May 24, 2011

California won't free criminals to ease prison crowding

09:00 AM
By John Bacon, USA TODAY

California prison officials say they hope to remove tens of thousands of inmates from prison rolls in the next two years without setting any criminals free, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Matthew Cate, secretary of California's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said plans to shift low-level offenders to county jails and other facilities would ease the persistent crowding in state prisons that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday causes "needless suffering and death" and amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

The state has estimated that more than 30,000 inmates must be removed from the state prison system to comply with the court mandate. The state now has 143,335 inmates, Cate says.

STORY: Details on the Supreme Court ruling

Gov. Jerry Brown's transfer plan "would solve quite a bit" of the overcrowding problem, Cate told the Times. "Our goal is to not release inmates at all.''

The hitch: Brown's plan would involve hundreds of millions of dollars in tax hikes that could be a hard sell to state lawmakers.

"Citizens will pay a real price as crime victims, as thousands of convicted felons will be on the streets with minimal supervision," Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said in a statement. "Many of these 'early release' prisoners will commit crimes which would never have occurred had they remained in custody."

http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... crowding/1