California prison lawyers told a federal judge last week they don’t expect to meet the June 2013 goal of cutting prison overcrowding to the target goal of 137.5 percent of capacity, so they will ask the court to raise the target to 145 percent.
The state’s 33 adult prisons have been under a court-ordered deadline to reduce overcrowding after it hit a 2006 high of 200 percent of capacity, about 173,000 inmates in facilities designed for 80,000. Authorities have so far cut it to about 154,000 but they say they will fall roughly 3,000 inmates shy of hitting the goal by the deadline.
In papers filed with a special three-judge panel overseeing the case, lawyers for the state said that early next year they will ask the panel to reconsider and raise the target to 145 percent for June 2013.
Lawyers for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reassured the judges that prison authorities will be able to maintain constitutionally acceptable medical care in the prisons, even at the higher population levels.
Rebekah Evenson, of the Prison Law Office, representing the prisoners, said the state can’t have it both ways. The state proposes to put off for nine months seeking an increase in population targets, at a time when it would be impossible for them to meet the goal. She argued the state should make the request now while there is time to investigate the claim and hold evidentiary hearings.
Back in 2002, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson first found the prison health care system to be in such a sorry state it amounted to an unconstitutional violation of 8th Amendment rights against cruel punishment. He appointed a monitor to keep watch on improvements, but when the prisons failed to move quickly enough Henderson installed a receiver in 2006 to take control of the prisons.
Henderson is one of the three-judges that ultimately ordered the prisons to lower the population levels to reduce overcrowding and improve the medical care conditions.
In May lawyers for the inmates argued that although California corrections officials believe the prisons have improved enough to end six years under a federal court receiver’s control, “they are wrong,” in a joint report.
Henderson is keeping the receiver in place for now. Clark Kelso, the court-appointed receiver, is scheduled to remain in control of the prisons until January 2014.
Case: Plata v. Brown, No. C01-1351TEH
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