The biggest issue facing California prisons is overcrowding, and big changes are on the horizon.
Two major issues will unfold in the coming months: California’s gigantic budget deficit and a lawsuit awaiting a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court will rule on a three-judge federal panel ruling that the state’s overcrowded prison system causes unconstitutionally inadequate inmate medical and mental health care. This violates prisoners’ Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment, the judges ruled.
Meantime, newly elected Gov. Jerry Brown is grappling with a $28 billion state budget shortfall. He is proposing several steps, including more prisoners staying in county jails, or prison inmates returned to county jails.
The California Legislature, politicians and a myriad of prison administrators have been unable, or unwilling, to fix the state’s broken prison system
The high court is reviewing the panel’s unprecedented August 2009 ruling that would require the state to reduce its inmate population by nearly 40,000 to relieve prison overcrowding. The San Jose Mercury News reported that one of the federal judges deemed conditions so bad that inmates were “dying needlessly” on a regular basis.
David G. Savage and Carol J. Williams of the Los Angeles Times reported that the suicide rate in California’s overcrowded prisons is nearly twice the national average, and an average of one inmate dies every eight days from inadequate care.
The Supreme Court will decide whether the three-judge panel overstepped its power to order inmate releases under a 1996 federal law, the Prison Litigation Reform Act.
California officials have asked the Supreme Court to strike down the prisoner reduction order because they say it violates the 1996 law. Robert Weisberg, a law professor at Stanford’s Criminal Justice Center stated, “It’s the first case really testing this particular issue under a relatively new statute.”
If the Supreme Court upholds the prison population cap, the state will have two years to gradually reduce the overcrowding. If the justices strike down the cap order, the federal judges who issued it will continue to oversee improvements to inmates’ medical and mental health care.
At issue in the case, known as Schwarzenegger vs. Plata, is whether the three-judge panel correctly applied the law governing how federal courts can get involved in state prison management.
Meantime, some 200 people demonstrated at the San Quentin gate on Feb. 8, They protested construction of a new Death Row complex while budget cuts appear likely for services to the disabled.
The same day federal Judge Jeremy Fogel visited San Quentin’s new execution facility. He halted California executions five years ago as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.
The new chamber was completed recently at a cost of approximately $900,000 The former execution chamber was designed for lethal gas, but was later modified to accommodate lethal injections.
Some 720 men and women are awaiting execution in the state.
