SACRAMENTO ? Gov. Jerry Brown's administration is balking at a demand by federal judges that it provide a timeline for releasing inmates from California's overcrowded prisons.
In a legal brief filed late Friday, the state called the prospect of early releases "unwarranted." The filing, which failed to include the court-ordered timeline, said the judges were overstepping last year'sU.S. Supreme Courtruling that upheld population caps intended to correct unconstitutionally poor conditions in the prisons.
Instead of complying with the judges' latest request, the state asked them to suspend enforcement of crowding limits.
In a few more months, the administration argued, "continued enforcement of the population reduction order will be unnecessary and legally inappropriate."
Inmate advocates denounced the administration's move.
"What we see is pure political intransigence," said Rebekah Evenson, a lawyer for the Prison Law Office, the firm representing plaintiffs in the decade-old class action lawsuit that ultimately gave rise to the court's demands. "Every step in the process, they have dug in their heels."
A panel of three federal judges had given California until June 2013 to shrink its inmate population to 137.5% of capacity, or no more than 112,000 prisoners in spaces built to house 82,500. State lawyers recently admitted they expect to miss the target, prompting the jurists two weeks ago to order California to produce the early-release timeline.
In its filing Friday, the state reiterated that it expects to lower its population only to 145% of capacity. If the jurists insist on further reductions, the state said, it will have little recourse but to drop plans to save money by bringing home more than 9,000 inmates kept at for-profit prisons as far away as Mississippi.
The long-running class action case centers on California's ability to provide decent medical and mental health care in increasingly over-packed prisons. Judges in two federal courts found prison healthcare so poor it led to an "unconscionable degree of suffering and death."
The medical care case was filed in 2001. The mental health litigation dates to 1990. The prison health operations have been run for six years by a court-appointed receiver.
The state contends the planned opening of a large prison medical facility in Stockton will resolve most of the remaining issues of care, and it has asked that the receivership be ended.
The Prison Law Office contends California is ignoring alternatives that would easily reduce crowding, such as releasing inmates early for good behavior.
"Just increase the good-time credits offered inmates, which is what other states do," said Don Specter, the lead plaintiffs' attorney. "They could cure the whole problem."
To date, the state has reduced its prison population largely by requiring low-level offenders to serve their time in county jails instead of in state lockups. Since that diversion program began last October, the prison population has dropped by 24,000 inmates and crowding has fallen to 150% of capacity, but the packing varies.
Mule Creek State Prison in Amador County remains at nearly 180% of capacity, according to a state document filed with the court in July.
Jeffrey Callison, press secretary for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said Mule Creek was the last prison in California to stop housing inmates in overflow areas such as gyms and day rooms ? a practice it discontinued in February.
paige.stjohn@latimes.com
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