why is this critical and important for society:Although seemingly well-intentioned, these policies have been noted to negatively affect the communities the people were told they would help. AB 109 was originally designed to decrease overpopulation and overcrowding in federal prisons. The law shifted the responsibility and supervision of non-serious, non-violent, non-sexual offenders (NNNs) from the state to the county. In other words, those convicted under this category of crimes would be held in county jails rather than state prisons (Hanisee, 2017). Note that although jail and prison are commonly used interchangeably, in this context, they do mean different things. County jails are normally used for short-term sentences, those awaiting trial, and are managed by local law enforcement that generally have less security. Meanwhile, state and federal prisons are for long-term incarcerations and serious offenses and have higher maximum security protocols (Alliance, 2021). Under the influence of AB 109, state prisons did decrease their populations as intended and diverted less serious offenses to county jails. However, this inadvertently caused a significant increase in county jail populations, and due to the nature of those facilities, to make room for the NNNs, they released low-level offenders early to make room. Making matters worse, AB 109 would then have corrections look at not the complete list of crimes committed by the offender but their most recent, which under review co