Supreme Court Won't Delay Release of California Prison Inmates

(AP) High court won’t delay release of Calif inmates
By PAUL ELIAS
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday paved the way for the early release of nearly 10,000 California inmates by year’s end despite warnings by Gov. Jerry Brown and other state officials that a public safety crisis looms if they’re forced to open the prison gates.

The majority of justices refused Brown’s emergency request to halt a lower court’s directive for the early release of the prisoners to ease severe overcrowding at California’s 33 adult prisons.

A panel of three federal judges previously ordered the state to cut its prison population by nearly 8 percent to roughly 110,000 inmates by Dec. 31 to avoid conditions amounting to cruel and unusual punishment.

The panel, responding to decades of lawsuits filed by inmates, repeatedly ordered early releases after finding inmates were needlessly dying and suffering because of inadequate medical and mental health care caused by overcrowding.

Court-appointed experts reported that the prison system had a suicide rate that worsened last year to 24 per 100,000 inmates, far exceeding the national average of 16 suicides per 100,000 inmates in state prisons.

Brown appealed the latest decision of the panel and asked the U.S. Supreme Court to cancel the early release order while considering his arguments that the state is making significant progress in improving conditions.

The governor also said he cannot further reduce the population without releasing dangerous felons.


Lawyers representing Brown argued in his July 22 appeal that releasing 10,000 more inmates will involve violent criminals and overwhelm the abilities of law enforcement and social services to monitor them.


The panel of judges and attorneys representing inmates have consistently rejected that argument. They say other states have marginally reduced inmate sentences without sparking an increase in crime.

The governor said the state has already transferred thousands of low-level and nonviolent offenders to county jails, which in turn have been forced into early release of many inmates to ease their own overcrowding issues/

The court rejected Brown’s plea on Friday over the objections of Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. who all said they would have granted the state’s request.

Scalia, in a dissent joined by Thomas, wrote that the previous order by the three-judge panel was a “terrible injunction” that threatens public safety. Scalia said the state’s evidence shows it has made meaningful progress and that such reductions in the inmate population are no longer necessary.

In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the state must cut its inmate population to deal with unconstitutional prison conditions caused by overcrowding.

They have said that further delay in reducing prison overcrowding will further the substandard delivery of medical and mental health care and, by extension, lead to more inmate deaths and injuries.

In recent years, the special panel of judges has accused Brown of attempting to delay and circumvent their orders. They threatened to cite the governor for contempt if he does not comply.

The judges waived all state laws in June as they ordered Brown to expand good-time credits leading to early release. They also directed the governor to take other steps, including sending more inmates to firefighting camps, paroling elderly felons, leasing cells at county jails and slowing the return of thousands of inmates now housed in private prisons in other states.

If those steps fail, the judges ordered the state to release enough inmates from a list of lower-risk offenders until it reaches the maximum allowed population.

In its latest filing with the Supreme Court, the state argued that no governor has the unilateral authority to take the steps ordered by the three-judge panel. They would require approval in the Legislature or “judicial pre-emption of California’s core police powers,” the administration wrote.

Brown has argued that prison conditions have substantially improved and that circumstances have changed since the federal courts’ original order four years ago to reduce the prison population.

The state is spending $2 billion on new or expanded facilities for inmate medical and mental health treatment. That includes seven new centers for mental health treatment and the opening last June of an $839 million prison hospital in Stockton that will treat 1,722 inmates requiring long-term care.

The state also has boosted hiring and salaries for all types of medical and mental health professionals.

The judges want the population reduced to 137 percent of the designed capacity in the state’s 33 adult prisons by the end of the year The state has already reduced the population by 46,000 inmates since 2006.

More than half of the decrease that has occurred so far is due to a two-year-old state law _ known as realignment _ that is sentencing offenders convicted of crimes considered non-violent, non-serious and non-sexual to county jails instead of state prisons.

___ 

AP Writer Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this story.