California's Prisons Go to Court

by Matt Kelley · 2008-12-01 04:56:00 UTC
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A special panel of three federal judges will reconvene tomorrow to continue hearing testimony in a class action case brought by thousands of inmates against the California prison system. The inmates argue that the state's prisons are so overcrowded that inmates cannot receive proper medical care. Federal courts have already ruled that the prison health care system contributes to inmate deaths, and this panel could take the ruling a step further by ordering the release of as many as 50,000 inmates.

California incarcerates 156,330 people in 33 facilities built to hold 100,000. The prisons are so crowded that inmates are using buckets to shower. Mentally ill prisoners sometimes wait a year for a bed in a treatment facility.

At the root of the problem is the appearance of mandatory minimum sentences and stricter laws without any increase in prison beds.

Jeffrey Beard, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, blamed California's adoption of tough drug laws and three-strikes sentencing laws since the 1970s. The state has added more than 1,000 felony sentencing laws during the past 30 years, and its criminal code gives judges little leeway in deciding punishments.

"They went from being one of the most progressive systems in the country to one of the most overcrowded," Beard testified. "California has this problem that has just been going on for years and years and years, and nobody seems to be willing to step up to the plate and fix the problem."

Read more.

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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