Legal News

?An Interesting Debate?: How To Clear 40,000 From California?s Prisons?

By Ashby Jones

If California state officials, currently wrestling with a nearly unprecedented budget crisis, didn’t have enough on their plate, they do now, in the wake of the Ninth Circuit’s order on Tuesday that the state had to reduce its prison rolls by about 40,000 inmates. (Fortunately, given today’s unemployment report, those 40,000 should have no trouble finding gainful employment once they’re on the street.)

The decision was made in order to ease overcrowding and improve medical care for existing inmates.

So what’s the state to do? That topic is the subject of a WSJ story out today. State officials have said they will appeal the decision, but as a contingency are cobbling together proposals to comply with the order.

At the same time, cash-strapped local governments in places such as Los Angeles and Fresno are grappling with how to monitor and support thousands of released inmates at a time of scaled-down police forces and underfunded social-services programs.

“This is just awful [since] the court’s decision is coming at a time when local public-safety has been slashed drastically,” said state Assemblyman Kurt Hagman, a Republican who is a member of the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee. He dubbed the order “ludicrous.”

The three-judge panel gave the state 45 days to develop a plan to carry out the order, which caps the state prison population at 110,000. The state’s 33 prisons were designed to hold about 85,000 inmates.

While it’s unclear how officials will execute the court’s decision, the department of corrrections doesn’t plan on releasing inmates en masse. “We aren’t opening the floodgates and releasing prisoners,” said Matthew Cate, secretary of the department. “We’re taking careful, well-thought-out steps to reduce California’s inmate population.”

The department suggests deporting illegal-immigrant inmates and allowing some low-level offenders to serve the final year of their sentences under house arrest. In addition, the state would reduce sentences of inmates who complete prison rehabilitation programs. The state may also change sentencing guidelines so offenders charged with crimes such as drug possession would be prosecuted for misdemeanors instead of felonies. If convicted, inmates would be sentenced to county jails rather than state prisons.

Assemblyman Danny Gilmore, a Republican, said he expected “very heated arguments over the plan. No one wants to release prisoners, particularly during these difficult times. It’s going to be a very interesting debate.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 07, 2009 (boomark / email).