A bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court ordered California on Monday to reduce its prison population by some 33,000 prisoners within the next two years.
By a 5-to-4 vote, the high court ruled that severe overcrowding in state prisons has resulted in extreme suffering and even death, a deprivation of the inmates' rights that violates the Constitution and the 1995 federal Prison Litigation Reform Act, as well.
California's 33 prisons, designed to house 80,000 inmates, housed twice that many prisoners by 2009.
"The California state prison system is the worst overcrowded system I have seen in my experience," says Wayne Scott, who headed the Texas prison system under then-Gov. George W. Bush.
Scott was one of many expert witnesses called in to look at the California system after 20 years of litigation and failure by the state to achieve reforms that it had agreed upon. Scott and other prison experts told a special three-judge court that overcrowding was the primary cause of the state prison's problems. The court then ordered the state to reduce the prison population to 137 percent of capacity, more than the 130 percent recommended by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/23/136579580/california-is-ordered-to-cut-its-prison-population
