It looks like California has run afoul of federal courts. The state is housing over 160,000 prisoners in facilities that were built to house only half that many. The overcrowding is so bad that prisoners are dying because they cannot receive adequate care.
The fact is that whether any state holds 10 prisoners or 10 million prisoners in a state facility, that state is required to provide each of those prisoners with a minimum level of decent food, shelter and medical care. The federal courts have long held that failure to do this is a violation of the United States Constitution's ban of cruel and unusual punishment.
Now a three-member panel of federal judges is ordering California to release tens of thousands of prisoners. The panel agreed with lawyers for the inmates that "crowding is the cause" of the constitutional violations, and said, "The evidence is compelling that there is no relief other than a prisoner release order that will remedy the unconstitutional prison conditions."
The judges are giving California two to three years to release between 40,000 to 60,000 prisoners, or they will order the release. The judges didn't tell California how to do this -- just that it has to be done. Building new prisons is out of the question, since California is already running a deficit of several billion dollars. The deficit would also seem to rule out paying the counties to house the extra prisoners.
That leaves increasing the amount of "good time" a prisoner can earn, or changing the rules of parole so prisoners are not revoked for minor offenses. These solutions would put violent offenders on the street faster, and make it harder to revoke them when they mess up their parole. These would not seem to be good solutions either.
But there is another solution -- one not considered by the courts or the state (yet). They could change their drug laws, and release all non-violent drug offenders who are incarcerated for possession only. The "war on drugs" has been a miserable failure. It has not curbed drug use, but it has filled our prisons with non-violent persons who could be better handled with treatment programs.
It may make politicians and police feel good to incarcerate those possessing small amounts of drugs for personal use, but it is not solving this countries drug problem. The California overcrowding case is the perfect opportunity to change the way we deal with the problem.
Possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use should be treated as a medical problem -- not a criminal one.
