Hopefully they release the least dangerous offenders possible. :eek:
How about they release the prisoners in the same neighborhoods where SCOTUS justices live.
If they cut loose all the people doing time on non-violent, non-sales drug related charges, it will be a good start.
The article doesn’t give any details about how/when this must be accomplished. I suspect that if we read the actual opinion, there will be enough wiggle room for the state so that this isn’t just “open the gates tomorrow and let them free”.
Do you expect that to be a large number?
The article notes that Kennedy is from California. And if transferring them is an option, they don’t have to release anybody. It sounds like a surprising ruling, but the story says the prisons will still be packed above capacity and this situation has existed for 20 years or so. I haven’t read the opinion, but I’m not sure what the alternative was- ruling that prisoners are entitled to no humane treatment whatsoever?
It seems like you could try to start with people capable of being put into some kidn of home-arrest for the remainder of their sentence and then move to short-timers and non-violent offenders.
How about if a state (and by extension, its public) wants to imprison massive numbers of criminals they actually build sufficient prisons to house them humanely?
It’s not like this ruling says you can’t lock up anybody and everybody. It just says that if you design a prison system to hold 100k, you can’t cram 150k people in there.
Lindsey Lohan approves of this ruling.
I believe I heard on the radio that there was a two year window to implement.
Correct, but they can appeal for a 3 year extension after that.
Meh, you can’t let our prison systems become third world style Russian prisons with 50 people to a cell. I don’t know the legalese as to whether this is properly something the court should have ruled, but from a practical stand point it’s really the only solution when you have a dramatically overcrowded prison system and a State that is in such bad fiscal shape there is no long term possibility of dramatically increasing prison capacity.
I think realistically when you’re making decisions like this you have to just decide based on two criteria: societal safety and practicality.
If I was in California I’d want prisoners released in this order:
- Non-violent offenders who are infirm or disabled.
- Non-violent offenders who are elderly.
- Non-violent first time offenders who have less than 2 years remaining on their current sentence.
- Non-violent first time offenders who have less than 5 years remaining on their current sentence.
- Non-violent offenders who have less than 2 years remaining on their current sentence.
- Non-violent offenders who have less than 5 years remaining on their current sentence.
- Violent offenders who are infirm or disabled.
- Violent offenders who are elderly and who have less than 2 years remaining on their current sentence.
- Violent offenders who are elderly and who have less than 5 years remaining on their current sentence.
- Violent offenders who are elderly and whose sentence is deemed to be highly likely to not expire until after the end of the offender’s natural life, and who are not serving a sentence for murder. (And whose remaining sentence is > 5 years)
After that if we still need to let more people go I would prioritize it based on non-violent offenders in 5 year increments of remaining sentence (10 years left, 15 years left, 20 years left) up to 20 years, and then violent offenders with 5/10 years left and then all non-violent offenders and then all violent offenders after that who must be released to comply with the ruling.
This was an inexorable consequence of combining terrible budgeting (and all the stupid laws that make budgeting impossible in California), three strikes laws, and the functional abolition of parole. States just don’t get to lock up so many people that it becomes an Eighth Amendment problem. And when they do, they either have to fork out the cash for more prisons, or stop sending so many people to prison.
Does it suck for federal courts to have to get their hands dirty in prison policy when states cannot get it together to comply with the Constitution? Of course it does. Judges have no special competence in how to run a prison system. But the alternative, ignoring any constitutional violation whose remedy require systemic change, is far more damaging to the constitutional order.
Yep. The right decision, and long overdue.
I heard some statistics at a commencement address on Saturday (at a California state university) that caused my jaw to drop (if true).
In the 1980’s, the state of California spent 5x as much money on higher education than they did on prisons. Now, prisons get more money than colleges.
In Jerry Brown’s previous terms as governor (1974-1982) there were 40,000 state prisoners. Now there are 40,000 prison guards.
The speaker didn’t give specific reasons, just alluding to politicians caving in to popular opinion. The reasons are probably related to 3 Strikes and the “crack epidemic” and mandatory minimum sentences.
I wasn’t sure if this was a debate or an IMHO or just a holy crap…but these stats seem relevant to this topic, so I thought I’d throw them in.
I’d say just send all the illegals back, but with our border security they’d be walking down main street the very next day…
Interesting. I’m surprised you’d be willing to cut short illegal immigrants’ sentences and let them be free in the country to which they are deported.
I think that it is worth noting that three strikes laws and lengthy prison sentences didn’t come out of the aether. We had a genuine, massive spike in violent crime in this country in the 70s and 80s (I believe it spiked in the early 1990s and then started going down.)
Was it reactionary? Sure. At the same time there were just far too many stories of people raping, mutilating, murdering, and essentially terrorizing society.
While some have argued for sociological causes for this spike and its subsequent decrease over the past 20 years, I think that it is very difficult to deny that stricter sentencing and greater advancements in the techniques of law enforcement have not also directly lead to a reduction in violent crime rates. If for no other reason than we incarcerate more people now.
People always argue about rehabilitation, “vengeance”, societal protection, deterrence and all kinds of other things when it comes to the criminal justice system. Usually as though they are all mutually exclusive.
I think that any proper system will seek to provide justice for victims. That is not synonymous with vengeance. Criminal justice systems exist because when humans are aggrieved by others in terrible ways humans demand retribution. That is human nature. It is also the basis for pretty much all legal systems on some level or another (even non-adversarial ones), society did not want individuals hashing out the problems and vendettas that inevitably come about. So we’ve developed common law system, civil codes, and such to deal with things in a civilized, orderly framework. Part of that must recognize that if you seriously wrong, or victimize someone, something must be done to make amends for that action. I think sometimes that thing must mean you forfeit some period of your free life and go into prison as punishment for actions done.
I also think that we need to develop a more robust system of punishment. In the middle ages and earlier there were basically three punishments levied. Fines of various types, corporal punishment (flogging, being put in the stocks, etc) and execution. Incarceration for lengthy periods of time was not widely practiced because governments of the day did not desire to have a permanent infrastructure for mass incarceration. I’m not advocating we go back to flogging and executions as the primary methods of punishment. I am saying we need to recognize prison isn’t the right punishment for everything. I think that most non-violent crimes, especially first offenses, should not even have prison time on the table. Crimes that cause financial damages should require the person to pay significant fines, and even to participate in work or labor programs for several hours a week for lengthy periods of time. I would envision a system in which someone could hold down a 40-hour a week job and would also be required to essentially perform free labor for perhaps 10 hours a week for a set period of time, and maybe even a whole 8 hour day on weekends. This would significantly degrade that person’s quality of life, but would also give them the ability to maintain a normal life and in some way perform real service to make up for the crime they have committed.
For non-violent offenders I think prison terms should be reserved for persons who do not comply with alternative sentencing arrangements and for serial offenders, fraudsters and et cetera who through many violations have shown they will not refrain from taking advantage of citizens.
For drug offenses I’ve long felt that most should not be a crime at all. I think any plant that you can grow, you should be allowed to grow and sell it at a farmer’s market. I think that any refined drug that requires some chemistry to create has too much room to be dangerous (I don’t want it to ever be legal to just sell random vials of poison on the street to people with no requirement that they know whether it’s full of formaldehyde or whatever crazy stuff people lace drugs with) and I do think things of that nature still need to be prohibited. However again, people who do sell meth, LSD, and other essentially chemical products should not be sent to prison immediately and certainly not for a first offense.
For violent crimes I think that once you stop incarcerating so many non-violent inmates for lengthy periods of time you have a prison population that is roughly halved and we should actually ramp up sentences for violent crimes. I think murder and any serious assault (including rape but I think other serious assaults can be just as damaging) should carry mandatory life sentences, no exceptions. Basically any crime of violence which causes “irrevocable and serious physical harm” to someone should mean your days of liberty are permanently at an end. I’m talking about people that beat persons into permanent comatose states or give them traumatic brain injuries, people that mutilate and maim, people that rape, and people that murder.
Gray areas for me would be permanent but not particularly life altering injuries. For example you knife someone in a heated bar fight and leave them scarred but not otherwise permanently injured. I can see giving that person a second chance.
Minor crimes of violence, such as simple assault, engaging in mutual combat, and perhaps first offenses of holding people or stores/banks up I would be more lenient with those people. To me brandishing a weapon just isn’t as bad as actually using one, yet you often see people get 20 years for holding up a bank in which not a single person is harmed while I know of at least two cases in my area in which people beat someone to the point that they are in a permanent vegetative state using just fists and feet and the assailants received a 2 year and a 10 year sentence, to me that sort of crime is almost equivalent to murder and should result in permanent forfeiture of personal liberty.
I also think any proper system will have a robust rehabilitation system that prepares non-life sentence inmates for reentry into society. I think we also need greater support for released felons and more career opportunities. There aren’t easy answers on this, but one of the big ones would probably be some legal protections or limitations on how much background checking an employer can do. Many employers have policies which effectively make released felons an unemployable class of people that can never earn a decent wage. Such a system guarantees recidivism.
But, aren’t illegal aliens in federal prisons to which the ruling doesn’t apply?
Bob
I don’t think so. First, because crime went down all over the country regardless of how “tough on crime” the local government got. And second, because I see no evidence that those extra imprisoned people are violent criminals. And third, because “stricter sentencing” doesn’t mean that violent criminals spend more time in prison’; it means that judges have less discretion, so they can’t keep the more dangerous criminals in prison longer, just as they can’t let the less dangerous ones go earlier.
What we do have here in California is a system designed to pander to people who panic over “liberal judges”, to serve as a payoff to the extremely powerful prison guards union, to serve as a tool to punish the poor and brown skinned, and to provide cheap prison labor.