Posted on 05/31/2008 1:54:42 PM PDT by SmithL
SAN FRANCISCO—A federal court referee is recommending that California's prison population be cut by nearly 40,000 inmates over the next four years.
There is little agreement over how to accomplish that, leading a special judicial panel on Friday to grant more time for settlement talks.
The three-judge panel says it will set a trial in November if the state, inmate advocacy groups, law enforcement organizations and others fail to agree on ways to solve prison crowding. They have 30 days to reach a settlement.
The federal courts could order an immediate release of inmates or cap the prison population, actions the Schwarzenegger administration and others want to avoid.
The court-appointed referee who is trying to negotiate a settlement says the state's 170,000 inmates should be reduced to about 132,000 by the end of 2011.
Referee Elwood Lui is proposing the population be trimmed by diverting parole violators and some convicts serving short sentences into community treatment or alternative-punishment programs.
Attorneys for the state, counties and local law enforcement say they are not yet ready to accept his proposed settlement. Republican lawmakers also have raised objections.
Just out the pedophiles.
tattoo a Big P on their fore heads.
Electric Bleachers ?
Damn activist libs. Overturning three-strikes which was passed by the citizens of CA.
WTF ? ? ?
Can’t Kaliforkia even geta real judge instead of a “referee”?
Why do I ask? I ask because referee types are famous for saying “You’re out.”
Anyone out there thought of calling ALPO?
;-)
When I was a kid, judges used to sentence criminals to serve time in jail/prison. I guess now we’re just locking ‘em up without the “judges” knowing about it.
Courts: California must cut prison population by 40,000
______________________________
Easy. Just send them back to Mexico.
And Columbia, and El Salvador, and etc....
Will this release of that many criminals ease the gun laws for Kalifornica citizens or will only these 40,000 arm themselves?
Inside America's toughest jail (Brit paper says Sheriff Joe Arpaio's ideas would be great for U.K.)
Reduce the state employee population by the same number. Leave felons where they are.
Bring back the gas chamber!
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
I believe you a confusing a jail system with a prison system.
Have them move into the judges homes...that should fix it.
Cal spends $12 billion a year in services to illegals and no one in Sacramento can decide what to do to cut spending.
Release them into the gated communities where these judges live?
Seriously, the best thing to do if the prisons are overcrowded is to keep building more. I dn’t LIKE the fact that warehousing recidivist criminals for most or all of their lives seems to be the best way to keep the public safe, but it’s a fact. Let’s build more.
Cheapest, Fastest and most gratifying solution..
OUTSOURCE THE CONVICTS - Prioritize outsourcing the illegal aliens who have been convicted and jailed for committing felonies in this country.
Pay some turd world banana republic to “house/feed” our prisoners at about $1 per day....
Why should WE pay $35,000 to incarcerate, medicate, educate and feed these bastards in a manner they have NEVER experienced?
OUTSOURCE them -— NOW.
If we can send American’s jobs to the Turd World, we should certainly be able to justify sending at least the illegal aliens criminals who make up >25% or our prison population.
"Confusion" was not a factor, it was merely a suggestion of a possible approach.
Why, pray tell, could a similar system not be adapted to prison populations?
Dang, you beat me to it!!!
Death row is turning into a hospice program. We put 20 or so in a year and average less than 1 execution per year. So that's overcrowded.
No consensus to build more prisons, but we want the bad guys locked up. Nothing done.
No leadership from within corrections and every governor turns the department director out. No nationwide talent hunt.
Most members of the public don't care what goes on inside as long as they don't escape.
Entire system under court mandate.
Largest mental health care system in the world and very little services. Most of these "patients" will be released onto the street.
I say nuclear option and start all over.
Since the “system” doesn’t allow us to drill for our own oil in Anwar, why not set up a jail and prison system there?
A mini gulag, so to speak.
Now that the democrats are more Socialist than the old Soviets, they should find that emulation just dandy...
Release the most hardened rapists and murderers to live with these oligarchs.
Deport ‘em! They are mostly illegals anyway.
If you think the baloney sandwiches are cute, try it with 2,000 inmates doing 25 years.
If you want the prisons to run, you have to have people want to work in them and not think they are going to be killed every day when they walk into work.
Sheriff Joe is "the man" for all I can see, but you can't run a long-term program based upon abusing and demeaning inmates.
You can put more inmates to work and provide treatment for the mentally ill, but it costs staff positions to run those programs.
In a jail, you don't have to do this because people are waiting trial or doing less than a year. So you can have them lay out in the hot sun all day in tents, because they won't be there long.
I forget the number I saw, but Cal probably has 40-75,000 illegal inmates. One problem if you let them all out early, they’ll probably come back and do it all over.
We have islands off the coast of Cal.
Euthanasia !!!
Gotta let the killers, pedophiles, and racists out so that we can make room for the Republicans and tax cheats.
A delightful, entirely appropriate and worthwhile solution of course.
An additional benefit would be that because the prison trash would be housed outside of the USA, we wouldn't be having the current situation of the various scummy extended "families" moving into the towns where the prisons are located in order to be able to visit their loved ones behind bars and thereby lowering the quality of life for the decent residents there.
I wonder if there is any particular reason they want to let these criminals go, or if they just decided it would be a good idea.
The old Romans knew what to do.
Plus money could made in the deal.
I’m sure Martin Sheen woudn’t mind putting up a few inmates at his house.
Anyone who cared to look could see this coming and from California first.
I'm sure this referee would be pleased if every released inmate would be provided with his home address so they could drop by and thank him.
Therein lies our difference in perspective....I don't consider what Sheriff Arpaio is doing to be 'abuse', and neither do the courts of the State of Arizona.
If you think the baloney sandwiches are cute, try it with 2,000 inmates doing 25 years.
I don't think that they're "cute", I think that they are an innovative, thoughtful and entirely appropriate solution to the problem in this context If this 'exact' solution doesn't lend itself to a longterm housing situation then adjustments can be made, but for those inmates serving 2-5 years I think that it would provide a long overdue lesson to criminals that prison is not a fun walk in the park.
How about sending all the illegal inmates home!
How about consulting with Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona on building some tent cities out in the desert?
“How about sending all the illegal inmates home!”
My toughts too. I wonder just how many are in there, bleeding our system to death.
Yes, but why send them to an island vacation?
Send them to a frozen tundra, where the sun never rises above 30 degrees.
End the War on Some Drugs and watch the prison population drop by half by 2011.
But knowing California, they’ll release the rapists and murderers and keep the check-kiters and embezzlers locked up.
In prisons there are nutrition standards because you have a LONG-TERM population. Also, the more work the inmates do the higher caloric intake needed to maintain health. A baloney sandwich doesn't get it in prison, by court or any other standard.
I like the way the sheriff operates, but he is running a short-term program.
Inmates who are doing 2-5 years need to be working and/or in school programs if you want them to be released better than when they went in,
Can’t grow your own food in the tundra.
Entire towns are freshly created—made up by judges and attornies: witness the Village of Pinecrest in Dade County, Florida.
Makes for thinner convicts... :)
And elements of his highly-successful program can certainly be adapted to long-term housing situations....at least they could be if it were not for the influence of Leftist, activist judges and the ACLU. Eliminating cost and waste within the prison system while decreasing the creature comforts would be a great place to start and could be done without being abusive or placing any inmates or staff at undue risk.
Inviting Sheriff Arpaio to conduct a study of the California prison system and to recommend cost-saving improvements would be an excellent place to start; certainly better than releasing tens of thousands of hardened, career thugs and criminals back into society and placing decent people at risk.
I'd rather see him in SoCal cleaning up the illegals.
And I disagree with the notion that jails and prisons are completely different in all respects and are therefore impossible to compare in any meaningful way. Using an example of the extreme cases such as the 25 year inmates tends to overlook the fact that the overwhelming, vast majority of inmates are not sentenced for such a period (unfortunately). Sadly, most prison inmates are sentenced to a far shorter term than that and so do not present the same challenges to the administration.
Given the reality of breathtaking, bloated waste within the California prison system a voice of reason such as that of Sheriff Arpaio’s would be a welcome breath of fresh air that would instantly be shouted down by all of the usual Leftist suspects.
The cost of such high pay? Fewer work crews, training, education and mental health care.
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