By Steve Yoder
Many of the leading Republican contenders in the presidential race have pushed reformist 'smart on crime' agendas. But will those agendas survive if one of them sits in the White House?
Read full entry »A new report from the Vera Institute examines the persistent problem of overcrowding in the Los Angeles County Jail, the world's largest jail system.
Read full entry »Alabama Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb and two key Republican lawmakers warn that the state legislature's failure to pass a sentencing reform package could lead to a federal court takeover of the state's overcrowded prison system, reports the Huntsville Times. The U.S. Supreme Court in May ordered 30,000 inmates freed from a California prison system that isn't nearly as overcrowded as Alabama's. Alabama has about 25,300 inmates in facilities designed to hold 13,400.
California had reached an overcrowding rate of only 137 percent of its prison capacity before the high court acted. Alabama's prison facilities are at 190 percent of capacity. Cobb said passage of the sentencing package would have reduced Alabama's overcrowding to about 170 percent.
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By William D. Burrell
May was a good month for constitutional democracy.
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By Ted Gest
Federal belt-tightening may encourage smart justice reforms at the city and state level, a Wash DC meeting is told.
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Budget crunches and overcrowded prisons provided a turning point for sentencing reform in 2010, says a new report by The Sentencing Project. New criminal justice policies, including changes to crack and cocaine sentencing in order to alleviate disparities, took place in 23 States across the nation in 2010.
Other reforms included changes to parole supervision and the successful reentry of felons.
Read the report here.
Read full entry »Publications in New Jersey, Wisconsin and Louisiana were awarded 2010 George Polk Awards for their work on criminal justice.
Amy Brittain and Mark Mueller of the Newark Star-Ledger were named winners of a 2010 George Polk Award in Journalism for "Strong at Any Cost," their series that "revealed rampant steroid use and fraud among cops and firefighters in New Jersey." The judges said that, "the tenacious work of the Star-Ledger tandem resulted in a wave of action from state lawmakers and the presidents of New Jersey’s two largest police unions — including an investigation by the state Attorney General’s Office and calls for random drug testing for steroids."
John Diedrich and Ben Poston of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel were named winners in criminal justice reporting, for "Wiped Clean." an investigation into violations by gun dealers, including how "more than 50 gun shop owners facing federal scrutiny wiped away years of gun sale violations simply by changing ownership on paper, such as from father to son or from husband to wife."
In the category of television reporting, A.C. Thompson of ProPublica, Raney Aronson-Rath and Tom Jennings of PBS' "Frontline," and Laura Maggi and Brendan McCarthy of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, won for "Law & Disorder," an investigation into abuses by New Orleans police following Hurricane Katrina. The judges said that, "The news project revealed that in the midst of post-Katrina chaos, law-enforcement commanders issued orders to ignore long-established rules governing use of deadly force, reporting that a police captain told a group of officers that they had the authority “by martial law to shoot looters."
The George Polk Awards have been administered by Long Island University since 1949. They memorialize CBS correspondent George W. Polk, who was slain covering the civil war in Greece in 1948.
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By Edith Brady-Lunny
The lessons of Illinois’ short-lived accelerated early-prisoner-release program.
By Edith Brady-Lunny
Still reeling from its controversial early-prisoner-release program, Illinois is searching for ways to cope with its ‘exploding’ prison population.
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Twenty-six journalists from across the nation gathered at John Jay College of Criminal Justice on Jan. 31st and Feb 1st, 2011 for the 6th Annual Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America to discuss the conference theme: “Law & Disorder: Facing the Legal and Economic Challenges to American Criminal Justice.”
The journalists were joined by criminal justice professionals and speakers including New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, Hon. Sue Bell Cobb, Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court; Hon. Andre Davis, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; and Hon. Robert T. Russell, Associate Judge for Buffalo City Court and a pioneer of the nation’s Veterans Courts. They were joined by ACLU president Susan Herman; John T. Chisholm, District Attorney, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin; Daniel F. Conley, District Attorney, Suffolk County, Massachusetts; and George Gascon, newly appointed DA in San Francisco and the city’s former Police Chief.
Panels included:THE COURTS, PUBLIC SAFETY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES: CHALLENGES IN 2011, THE COURTS ON TRIAL: IS THE SYSTEM FAILING US?,TECHNO-CRIME FIGHTING: LAW ENFORCEMENT, CIVIL LIBERTIES, PUBLIC SAFETY AND THE WEB.
See the symposium agenda here.
Fellows ask colleagues follow-up questions in a closed forum.
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By Debora Halpern Wenger
A team of five reporters for the Philadelphia Inquirer has been documenting serious problems in Philadelphia’s court system for more than two years for their groundbreaking series, "Justice: Delayed, Dismissed, Denied." Their investigation found that the city had the highest violent crime rate among America's 10 largest cities and among the lowest conviction rates for big cities. Nearly two-thirds of all defendants accused of violent crimes in Philadelphia have been allowed to walk free.
University of Missouri journalism professor Debora Halpern Wenger interviewed the reporting team about their investigative techniques.
Read the case study.
Read the NICAR tip sheet the Philadelphia Inquirer team put together.
Read full entry »California Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to transfer state inmates to county jails faces a simple obstacle: Many jails don’t have the space to hold them. reports the Sacramento Bee. Just as the state has struggled with prison overcrowding, some counties have had problems keeping inmates locked up. Statewide, tens of thousands of inmates are released early from county jails each year because of space constraints.
Jail crowding was on the minds of many sheriffs when Brown announced in his budget proposal last week his plan to give them responsibility for more than 40,000 lower-level offenders and parole violators. “We don’t have the space,” said Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, who once ran the county’s two jails. “The main jail is full or over-full every day.” If Brown’s plan is approved, sheriffs say, they would have to release inmates early to make room for state prisoners. Administration officials hope to come up with ways of helping counties with limited jail space. One option would be through a law that authorized $7.4 billion in bonds for jail construction four years ago. Jails in 20 counties are under court orders to release inmates when they become too crowded.
Link: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/18/3330962/browns-prison-plan-has-a-hitch.html
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As a Supreme Court ruling looms this year, The Crime Report explores the choices facing one of the country’s largest and most troubled corrections systems, in an exclusive interview with Matthew Cate, Secretary of California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
For the past decade, California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has been operating in crisis mode.
In 2004, a blue-ribbon commission convened by then- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger accused the CDCR of operating "dysfunctional" prison and parole systems characterized by “out-of-control costs;” by inmates who are “failing [to receive] mandated health care and other services;” and by corrections officials who lack “the integrity to stand up to political pressure.”
The catalogue of defects seemed endless. “The recidivism rate [of 67 percent],” the report noted, “exceeds that of any other state.” Wardens were running their prisons as if they were independent ”feudal barons;” the “employee disciplinary system is failing to punish wrongdoers;” and union contracts were “encouraging a code of silence’’ among prison guards.” The reasons for California’s prison crisis, according to the commission, “were complex, yet simple: too much political interference, too much union control, and too little management courage, accountability and transparency."
Schwarzenegger vowed to transform the CDCR. But as he ended his tenure early this month, his record of reform was decidedly mixed. The corrections budget, which was $6.2 billion when he entered office, ballooned to as high as $11 billion, before falling to a still staggering $8.3 billion for fiscal year 2010-2011. And the prison population which was 165,000 when Schwarzenegger entered the governor’s office, rose to an all time high of 174,000 before declining to its current 153,000.
Most dramatically, in 2009, after years of the state failing to agree on a satisfactory solution to relieve the severe overcrowding, a three-judge federal panel declared that the prisoner overload had led to inmate medical care so inadequate that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. It then ordered the state to reduce its inmate population by 40,000 inmates within three years—almost one-quarter of the total prison population.
The Schwarzenegger Administration appealed. Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, setting the stage for what is likely to be a historic civil rights ruling—one which could either strengthen or curtail the federal government’s power to force states to reform overcrowded, inhumane conditions in corrections systems across America. Oral arguments were presented late last year.
In May, 2008, Schwarzenegger named Matthew Cate as his Secretary of Corrections. A former Sacramento County prosecutor, Cate served as a public corruption prosecutor in the California State Attorney General’s Office from 1996 to 2004, when he was named Inspector General of CDCR.
His mandate includes not only running a potentially explosive penal system with 33 prisons, 300,000 adult prisoners and parolees, a $8.3 billion annual budget, and over 50,000 employees, but re-imagining and transforming California’s approach to corrections.
With new California governor Jerry Brown just sworn into office last week, Cate, who says he’d like to continue in his post, is waiting to see if he’ll be reappointed. In the meantime, he spoke with TCR’s West Coast Bureau Chief, Joe Domanick.
TCR: What most surprised you when began when working at the CDCR as Inspector General?
Cate: The sheer number of issues that had to be addressed simultaneously: The medical and mental health systems were being placed under court receiverships and special masters; the Bureau of Independent Review was being created in the IG’s Office to oversee the department’s internal affairs investigations and address allegations and law suits concerning the lack of quality and professionalism within department in policing itself; the department’s prisons were massively overcrowded, and its budget was growing every year. So pretty much anything [negative] you can name was happening in California corrections in 2004 and 2005.
TCR: The department faced continuing allegations of prisoner abuse by correction’s officers. What are you doing to try and recruit a different kind of officer, such as, for instance, Jennie Woodford, the progressive, former acting head of California’s prisons, who started as a prison guard, and comes from a background of social work?
Cate: One of the good things coming out of this bad economy is that [high paying] jobs like California’s corrections officers have become much more coveted. So we now have a massive pool of applicants to chose from. Tens of thousands. So we can be a lot more picky in terms of [the] quality of people.
But I can’t say we go through applicants and look for people who understand the components of psychology, or have a background in social work. Not for our corrections officers. But we are starting to do that for our parole agents. Typically in California parole agents have been former corrections officers. We still recruit some of those people, but in the next academy class, between 50 and 70 percent will be from the outside, either from law enforcement or social work backgrounds.
I really worry about ensuring that folks from the sergeant’s level up have some background in education and training, But we still have a long way to go in that regard.
TCR: How important has California’s 2009 parole reform law been to you as secretary of the CDCR?
Cate: Next to reducing California’s inmate population down from an all-time high of 174,000 to 153,000, it’s been the governor’s first and biggest win in corrections. It has allowed us reduce the corrections budget by $1 billion has been a principal cause of decline in the number of inmates.
TCR: Parole reform has always been a political third rail – a hot potato in California politics, why do you think it finally happened?
Cate: The policymakers in Sacramento understood that [today’s] correctional science can help us make good, sound public safety decisions regarding corrections and rehabilitation. And so people on both sides of the aisle were willing to listen to ideas about reform and to understand that we’re not just making this stuff up, but that we have an understanding of the research behind those reforms.
For example, we demonstrated to the legislature that for the first time we had a valid risk-assessment tool—validated by UC Irvine researchers—that gave us the ability to predict an inmate’s future criminology. That was vital in getting the legislature and the governor to agree to the reforms. Rather than have a parole agent make decisions about who goes back to prison for a parole violation based on his gut, we developed a parole violation decision-making instrument, like a judge uses for sentencing.
TCR: By how much has California’s inmate population decreased as a result parole reform?
Cate: By about 11,000 inmates. Most of that reduction comes from lower level, lower risk inmates.
TCR: Another big cause of prison overcrowding in California has been California’s sentencing laws. Governor Schwarzenegger tried and failed to get sentencing reform through the state legislature. Governor Schwarzenegger called for the creation of a sentencing commission, but in both 2007 and 2009, he failed to win the support of the legislature. How big of an impact would sentencing reform make on solving the CDCR’s problems?
Cate: It’s important, and sentencing is ripe for improvement. Potentially it could be very big. If you ask any prosecutor in California, they’ll tell you that sentencing laws in California are a byzantine, complex, difficult-to-decipher, and not always consistent patchwork. They have to be [changed] so that people we should really be afraid of serve longer terms, and that people we’re just mad at do shorter terms.
TCR: Reforming California’s parole policies is a big step in helping to reduce California’s highest-in-the-nation recidivism rate. But inmate rehabilitative programs – which have been sorely lacking in California prisons -- are also important in the equation. Where do such programs stand now?
Cate: We’ve had to cut funding for them [because of California’s huge budget deficit], which as been a disappointment to me. But at the same time, we’re now at least assessing the cryogenic needs of every inmate that enters our system with a new prison term. So at least we now know what their needs are and can use corrections science to steer the right inmate into the right programs.
TCR: How much of the $1 billion that been cut from the CDCR budget this fiscal year has come from rehabilitative programs?
Cate: About $250 million. Of that $250 million we were able to mitigate about half of that by ending programs [we calculated] didn’t reduce recidivism, like a certificated program in landscaping when you don’t need a certificate to do landscaping work. So we got rid of programs that weren’t evidence-based. But at least half of the [rehab] cuts were to programs that really could have reduced recidivism, and I hope we can get them restored.
TCR: Another key to reducing recidivism is an effective re-entry program. What has the CDCR been doing in this regard? What happened to the 500-bed reentry facilities that were going to be built?
Cate: It’s been a difficult. [Re-entry programs are] more expensive to run [per inmate] than regular prisons. They’re a good idea and there’s a future for them, but it’s just difficult to get these kinds of things going when everyone is being asked to cut to the bone in California. So we have to try and do re-entry without bricks and mortar. But until local communities and corrections get together and figure out what we do together about these 9,000 offenders we keep rolling out of prison every month, we’ll continue to miss a big opportunity. But [doing so] is the next big thing on my radar screen.
TCR: What are your two or three major accomplishments?
Cate: Reducing prison overcrowding while seeing crime rates in California continue to decline, is accomplishment number one. Number two is parole reform, where as I’ve mentioned, we’ve developed and used a risk assessment tool to identify and focus our resources on our most dangerous inmates, rather than just cycling our low risk inmates through our prisons over and over again for technical violations. This concept of basing our decisions on the science of who’s risky and who’s not is a major step forward in California.
TCR: What has been your biggest frustration?
Cate: The fact that corrections reform takes so long. It took two-and-a-half years to put in place the basic rudiments of parole reform. It was a highly politicized issue, and there were civil service and bureaucratic rules that had to be dealt with. The red tape is so unbelievable in California that it takes a long time to make anything happen even when everyone agrees it should be done.
TCR: What’s your view on the on the federal court ruling ordering you to release 40,000 prisoners?
Cate: While there is active litigation in front of the courts I should steer clear of public pronouncements about it. The case could still be remanded for additional proceedings.
ED NOTE: Secretary Cate will join a special “conversation on America’s prisons” with other corrections leaders later this month at the 6th annual Harry Frank Guggenheim Conference on Crime in America at John Jay College in New York. The Crime Report will cover the event.
Joe Domanick is West Coast Bureau Chief of The Crime Report
Photo by Mayor Gavin Newsom's photo stream via Flickr.
Read full entry »
As a Supreme Court ruling looms this year, The Crime Report explores the choices facing one of the country’s largest and most troubled corrections systems, in an exclusive interview with Matthew Cate, Secretary of California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
For the past decade, California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has been operating in crisis mode.
In 2004, a blue-ribbon commission convened by then- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger accused the CDCR of operating “dysfunctional” prison and parole systems characterized by “out-of-control costs;” by inmates who are “failing [to receive] mandated health care and other services;” and by corrections officials who lack “the integrity to stand up to political pressure.”
The catalogue of defects seemed endless. “The recidivism rate [of 67 percent],” the report noted, “exceeds that of any other state.” Wardens were running their prisons as if they were independent ”feudal barons;” the “employee disciplinary system is failing to punish wrongdoers;” and union contracts were “encouraging a code of silence’’ among prison guards.” The reasons for California’s prison crisis, according to the commission, “were complex, yet simple: too much political interference, too much union control, and too little management courage, accountability and transparency.”
Schwarzenegger vowed to transform the CDCR. But as he ended his tenure early this month, his record of reform was decidedly mixed. The corrections budget, which was $6.2 billion when he entered office, ballooned to as high as $11 billion, before falling to a still staggering $8.3 billion for fiscal year 2010-2011. And the prison population which was 165,000 when Schwarzenegger entered the governor’s office, rose to an all time high of 174,000 before declining to its current 153,000.
Most dramatically, in 2009, after years of the state failing to agree on a satisfactory solution to relieve the severe overcrowding, a three-judge federal panel declared that the prisoner overload had led to inmate medical care so inadequate that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. It then ordered the state to reduce its inmate population by 40,000 inmates within three years—almost one-quarter of the total prison population.
The Schwarzenegger Administration appealed. Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, setting the stage for what is likely to be a historic civil rights ruling—one which could either strengthen or curtail the federal government’s power to force states to reform overcrowded, inhumane conditions in corrections systems across America. Oral arguments were presented late last year.
In May, 2008, Schwarzenegger named Matthew Cate as his Secretary of Corrections. A former Sacramento County prosecutor, Cate served as a public corruption prosecutor in the California State Attorney General’s Office from 1996 to 2004, when he was named Inspector General of CDCR.
His mandate includes not only running a potentially explosive penal system with 33 prisons, 300,000 adult prisoners and parolees, a $8.3 billion annual budget, and over 50,000 employees, but re-imagining and transforming California’s approach to corrections.
With new California governor Jerry Brown just sworn into office last week, Cate, who says he’d like to continue in his post, is waiting to see if he’ll be reappointed. In the meantime, he spoke with TCR’s West Coast Bureau Chief, Joe Domanick.
TCR: What most surprised you when began when working at the CDCR as Inspector General?
Cate: The sheer number of issues that had to be addressed simultaneously: The medical and mental health systems were being placed under court receiverships and special masters; the Bureau of Independent Review was being created in the IG’s Office to oversee the department’s internal affairs investigations and address allegations and law suits concerning the lack of quality and professionalism within department in policing itself; the department’s prisons were massively overcrowded, and its budget was growing every year. So pretty much anything [negative] you can name was happening in California corrections in 2004 and 2005.
TCR: The department faced continuing allegations of prisoner abuse by correction’s officers. What are you doing to try and recruit a different kind of officer, such as, for instance, Jennie Woodford, the progressive, former acting head of California’s prisons, who started as a prison guard, and comes from a background of social work?
Cate: One of the good things coming out of this bad economy is that [high paying] jobs like California’s corrections officers have become much more coveted. So we now have a massive pool of applicants to chose from. Tens of thousands. So we can be a lot more picky in terms of [the] quality of people.
But I can’t say we go through applicants and look for people who understand the components of psychology, or have a background in social work. Not for our corrections officers. But we are starting to do that for our parole agents. Typically in California parole agents have been former corrections officers. We still recruit some of those people, but in the next academy class, between 50 and 70 percent will be from the outside, either from law enforcement or social work backgrounds.
I really worry about ensuring that folks from the sergeant’s level up have some background in education and training, But we still have a long way to go in that regard.
TCR: How important has California’s 2009 parole reform law been to you as secretary of the CDCR?
Cate: Next to reducing California’s inmate population down from an all-time high of 174,000 to 153,000, it’s been the governor’s first and biggest win in corrections. It has allowed us reduce the corrections budget by $1 billion has been a principal cause of decline in the number of inmates.
TCR: Parole reform has always been a political third rail – a hot potato in California politics, why do you think it finally happened?
Cate: The policymakers in Sacramento understood that [today’s] correctional science can help us make good, sound public safety decisions regarding corrections and rehabilitation. And so people on both sides of the aisle were willing to listen to ideas about reform and to understand that we’re not just making this stuff up, but that we have an understanding of the research behind those reforms.
For example, we demonstrated to the legislature that for the first time we had a valid risk-assessment tool—validated by UC Irvine researchers—that gave us the ability to predict an inmate’s future criminology. That was vital in getting the legislature and the governor to agree to the reforms. Rather than have a parole agent make decisions about who goes back to prison for a parole violation based on his gut, we developed a parole violation decision-making instrument, like a judge uses for sentencing.
TCR: By how much has California’s inmate population decreased as a result parole reform?
Cate: By about 11,000 inmates. Most of that reduction comes from lower level, lower risk inmates.
TCR: Another big cause of prison overcrowding in California has been California’s sentencing laws. Governor Schwarzenegger tried and failed to get sentencing reform through the state legislature. Governor Schwarzenegger called for the creation of a sentencing commission, but in both 2007 and 2009, he failed to win the support of the legislature. How big of an impact would sentencing reform make on solving the CDCR’s problems?
Cate: It’s important, and sentencing is ripe for improvement. Potentially it could be very big. If you ask any prosecutor in California, they’ll tell you that sentencing laws in California are a byzantine, complex, difficult-to-decipher, and not always consistent patchwork. They have to be [changed] so that people we should really be afraid of serve longer terms, and that people we’re just mad at do shorter terms.
TCR: Reforming California’s parole policies is a big step in helping to reduce California’s highest-in-the-nation recidivism rate. But inmate rehabilitative programs – which have been sorely lacking in California prisons — are also important in the equation. Where do such programs stand now?
Cate: We’ve had to cut funding for them [because of California’s huge budget deficit], which as been a disappointment to me. But at the same time, we’re now at least assessing the cryogenic needs of every inmate that enters our system with a new prison term. So at least we now know what their needs are and can use corrections science to steer the right inmate into the right programs.
TCR: How much of the $1 billion that been cut from the CDCR budget this fiscal year has come from rehabilitative programs?
Cate: About $250 million. Of that $250 million we were able to mitigate about half of that by ending programs [we calculated] didn’t reduce recidivism, like a certificated program in landscaping when you don’t need a certificate to do landscaping work. So we got rid of programs that weren’t evidence-based. But at least half of the [rehab] cuts were to programs that really could have reduced recidivism, and I hope we can get them restored.
TCR: Another key to reducing recidivism is an effective re-entry program. What has the CDCR been doing in this regard? What happened to the 500-bed reentry facilities that were going to be built?
Cate: It’s been a difficult. [Re-entry programs are] more expensive to run [per inmate] than regular prisons. They’re a good idea and there’s a future for them, but it’s just difficult to get these kinds of things going when everyone is being asked to cut to the bone in California. So we have to try and do re-entry without bricks and mortar. But until local communities and corrections get together and figure out what we do together about these 9,000 offenders we keep rolling out of prison every month, we’ll continue to miss a big opportunity. But [doing so] is the next big thing on my radar screen.
TCR: What are your two or three major accomplishments?
Cate: Reducing prison overcrowding while seeing crime rates in California continue to decline, is accomplishment number one. Number two is parole reform, where as I’ve mentioned, we’ve developed and used a risk assessment tool to identify and focus our resources on our most dangerous inmates, rather than just cycling our low risk inmates through our prisons over and over again for technical violations. This concept of basing our decisions on the science of who’s risky and who’s not is a major step forward in California.
TCR: What has been your biggest frustration?
Cate: The fact that corrections reform takes so long. It took two-and-a-half years to put in place the basic rudiments of parole reform. It was a highly politicized issue, and there were civil service and bureaucratic rules that had to be dealt with. The red tape is so unbelievable in California that it takes a long time to make anything happen even when everyone agrees it should be done.
TCR: What’s your view on the on the federal court ruling ordering you to release 40,000 prisoners?
Cate: While there is active litigation in front of the courts I should steer clear of public pronouncements about it. The case could still be remanded for additional proceedings.
ED NOTE: Secretary Cate will join a special “conversation on America’s prisons” with other corrections leaders later this month at the 6th annual Harry Frank Guggenheim Conference on Crime in America at John Jay College in New York. The Crime Report will cover the event.
Joe Domanick is West Coast Bureau Chief of The Crime Report
Photo by Mayor Gavin Newsom’s photo stream via Flickr.
Read full entry »After a hearing on Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court appears likely to uphold a judicially mandated population cap for California prisons, reports Southern California Public Radio. The state had appealed a ruling last year by three federal judges ordering California to reduce overcrowding they said deprived inmates of adequate medical and mental health care. The judges ordered the population reduced by a third — about 40,000 inmates. Don Specter, an attorney representing inmates, argued that overcrowding results in one inmate death every week and a suicide rate double the national average. On the steps of the courthouse after the hearing, Specter said most Supreme Court justices indicated that they had a clear picture of the risks overcrowding poses to inmates and prison staff. Specter said California prison officials admit as much.
But the state's attorney, Carter Phillips, said conditions have greatly improved since a federal receiver assumed control of prison medical care four years ago. Phillips told the justices that the government should allow the receiver to complete the job. But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg said the state had failed to comply with two decades of lower court orders to fix inmate’s medical and mental health care. She asked Phillips, “How much longer do we have to wait, another 20 years?” Chief Justice John Roberts suggested more sympathy for California’s position that a population cap poses risks to public safety. During the hearing, Phillips told the justices that if the state addresses the crowding as ordered, “people are going to die on the streets of California.”
Read full entry »
