MESSAGE
| DATE | 2016-10-05 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] Hey, Ruben! Plastic bag initiatives!
|
Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben.safir-at-my.liu.edu):
> The court can try it but that would make it very difficult in the future
> for them.
'California is under immense legal pressure to reduce prison
overcrowding. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that overcrowding
in California’s penitentiaries violated the Eight Amendment’s
protections against cruel and unusual punishment (in part because
of prisoners’ problems accessing health care). The high court
ordered California to reduce its prison population, which at
the time stood at 140,000 inmates, to 137.5 percent of the
system's designed capacity (or roughly 114,000 inmates). Lower
courts set a deadline for California to meet that threshold by
February 2016.'
http://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-california-prison-population-proposition-47-impact.html
> What usually happens in these cases is a nod and a shrug and a lot of
> passive resistance, and further litigation ... and so on.
A wise person does not commit contempt of court against the United State
Supreme Court and the entire chain of Federal courts.
> Anyway, build more jails.
I'm for it.
However, the real cause of the out-of-control prison population was
three-fold. (1) The idiotic 'three strikes' law. Parts of this were
finally rolled back in 2012, but this left a huge number of people in
the system who hadn't been before, often on trivial third charges.
(2) The War on Some Drugs. (3) Until 2014, excessively low thresholds
for felonies. 2014's Proposition 47 fixed this, raising the threshold
for property crimes to be deemed felonies to $950. (I think it was
$500.) But again, it will take quite a while for the effect of that to
work through the system.
Peak prison population was 2006, but it simply takes a long time to work
down.
> Execute more prisoners.
Nah, you do it. I'm busy.
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