[Victims of Court Corruption] Contemptible Overcrowding Of California Prisons

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http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130624/A_OPINION01/306240301/-1/A_OPINION

Prison Order Loud and Clear

Time to stop challenging the courts and focus on judicial reform

June 24, 2013 12:00 AM

A three-member federal panel, fed up with California, has ordered the state to release nearly 10,000 more inmates by the end of the year to get the prison population down to the 137.5 percent of capacity level ordered years ago.

The judges demanded that the state take such steps "commencing forthwith" and regardless of any laws that might prevent those releases.

"All such state and local laws and regulations are hereby waived, effective immediately," the judges ordered.

The blistering 54-page order leaves no doubt the judges believe the state has intentionally defied previous court orders.

"There can be no reasonable dispute the defendants have failed to meet their obligations," the judges said. They said the court has "taken care to limit the extent to which its orders tell defendants how to administer their prison system. Defendants, however, have continually responded to this Court's deference with defiance."

We may not like the order. We may think the population cap is arbitrary. We may believe the federal court's have no place telling a state how to run its prisons.

But there comes a time when fighting no longer makes sense. We've reached that point.

Thursday's order should be the final wake-up call for the Brown administration in its years-long battle over the prisons. Unfortunately, it won't be.

The Brown administration immediately asked the appellate court for a stay and filed notice the state will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Two years ago this month, the high court backed up the lower court's order to reduce the prison population.

Federal Judges Lawrence K. Karlton, Stephen Reinhardt and Thelton E. Henderson on Thursday ordered the state to expand the use of good-time credits to cut the inmate population, a tool they indicated would trim prison sentences of some inmates by several months without endangering the public.

The order follows years of hearings and a 14-day trial that found the state's prison health care system so lacking as to be unconstitutional - a finding that, among other things, resulted in the construction of a $900 million prison hospital to open in Stockton next month.

The irritation of the judges was evidenced by their waiving of any state law or administrative procedure that would delay releases. They demanded the state report every two weeks on the progress being made, rather than monthly. And they found "considerable merit" in requests by attorneys for inmates who have sought an order finding the state in contempt of court orders.

If this order doesn't send the message directly and forcefully to the state about the court's intentions, nothing will.

But what it really should do is prompt immediate and careful review of the state's sentencing practices by the administration, the Legislature and judiciary.

Earlier court orders to cap the prison population resulted in so-called realignment that diverted some prisoners into county jails. In some cases, that has simply overcrowded the county lockups.

What's urgently needed - and with pressure from the federal court now approaching a critical level - is top-to-bottom sentencing and judicial reform. Most other states have nothing approaching California's incarceration rates. Or prison costs. At $11.2 billion in the current fiscal year, the state spends more imprisoning people than it does on higher education.

We must find another way. Never-ending appeals work no better than our sentencing system.