Testimony has concluded in a landmark federal court case where a three-judge panel will decide if chronic overcrowding in California’s overwhelmed prisons is the cause of unconstitutionally poor levels of medical and mental health care.
If the panel of three federal court judges rule against the state, another trial will convene early next year to determine remedies. Attorneys for prisoners in the class action lawsuit want the court to reduce the inmate population in the state’s 33 prisons to no more than 104,000 prisoners. Their plan would require the early release of 52,000 prisoners over a two-year period into treatment centers, county jails or on parole.
In order to prevail in the case, the plaintiffs (inmates and their attorneys) must prove that overcrowding is the leading cause of the substandard medical and mental health care. There is no indication of how soon a decision in the case will be handed down.
The civil rights case opened Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008 in a San Francisco courtroom and quickly took shape as a battle between prison and health care experts testifying for both sides. The state adamantly denies that the overcrowding itself is the primary cause of the poor level of care.
The historic case began more than 21 years ago when Jay Lee Gates, an inmate at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, filed a lawsuit in Sacramento federal court protesting the quality of his health care. The Gates’ lawsuit was eventually converted into a class action lawsuit and combined with two subsequent class action suits also over unconstitutionally substandard medical care.
The three-judge panel is composed of District Judges Thelton E. Henderson of San Francisco. Lawrence K. Karlton of Sacramento and Circuit Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt of Los Angeles. Each of the three judges formerly oversaw one of the three original class action lawsuits which together formed the present case.
Each jurist was appointed to the panel by the chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals under provisions of the Federal Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996. It is the first time judges have acted under the 1996 act, which, ironically, was originally designed to limit the power of judges in prisoner rights cases.
The Act authorizes the formation of a special judicial panel which may, in extreme cases, order the early release of prisoners if the panel decides that all other options have been exhausted.
Henderson and Karlton have each already ruled that the state is providing unconstitutionally substandard medical and mental health care in violation of inmate’s rights. Karlton ruled in 1995 that the state’s prison mental health system violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Henderson in 2005 made a similar ruling regarding medical care and appointed a federal receiver to take over the medical system through a three to five year rebuilding period.
In his 2005 ruling, Henderson found that an inmate was dying unnecessarily every six to seven days as a result of poor quality health care.
Attorneys for the state maintain that conditions are improving and they are quick to say that California now spends an average of nearly $14,000 a year per inmate on medical care, a figure among the highest in the nation. Experts in the areas of inmate health care and prison operations are scheduled to testify for both sides.
“The state has put its money where its mouth is,” said Paul Mello, an attorney for the state. He points out that state spending on prisoner health care has jumped from $345 million in 1995 to nearly $2.2 billion today. “There have been significant improvements,” he said.
Meanwhile, attorneys maintain that three of the state’s 33 prisons currently hold about 230 percent more inmates than they were designed for, and that such overcrowding prohibits prisoners from having jobs or going to educational and rehabilitation programs. Classrooms, gymnasiums and meeting rooms have been converted to dormitory space.
The state currently has over 5,000 male inmates housed in private prisons in states such as Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Tennessee in response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2006 declared state of emergency due to prison overcrowding. An additional 3,000 inmates are scheduled to be shipped out of state by the end of 2009, according to the CDCR website.
Attorneys for the inmates played a clip of a television interview for the court in which Schwarzenegger says “the situation is a recipe for disaster.” He also said that he didn’t blame the courts “for stepping in to try to solve the (prison) health care crisis that we have, the overcrowding crisis that we have. For decades the state of California hasn’t really taken it seriously.”
The Schwarzenegger administration maintains that steps are being taken to reduce the population, including changing parole policies and adding rehabilitation programs in an effort to reduce recidivism. They say that massive spending has been approved to add additional beds and space in the prison system.
The Schwarzenegger administration has rejected recent attempts by the federal receiver overseeing medical operations, J. Clark Kelso, to collect the $8 billion he says he needs to build medical and health centers and improve existing facilities.
And all of this comes at a time when the state is staggering under a budget deficit which has ballooned to a mind-boggling $11 billion. As of Oct. 1, 2008, the state owed $57.3 billion in outstanding debt in addition to another $78.2 billion that has been previously authorized for borrowing.
If the state borrows all of the money that the Schwarzenegger administration has requested for prison beds and additional medical facilities it will cost the state taxpayers $1.2 billion each year to repay the debt. The administration plans to finance the construction with a type of bonds that do not require voter approval.
The three judges had originally decreed that testimony in the non-jury trial’s first phase would conclude by Dec. 19, 2008, but the quick pace of the much-watched trial has surprised many courtroom observers. No date has been set for a decision in the trial. The judges have in the past made numerous rulings sympathetic to, and in favor of, the inmates’ cause.
The 9th Circuit Court rebuffed the state’s strenuous attempts to block formation of the three-judge panel, ruling it (the 9th Circuit) had no jurisdiction in rejecting the state’s appeal. Any appeal of the three-judge panel’s ultimate decision must go directly to the more conservative U.S. Supreme Court. California Republican lawmakers are preparing an appeal to the Supreme Court in the event that the panel orders an early release of inmates.
The powerful prison guards’ union, which went to court in an unsuccessful attempt to block the Schwarzenegger administration’s plans to transfer inmates out of state, openly supports the inmates’ lawsuit. Attorney Gregg Adam of the California Correctional Peace Officers’ Association says overcrowding increases tension and an atmosphere of violence behind bars, and has a “dehumanizing effect on correctional staff.”
California’s prisons currently hold approx 170,000 prisoners in a space designed for just over half that number.
