Ruling Could Spring [California] Inmates Early

Source: Sacramento Bee

In a rare move, federal judges in Sacramento today will consider setting up a panel that may cap the state's burgeoning prison population.

By Andy Furillo - Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A3


Mahoning County got one. So did the District of Columbia. Today, the California prison system finds itself in line to get slapped with an inmate population cap under a hardly used federal legal process that has been on the books for 11 years.

In jurisdictions in Youngstown, Ohio, and Washington, D.C., the caps imposed by the so-called "three-judge courts" under the Prison Litigation Reform Act resulted in early release orders of few hundred inmates each.

In California, the figure is likely to reach into the tens of thousands -- if a three-judge court is created and if the panel agrees with population figures quoted by inmate rights lawyers who brought the action.

As a result, prison litigators from across the country are awaiting the ruling from U.S. District Court in Sacramento, where the plaintiffs will argue that the jampacked conditions in California's overcrowded prisons are contributing to what federal judges have already determined to be the unconstitutional provision of prison medical care and mental health treatment to inmates.



Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/243596.html

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California has 170,000 people behind bars. How's that three-strikes law working out for ya?

it has literally ruined our state.

Most people do not belong behind bars... there are other ways to resolve the problem.

...and I don't mean just the criminals.

Just cap it? That's weird.

Why not review the laws and eliminate the three strikes stuff and other such ridiculousness?

I agree with other actions too. But to say that only so many may be housed in existing facilities is reasonsble and restrained judicially.

I just wish they'd implement some of the more proactive solutions faster than this reactive one.