Who should control California's prison budget? U.S. Supreme Court may weigh in

[cory777]

Source: LA Times

Reporting from Ione, Calif. —
A legal battle over who gets to control California's massive spending on prisons — judges or corrections officials — may be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, with overcrowding at the state's 33 prisons at the center of the debate.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state officials have challenged an edict from three federal judges that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation must cut the prison population by 40,000, or about a quarter of its 165,000 inmates. The judges' order, issued last August, cited overcrowding as the main cause of healthcare failures that amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and left inmates to die from treatable conditions at the rate of one per week.

The three-judge order brought to a head the tension over a decades-long judicial practice of intervening in prison management to correct what have been deemed unconstitutional deficiencies in state custody. Courts have empowered a phalanx of overseers and experts to mandate reforms on prisoners' healthcare, psychiatric treatment, parole rights, access to law libraries and other matters.

But as California's budget woes increasingly pit the jailers and judicial monitors in a struggle for scarce resources, the monitors have become a point of contention.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-courts-prisons-20100518,0,3444734.story

[ProudDad]

1. K&R - end the f*cking phony "war on drugs (tm)"

Empty out the cells of the 40-50 percent in there on low level drug "crimes"...

Decriminalize and the problem of over-incarceration AND "immigration" would be mostly solved...

Change USAmerican economic policy from that of a predator nation to that of a decent world citizen and again, "immigration" would be solved and the culture made more healthy -- thus less crime...

End the phony "war on terra(tm)" and cut the permanent war budget by at least 75% (along with acting like a decent world citizen and ending the arms race fueled by USAmerican arms manufacturers)...

But, of course, all of these solutions would hurt the GDP, the only acceptable gauge of the health of the USAmerican Empire...

So none of these reasonable things will be done...