Federal judges create prison cap panel

Two federal judges tasked with overseeing California's troubled prison system have decided to create a three-judge judicial panel charged with setting a population cap for California's prison system.

The decision, by U.S. District Court Judges Thelton Henderson and Lawrence Karlton, is to create a three-judge panel empowered to force the early release of thousands of prisoners from the California system.

Lawyers for state prisoners have appealed successfully to the judges that inmate overcrowding is contributing to constitutional violations of inadequate medical and mental health care in the state's prisons.

"There is no dispute that prisons in California are seriously and dangerously overcrowded," wrote Karlton in his decision, released Monday.

The three-judge courts were created as a component of the Prison Litigation Reform Act signed in 1996 that was designed to restrict the power of a single federal judge to order early inmate releases from jails and prisons.

Once empaneled, the three-judge courts can order early inmate releases only if there had been an earlier finding of a constitutional violation, if the defendants failed to fix it in a reasonable amount of time and if they found that overcrowding is the main cause of the problem.

Before they order the early releases, three-judge courts must first hold hearings in which interveners that include legislators, prosecutors and county jailers are allowed to file briefings and testify. Republicans in the California Assembly have said they plan to intervene if a three-judge court is empaneled.

Only two such panels have imposed early release orders, one in Youngstown, Ohio, and the other in Washington, D.C.

Inmates rights lawyers filed motions Nov. 13 requesting the three-judge courts in California. They characterized a prison population cap as a last resort for a prison system that had failed for years to bring its medical and mental health systems into constitutional compliance.

A key exhibit in their initial filing was Gov. Schwarzenegger's declaration on Oct. 4 that overcrowding had created an emergency in the prison system that as of July 4 housed 173,017 inmates in space designed for about half that many.

The plaintiffs attorneys said in court papers that the "maximum, safe and reasonable capacity" for the prison system is 137,764, a figure they culled from the Corrections Independent Review Panel report commissioned in 2004 by Schwarzenegger and chaired by former Republican law and order Gov. George Deukmejian.

If a three-judge court agrees with the figure, it would mean the release of more than 35,000 prisoners. Attorneys have said the number could be achieved by parole changes that would eliminate the return of truly technical parole violators and by releasing low-risk offenders within 15 days to a month before they would have gotten out anyway.

Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, said he will intervene in the case by objecting to any population cap on prisons once the three-judge panel is named. He was disappointed the judges agreed to form the panel but said the upside was that it gives the Legislature legal standing in the case.

"If these judges go ahead and order early release, all it does is jeopardize public safety," Spitzer said. "It makes a statement to people on the street that all you get is a slap on the hand. It would make a mockery of the entire judicial system."

But Michael Bien, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, said the judges' ruling moved California closer to resolving its prison overcrowding problems.

"I think it's a very historic step in an effort to bring California's prison system back to constitutional levels," Bien said. "It's out of control. It's plummeting over the precipice, and this is the first step in a process to bring the kind of remedies that are necessary."

Bien said the judges agreed with him that a legislative solution signed by the governor in April does little to change the system. Under Assembly Bill 900, the state plans to build 53,000 new prison and jail beds at a cost of $7.9 billion, as well as enhance and improve its rehabilitation programs and transfer as many as 8,000 more inmates out of California.

"AB 900 is not only not a solution to the overcrowding problem, but it aggravates the problem," Bien said. "Expanding the prisons, which is what AB 900 does, makes the problem worse, not better. There's nothing in AB 900 about staffing. There's very little about treatment space. We think AB 900 really does nothing to address overcrowding and certainly does nothing in the next several years. It served political purposes, but it did nothing to address overcrowding in my mind."

Spitzer disagreed. He said the courts should allow AB 900 more time to take effect.

"We should now be given the opportunity to implement AB 900," Spitzer said. "It's not for a three-judge panel to question prior to implementation whether it will resolve the issue of overcrowding. We have taken more than a good-faith effort to act on overcrowding."