Posted on 05/24/2011 8:13:43 AM PDT by SmithL
The U.S. Supreme Court effectively ordered California on Monday to release 33,000 inmates over two years from an in-state prison population that numbers about 143,000.
Kent Scheidegger of the tough-on-crime Criminal Justice Legal Foundation blogged that Californians shouldn't "bother investing much in a car. It will be open season on cars, given that car thieves (nonviolent offenders) will never go to prison no matter how many times they are caught."
The 5-4 Plata decision upheld a federal three-judge panel that in 2009 found that overcrowding in California prisons is "criminogenic" - likely to produce criminals - and ordered state prisons to run at 137.5 percent of design capacity. The state's prisons are designed to hold 80,000 inmates. (Be it noted, 100 percent capacity means one inmate per cell.)
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy cited ugly stories of inmates waiting months for needed medical and mental-health treatment - a violation of Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. And: "As many as 54 prisoners may share a single toilet." Kennedy argued, "Prisoners retain the essence of human dignity inherent in all persons."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Obviously the good justice has never been deployed, where a hundred troops share a single working sh~!tter...
And I find that if there is no fear of punishment, then the entire society is “criminogenic”. The simple answer would be razor wire, tents, and porta-johns in the Mojave.
I always thought a no wall prison in the middle of Alaska would be good. Wanna run...there is the tundra!
I remember that in a previous thread regarding judicial retention, that I suggested the idea of the public being allowed to vote out a sitting federal judge or a Supreme Court justice. Too bad we can't do that now.
They shouldn’t be incarcerating all those pot smokers anyway.
The riches in agriculture, technology, tourism, natural harbors and an embarrassment of other assets have been run into the ground through liberal policy and unchecked third world immigration.
If they're ever going to reclaim a functioning society, they ought to build enough prisons to hold 1 million people, and hope that removing the criminals from society will allow the law-abiding majority to be productive enough to support the incarceration of the lawless.
Uh, no...don't wanna do time? Don't do the crime.
I agree that prisons are overcrowded and that something must be done about it. What needs to be done is: build more prisons. Lots of ‘em. Criminals should never be let loose because of overcrowding.
Let’s just legalize drugs, instead of throwing the pot smokers in jail. They are no more dangerous than people who consume alchohol. That should cut the prison population in have, and also have no use for the federal drug enforcemant agency, which can then be eliminated.
Mexifornia in two years !
I wonder how many pot heads are really in the cali jails? Did not cali decriminalize pot years ago? But yeah, end the war on drugs .... we lost.
If they released all the pot smokers, they wouldn't have anyone left in jail!
SB1401
Possession of less than 28.5 g of marijuana is already a misdemeanor in CA, so the idea that prisons are filled with guys who were just in possession of personal consumption amounts is a myth. Even possession of hash is nearly always punished with a fine instead of jail time.
I know Kapuskasing Ontario (way up north) was a place where German POWs were held in minimum security.
Chamberpots were the norm for millenia.
It honestly looks to me more like a problem with the California state government than the SCOTUS.
“In Plata v. Brown, filed in 2001, the State conceded that deficiencies in prison medical care violated prisoners’ Eighth Amendment rights and stipulated to a remedial injunction. But when the State had not complied with the injunction by 2005, the court appointed a Receiver to oversee remedial efforts. Three years later, the Receiver described continuing deficiencies caused by over-crowding. Believing that a remedy for unconstitutional medical and mental health care could not be achieved without reducing over-crowding, the Coleman and Plata plaintiffs moved their respective District Courts to convene a three-judge court empowered by the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA) to order reductions in the prison population. The judges in both actions granted the re-quest, and the cases were consolidated before a single three-judge court. After hearing testimony and making extensive findings of fact, the court ordered California to reduce its prison population to 137.5% of design capacity within two years...
...The appeal presents the question whether the remedial order issued by the three-judge court is consistent with requirements and procedures set forth in a congressional statute, the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA). 18 U. S. C. §3626; see Appendix A, infra. The order leaves the choice of means to reduce overcrowding to the discretion of state officials.”
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-1233.pdf
FWIW, the dissent starts at page 59.
This has been going on for 10 years, and California refused to spend the money to expand prisons - although I’d bet the salaries of prison guards increased more than inflation during that time.
I support putting people in prison, but I also support the idea of building prisons to hold them. Maybe if California spent less on unions and more on prisons, this would not have happened. Frankly, I would trust the judgment of a 3 judge panel more than I would a vote of the California legislature...
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