Judges weigh ordering release of Calif. prisoners

The state stuffs its 33 adult prisons with nearly twice as many inmates as they were designed to house. Attorneys representing the inmates asked the judges on Thursday to order the state to trim about 52,000 inmates from the current population of 156,300 over the next two years.

The judges hearing the case brought on behalf of sick and mentally ill inmates may not make a decision until next year. The special three-judge panel is acting for the first time under a 1995 federal law designed to limit the judiciary's power in inmate rights cases, and any release order likely faces an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Several more weeks of testimony are scheduled this month on whether releasing inmates early will increase crime. The judges have already heard seven days of testimony on overcrowding.

"In the long run, does it make any difference to public safety if we release them 60 days earlier?" than their original sentence, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento wondered as the judges debated one hypothetical release order this week.

Attorneys for the inmates argued that releasing prisoners would reduce violence in prison and the spread of contagious disease, end the need for housing inmates in gymnasiums and other makeshift areas, and improve treatment for mentally and physically ill inmates who now suffer and sometimes die of neglect.

They produced criminologists who said the state could cut its population safely through steps such as reducing the number of parolees sent back to prison for "technical" violations like testing positive for drugs or failing to meet with a parole agent, and giving alternative sentences to criminals who currently serve short prison terms.

Inmates who participate in education and other rehabilitation programs--even some serious, violent offenders--could be released from prison earlier.

Better still, the state should be required to spend more money to keep people from going to prison in the first place, Jerry Powers, Stanislaus County's chief probation officer, told the judges.

Freeing criminals earlier gives them more time to commit new crimes, said Powers, who leads the statewide chief probation officers' association. He was not comforted by new scientifically developed questionnaires designed to predict which ex-convicts are most likely to commit new crimes.