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. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake