Emptying California's crowded prisons
California's incarceration rate has been skyrocketing for decades. Now the courts have finally said: enough
"On Tuesday, a panel of federal judges ruled that California must reduce its prisoner population by about 40,000 inmates over the next two years.
The ruling wasn't a surprise. After all, earlier this year the same panel issued a preliminary ruling that California's prison-overcrowding crisis was now so acute that it inevitably resulted in unconstitutionally poor levels of medical and mental healthcare for inmates. The preliminary ruling had mandated that the state reduce its prisoner population, but while the state made further arguments and tried to demonstrate that it was making a good-faith effort to improve conditions, the ruling hadn't been enforced.
On Tuesday, the judges, in a scathing ruling, declared California's efforts had utterly failed to improve conditions. So now, absent a successful appeal by the state directly to the US supreme court, the Golden State will have to implement one of the largest prisoner-reduction programmes in American history – and at great speed".
A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
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