It’s early. About 5 in the morning and I’m heading south on Highway 5 toward Corcoran, a farming town of about 24,000 people. However, that population count is misleading. About half of the people living in Corcoran are locked up in two of the state’s largest prisons just south of downtown.
Nationally, women are the fastest growing prison population. And one of the highest female prison populations in the world is here in California. That's slated to change under the state's new realignment program. The number of women in prison is supposed to shrink drastically, by as much as half, over the next few years.