"Calif. governor wants to speed inmate release" by Don Thompson | Associated Press, May 04, 2013
SACRAMENTO — California is considering speeding up the release of some inmates while allowing other inmates with a violent history to become firefighters, under a proposal to cut crowding in state prisons that Governor Jerry Brown filed late Thursday night.
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“The plan is ugly. We don’t like it. But considering the inmates we have left in our prison population, it’s the best plan we can come up with,” Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard said at a Friday press conference.
Beard said some options could undermine public safety, and the state plans to appeal.
The governor’s plan calls for increasing early release credits and paroling elderly and incapacitated prisoners, while slowing the return of thousands of inmates who are being held in private prisons in other states.
Federal courts required the state to outline by midnight Thursday how it intends to meet a court-ordered population cap by the end of the year. A panel of federal judges threatened last month to hold the Democratic governor accountable if he is not complying with their long-standing order, which has been upheld by the US Supreme Court.
California is sentencing thousands of lower-level offenders to county jails instead of prison. But judges ruled that it must reduce its prison population an additional 9,300 inmates to improve medical and mental health care for inmates....
Two other existing measures will help reduce crowding.
The state will add space for 1,700 sick and mentally ill inmates when a $840 million treatment facility opens in Stockton this summer. And the state projects that about 900 inmates will be freed because voters softened the state’s tough three-strikes lifetime sentencing law for career criminals in November. Third-strikers with lesser offenses can apply for shorter sentences.
The administration argued against many of the proposals as it presented options to the court in a series of legal filings.
Most would require legislative approval, but the administration argued that Brown cannot be expected to “advocate for the Legislature to pass measures that would jeopardize public safety.” The court has said it could waive state laws if lawmakers do not agree.
“It’s still pretty defiant,” said Michael Bien, one of the lawyers who filed a suit over prison crowding. “They’re saying we’re not going to comply willingly, you’re going to have to force us in some way, shape, or form.”
A Democrat defying a court order?
Brown said in a one- sentence tweet that “the state’s filing speaks for itself.”
Under the court order, the state must reduce the population in its 33 adult prisons to about 110,000 inmates by year’s end.
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Related: Supreme Court Cuts California Criminals Loose
Sometimes the U.S. blather on human rights makes you sick.
Maybe Massachusetts can point the way?
