U.S. Supreme Court says California must reduce prison population

In a move that one justice called "the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation's history," the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ordered California to cut its prison population by more than 33,000 inmates.

It is a landmark decision in a decades-long legal battle over conditions inside California prisons, and the immediate response from some quarters warned of an impending public safety crisis.

"If that doesn't have a negative impact on the safety of the people of California, I don't know what does," said U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Gold River. "This is not releasing the Vienna Boys Choir."

But the reality is that the court's opinion has no immediate effect on how many inmates the state can keep in custody.

"This is not a sudden court order requiring the prison doors to fly open," said Allen Hopper, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Instead, the high court's opinion gives the state at least two years to reduce its current population of 143,435 inmates to 109,805.

State officials hope most of those reductions will come through Gov. Jerry Brown's budget proposal to remove tens of thousands of nonviolent inmates and parole offenders from prisons and place them in county jails.

The court cited that proposal as a sign "that the prison population can be reduced in a manner calculated to avoid an undue negative effect on public safety."

Monday's ruling described almost medieval conditions inside California's 33 adult prisons and affirmed a three-judge federal panel's decision two years ago that inmate populations need to be reduced to 137.5 percent of capacity.

The state's prison capacity is designed for 80,000 inmates, and for many years the system housed more than twice that many. The population now is about 180 percent of capacity.

The Supreme Court also suggested the state could seek an extension from the three-judge panel to get as many as five years to come into compliance.

The state has been under threat of court-ordered reductions for nearly two decades over cases that claim overcrowding has resulted in medical care and mental health services so woeful they are unconstitutional.

"The violations have persisted for years," the high court said in a 5-4 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy. "They remain uncorrected."

Justices sharply split

The court majority cited stark instances of overcrowding: 54 inmates sharing a single toilet, suicidal inmates being held for long periods in "telephone booth-sized cages without toilets," up to 50 ill inmates being held without treatment for five hours in a 12-by-20 foot cage.

"After one prisoner was assaulted in a crowded gymnasium, prison staff did not even learn of the injury until the prisoner had been dead for several hours," Kennedy wrote.

The court took the unusual step of including photographs of crowded prison conditions with the majority opinion, but it was clear the justices were sharply divided in their views.

Justice Antonin Scalia said in a dissenting opinion that the majority decision was "radical" and that "the proceedings that led to this result were a judicial travesty."

Prisoners who may win release under the court's decision "will undoubtedly be fine physical specimens who have developed intimidating muscles pumping iron in the prison gym," he added.

Justice Samuel Alito said in his own dissent that the original estimate of how much the state would have had to reduce its inmate population – by 46,000 prisoners – is "the equivalent of three Army divisions."

The governor said the court's decision reinforces the need for the Legislature to approve his budget and the realignment plan it contains to shift thousands of nonviolent prison inmates to the custody of county jails.

"As we work to carry out the court's ruling, I will take all steps necessary to protect public safety," Brown said.

Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate told reporters that prison conditions have improved vastly since the court battles began and that the state has taken dramatic steps to cut the inmate population in recent years.

Those efforts included sending more than 10,000 inmates to prisons in other states, placing more than 30,000 nonviolent offenders on non-revocable parole and increasing the amount of time credited for good behavior that inmates can earn.

Today, the state's first medical parole hearing will take place at Corcoran State Prison under an effort to remove incapacitated and vegetative inmates from prisons to cut costs and overcrowding.

Even with those efforts, Cate said, the state "respects the order of the court and will comply."

Tax money key to plan

Much of the effort to comply would come from legislation Brown signed last month, Assembly Bill 109, to carry out the inmate shift.

But that happens only if the state provides sufficient money to local governments. Brown and legislative Democrats want to extend higher rates on vehicle and sales taxes to pay for it.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said the timing of the Supreme Court's decision was "very significant" because it comes just weeks before lawmakers are scheduled to vote on the state budget and Brown's revenue package.

"Either the court will do it or we have the opportunity to do it right," said Steinberg, a Sacramento Democrat.

"One of the worst things we could do would be to give sheriffs and police chiefs and local communities this responsibility, which is coming by virtue of the Supreme Court decision, and not give them the resources to be able to do their jobs," he said.

By 2014-15, Brown's plan envisions the state will have diverted 40,984 inmates from state prisons to local jails. That includes "lower-level" offenders and those who currently must return to prison for several months after violating parole.

His proposal would shift about $955 million in state costs during 2011-12, as well as $611 million to $762 million annually in subsequent years. All would be funded by the tax extensions over five years.

Republicans, who oppose Brown's tax plan, criticized the court's decision. They say shifting inmates to local facilities could force an early release of dangerous individuals since many county jails are filled beyond capacity.

"People that go to the state prison system aren't there because they stole a pack of chewing gum," said Senate Republican Leader Bob Dutton, R-Rancho Cucamonga. "There are some very serious people there."

INMATE NUMBERS AT A GLANCE

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ordered California to reduce its prison population to 109,805 inmates. There were 143,435 inmates in 33 adult prisons across the state as of Monday. The prison system is designed to hold 80,000 inmates.

In recent years, the state has taken steps to reduce overcrowding by:

• Housing 10,000 inmates out of state.

• Placing 5,000 inmates in fire camps.

• Ordering 4,000 to 5,000 inmates to community correctional centers.

Gov. Jerry Brown's realignment proposal would send an estimated 40,900 nonviolent prisoners to local jails by 2015.

Natioanl Day of Action

Spending Limits Don’t Balance Budgets

California Budget Bites

 Press reports and the rumor mill are once again hinting that some type of new-fangled spending limit may be under consideration as part of negotiations over extending temporary taxes needed to balance the state’s budget. Thus our interest was piqued when we read that State Treasurer Bill Lockyer had developed a packet of charts and graphs analyzing the impact of various types of limits on future spending. The Treasurer’s analysis clearly documents the harsh impact that ACA 4 of 2010, placed on the ballot as part of the October 2010 budget agreement, as well as other types of caps might have on future spending.

If approved by the voters – the measure will go on the 2012 primary ballot – ACA 4 would require deeper spending cuts than even an “all cuts” 2011-12 spending plan. ACA 4, similar to Proposition 1A of 2009, uses a statistical technique known as a “linear regression” to limit future years’ spending. Beginning in 2013-14, ACA 4 would restrict the use of “unanticipated revenues,” defined as the lesser of the difference between:

Estimated General Fund revenues for a given fiscal year and an amount determined “by a linear regression” of the prior 20 years’ General Fund revenues; or

Esimated General Fund revenues, transfers, and available balances and the prior year’s estimated spending adjusted for population and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for California.

We’ve written about many of the problems inherent in this type of approach before in our analyses of Proposition 1A of 2009 and Proposition 76 of 2005. We’ll also release an analysis of ACA 4 in the near future. While no details of measures that may be under consideration as part of the current debate are publicly available, there’s every reason to suspect that such a measure would impose an even more stringent straightjacket than ACA 4.

At the end of the day, it is important to remember that California has had a constitutional spending limit since 1979. Moreover, California’s limit is arguably one of the toughest in the nation. If spending limits balanced budgets, California wouldn’t be where it is today. In fact, spending caps simply limit lawmakers’ options for responding to shortfalls in tough times and limit states’ ability to respond to an increasingly competitive global economy.

Voters have defeated additional limits on state spending twice in less than a decade: first with the defeat of Proposition 76 in 2005 and again with the defeat of Proposition 1A of 2009. That should send a clear enough signal. As we’ve said before, and will no doubt say again, a balanced approach is the only reasonable approach to solving California’s budget problems.



– Jean Ross