Folsom Prison
Federal Judges Thelton E. Henderson and Lawrence K. Karlton have absolutely HAD IT with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California State Legislature. The judges feel they’ve given clear warnings. They’ve said what the consequences would be if Arnold and the Leg don’t get their collective act together in terms of relieving prison overcrowding that has metastasized to such an extreme, say the judges, that it has created inhumane conditions clearly in violation of the U. S. Constitution—particularly in areas pertaining to prisoner health and mental health.
(I can attest to this—at least second hand. Because of my work, I get weekly collect calls from various state correctional institutions, and the tales I hear on a regular basis are pretty horrifying. Of course, they are also tough to prove as, with extremely rare exceptions, reporters are prevented from visiting prisoners.)
In response to the judge’s previous warnings, earlier this year lawmakers endlessly congratulated themselves for passing AB 900, a monster $7.4-billion prison-building bill. The judges, however, were not molified and all but visibly spat on the legislation, correctly pointing out that while it adds 54,000 additional beds, it does so without also adding extra staffing or any appreciable rehabilitation programs for prisoners. In other words, it would make things worse.
“From all that presently appears,” said Judge Karlton, who is overseeing a mental health care class-action lawsuit against the prison system, “new beds will not alleviate this problem but will aggravate it…..Given the almost twelve years that this case has been in its remedial phase,” he growled, “and given the constitutional considerations at stake, the direction in which the State has at present chosen to go by enacting AB 900 simply fails to address in any timely way relief from the overcrowding crisis and its attendant impact.”
This brings us to yesterday when the two judges announced that they were talking matters out of California lawmakers hands and into their own—then appointed a three person panel to come up with a way to alleviate the overcrowding. This is the last legal step before the judges actually “cap” the population—meaning that they could enforce dramatic remedies to keep the statewide prison population down to a fixed, manageable level. For instance, to do so they could require:
1. Certain low-level offenders to be released early. (This means that as many as 35,000 prisoners could get sprung.)
2. Thousands of offenders released to serve the rest of their sentences at home with an electronic anklet. (Since a significant portion of California’s prisoners are locked up for technical violations of their parole, not for new crimes, they would likely be first on the list along with non-violent, low-level drug offenders.)
3. Sentencing reform, sentencing reform, sentencing reform.
Arnold and the state legislature swear they’ll be able to get this all in hand before the panel brings down the hammer.
The judges don’t seem one bit convinced.
The LA Times, and the NY Times among others have stories.
PS: Several of my felonious collect callers tell me they’ve heard about the possible cap and are keeping their fingers crossed that it’ll happen and they’ll be on the Get-Out-Of-Jail Card list.
Judges taking over legislative duties…. What do you want to bet that they are activist Democrats? The judges are more out of line than the California legislature and its governor. Let’s cut the budgets of pay for judges and use that to staff bigger prisons.
Would you be for judicial overstepping if they said let’s hang the violent offenders to reduce overcrowding?
The Prison Judge
I guess you have to ask yourself if you turst this Judge to be running the prisons. However, I would not find it out of line if he sent the legislators (from the committee handling the prison) to different prisons around the state for a week or two (about the same as Paris Hilton) to give them first hand experience and understanding of the issues at hand. I assume he could hold them in contempt.
It would also be amusing to ask the Democrats running for president if any agree with Judge Karlton rulings and logic.
Pokey I like your idea for the legislators. (Gloria Romero should be excluded since she seems to be one of the few people with her head screwed on straight on these issues.)
With regard to Karlton and the Pledge… Here’s the actual opinion (below) If you read through it, and then maybe look at Howard Bashman’s summary at HowAppealing.com you might get a different feeling.
news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/religion/newdowus91405opn.pdf
The case has to do with this sorta whack job athiest guy who’s in a fight with his ex-wife about his kid, and Karlton makes his way tortuously through the quicksand of the case. In the end, he was upholding the 9th Circuit’s ruling, but also throwing out some other aspects of the lawsuit, so that the case was narrowed way, way down. In essence the ruling said that, yes, the atheist dad gets to object if his elementary school daughter is made to say the Pledge with the Under God clause in class; that it is indeed coercive if it’s not in keeping with her beliefs because she has no ability to opt out. (Ironically, the truth is, it IS in keeping with her mom’s beliefs. But whatever.) Anyway, read it and see what you think. It sounded like a reasoned legal opinion given by somebody who would have loved to not have these fools in his courtroom at all.
BTW, he also ruled that the addition of “under God” to the pledge was NOT unconstitutional.
Ooops. Here’s the HowAppealing.com link:
http://pda-appellateblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_pda-appellateblog_archive.html
If we don’t get a grip on sentencing reform it’ll be 1960s deinstitutionalization applied in the new millennium to a whole new population. Some of these folks who should stay locked up for eveyone’s benefit – including, perhaps, theirs – will find their way back to the community if the states don’t get some relief wrt sentencing guidelines. Some might argue that it was ’60s deinstitutionalization that contributed to where we are now.
Why spend $7.4 billion on something that can’t be fixed? Anrny had 3 chances to pass a sentencing reform bill that were approved, but didn’t. Now, the Union of the Prison guard assoc. wants a 10% increase which they asked for right before the special session let out (what cowards?). I don’t blame them that they are overworked, but they already get paid to much and their mismangment is not tolerable. They are not properly trained and some are as bad as the prisoners they house. A prison cap will happen, maybe not now or 5 years, but it will. All of a sudden now, the D.A’s care and our politicans. When was prison crowding a problem? How about when the State got 70 Federal Orders to shape up since 1990. Arny just doesn’t want to look like a “girly man.” He needs to get over himself and come up with a better plan.