Legal News

Brown asks judge to reject motion to seize $8 billion for prison healthcare

By Jason Siegel

California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown asked a federal judge to reject a motion by the federal prison receiver that aims to seize $8 billion in state funds for a massive prison healthcare facilities construction project.

The legislature approved $7.4 billion for prison construction in 2007 that "hasn't even been spent yet, and the Receiver wants $8 billion more," Brown said in a press release.

Brown claimed that the federal court doesn't have the power to mandate state prison construction and that there's no evidence to justify the $8 billion being sought "under the veil of secrecy."

Federal prison receiver Clark Kelso told KPCC last month that "The timing of [the motion] is dictated by the fact that I'm running out of money, and I actually have hundreds of planners working now on seven long-term care facilities, and I simply no longer can wait." (LISTEN)

As for the veil of secrecy, only the court can make the receiver's plan poublic, John Hagar, Kelso's chief of staff, told the Los Angeles Times (here).

A hearing is set for October 6, the L.A. Times reported.

Death rate drops

Since state prison healthcare was taken out of state control in 2006, the death rate of prisoners has dropped by nearly a third, according to a report by Kelso.

Kelso told the Times (here) that the drop is due to his office's work to reduce preventable deaths due to poor access to care and treatment, among other things.

That's not clear, says Prison Law Office director Donald Specter.

Spector told the TImes that the deaths might be due to medical care or other factors, like the age of prisoners, but that the report didn't provide that breakdown.

UC-Irvine professor and criminologist Joan Petersilia told the Times some of those other factors could be the increase in gang members/disruptive prisoner extractions, isolating mentally ill prisoners from other inmates and getting them their medications more often, as well as an increase in the number of lockdowns.

Kelso told the Times that 428 state prisoners died in 2006 compared with 397 in 2007 and 186 in 2008, so far.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on September 17, 2008 (boomark / email).