Calif. Judges Order Massive Prisoner Release

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A special panel of federal judges tentatively ruled Monday that California must release tens of thousands of inmates to relieve overcrowding.

The judges said no other solution will improve conditions so poor that inmates die regularly of suicides or lack of proper care.

The panel said it wanted the state to present a plan to trim the population in two to three years.

"There are simply too many prisoners for the existing capacity," they wrote. "Evidence offered at trial was overwhelmingly to the effect that overcrowding is the primary cause of the unconstitutional conditions that have been found to exist in the California prisons." the rest