California took a major step toward overhauling its overburdened prisons on Friday when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger approved changes to parole and early-release programmes that could reduce the prison population by about 16,000 inmates.
Even as the Governor prepared to sign the legislation into law, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeal of a federal court order to draft a plan by next Friday to reduce the prison population by 43,000 inmates within two years.
“The application for stay presented to Justice Kennedy and by him referred to the court is denied,” the terse rejection said.
The Governor said he would continue to appeal future rulings of the three-judge panel that ordered the state to draft a prison plan. The panel has found that overcrowding is the main reason California has failed to provide a constitutional level of health care to prisoners.
The panel, made up of Judges Thelton E. Henderson and Lawrence Karlton of U.S. District Court and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is the result of two separate class-action lawsuits by prisoners.
The three-judge panel has recommended a federal takeover of the prisons if conditions do not improve.
The spectre of a takeover helped passage of the prison overhaul package. Several state lawmakers warned that if they did not act to reduce the prison population, which stood at about 1,67,000 inmates in June — or about double the number the system is designed to hold — then the court would impose prisoner releases that could compromise public safety.
The changes passed on Friday, along with budget cuts passed in July, will cut $1 billion in corrections spending by significantly reducing parole agent caseloads. They will have about 45 parolees under the new law, instead of the 70 offenders they currently supervise.
Parolees without violent records or serious offences will receive less parole supervision under the new law and will not be sent back to prison for technical violations, including substance abuse or missing parole check-in appointments.
Certain non-violent inmates will also have the opportunity to participate in rehabilitation programs in exchange for releases as much as six weeks earlier than their original release dates.
The corrections legislation followed years of failed overhaul efforts and a summer of intense lobbying by law enforcement and corrections officer groups, which opposed proposals to establish an independent sentencing commission to recalibrate the state penal code and to change some felonies to misdemeanours.
The state Assembly passed a version of the bill without those provisions and appeased the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, district attorney groups and police organisations.
The final bill, which was a consolidated version of legislation approved by the state Senate and Assembly, passed Friday night.
© 2009 The New York Times News Service
