California must reduce its prisoner population by around 40,000 inmates over the next two years, a panel of federal judges ruled on Tuesday. Earlier this year the same panel issued a preliminary ruling that California’s prisons are so overcrowded that they offer unconstitutionally poor levels of medical and mental healthcare for inmates. The preliminary ruling had mandated that the state reduce its prisoner population. The state made further arguments and tried to demonstrate that it was making a good-faith effort to improve prison conditions, and the ruling hadn’t been enforced.
California’s prisoner population has gone from around 30,000 in the late 1970s to around 170,000 today. These numbers grew because of laws like Three Strikes and You’re Out, mandatory minimum sentences for categories of drug offenders and a stringent parole system. Generally, over the last 15 years, the crime rate has dropped.
It is difficult to say if there will be a backlash from these released prisoners, but common sense say that drug dealing, violence, burglary, theft and even murder rates will increase. It is likely that California cities with large populations, such as San Diego, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino will all see a rise in the crime rate because a majority of the prisoners will be released into their populations. However, it is also possible that small suburban cities such as Irvine, Anaheim and Santa Ana will be effected by the prison releases also.
The Los Angeles times wrote “The order cited Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s own words when he proclaimed a state of emergency in the corrections system in 2006 and warned of substantial risk to prison staff, inmates and the general public, saying ‘immediate action is necessary to prevent death and harm.’”
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the judges believed “by changing parole practices and releasing some low-risk inmates to local custody, treatment programs or electronic monitoring, the prison population can be reduced ‘without a meaningful adverse impact on public safety,’”
