Does California need a prison bailout?

A federal judge is demanding a downpayment from California on an $8 billion prison health care overhaul he mandated two years ago. Unfortunately, California's broke.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson said Wednesday that the state owed $250 million immediately to start work on a court-ordered expansion of the state's failing and overcrowded prison health centers. The judge ruled two years ago in a class action case that the state was violating the Constitutional rights of inmates by failing to provide adequate care.

Meanwhile, California is already failing to meet revenue expectations in its stripped-down budget, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sent a letter last week asking Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for a $7 billion loan to keep the state running. Apparently, the Governator wants some of that money Washington is handing out in these difficult financial times. If he gets it, we can only hope that he begins to address the serious prison health care and overcrowding problems.

California prisons are among the country's most crowded, with more than 160,000 inmates in prisons designed for 100,000. And the health care conditions that brought about this lawsuit apparently haven't improved much. The state prisons average 65 preventable deaths a year. Robert Sillen, who was initially appointed by Judge Henderson to oversee the overhaul but  was then replaced by J. Clark Kelso in January, visited the San Quentin medical clinic last year:

“It was unclean, it was unkempt, and there were no sinks, no phones, no faxes, no way to communicate, no nothing,” Mr. Sillen said. “And that’s the clinic. It was just worse than Third World conditions.”