In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision ordering California to reduce prison crowding, the fearmongers are out in full force and full voice.

A statement made by U.S. Rep. and former California Attorney General Dan Lungren on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives stands out. "The United States Supreme Court," Lungren falsely claimed, "basically ordered that between 38,000 and 46,000 prisoners currently in the California prison system be released."

Mr. Lungren, that interpretation is dangerously misleading and you know it, or should know it.

In affirming a three-judge panel's order to reduce the state prison population to 137.5 percent of designed capacity, down from the current 143,000 inmates to 110,000, the majority went to great lengths to give California officials maximum discretion.

California doesn't have to release inmates, although it should and probably will release more elderly and infirm prisoners. It can build new prisons – admittedly, unlikely given the state's dire fiscal condition – or it can reduce the number of inmates flowing into the system. That's the sensible solution.

And that is what California proposes to do by implementing Gov. Jerry Brown's realignment proposal to divert more parole violators to local jails instead of back to prison for costly and disruptive three- and four-month stays.

The state can also flow more nonviolent felons to local detention when they are sentenced under the realignment plan approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor. Of course this remedy requires state legislators, specifically Republicans, to approve the tax extension that the governor is pleading for to pay local government's cost.

Lungren isn't the only fearmonger.

"By flooding our neighborhoods with criminals," Board of Equalization member George Runner, bellowed, "the court will make one of the highest taxed states in the nation among the most dangerous as well."

In fact, as the court majority outlined, citing experts from across the country, overcrowding endangers us all, inmates, prison staff and the public. Eventually mentally ill and sick inmates untreated and brutalized in prison do get out, sicker, more mentally ill and more dangerous than when they arrived.

The U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment," the basis of the Supreme Court decision, doesn't coddle criminals, it protects us all.

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