By Greg Lucas
SACRAMENTO, California, Jan 8 (Reuters) - California's
Democratic Governor Jerry Brown asked federal judges on Tuesday
to lift a court order demanding further releases of state
prisoners to reduce overcrowding, saying that such a move could
harm public safety.
Brown, who said the state had already "shaped up" on
prisons, said he was striking a "middle path" that protects the
public while saving state dollars better invested in education
and other state functions.
"Let the judges give us our prisons back. We'll run them
right," Brown told a news conference at the state Capitol.
California has been under court orders to reduce population
in the 33-prison system since 2009, when a panel of federal
judges ordered it to relieve the overcrowding that has caused
inadequate medical and mental health care.
The U.S Supreme Court later rebuffed California's appeal of
a requirement to reach 137.5 percent capacity by June 27, 2013,
saying the state needed to release tens of thousands of inmates
or take other steps to ease crowding and prevent "needless
suffering and death."
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported
119,213 in-state inmates on Jan. 2, just under 150 percent of
design capacity.
Brown's remarks came after a Jan. 7 deadline for state
prison officials to explain the steps they would take to lower
inmate population at California's 33 prisons to 137.5 percent of
"design capacity," or approximately 110,000 inmates.
Doing so would require reducing the state prison population
by an additional 9,000 prisoners. But Brown said the state had
met the intent of the court's edict and that further releases
would harm public safety.
"In the years since the court issued the current population
cap order, the state has dramatically reduced the prison
population, significantly increased capacity through
construction, and implemented a myriad of improvements that
transformed the medical and mental health care systems," court
filings by the Brown administration said.
PRISON CONDITIONS
Brown, as ordered by a three-judge panel supervising efforts
to ease prison crowding, included in his court filings other
possible actions to further reduce inmate population. But he
said implementing the options was neither "smart" nor "sound."
Among the proposed ways to reduce crowding further:
Shortening sentences through greater use of inmate credits for
good behavior, sending more types of felons, like car thieves
and forgers, to county jails, contracting with additional
private prisons and releasing inmates sooner.
Since 2006, the state's inmate population has fallen by more
than 43,000 and crowding has dropped from a high of more than
200 percent capacity.
More than half that reduction occurred since October 2011
through "realignment," a budget move championed by Brown that
transferred incarceration of more than 23,000 inmates from state
prisons to county jails.
To illustrate the progress, Brown's lawyers included
before-and-after photographs in their court filings of now-empty
gymnasiums formerly jammed with triple-bunked inmates.
Brown says that the health care state inmates receive is
better than that enjoyed by many Californians. But prisoner
rights lawyers say medical services are still poor and intend to
challenge Brown's request to remove the population cap.
"The governor's assertion that the prison crisis in
California is over is demonstrably false," said Allen Hopper,
criminal justice and drug policy director for the American Civil
Liberties Union of California.
"Brown has thrown down the gauntlet in this latest filing.
He's telling the judges 'the state shouldn't have to come down
to 137.5 percent of capacity and that we don't want to take
additional steps to reduce overcrowding and, if you order us to
do these things we don't want to do we'll appeal that,'" he
added.
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