US Supreme Court

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July 21, 2011 | 9:32 AM | By

Poll: California voters prefer sentencing reform to building more prisons

How should California comply with the Supreme Court’s order to reduce overcrowding in its 33 state prisons? In theory, the state could build additional prisons or transfer more inmates to private facilities, but both of those options would require taxpayer outlays. A new poll of registered California voters suggests that voters would prefer sentencing reform to any option that requires raising taxes. (The full poll, conducted for the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Times, is available here.)

Here are some highlights:

  • 79% of those polled said they favored moving low-level offenders to the county level — perhaps good news for Gov. Jerry Brown’s realignment proposal,
  • Interestingly, 69% of those polled said they favored releasing nonviolent offenders early. Both Gov. Brown and CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate have repeatedly said they hope to comply with the court order without doing that — Cate says all the changes will be prospective, so CDCR won’t have to release any current inmates before their term is up.
  • 62% of offenders said they’d favor reforming the state’s three strikes law to reduce sentences for third-strike offenders convicted of property crimes.
  • In comparison, only 23% of respondents said they favored raising taxes to construct new prisons, against 55% who said they “strongly opposed” such a measure (and another 18% who said they were “somewhat opposed”).
  • And a measly 12% said they favored cutting education or health care spending to help pay for prisons.
  • Latinos were more likely than whites to oppose shorter prison sentences. 71% of white respondents said they would favor early release of nonviolent offenders, compared to 59% of Latino voters.
FILED UNDER: Corrections, Politics, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Jerry Brown, Matthew Cate, Prison Overcrowding, Prisons, Realignment, US Supreme Court
July 13, 2011 | 3:08 PM | By

CDCR Chief: “We incarcerate too many short-term offenders”

CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate recently spoke with PBS NewsHour about the recent Supreme Court ruling that California must reduce its prison population. The full video, available here, is worth a watch, but here are some key points from Cate’s remarks:

  • On his initial reaction to the Court’s order in Brown v. Plata: “Well, it’s a mixed reaction. I fundamentally agree that our prisons are overcrowded and it makes life very difficult to run an effective, efficient prison system when you have 180% of what you’re designed to have. I disagreed with some of the particulars regarding the status of our medical and mental health care. I think we’re providing pretty good care now. But the bottom line is we had to agree that we’re overcrowded and have been for some time.”
  • On the inefficiencies in the California criminal justice system: “We’re spending almost $10 billion on prisons in California and far less than that on higher education. It used the be the other way around. And what’s really changed is that we incarcerate too many short-term offenders and low-level offenders in California. One example would be last year we incarcerated 47,000 Californians for 90 days or less. Incredibly inefficient, ineffective system.”
  • On Gov. Jerry Brown’s “realignment” proposal to shift low-level offenders to the county level: “The whole point of realignment is that counties elect sheriffs to make decisions about public safety and they hire probation chiefs to supervise their own offenders. The state has taken on more and more of this responsibility. We think, and [the county sheriffs] think, that they can do a pretty good job. … I think there’s about $1.5 billion coming their way [from the state], so we’re not going to short them on the money … We’re going to do some jail construction as well. The state’s agreed to fund 90% of jail construction in California.”
  • On public safety: “Well, there’s a lot of confusion about realignment and the U.S. Supreme Court’s order and you hear the term ‘inmate release’ all the time. From our perspective … anybody who’s in prison today is going to serve their full sentence. All of these changes will be prospective. So it’s diverting tomorrow’s inmate to jail instead of prison, for example, to serve their time.”
FILED UNDER: Community, Corrections, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Matthew Cate, Prisons, Realignment, US Supreme Court
June 7, 2011 | 1:36 PM | By

California releases its prison overcrowding plan

CDCR

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation filed its formal plan with the Federal District Court in the Northern District of California today for how it will reduce the state’s prison population by about 33,500 inmates over the next two years. Among the take-aways from the filing, two main points echoed a few times: first, CDCR says it will not be releasing inmates early, contrary to popular wisdom; and second, the system has already come some way towards reaching the final goal. Specifically, the state has a number of ideas of how they’ll get to the eventual goal of 137.5 percent of designed prison capacity:

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FILED UNDER: Corrections, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Jerry Brown, Prison Overcrowding, Realignment, US Supreme Court
June 3, 2011 | 9:57 AM | By

Prison overcrowding: What’s the backup plan?

US Supreme Court

A new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California seems to show a tough (but not impossible) road for Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to extend and increase taxes to help alleviate some of the state’s fiscal problems. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

According to the poll, 62 percent of likely voters said they want a special election, up 6 percentage points from April and 11 percentage points from March. However, 46 percent of likely voters said they supported the taxes while 48 percent said they opposed them.

According to an analyst interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, the tax measures need to be polling in the 60s–at least 12 points higher than now–to have any prayer of passing if they’re put on the ballot. But Brown does not seem deterred–he’s pledged to fulfill his campaign promise of letting voters decide whether they want to tax themselves and save certain functions of state government, or not tax themselves and absorb cuts.

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FILED UNDER: Politics, Budget, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Jerry Brown, Prison Overcrowding, Realignment, US Supreme Court
May 23, 2011 | 8:11 AM | By

US Supreme Court: California must release inmates

In a 5-4 decision this morning, the US Supreme Court issued a long-awaited decision on whether California will have to release some 40,000 inmates to relieve prison overcrowding. The short answer? Yes. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy, a native Californian and often the swing vote on the court, pointed out that there are “serious Constitutional violations in California’s prison system.” Specifically, a lack of adequate medical and mental health care for inmates, due to the sheer size and lack of capacity in the system. “[T]he violations have persisted for years,” Kennedy continued. “They remain uncorrected.”

Complete ruling after the jump.
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FILED UNDER: Courts, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Prison Overcrowding, US Supreme Court
April 4, 2011 | 9:28 AM | By

California man’s death sentence reinstated

Justice Thomas wrote the opinion.

The US Supreme Court restarted their week this Monday by overturning a 9th Circuit decision to throw out the death sentence of California’s Scott Pinholster. KSRO reports:

Pinholster was convicted in 1984 of brutally beating and stabbing two men to death when they interrupted a burglary he and two accomplices were committing in Los Angeles.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Pinholster’s death sentence because his lawyer did not give a jury evidence of mental illness during the penalty phase of his murder trial. The San Francisco-based court said that evidence might have persuaded the jury to reject the death sentence.

The high court, in a decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas, overturned that ruling. “There is no reasonable probability that the additional evidence Pinholster presented in his state habeas proceeding would have changed the jury’s verdict,” Thomas said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, wrote that if Pinholster’s lawyer had handled his trial better, it is “not a foregone conclusion” that the jury would have sentenced him to death.

FILED UNDER: Courts, Capital Punishment, US Supreme Court
December 3, 2010 | 9:44 AM | By

Prison overcrowding: What will Justice Kennedy do?

Justice Anthony Kennedy

Earlier this week, a case went to the US Supreme Court that will have tremendous impact on California’s prison system. At issue is a federal court order that requires California to substantially reduce its prison population. If the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the order, California will have to release about 40,000 inmates in the next two years. The lawyer for prisoners in the case, Don Specter of the Prison Law Office, said that if it’s upheld, this case will be groundbreaking: “My hope is that if our case is affirmed it will cause the state’s political leaders, the legislature, the governor, and other influential groups to evaluate how they deal with crime in this state.” Lawyers for the state of California, however, say that prisons have improved, and that releasing that many prisoners in such a short time would compromise public safety. I attended oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, where justices pounded lawyers from both sides with questions about what the release order would mean–and made it pretty clear which side of the issue they fall on. But everyone was really watching for what Justice Kennedy would say. On a divided court, Kennedy is the presiding swing vote and will likely decide how this case falls. I sat down with KALW’s Hana Baba yesterday to talk about the case and its possible outcomes. Transcript after the jump.

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FILED UNDER: Courts, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Prison Overcrowding, US Supreme Court
December 1, 2010 | 5:20 AM | By

How did California’s prisons become so overcrowded?

Yesterday, I wrote about a case at the US Supreme Court that will decide whether or not California will be required to release as many as 40,000 prison inmates. Above is a radio piece I did on the same topic. It gets into the background of the court case: how California’s prisons got so over-stuffed and why courts haven’t been able to fix the problem yet.

FILED UNDER: Corrections, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Prison Overcrowding, Prisons, San Quentin, US Supreme Court