Sacbee — For decades, California's political leaders have tried every imaginable approach to dealing with its overcrowded prisons - sending inmates out of state, fighting the federal courts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, promising more prison beds and insisting that it has done plenty to cut inmate populations and improve health care.
On Thursday, a panel of three federal judges said they have had enough.
In a sharp rebuke of Gov. Jerry Brown, the judges said the state must take immediate steps to release inmates toward compliance with the panel's 2009 order that the prison population be reduced to 137.5 percent of capacity, an order the U.S. Supreme Court later adopted.
"The history of this litigation is of defendants' repeated failure to take the necessary steps to remedy the constitutional violations in its prison system," the panel wrote in a scathing 51-page order and opinion that demands the state immediately slash inmate levels or face a contempt citation.
"We are compelled to enforce the Federal Constitution and to enforce the constitutional rights of all persons, including prisoners," the panel wrote in an order that left no doubt the judges believe the state has intentionally defied its previous orders.
The latest one essentially requires the state to cut its inmate population by nearly 10,000 inmates by the end of the year, and to take steps to ensure that the count will not jump back above the 137.5 percent level. continue reading...
2 comments:
These retarded judges are just that, retarded. The state can not control what parolees/inmates do i.e. crime.
There are not any steps a prison or the state can take to make an inmate stay out of jail, or to stop acting out crime. It's a personal choice, therefore out of the state's hands.
It's an unreasonable order. I believe the safety of the public is more important that any constitutional right that an inmate may have. The constitution wasn't written with criminals in mind anyway.
WOW! And the winners are the federal and state governments, they always do when they lock horns. Consequently, it is always the public that gets screwed in the fallout of their political BS! Let's not forget the inmates and their lawyers. What ashame no one truly represented the public, They are the losers
on so many levels simply because their governments let them down.
Yeah the Joes and Janes of the public were thinking they were being protected, by the political big brothers on the benches and in the elected trenches of morals, far to often found lacking in those holding positions in high places. Unfortunately for the public, in far to many cases the loyalties of to many appointed and ellected officials have been brought and sold at the expense of the public.
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