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California Prison Population Ordered Reduced: Three Judge Panel Issues Tentative Ruling

By Jonathan Simor

A special panel of three federal judges, Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Lawrence K. Karlton, of the Eastern District of California, and Thelton E. Henderson of the Northern District of California, issued a tentative ruling yesterday in the mammoth prison conditions litigation known both as Coleman v. Schwarzenegger and Plata v. Schwarzenegger after the lead plaintiffs in two class action prison lawsuits that have wound their way through courts since 1995 and 2002 respectively. The judges announced there readiness to order California to reduce its prison overcrowding from its current status of nearly 200 percent above the design capacity, to a level between 120 and 145 percent of design capacity, and below 100 percent of design capacity for those facilities housing "clinical" populations, presumably those with mental illness or acute health problems (with a more precise target likely to be named in the final ruling)...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on February 10, 2009 (boomark / email).