Federal judges to rule on Calif. prison crowding
Associated Press – November 30, 2008 6:24 PM ET
SACRAMENTO (AP) – California’s day of reckoning for its years of prison overcrowding is expected to come this week in a federal courtroom in San Francisco.
Over the past three decades, state lawmakers and voters have sought to combat crime with an ever-expanding list of sentencing laws that has led to a ballooning prison population.
The federal courts have found that the prison system’s delivery of health and mental health care is so negligent that it’s a direct cause of inmate deaths.
On Tuesday a special three-judge panel reconvenes to decide if crowding has become so bad that inmates cannot receive proper care. If they do, the panel will decide if lowering the inmate population is the only way to fix the problems.
That could result in an order to release tens of thousands of California inmates before their terms are finished, a move Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republican lawmakers say would endanger public safety.
