The identification of a man suspected of carrying out a stabbing spree that left four dead and two wounded as a documented gang member with a criminal history left law enforcement officials once again placing partial blame for violence on a 2011 Assembly bill that has long drawn police ire.

Assembly Bill 109, also known as inmate realignment, has since become a favorite target for law enforcement, one cited by name in a news conference Thursday focused on the Garden Grove and Santa Ana killings, though state prison officials later in the day confirmed that the suspect had not been released early from prison.

For years the passage of AB109 has served as a flashpoint for law enforcement officials angered by the move away from longer incarcerations. Combined with the subsequent passage of Proposition 47, which downgraded some nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors, AB109 marked the beginning of a sea-change in California’s criminal justice system.

“The status of the law in California is to continually pursue earlier and earlier release of people incarcerated,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Shawn Nelson said on Thursday.

However, state prison officials said Thursday that Zachary Castaneda was not released early. He was freed after serving his full term, said Luis Patino Jr., corrections spokesman.

Castaneda was sentenced to a total of four years in state prison for 14 convictions that included mostly drug possessions and the possession of a firearm, an assault weapon and ammunition by a felon.

He was eligible to earn one day of additional credit for each day served, which cut his sentence in half, Patino said.

Castaneda went to prison on Sept. 30, 2014 and was released for supervision by the Orange County Probation Department on Jan. 14, 2016.

Approved in 2011 to address a badly overcrowded state prison system, AB109 shifted responsibility for some inmates from the state to counties. Thousands of prisoners were sent to county jails, and some released inmates were relinquished to county probation officers rather than state parole.

In some respects the impact was substantial, particularly in the makeup of county jails, where the prisoner population now includes more sophisticated criminals and those more prone to break jailhouse rules.

The impact on crime and re-conviction rates was less clear-cut.

A county report released in 2016, four years after realignment went into effect, suggested that re-conviction rates in Orange County hadn’t gone up under realignment. A Public Policy Institute of California report published that same year concluded that realignment didn’t lead to a spike in violent crime, but also didn’t result in the reduction of re-conviction rates proponents hoped it would lead to.

In the years since realignment went into effect, many cities have seen increases in property crimes, although those are more often blamed by law enforcement on Prop 47, which reduced some drug possession crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.