California compromise to cope with prison problems

This AP report provides lots of background and information about a deal worked out by California legislators to deal with the state's prison overcrowding problems.  Here are snippets:

Racing a court-imposed deadline, California's top legislative leaders on Wednesday said they had reached a wide-ranging, $6.1 billion deal to ease severe overcrowding in the nation's largest state prison system.  The agreement adds 53,000 beds, requires improvements to rehabilitation programs and allows Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to continue his strategy of transferring thousands of inmates out of state.

"The Legislature does not want a court takeover of the system ... but we will not blindly give a blank check and throw good money after bad," Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata said in a letter to the governor outlining the bipartisan deal. "A quick fix without fundamental changes and effective reform is simply running in place."...

The deal was criticized by the union representing state prison guards. Mike Jimenez, president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, said the agreement only creates a larger prison system with the same underlying problems. "At some point, it's going to break," he said....

Absent from the agreement is any mention of sentencing reform, although bills that would create a commission to review California's sentencing guidelines are moving independently through the Legislature.