The Supremes Rule California Must Cut Inmate Population

In a 5 to 4 ruling today (May 23), the Supreme Court decreed that California must whittle down it’s prison population by over 30,000 inmates to address extreme overcrowding. The case arose from problems with physical and mental health care…in 2009, there was around a death per week which allegedly could have been prevented or delayed with better medical care.

There are presently over 143,000 inmates in facilities that were designed to hold 80,000. One unspoken political issue that has affected California governors of both parties is the very powerful prison guards union. Of course less inmates means less guards, and they have lobbied hard to prevent the loss of those jobs.

This case may now give Governor Brown the cover he needs to release lower level offenders to other jurisdictions, such as the counties. Of course, there has been some call for him to simply commute and release pot offenders, which would put a substantial dent in decreasing the population as the the Supreme Court has called for. Will that fly…even in California?