The Sacramento State Public Debate Association held a public forum Thursday discussing inadequate prison conditions and the increasing cost of maintaining an overwhelming amount of inmates.

“In the last 20 years, incarceration has reached record levels,” said Sac State sociology professor Cid Martinez. “In the last 10 years, however, crime was going down.”

Martinez said it was a paradox with more people being imprisoned even with lower crime rates.

With a record 117,000 people filling up prisons in California, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is looking to answer the overcrowding issue with realignment, which is intended to send drug users to rehab and treatment instead of just sending them to prison.

“Why would we spend $45,000 a year to house a low-level drug offender in prison when for a fraction of that amount, about $5,600 a year, we can get that person into a community based treatment program and give them a chance at recovery?” said Thomas Renfree, executive director of the County Alcohol and Drug Program Administrators Association of California.

Renfree said 50 to 60 percent of prisoners are heavily involved with alcohol and other drugs and 80 percent of all arrestees are tested positive for at least one illegal drug.

“Our primary goal is to get addicts and drug offenders into treatment rather than incarceration,” Renfree said.

Deputy Chief of External Affairs Albert Rivas said prisons in California are at 147 percent capacity because there are more inmates in a cell than should be.

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation wants to get jails to 137.5 percent capacity by February 2016, but to achieve that goal, Rivas said the recidivism rate has to drop.

Recidivism, or the amount of inmates that are released but return to prison, is at 61 percent. Sac State Police Department Lt. Roman Murrieta said the reason behind such a high rate is because without treatment, inmates will resume their former lives, especially if selling drugs was a source of income.

“I suspect that they’re probably not getting the rehabilitation that they should be because they’re so cramped,” Martinez said.

Murrieta said another repercussion from the tight living spaces of the prison is the lack of sanitation, leading to disease.

“What got them all rolling in 2001 was a lawsuit filed on behalf of inmates who claimed that medical treatments in prisons were so poor; it was leading to a death a week through neglect or malpractice,” Martinez said.

Renfree said it was more effective to treat inmates and help transition them back into the community instead of just sending them back to prison.

Renfree said San Francisco is a successful example of realignment, because money has been invested into mental health treatment, health care, addiction treatment, vocational training and housing support.

“For the last 30 years, we’ve gone to a system that punishes,” Martinez said. “Realignment gives us the opportunity to move away from punishing to a more humanizing type of criminal justice system where people feel like they’re being treated fairly.”