Legal News

CA prison plan, pending appeal, OK'd by panel judges

By Richard Binder

U.S. District Judges Thelton Henderson and Lawrence Karlton and 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt make up the panel that ordered the state of California to educe its prison population by about 40,000 inmates to improve medical and mental health care. Governor Schwarzenegger appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, but in the interim came up with a plan that the panel finds satisfactory.

Schwarzenegger said in his plan that he would work with lawmakers to approve measures they rejected last year, including home detention with satellite tracking devices for some inmates; permitting some felons to serve time in county jails instead of state prisons; and reducing sentences for property crimes. The governor also said he would need more prisoner transfers to other states, private prison construction and suspension of Civil Service rules, among other solutions.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide on whether or not it will take up the matter of the appeal this Friday. If the state loses, the panel judges said, officials will have to meet interim population targets every six months, while submitting progress reports, before completing the plan within two years.

Full story at LATimes.com.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on January 13, 2010 (boomark / email).