Court orders California to cut inmate population by 40,000

[Dominus Atheos]

NYT

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.

The California prison system is completely and utterly broken, and I for one am glad to see them being forced to fix it. I can only hope that California actually takes this opportunity instead of screwing it up like they have every other attempt.

[General Zod]

Solution? Legalize or at the very least completely decriminalize marijuana. I'll bet that would eliminate a significant fraction of the existing inmates.

[Nephtys]

Solution? Legalize or at the very least completely decriminalize marijuana. I'll bet that would eliminate a significant fraction of the existing inmates.

Do you have ANY numbers for this claim?

I highly doubt that a quarter of people in jail are around because of Pot.

[Flash]

Solution? Legalize or at the very least completely decriminalize marijuana. I'll bet that would eliminate a significant fraction of the existing inmates.

Do you have ANY numbers for this claim?

I highly doubt that a quarter of people in jail are around because of Pot.

Decriminalising marijuana would put a dent in those figures, but not a huge one. According to the report available here, approximately 20% of California's prison inmates were locked up for drug crimes. That means the total inmate population for drug crimes is approximately 33500 people, so even if they decriminalised every drug law on the books that wouldn't be enough.

I would say that examining and overhauling sentencing guidelines would be a far more effective way of controlling the prison population. Obviously for violent and dangerous offenders prison is the correct choice, but for certain non-violent and drug offenders it should be a last resort. Problem is, these sorts of policy changes need money (investment in rehab and education programs for example), something which California simply doesn't have.

[Pick]

I once read about California's prisons and it shook me to the core. Same with Red Onion and that one in Louisiana where they run it like an old-school plantation on the grounds of an old-school plantation. Uh, what's it called... Angola?

[Imperial Overlord]

I once read about California's prisons and it shook me to the core. Same with Red Onion and that one in Louisiana where they run it like an old-school plantation on the grounds of an old-school plantation. Uh, what's it called... Angola?

Yeah, that's it. Scary place. California also has that three strikes law that helps swell its prison population.

[General Zod]

Solution? Legalize or at the very least completely decriminalize marijuana. I'll bet that would eliminate a significant fraction of the existing inmates.

Do you have ANY numbers for this claim?

I highly doubt that a quarter of people in jail are around because of Pot.

Any number of sites turn up the rather consistent numbers of 74,119 arrests for pot related offenses in California for 2007. How much money do you think it's costing the state to prosecute all of those?

[Rahvin]

A quick search returns this:

Average agency cost per inmate in 2008 = $35,587

So, 74,000 inmates at $35,587 each would be $2,633,438,000.

For pot.

Each year.

Granted, a lot of the average cost goes into the cost of the facility itself, and the prisons are so overcrowded that we wouldn't save all of that by simply releasing all pot related offenders. It's still a sobering figure, though - $2.6 billion every year just to administer the incarceration of marijuana offenders. Even if you cut that number in half it's still a significant amount. That doesn't include the cost of the police or prosecution of the offenders, either.

[The Spartan]

Um, how many of those pot arrests results in actual prison sentences? I'm guessing it's not the full 74000, many of whom I suspect plead the case out to probation or a fine depending upon how much they had on them, etc.

[RedImperator]

California's marijuana laws and enforcement are lax enough I don't think you'd get the huge savings you would in other states just by releasing all the potheads (and dealers), though for reasons elaborated elsewhere it's a good idea anyway. California's prison population is fueled by two things: gangs and RAR TOUGH ON CRIME sentencing laws, including three strikes. Effective gang mediation will be expensive and labor-intensive, and reducing sentence length for most crimes will be deeply politically unpopular.

[Havok]

Do those pot numbers take into account the difference between inmates in jail and prison?

[Rahvin]

California's marijuana laws and enforcement are lax enough I don't think you'd get the huge savings you would in other states just by releasing all the potheads (and dealers), though for reasons elaborated elsewhere it's a good idea anyway. California's prison population is fueled by two things: gangs and RAR TOUGH ON CRIME sentencing laws, including three strikes. Effective gang mediation will be expensive and labor-intensive, and reducing sentence length for most crimes will be deeply politically unpopular.

As of 2004, there were approximately 42,810 second/third strikers in California. Of those, 24,123 were regarded as "nonserious and nonviolent."

The total of all strikers comprised a little over 25% of the prison population.

[Darth Wong]

Clearly, California needs to bring back Roman gladiatorial combat, in order to whittle down their prison population.

[Samuel]

Clearly, California needs to bring back Roman gladiatorial combat, in order to whittle down their prison population.

We'd need to kill 100 a day. Lets see... only on weekends so we'd need to off 700...

I don't think pure melee weapons will work to kill them fast enough. Unless we do our version of naval battles the Romans had. The problem is that most battles people like involve modern weapons which is a bad idea to given prisoners. Maybe we can revive the classics or just have the battle of the Thermopylae for the media recognition.

[Mr Bean]

Why not a thousand a day Brawl with a There can be only One rule? We can put them in Football stadiums with random shard and blunt objects left in seats with some nice edged weaponry on the field itself. We bring them into the stadium in hand and leg cuffs with the keys to their cuff's in a timed lock box they carry themselves, when the gong goes off the boxes unlock and the scramble out of the stands to get at some of the weaponry.

It is There can only Be one, so aside from enough violent footage to give Fox it's Monday-Friday night line up for the next eight years, we only need to run it for one year at one match a week in order to reduce the population to acceptable levels.

[loomer]

To be honest, you could just do the same thing by removing the guards from some of the cellblocks and by desegregating the gangs from each other. You'd see a pretty sharp increase in death rates that way, and you could also make it into a fantastic new version of 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here' by putting famous people of the wrong gang affiliation (this one mostly works on rappers, for obvious reasons) or race in a cellblock.

[Sea Skimmer]

It’d make so much more sense to work them all to death improving the states highways and flood barriers.

[Mr Bean]

It’d make so much more sense to work them all to death improving the states highways and flood barriers.

What an idiot I am! We could have them dig a cannal to the sea. Specifically from the Atlantic to the Pacific! It's brilliant! And we get a moat to put our border fence behind.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Um, how many of those pot arrests results in actual prison sentences? I'm guessing it's not the full 74000, many of whom I suspect plead the case out to probation or a fine depending upon how much they had on them, etc.

Unless you're arrested for distribution I find it highly unlikely that simple possession would land you in jail let alone prison, but maybe California is different. If they have a statistic for arrests for marijuana distribution then that's what would be mostly relevant in this discussion.

[Mr Bean]

Unless you're arrested for distribution I find it highly unlikely that simple possession would land you in jail let alone prison, but maybe California is different. If they have a statistic for arrests for marijuana distribution then that's what would be mostly relevant in this discussion.

Is not one of the problems of drug laws that people who buy more than a week or two of use get busted for distribution? I do know a friend of a friend who I met at a part once who got busted with the equivalent for him of two weeks worth of weed and was charged with distribution because of the amount under DC law.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Is not one of the problems of drug laws that people who buy more than a week or two of use get busted for distribution? I do know a friend of a friend who I met at a part once who got busted with the equivalent for him of two weeks worth of weed and was charged with distribution because of the amount under DC law.

Yeah, that is a problem. I'd like to think my department has officers who are more reasonable. Everyone on my squad tends to look at the whole picture and will only charge someone with distribution if they are actually distributing and we determine that by other items (like individual packages, scales, etc) they have on their person or activities that they were engaged in. So, if you bought two weeks worth of marjiuana for personal use we'll probably not charge you with distribution...unless you're a shitbag.

Also, a lot of the officercs on my department are like me and if we find some marijuana on someone that isn't a shitbag then we'll likely just seize the marijuana and let that person go without citing or arresting them.

[Simon_Jester]

It’d make so much more sense to work them all to death improving the states highways and flood barriers.

What an idiot I am! We could have them dig a cannal to the sea. Specifically from the Atlantic to the Pacific! It's brilliant! And we get a moat to put our border fence behind.

This could not be done by the state of California alone, and is therefore not a solution to their problem.

Now, lesser canals, such as the "save the Salton Sea" canal I've heard of... that's an idea.

[Lusankya]

There's one obvious solution that hasn't been mentioned yet: find a largely uninhabited continent with minimal precipitation and generally harsh conditions and poor soil, and found a colony on it.

Then sit back and in a hundred years or so, they'll come back to beat the US at all of the sports they invented.

[Zac Naloen]

There's one obvious solution that hasn't been mentioned yet: find a largely uninhabited continent with minimal precipitation and generally harsh conditions and poor soil, and found a colony on it.

Then sit back and in a hundred years or so, they'll come back to beat the US at all of the sports they invented.

And behave like spoilt children when things do go their way.

[Solauren]

Ship them to other states.