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Prison Reform Lite: With Fiscal and Constitutional Alarms Ringing, Cal Legislature Hits the Snooze Button

By Jonathan Simor

Staggering to the end of what Assembly Speaker Karen Bass called "a painful year for all of us", the California legislature passed and sent on to Governor Schwarzenegger a prison bill that will help the state save about a billion dollars (in a 26 billion deficit situation), about 200 million short of the governors announced goal (read Michael Rothfeld and Shane Goldmacher's reporting in the LATimes; and Kevin Yamamura, Steve Wiegand and Jim Sanders' reporting in the SacBee). The other number, besides the budget, is the 40,000 inmate reduction over two years called for by the three judge federal court in the Plata/Coleman case. The plan is expected to reduce the prison population by about 17,000 during the year, as opposed to the 27,000 projected by the Governor's plan...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on September 12, 2009 (boomark / email).