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Uploaded: Wednesday, January 9, 2013, 6:56 AM
Updated: Thursday, January 10, 2013, 7:29 AM
Brown wants U.S. to end control over California prison population
Contends order no longer needed because inmate numbers already reduced
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Gov. Jerry Brown has asked a federal three-judge panel to lift an order requiring the state to reduce the number of inmates in its overcrowded
prisons to 110,000 by June.
In filings in federal courts in San Francisco and Sacramento on Monday night, Brown contends the order is no longer needed because the prison population has already been significantly reduced and health care greatly improved.
"The overcrowding and health care conditions cited by this court to support its population reduction order are now a distant memory," state lawyers argued in the papers.
"California's vastly improved prison health care system now provides inmates with superior care that far exceeds the minimum requirements of the Constitution," the attorneys contended.
The population reduction was ordered in 2009 by the three-judge panel acting on a lawsuit in which inmates claimed that prison health care was so deficient that it amounted to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.
The panel concluded that severe overcrowding was a primary cause of poor health care and ordered the state to decrease the population of its 33 adult prisons to 110,000 inmates, or 137 percent of the designed capacity. At the time, the prisons housed 150,000 inmates in facilities designed for 80,000.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld that ruling in 2011, saying that the "grossly inadequate" health care was unconstitutional.
The prison population has now fallen to 119,000, as a result of several measures, including the so-called "realignment" process in which some low-level offenders are diverted to county jails.
Brown claims in the court papers that continued enforcement of the population reduction order is now "unfair, unnecessary and illegal."
Monday was also a deadline for the Brown administration to tell the court how it would complete the remainder of the population reduction by June.
In a separate filing, the administration said the number of inmates could be reduced further by changes in state laws to provide shorter sentences and/or by court orders for the early release of some prisoners, but argued that those options might endanger public safety.
The three-judge panel is made up of U.S. District Judges Thelton Henderson and Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento and 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt of Los Angeles.
It was convened under a federal law that provides that a court order to reduce prison population can be made only by a three-judge panel and not by a single trial judge acting on a civil rights lawsuit.
Donald Specter, a lawyer for the inmates, called Brown's filings "misguided and misplaced" and said the prisoners' attorneys will oppose lifting the 2009 order.
"He's not aware of the true facts, which show that the prison system is still unconstitutionally overcrowded," said Specter, who works out of the Prison Law Office in Berkeley.
In a statement filed with the court on Monday, the prisoners' attorneys argued that the prison system remains "vastly overcrowded," that medical and mental health care continues to be inadequate and that there are safe and effective ways to reduce the population.— Bay City News Service Are you receiving Express, our free daily e-mail edition? See a sample and sign-up for Express.
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Posted by mooseturd, a resident of the Pleasanton Valley neighborhood, on Jan 9, 2013 at 9:48 am
mooseturd is a member (registered user) of PleasantonWeekly.com I read two days ago that property and drug crimes are on the upswing in Santa Rosa. Could it be because there are more criminals preying on us?
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Posted by Cholo, a resident of Livermore, on Jan 9, 2013 at 11:28 am What do you mean by crimals? duh...
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Posted by Libertarian, a resident of the Another Pleasanton neighborhood neighborhood, on Jan 9, 2013 at 12:12 pm Its so obvious! Brown only wants to keep criminals in CA prisons because, like Obama, he wants people dependent on the state.
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Posted by Cholo, a resident of Livermore, on Jan 9, 2013 at 2:25 pm yup...just like a war...the USA takes soldiers hostage and then makes them go fight in a crazy war...if they don't go to war then they don't eat. instead, they go to prison and get raped...wars allow everybody to act crazy and if get killed you get a medal and your family gets a flag...you're never seen again and you can't go home for the holidays...
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Posted by Cholo, a resident of Livermore, on Jan 9, 2013 at 2:27 pm Correction: if soldiers don't want to fight in a war, then they're starved. the soldiers that don't want to kill civilians get fed the worst slop you can possibly imagine...everybody laughs and then they watch TV...
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Posted by Darla Anderson, a resident of another community, on Jan 23, 2013 at 7:10 am First, as the INFORMED WIFE of a PRISONER (doing 4 years for a DUI that was nothing more than a new blended family with six stepchildren, a newborn, and ran out of anti-anxiety medication-induced marital squabble GONE BAD), let me tell everyone that CDCR will be the first to gloat that they have released NO ONE FROM PRISON EARLY, nor have they transferred ANYONE from PRISON to LOCAL COUNTY JAILS. The only way they have gotten their numbers down thus far is to declare that any 'low-level offenders' (i.e., anyone that California elites are offended by) will now do their time in the local jail system, rather than going to the prison. So, effectively, they shut the front door of the prison. Likened to a body, it would be like sewing up the dark vile mouth of the prison beast. And then, they just wait for prisoners to complete the very last drop of blood, sweat, and tears to which the state has deemed their prison sentences, pooping out each one at the end of their time. According to CDCR (Ca. Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation), they can find not one person that they have CORRECTED OR REHABILITATED. So what exactly are we paying them for????!!!!! They cannot cough up two months on the end of every 'low-level offender' and send them home to their wives and their children two months early. That's just plain evil. For those of you who would FREAK OUT over someone getting their two months off, what are you gonna do in two months when they naturally parole out?? Are you losing sleep?? Because I can tell you that that guy of mine who used to make beautiful sets and special effects on movies such as Mr. and Mrs. Smith and tv shows like House, and who married an abandoned woman with six children, two of which have autism, and who can build anything, and who is the most loving man I have ever met SHOULD NOT be your FEAR. It is the government of elites that have set up a system of mafia goons to black-widow catch the citizens so that they have a steady stream of working slaves for the state to pay their prison guards and their prison beast financial interests. And, they are building many more prisons to incarcerate more citizens. Think about that the next time you see one of those Black and White Highway Patrol cars doing one of his spider-hiding-in-the-bushes....that he is about to shake down one of our neighbors and run him through the database, and shake him for WHATEVER HE CAN!!
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Posted by msar, a resident of the Danbury Park neighborhood, on Apr 5, 2013 at 8:47 pm The practice of psychiatry and related, calling people mentally ill/mentally defective, treatments (drugs, electroshock--external and/or internal, surgical, talk, etc.), incarceration in mental wards/mental hospitals, appointment with psychiatrists and/or coattail riders (they refer to it as a sustainable eco-system or sustainable economic system)--all part of the new American slavery system, were to cease by the end of World War II by international treaties and reiterated by Executive Orders of President John F. Kennedy and President Ronald Reagan. All psychotropic drugs are supposed to be off the market. The proceeds from psychotropic drugs go to finance weapons used for genocide worldwide.
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Posted by Archy, a resident of the Another Pleasanton neighborhood neighborhood, on Apr 5, 2013 at 9:13 pm Unfortunately, Brown has taken the easy way out. Yes, he has been playing shell game with prisoners. Why? If he releases anyone prematurely who then commits a serious crime, the Repubs will do what they did to Dukakis with the whole Willie Horton fiasco.
Of course we know that Repubs are quite happy to have prisoners -- especially those who are light in the pocketbook and so who cannot afford a high-priced attorney -- rot away behind bars. It squares with their authoritarian mindset: As Hannity said the other day, "My father whipped me with a belt all the time and I turned out okay." Yeah, right. Repubs are sick; Dems are cowards.
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