The state has submitted a new plan to reduce the prison population in an effort to satisfy a judicial panel even as it attempts to block the panel’s decision by appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. The latest plan will require the three federal judges to issue orders that the state considers illegal and that the League sees as dangerous and unacceptable.
As an example, the judicial panel would have to order the State Department of Corrections to not accept individuals who fit a specified profile, such as those with no strikes under the "three-strike" law who are convicted of simple drug possession or any one of a number of theft-related crimes. Another example would be an order to not accept any person convicted of felony theft that did not meet a $950 threshold.
The judicial panel, formed under provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, ruled in August that substandard health care received by inmates in California's 33 adult prisons violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and that overcrowding is the primary reason. The judges ordered the Schwarzenegger administration to come up with a plan "that will in no more than two years reduce the population of adult institutions to 137.5% of their combined design capacity."
This is a classic case of a solution in search of a problem. The design capacity of California prisons is one inmate per cell, yet most cells are built to house two inmates! In our opinion, the judge’s panel is dramatizing the overcrowding figures which, according to the excellent article, “The False Promise and Lethal Consequences of Releasing Inmates,” are nothing new. “California prisons have been overcrowded for more than 15 years,” Michael Rushford of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation writes. “…As of June 30, 2009, California had roughly the same number of inmates in state prisons as it did 1998.”
Besides the fact that we don’t feel the overcrowding is a new and urgent problem, there are other measures that can be taken to reduce the prison population density – such as maximizing the use of out-of-state facilities to house prisoners and deporting imprisoned non-citizens – that do not involve releasing criminals onto our streets.
The panel’s assertion that inmates are being denied adequate healthcare is also questionable. According to Rushford’s article, per inmate spending on healthcare, levels of medical staffing and mortality rates (California’s inmate mortality rate is 38th lowest among the 50 states), do not support the judges’ conclusion. The state currently spends an estimated $14,000 a year per inmate on medical care for its prisoners, while the federal government only spends about $4,000 per prisoner!
Rushford concludes, as we argued in previous posts and articles, that the release of prisoners is unlikely to save the state money; that costs to re-arrest and prosecute re-offenders will be pushed to local governments; and that Californians will pay the highest price in terms of property and lives lost.
At this point, our best chance to stop the federal government from overstepping its authority and interjecting itself in the operation of the state prison system is intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court. We think that the panel’s justification for the massive release is simply not supported by the facts, and are hopeful that the Supreme Court will clearly see that.
