Legal Commentary

Federal Judges Threaten to Order Release of CA Prisoners

By TChris

Three federal judges, after hearing evidence of California's ongoing failure to provide adequate health care (including mental health care) to state inmates, told the State it had lost the lawsuit and had better settle quickly if it didn't want to face an order requiring it to release as many as 58,000 prisoners over the next two to three years.

Everyone (except maybe the correctional officers' union) agrees that overcrowding is the problem.

Because prisons are jammed beyond capacity, they lack medical facilities, doctors and nurses, can't make sure inmates are taking medications or receiving treatment, and are triple-bunking inmates in gyms and other locations, the panel said. Such overcrowding increases the risk of spreading diseases among prisoners and staff, the judges said.

[more ...]

"The evidence is compelling that there is no relief other than a prisoner release order that will remedy the unconstitutional prison conditions," the panel said in what it labeled a tentative ruling after a trial in San Francisco last fall.

Reducing the inmate population could save the State $1 billion a year, a number that should penetrate the skulls of legislators (and Gov. Schwarzenegger) no matter how persuasive they find the union lobbyists. The risk to society is minimal if resources now devoted to incarceration are instead spent on community supervision, and if inmates on parole are given alternatives to incarceration for minor parole violations. Allowing sentence reductions for good behavior (once a common practice before the "tough on crime" crowd convinced the public that early release was somehow deceptive, giving birth to "truth in sentencing" laws) would, the judges noted, give inmates an incentive to behave better while they're locked up.

"Much of the evidence showed that [reducing prison populations has] been done in other states without having any impact on public safety," [Donald] Specter [of Prison Law Office] said. "It's safe, it's reasonable, it's necessary. It's too bad that it's taken a court to recognize this."

It's too bad the state's government can't recognize the obvious.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 09, 2009 (boomark / email).