment program has created fuller jails, which some say has contributed to the higher rate of crime now seen at the jails.

An August report by the San Diego Association of Governments stated crime rates rose during the first half of 2012, marking the first increase in years, according to the North County Times.

San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said she sees a direct correlation between the realignment program and the higher crime rates in county jails.

"I don't think it is a coincidence that crime was at its all-time low in 40 years, and now it is up 6 percent," she told the North County Times. "That is circumstantial evidence to me."

Counties were not given enough time to determine how they were going to handle the influx of inmates due to the realignment program, according to Dumanis. Because county correctional officials were given just six months before the plan took effect, she said many counties are finding they are operating on a trial-and-error basis, learning as they go how to handle more inmates - including some who are more hardened-criminals who have spent time in state prisons, the Times reported.

"We are all trying to make the airplane while we are flying it," Dumanis said, according to the source. "We are working as fast as we can to get up to speed."

The San Diego County Sheriff's Department reports the county's jails are at 96 to 99 percent capacity on average every day, as the system houses about 5,500 inmates, the Times reported. The prison realignment program has meant those inmates, who previously were serving sentences in state facilities, are now staying in county jails five times longer than the average county jail inmate. Before the realignment program took effect October 1, 2011, the average length of stay for an inmate at a San Diego jail was 75 days. Now, that average is 346 days, according to the Times. In addition, the longest sentence an inmate would previously serve at the jail was a year, and now the jail is housing inmates who have been sentenced to 10 years or more.

While some are concerned about the burden the state plan has placed on California counties, others are optimistic the plan is effective, and some say it was a necessity to keep felons off the streets. California Governor Jerry Brown told the San Francisco Chronicle the state made a solid transition with the realignment program, and said without it, "we would have been forced by judges to let felons out of prison or to build new cells, which we can ill afford."