Gov. Jerry Brown’s effort to shun a federally imposed population cap on California’s prisons was met with clear-cut directives by a three-judge panel.
The judges ordered Brown and prison officials to provide a plan outlining what measures are necessary for the state to meet and maintain a federally imposed population cap of 137.5 percent of design capacity on its prison facilities.
The court gave the governor and prison officials until May 2 to submit a “list of all prison population reduction measures identified or discussed as possible remedies” to met the population cap imposed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011.
The three-judge court criticized the state lawyers for “simply seeking to re-litigate the 137.5 percent question” by attempting to have the court modify the cap to 145 percent. The state’s attempt to challenging a legal conclusion is not a permissible basis for modifying the population cap, the three-judge court stated in the May 8 decision. California prisons were operating at 149.7 percent of designed capacity as of April 3, according to prison officials’ numbers.
The cap was ordered after the Prison Law Office filed lawsuits against the state for overcrowded conditions and poor mental health care.
The court ruled California’s prisons are overcrowded because there isn’t enough staff and space “to provide constitutionally adequate medical health care and mental health care.”
The court further noted that “given the criminogenic nature of overcrowded prisons, substantial evidence supported the conclusion ‘that a less-crowded prison system would in fact benefit public safety and the proper operation of the criminal justice system.’”
The three-judge court suggested several methods the state could use to meet the cap: “(1) early release through the expansion of good time credits; (2) diversion of technical parole violators; (3) diversion of low-risk offenders with short sentences; (4) expansion of evidence-based rehabilitative programming in prisons or communities; and (5) sentencing reform and other potential population reduction measures.”
The court recognized “despite the fact that 14 percent of California’s misnamed ‘Lifers’ population—which consists of over 30,000 inmates—are over 55 years old, defendants (the state) have taken no meaningful action to release elderly low-risk prisoners in this category.”
Since the prison population is approximate 119,000 and the prisons are capped at 110,000 the court concluded approximately 4,500 elderly prisoners would be released if the state took this action, accounting for about half needed to meet the cap.
The state’s “greatest failure” was “with respect to…the expansion of good time credits,” the court recognized.
If the state “were to adopt the policies of other jurisdictions and increase the length of goodtime credits to 4-6 months and award credits to inmates regardless of their offense or strike level, these changes would, on their own, reduce the prison population by far more than the amount necessary to comply with the 137.5 percent population cap,” the court claimed.
The three-judge court stated how to comply with the order was up to state officials, but confirmed that complying with the cap was in the May 2011 U.S. Supreme Court decision, capping the prison population. The three-judge court additionally noted the state had four years to comply with the order, considering the lengthy appeals process.
The state adopted AB 109, more commonly known as Realignment, in October 2011 as its way of meeting the cap. The three-judge court noted, “It soon became apparent, however, that Realignment was not sufficient on its own to achieve the 137.5 percent benchmark by June 2013 or to meet the ultimate population cap at any time thereafter, in the absence of additional actions by defendants.”
In a previous hearing, the court extended the June 2013 benchmark to December in order to allow the state to develop a feasible plan to meet the cap.
The court determined the state’s failure to take all necessary steps to comply with the cap required an order demanding that the state “develop a system to identify prisoners who are unlikely to reoffend or who might otherwise be candidates for early release, to the extent that they have not already done so.”
If the state fails to reduce the prison population to 137.5 percent design capacity in a timely manner, the court process will nevertheless permit compliance with the order through the release of low-risk prisoners, the ruling states. The court gave the state until July 19 to complete “this identification system.”
The prisoners’ lawyers filed papers in the court claiming the state “already had risk instruments by which they could identify low-risk prisoners for release and that implementing a good time credit program was quite straightforward.” Moreover, the prisoner’s lawyers noted, the state “made no effort to seek the needed legislation” on good time credits or sentencing reform.
This footnote to the case was acknowledged by the three-judge court:
Former Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections Jeffery Beard testified on behalf of California prisoners at the 2009 trial. Since that testimony, Beard has been appointed as the California director of prisons. He has since revised his position on the crowding issue.
The 71-page decision concludes: “Having been granted a six-month extension, defendants have no further excuse for non-compliance. If defendants do not take all steps necessary to comply with this court’s June 30, 2011 order, as amended by this court’s Jan. 29, 2013 order, including complying with the order filed in conjunction with this opinion, they will without further delay be subject to finds of contempt, individually and collectively.”
