Courts Order California To Lose 40,000 Prisoners

[Sionnach Glic]

LOS ANGELES - A panel of federal judges ordered the California prison system on Tuesday to reduce its inmate population of 150,000 by 40,000 - roughly 27 percent - within two years.

The judges said that reducing prison crowding in California was the only way to change what they called an unconstitutional prison health care system that causes one unnecessary death a week.

In a scathing 184-page order, the judges said state officials had failed to comply with previous orders to fix the prison health care system and reduce crowding.

The judges left it to state officials to come up with a specific plan within 45 days, saying there was "no need for the state to release presently incarcerated inmates indiscriminately in order to comply with our order." They recommended remedies including imprisoning fewer nonviolent criminals and reducing the number of technical parole violators.

The order is the largest state prison reduction ever imposed by a federal court over the objection of state officials, legal experts said.

It comes as the state has emerged from a long battle to close a $26 billion budget gap. The latest budget includes severe cuts to social welfare programs, schools and health care. The governor planned to slash spending by reducing the prison population by 27,000 inmates, but law enforcement and victims' rights groups stopped that.

Attorney General Jerry Brown said in a telephone interview Tuesday that he intended to appeal the ruling. "Eventually, we're going to have to go to the Supreme Court because I think the California prisons are spending about $14,000 per year per inmate," Mr. Brown said, adding that the changes the judges ordered would cost more money, which the state does not have.

The special three-judge panel described a chaotic system where prisoners were stacked in triple bunk beds in gymnasiums, hallways and day rooms; where single guards were often forced to monitor scores of inmates at a time; and where ill inmates died for lack of treatment.

"In these overcrowded conditions, inmate-on-inmate violence is almost impossible to prevent, infectious diseases spread more easily, and lockdowns are sometimes the only means by which to maintain control," the panel wrote. "In short, California's prisons are bursting at the seams and are impossible to manage."

Mr. Brown, who is raising money for a possible run for governor, said that some sort of settlement might be negotiated, but he added that he did not believe the court has the authority to cap the state's prison system.

"California is facing real financial challenges and at the same time the court is ordering standards of care that exceed the standard required under the Constitution," he said.

The case began as the result of class action lawsuits addressing inadequate medical and mental health care in the prison system. Those lawsuits were resolved years ago. The medical care case ended up with a federal receiver overseeing the system, and the mental health care case with a special master.

"It's an extraordinary form of federal involvement," Kara P. Dansky, the executive director of the Stanford University Criminal Justice Center, said of the ruling. "I'm not aware of any other case in which a federal court has entered a prison release of this magnitude over the objection of a state defendant."

Such federal interventions have become increasingly rare under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which restricts inmates' access to courts and prohibits federal courts from imposing population caps on prisons except as a last resort.

Prison reform advocates said Tuesday that the state would probably lose any appeal of the reduction order.

"These are cases that have been going on for more than 15 years," said David Fathi, the director of the United States program for Human Rights Watch. Mr. Fathi added, "The record in regard to constitutional violations is massive, and the judges have tried other less intrusive remedies before."

Although the state spent millions of dollars on court-ordered changes, the judges ruled Tuesday that the system still violates the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has shifted between supporting the court-ordered changes and, as state deficits grew and political pressures intensified, fighting them. In June, Mr. Schwarzenegger reneged on a deal with the federal receiver that would have provided $3 billion to build two prison hospitals and renovate other facilities to create 5,000 beds for ill inmates. An earlier plan was for the state to pay $8 billion for 10,000 prison hospital beds.

The governor has also pushed his own prison construction plan and a parole overhaul as ways to reduce prison crowding and to fix inmate health care services without federal intrusion.

But the court pointed out on Tuesday that the state had not committed enough money toward the governor's prison construction plan and that even if that money was provided, it would take years for the state to build its way out of the overpopulation crisis.

The judges on the panel were Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and two Federal District Court judges from California, Lawrence K. Karlton and Thelton E. Henderson.

150,000 prisoners? That's one hell of a lot of people.

[Tsukiyumi]

Maybe now they can stop tossing people in prison for smoking non-approved plants.

[Lazar]

150,000 prisoners? That's one hell of a lot of people.

The US has by far the highest incarceration rate (and total prison population) of any nation in the world - about 6-7 times that of Canada or Australia, about 5 times the EU average, and significantly higher than even Russia and South Africa. "Land of the free" my ass. I'm glad to see any development that goes against this country's massive prison-industrial complex, and in the direction of a sane drug policy.

[Sionnach Glic]

This is a result of the idiotic "War On Drugs" and the "Zero Tolerance" policy, I take it?

[Mikey]

I agree that the general push to incarcerate is wildly out of hand in this country - but I still get annoyed by the spin on stories like this. The vast majority of people "inside" are truly guilty of what they were accused of... but we're supposed to feel sorry because they have sh*t conditions? Like the great Curtis Mayfield once sang, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."

[sunnyside]

This is a result of the idiotic "War On Drugs" and the "Zero Tolerance" policy, I take it?

Tied in there is the "three strikes" laws. Where the first few offenses carry more "normal" sentences, but the third time you mug somebody they put you away for an extended period of time. And apparently we've got some problems from a quarter of the innmates being illegal aliens (from the wiki link above).

I went over to the Bureau of Justice stats page to try and find some info on the populations and such.



So you can see since the war on drugs started the people locked up for that has gone up, but people guilty of violent offences are the bulk of the problem.

However I'm pretty sure across the US violent crime rates are going down, despite the prison population going up (and it appears going up faster that population is rising).

My guess is that it's the abovementioned "three strikes" laws in combination with the gang culture that plagues the US.

We really need to figure out how to change that cultural element. Though making a profit off of prison labour might be a stop gap measure...

[Graham Kennedy]

I agree that the general push to incarcerate is wildly out of hand in this country - but I still get annoyed by the spin on stories like this. The vast majority of people "inside" are truly guilty of what they were accused of... but we're supposed to feel sorry because they have sh*t conditions? Like the great Curtis Mayfield once sang, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."

1. Stop locking people up so much.
2. Spend the money to deal with the huge prison population.
3. Amend the constitution to say cruel and unusual punishments are allowed after all.

Choose any one you like, but just saying you don't care cos it's their fault doesn't cut it.

[Tsukiyumi]

...3. Amend the constitution to say cruel and unusual punishments are allowed after all...

Apparently, they don't have to wait for an Amendment...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio

It's almost tolerable until you get to all of the deaths.