Pubdate: Sun, 12 Dec 2010
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2010 The Dallas Morning News, Inc.
Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/lettertoed.cgi
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Sherrilyn A. Ifill
Note: Sherrilyn A.Ifill is a professor of law at the University of 
Maryland and a regular contributor to TheRoot.com, where a version of 
this piece originally appeared.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Schwarzenegger

KEEPING AMERICA'S PRISONS OVERCROWDED

Our nation's love affair with incarceration continues. In a case 
before the Supreme Court, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is 
arguing that judges have no right to tell states to reduce their 
prison populations.

America's prisons, like many of our public schools, reflect our 
country's most shameful and profound failings. Last month, the U.S. 
Supreme Court took on one aspect of our nation's love affair with 
incarceration.

In Schwarzenegger vs. Plata, the state of California has challenged a 
federal court order under the Prison Reform Litigation Act, which 
requires the state to reduce its prison population to deal with 
overcrowding. The court found that overpopulation is directly 
responsible for the failure of the California system to provide 
inmates with adequate physical and mental health services. California 
argues that the prison reduction order goes beyond the scope of the 
statute and infringes on the state's power.

This case is likely to play out before the court and in the media as 
a battle over states' rights   in this case, the right of the state 
of California to manage its own prison system   and against the 
encroachment of federal judges supplanting the judgment of elected 
leaders. Indeed, 18 states   including Texas   have joined in a brief 
supporting California and making this very argument.

But there's much more at stake in this case than the age-old "state 
sovereignty vs. federal courts" story. In fact, the federal court's 
prison reduction order is something of a last resort   imposed only 
after eight years in which California, while conceding the 
unconstitutional overcrowding in its prison system, has failed to 
reduce its prison population.

Built for 80,000 prisoners, the California corrections system houses 
twice that number. In 2006, a report from a court-ordered receiver 
determined that until the overpopulation problem was addressed, it 
would be impossible to fix the prison's health care services.

But the California Legislature has failed to enact a plan to reduce 
the prison population. There's no political gain to enacting reforms 
that would release prisoners and create more humane conditions for 
those who remain incarcerated.

And this is, in no small measure, a key to our dysfunctional prison 
policies. The decisions we've made as a society about incarceration 
are driven too often by politics and too little by professional 
correctional expertise. Our shamefully bloated prison population is a 
symptom of the problem. The United States incarcerates more than 2 
million prisoners   the vast majority African-Americans and Latinos, 
and a disproportionate number for nonviolent drug offenses.

The fact that overcrowding undermines adequate health care to 
prisoners and exacerbates negative mental health outcomes has been 
well-known for decades. It's also well-established that prison 
overcrowding endangers corrections officers and other personnel who 
work in prisons. (In an extraordinary move, the organization 
representing the 35,000 correctional officers in the California 
system filed a brief on the side of the Plata plaintiffs, arguing 
that overcrowded conditions make it impossible for corrections 
officers to provide adequate care.)

Yet states throughout the country have plowed forward, imposing 
draconian sentencing guidelines without ensuring adequate funding or 
facilities to meet the needs created by such policies, which favor 
warehousing convicts over providing drug-treatment, educational and 
vocational-training programs.

States' rights come with responsibilities. The condition of our 
prison system is a reflection of irresponsible state and federal 
policies that have often been politically expedient but fiscally and 
morally unsound.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake