Judges to Decide Whether Crowded California Prisons Are Unconstitutional

[groovedaddy]

SAN FRANCISCO — Faced with chronically packed prisons and a federal mandate to improve medical and living conditions, a three-judge panel is meeting here to decide whether the overcrowding results in unconstitutional treatment of California’s more than 150,000 inmates. If so, the judges could order the state to release tens of thousands of prisoners.

“We have a motion today to exercise a very serious order which interferes in a profound way with the state’s right to run its own affairs,” one of the judges on the panel, Lawrence Karlton of Federal District Court, said in a hearing last week. “And on the other hand, we have a serious failure of the state to provide adequate care.”

California’s 33 adult prisons teem with nearly double the inmates they were designed to hold. Lawyers for the inmates say the conditions lead to violence, outbreaks of disease, inadequate mental and other health care for prisoners, and even death.

“Overcrowding is dangerous for the prisoners, for the corrections officers and for the public,” said Michael Bien, a lawyer for the inmates, who asked the judges to reduce the prison population by 52,000 inmates over two years.

Lawyers for the state argued that reducing the prison population would result in increased crime and burden counties already facing tight budgets.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/us/08calif.html

[juno jones]

1. Easy,

release every non-violent marijuana offender. That should free up some space.

[Jkid]

2. Even better

Release every non-violent drug offender.