Posted on 09/17/2009 12:40:30 PM PDT by SmithL
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday will submit to a panel of three federal judges a plan that would reduce the inmate population at California’s overcrowded prisons by substantially less than what the court has ordered, a move that a top prison administrator acknowledged will place state officials at risk of being held in contempt.
Although the final plan will not be submitted until late Friday, administration officials have briefed other parties involved in the court proceedings on its major elements. They said exact projections of how much the prison population will be reduced have not yet been calculated, but the reduction would not lower the population to the court’s standard of 137.5 percent of the prison system’s design capacity.
“This plan will not meet the court’s requirements,” said Lee Seale, deputy chief of staff of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in a conference call Wednesday with legislative staff members. “I certainly don’t think this panel will be thrilled by this plan. I think we recognize we may be held in contempt.”
The Star participated in the call after obtaining an advisory of the event.
The three-judge panel on Aug. 4 ruled that overcrowding is the primary reason the state has been unable to provide constitutional levels of medical and mental healthcare to inmates, even after many years of working under court supervision to do so.
The prison system, designed to hold 80,000 inmates, now houses nearly twice that number. To meet the 137.5 percent of capacity level would require a reduction of about 40,000 inmates.
Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, who has intervened in the court case in the hope of preventing a judicial mandate to lower the prison population, believes the administration is taking exactly the right approach.
Possible compromise
“I would like to see the state plan be as easily rejected as possible,” Runner said.
If the administration submitted a plan that came close to meeting the court’s order, Runner said, that could lead to a negotiated compromise. This way, he said, the court will be forced to propose its own plan — one that would set up a showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court.
A coalition of human rights groups is planning a demonstration at Schwarzenegger’s San Francisco office today to urge him to submit a plan that complies with the court order.
Helia Rasti of Critical Resistance said she is disappointed but not surprised by the administration’s decision.
“They’re going to try every step of the way to delay the process with politics as usual,” she said, noting the status quo has resulted in a surge in unnecessary state spending on prisons. “What we need to do is show them that people deserve to have these investments go back into the community.”
Last month, the administration proposed a plan to lawmakers that would have nearly met the judges’ goal within the two years allotted. The plan, designed to achieve reductions in prison spending already carved from the state budget, included a proposal to place selected inmates under alternative custody, specifically house arrest with GPS monitoring.
Although the Senate agreed with the alternative-custody plan, members of the Assembly, citing public safety concerns, refused to go along. Instead, both houses of the Legislature last week approved changes in parole and an expansion of good-time credits that would allow selected inmates to have their sentences reduced by as much as six weeks per year for participation in rehabilitative programs.
A legislative analysis estimated the steps approved by lawmakers would reduce the inmate population by 16,000 over two years.
The plan Schwarzenegger submits to the court will include those changes, Seale said, and some acts the department can take without legislative approval. Those include transferring about 2,500 more inmates to prisons in other states and commuting the sentences of some undocumented inmates and turning them over to federal authorities for deportation. The administration last month estimated the commutation of selected deportable inmates would remove 8,500 from state prisons, although critics say that number is grossly inflated..
The plan Schwarzenegger submits to the court will not, however, include the alternative custody provisions he had asked lawmakers to approve last month — even though the federal judges have the authority to waive any provisions of state law that might impede the administration from complying with the order.
“I’m pleased that they didn’t try to put back on the table any kind of release program that would put the citizens of California at risk,” Runner said.
In addition to programs to reduce the number of people in prison, the state plan will also propose the construction of more than 12,000 new prison beds at new facilities that would be built on the grounds of existing state prisons, a new acute-care medical facility, the conversion of three juvenile prisons for adult use and the creation of several county-based re-entry facilities.
Midnight Friday deadline
Most of that construction would be financed through AB 900, a prison bond approved by the Legislature in 2006 that has never been tapped.
Corrections Department attorney Ben Rice said the state will submit its plan by the midnight Friday deadline because the U.S. Supreme Court last week denied the state’s request to delay the order of the three-judge panel.
He said he believes the order to produce a plan provides sufficient grounds for the state to appeal, although others contend the state cannot seek relief from the Supreme Court until after the three-judge panel issues a final order detailing how the population reductions are to be achieved.
If a majority of Supreme Court justices agrees with the administration’s position that the initial order is subject to appeal, Rice said he anticipates the California case would be heard by the high court late next spring.
Under the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act, only a special three-judge panel can order state or local jurisdictions to take such steps as releasing prisoners or constructing penal facilities. The law requires judges to seek the least intrusive remedy and allows states to appeal decisions directly to the Supreme Court.
America is so damn broke we’ve begun laying off convicts. Some “recovery.” I can’t believe there are morons in this country who think we can afford to give the entire world “free healthcare.”
tents are cheap. they can set some up out NE of Barstow,
a la Arpaio.
Joe also makes the cons grow a lot of their own food. He likes to keep the cost to the taxpayer as low as possible.
GO JOE!
I say feed them Delta Smelt.
I say let them go.
In DC.
I’m going to guess Delta Smelt are not on the A-list of fine fish foods?
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