Why are 3 judges deciding to release inmates?

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 12/14/8 | Debra J. Saunders

[SmithL]

A panel of three federal judges is holding a trial to determine whether to free 52,000 of California's 172,000 prison inmates to alleviate overcrowding. You might be asking yourself: Who elected these guys to run California?

One of the three, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson, already determined in 2005 that California's prison health care system is so bad that it's unconstitutional. He put the system in receivership, and appointed law Professor Clark Kelso to oversee prison health care. Now Kelso is demanding $8 billion to renovate the system - even though the state spends about $14,000 on health care per inmate, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

(California's total health care spending was $169 billion in 2006, the California Medical Association's Ned Wigglesworth told me, which, divided by 37 million residents, comes to about $4,600 per head - or a third of what is spent on the incarcerated.)

Here's the unfunny funny part: Criminal Justice Legal Foundation President Michael Rushford recently figured out that inmates live longer on the inside than on the outside, and they live longer on the inside than outsiders live. He found a study, "Release from Prison - A High Risk of Death for Former Inmates," published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine, which shows that the mortality rate for Washington state inmates spiked more than 1,200 percent in the first two weeks after their release, and averaged 386 percent higher than inmates in prison during the two years after release. The study also found that Washington inmates live longer than the general population.

[Seven plus One]

...recently figured out that inmates live longer on the inside than on the outside, and they live longer on the inside than outsiders live.

From the department of redundancy department.

[tajgirvan]

Bizzaro is just the word I was looking for.....THANKS

saltnlemons

[Alia]

After the majority of Californian voters approved Prop 209 (banning the use of Preferential Affirmative Action in re state monies), Thelton Henderson was the judge who issued a stay on Prop 209, arguing that it was not "fair" nor "just". Manny Klausner argued on behalf of Prop 209, and won.

Thelton used the "jail system" and "prisoners" as his rhetorical device for shooting down the majority vote of the people of California.

So. Now he wants to free prisoners. This is not news.

[Jack Black]

What county are you in?

[marsh2]

Siskiyou -and there is an error in what I said - just aggravated assault is five times greater.