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The Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote ordered California to release 32,000 or 38,000 or 46,000 or some other number of prisoners because California is not providing enough facilities for them.
The whole thing is a problem. If the state doesn't deal with it then the Court must, although I'm not sure I agree with how far they went. The US has the highest incarceration rates (or one of them) in the world. A lot of them are victimless drug crimes. (Incidentally doing drugs was not illegal during the administrations of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln.)These things need to be reviewed.
Seriously, the prediction is: One of these released prisoners will commit some grim crime and, in next year's campaign, someone will point out who appointed those justices.
Semi-seriously: There is a citation in the story of one toilet serving 54 prisoners. This would mean that each prisoner would have access for less than 20 minutes per 16 hour day. I wonder what the constitutional limits are in this case. Fifty four people to one toilet is apparently too many. Probably 5 would be within bounds. What number would this court majority calculate to be the maximum permissible prisoners per potty?
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
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A friend says that I should correct the numbers and that the actual number is a bit over 10,000.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, but the story listed in the article (from the L A Times) says:
"It is one of the largest prison release orders in the nation's history, and it sharply split the high court. Justices upheld an order from a three-judge panel in California that called for releasing 38,000 to 46,000 prisoners. Since then, the state has transferred about 9,000 state inmates to county jails. As a result, the total prison population is now about 32,000 more than the capacity limit set by the panel."