INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A big jump in Indiana county jail overcrowding has state lawmakers looking to partially roll back a nearly decade-old criminal sentencing overhaul and let judges send more people convicted of low-level felonies into state prisons.
An Indiana House committee voted this past week in favor of a proposal dropping the state’s requirement that most people sentenced for those crimes serve any time behind bars in county jails.
That requirement took effect in 2014 as lawmakers aimed to have those convicted of such crimes spend time in intensive local probation, work-release or addiction-treatment programs.
The change, however, resulted in nearly 16,000 people with Level 6 convictions being sent to county jails last year.
