Conditions in CA Prisons Unconstitutional

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

The Supreme Court today ruled that California's prisons are so overcrowded, they actually enter the territory of cruel and unusual punishment.[Full opinion | WSJ article] In a 5-4 decision penned by Justice Kennedy, the Court found that the overcrowding so impeded the delivery of mental and physical health care to prisoners that immediate release of a significant proportion of the population was required to avoid constitutional violation. The prison system was roughly 100% over capacity at the time of the original appeal, and the government had failed to comply with other orders to alleviate the capacity issue in a reasonable time frame. In a withering dissent (as always), Justice Scalia said the ruling "ignores bedrock limitations on the power of Article III judges" to "uphold the absurd."

I must say, I agree with Scalia. The statute was narrowly drawn to avoid just this result, and the injunction entered orders the release of 46,000 felons. I disagree with his standing analysis (I think substantial risk of poor care is easily displayed by just about every felon with over a year's sentence - he totally avoids this with a "whatever that means" off-hand dismissal), but statutorily, he's correct - these appeals were to be analyzed on a case-by-case, violation-by-violation basis.

What are your thoughts? I'm interested to see how this will play out. I think who they release, and how they do it, is going to be a big part of how successful this is in the long term. For instance, merely letting out those with the shortest time remaining on their sentence is unlikely to reach a just conclusion given the ridiculous sentences forced on individuals under the California three-strikes law. Releasing non-violent offenders sounds good, until you realize they're mostly going to be drug addicts who will just return to their former pastimes and be caught up again. Combine this with the fact that CA has a 3-year probation period for most offenses (as compared to 1 year in most states) and there's ample room for these releases to be reversed inside of a year or so.

Comments

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

Legalize drugs. Problem solved.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

I doubt that the amount of people in prison on just drugs, with no plea bargains throwing out additional charges, isn't altogether that high.

Drug plea deals are an easy plea to make.

[yahvah.livejournal.com]

Seriously. How stupid is our nation? OH MY GOD PEOPLE WE CAN'T LEGALIZE HEROIN BECAUSE IT'S SO AWFUL. Yeah. It's an awful drug. People get it and do it anyway. So what do we as a nation do? We spend money not only on putting people in prison, but we spend money on trying to rehabilitate the addicts. Good fucking job, America. Way to have a little god damn common sense.

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

It won't solve the whole problem by any means, but it would make a difference. And I agree: legalize drugs, please!

[bex.livejournal.com]

Mass release of prisoners is stupid, but not really any worse than what they already do. Re-entry programming in this country is a freaking joke, so this sudden mass release isn't really going to differ from the massive releases of unprepared prisoners every single day.

The US CJ system's over-reliance on imprisonment is beyond misguided - it's outright harmful. Very well-respected criminologists have drawn connections between high incarceration rates and the further breakdown of inner-city families and social norms. Plus, imprisonment doesn't do shit. Nobody "gets better" in prison - not from criminality, not from a substance abuse problem, and not from the poverty and crappy life that probably led them to offending in the first place. If anything, when these individuals are finally released from prison, they're even worse off - their social support network is gone, they can't get jobs, they can't get housing, and they've most likely adapted to prison culture and that way of surviving. It's a tragedy.

If you're interested in this topic, I encourage you to seek out some books by today's criminologists on the effects of mass incarceration and poor re-entry programming. Off the top of my head, I can recommend Petersilia's When Prisoners Come Home, Travis' But They All Come Back, Chesney-Lind's Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment, and Clear's Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse. These authors are some of the most respected scholars in my field today.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

BTW, I would love a more developed post on the topic from you. I'm approaching it from the law student's perspective, which is all too apt to get the formalities confused with policy.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Nobody "gets better" in prison

This is patently false. There are plenty of examples of people who "got better" in prison. You can say that the vast majority don't or break it down along some other line, but your absolutist statement is absolutely false.

[malakh-abaddon.livejournal.com]

I am sure that California can keep these people incarcerated by one of several means. These people (nonviolent offenders) can be placed in the care of local jails for the remainder of their sentences, while others are placed on home confinement. There is also the option of shipping these people to other states for confinement. Best bet should be, take all those who are here illegally and drop them off in their home nation. Of course we could become more realistic with some sentences for some nonviolent crimes. 1 to 5 years for the first offense for a bad check is a little excessive, it might be wise if the person in question had three or four offenses.

On that note, I can only say, the conditions in many prisons are less than desirable. I am sorry, yes these people are often drug users, or the lowest of the low, but for the most part I would consider them human. Where we have failed in our system is, we do not try to rehabilitate people anymore. We simple try to punish them, with no regard for anything other than suffering, and in that we are masters. While I do not have the statistics right here, and I feel far to lazy to find them, we have the most people incarcerated. More people are incarcerated in America than China. I think the line reads that one out of every 50-150 Americans is currently incarcerated, if memory serves this does not include those in jail, and children.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

In California, at least in Southern California most of the Jails are even more over crowded than the prisons.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

in California, aren't prisoners already being shipped to other states? pretty sure one of my distant, very distant, cousins was sent to arkansas reason being over-crowding....

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

China has ways to not only keep their prison population down but also to reduce the waiting time for a kidney transplant.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Although I don't have one handy, I bet a graph showing prison population increasing as mandatory minimum programs came into being would show correlation.

So if overpopulation in CA is due mainly to MM and 3Strikes, could not SCOTUS not declare those to be cruel and unusual as well?

Legalize drugs and put former convicts to work in the legal drug trade that replaces the black market. It's a start.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

So if overpopulation in CA is due mainly to MM and 3Strikes, could not SCOTUS not declare those to be cruel and unusual as well?

Not really. Those are sentences, and sentencing is judged under a different standard (generally the rational basis standard). What we're seeing here is the after-effect of sentences. Outlawing MM and 3-strikes wouldn't fix the violation, at least not for several years.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

Earth to Scalia: absurd does not trump cruelty.

He is such a dumb ass.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Well, if his standing argument is correct, then he's right, they're using an improper standard, and shouldn't be hearing the case. Standing is also a constitutional requirement, so they can't waive that to hear a case, even about a constitutional issue.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

But with the massive privatization of prisons combined with lobbying for stricter sentencing especially for drug offenses, why do you hate capitalism?

/Unsure whether Robocop or Fortress more accurately describes our near future

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

The War on Drugs far predates the privatization of prisons. In fact, the huge number of prisoners is what's convincing state governments to privatize some prisons.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

The problem with the privatization of prisons is you have a bunch of people trying to expand their business, when the idea is we want to destroy their business by not having as many inmates.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I thinks its more of a choice between Judge Dredd and Demolition Man. (depending on who's in office)

Just think...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Q: What do you call 46,000 felons with weapons?

A: A small army.

Re: Just think...

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm so scared of an army of drug users and prostitutes.

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

As least somebody is realizing our prison system is fucked up.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Just release everyone whose crime didn't have a victim to complain about their release.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Unless you couple that with legalization, a large number will be back inside of six months.

[prog-expat.livejournal.com]

"Releasing non-violent offenders sounds good, until you realize they're mostly going to be drug addicts who will just return to their former pastimes and be caught up again."

And then have to be released again to avoid violating this ruling. Either California's law enforcement is going to stop enforcing silly drug and/or prostitution laws outright (sort of like how Utah's law enforcement doesn't enforce its fornication laws) or the rapidly revolving door on the offenders is going to force the state legislature to lighten up those laws, mainly with shorter sentences, to get capacity back under control.

I would also be interested in seeing how this ruling impacts other states.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

fornication laws? oh wow O_O are there laws against gluttony and gossip as well? it'd be interested to look into.

[root-fu.livejournal.com]

Blame for profit prisons.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

How about the prison guard's union?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111843426