Federal judicial panel orders California to drastically cut prison population

This New York Times piece provides the highlights of a major prison conditions ruling coming from California late today:

A panel of federal judges ordered the California prison system on Tuesday to reduce its inmate population of 150,000 by 40,000 — roughly 27 percent — within two years.

The judges said that reducing prison crowding in California was the only way to change what they called an unconstitutional prison health care system that causes one unnecessary death a week. In a scathing 184-page order, the judges criticized state officials, saying they had failed to comply with previous orders to fix the health care system in the prisons and reduce crowding, and recommended remedies, including reform of the parole system.

The special three-judge panel also described a chaotic prison system where prisoners were stacked in triple bunk beds in gymnasiums, hallways and day rooms; where single guards were often forced to monitor scores of inmates at a time; and where ill inmates died for lack of treatment.

“In these overcrowded conditions, inmate-on-inmate violence is almost impossible to prevent, infectious diseases spread more easily, and lockdowns are sometimes the only means by which to maintain control,” the panel wrote. “In short, California’s prisons are bursting at the seams and are impossible to manage.”

Attorney General Jerry Brown said previously that he intended to appeal the ruling to the United States Supreme Court. Officials said they would not comment on Tuesday until they had time to read the decision.

Thanks to this post at How Appealing, everyone can check out additional major medial coverage and the full 184-page order(!) at this link.  Here are the first two paragraphs of the ruling:

“California’s correctional system is in a tailspin,” the state’s independent oversight agency has reported. Ex. P3 at i (Jan. 2007 Little Hoover Commission Report, “Solving California’s Corrections Crisis: Time Is Running Out”).  Tough-on-crime politics have increased the population of California’s prisons dramatically while making necessary reforms impossible. Id. at ii, 2-5, 9, 20. As a result, the state’s prisons have become places “of extreme peril to the safety of persons” they house, Ex. P1 at 7-8 (Governor Schwarzenegger’s Oct. 4, 2006 Prison Overcrowding State of Emergency Declaration), while contributing little to the safety of California’s residents, Ex. P3 at ii.  California “spends more on corrections than most countries in the world,” but the state “reaps fewer public safety benefits.” Id. at 14. Although California’s existing prison system serves neither the public nor the inmates well, the state has for years been unable or unwilling to implement the reforms necessary to reverse its continuing deterioration.

In this proceeding, we address two particular problems that every day threaten the lives and health of California prisoners.  First, the medical and mental health care available to inmates in the California prison system is woefully and constitutionally inadequate, and has been for more than a decade.  The United States Constitution does not require that the state provide its inmates with state-of-the-art medical and mental health care, nor does it require that prison conditions be comfortable.  California must simply provide care consistent with “the minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities,” Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 347 (1981) – care sufficient to prevent the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain or death, Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 103-04 (1976).  Tragically, California’s inmates have long been denied even that minimal level of medical and mental health care, with consequences that have been serious, and often fatal. Inmates are forced to wait months or years for medically necessary appointments and examinations, and many receive inadequate medical care in substandard facilities that lack the medical equipment required to conduct routine examinations or afford essential medical treatment.  Seriously mentally ill inmates languish in horrific conditions without access to necessary mental health care, raising the acuity of mental illness throughout the system and increasing the risk of inmate suicide.  A significant number of inmates have died as a result of the state’s failure to provide constitutionally adequate medical care.  As of mid-2005, a California inmate was dying needlessly every six or seven days.

UPDATE:  The Sacremento Bee has this new op-ed responding to the ruling, which is headlined "Voters, politicians let prison costs soar." Here are its closing paragraphs:

Make no mistake: California brought this situation onto itself, as the judges declared, by continuing to pass tough sentencing laws, such as three-strikes-and-you're-out, but refusing to spend what it would take to legally house, clothe, feed, medicate and educate what became a flood of new inmates.

When California launched this lock-'em-up policy 30 years ago -- the result of some Democratic legislators and judges losing their positions after being accused of softness on crime -- the state had about 20,000 inmates. Now it has more than 160,000.

There's an old saying in police and prosecutorial circles: Don't do the crime unless you want to do the time. A political corollary should be: Don't crack down on crime unless you're willing to spend the dime.