By Steve E. Swenson
The Bakersfield Californian
KERN COUNTY, Calif. — A tentative ruling by a federal panel of judges to release tens of thousands of inmates from California prisons won’t happen any time soon.
A three-judge panel suggested some 36,000 to 57,000 inmates -- of the total 158,000 -- will need to be released over the next several years because conditions are so bad that inmates die regularly from suicide or inadequate care.
Not only would any such final ruling be appealed by the state Department of Corrections, but Kern County’s top prosecutor is among a group of law enforcement intervenors in the lawsuit ready to challenge the decision.
Kern District Attorney Ed Jagels said Monday’s ruling by the “extremely liberal” panel ignores medical and mental health improvements which have been made in the last few years.
On the other hand, Kern Public Defender Mark Arnold said now is the time to work on keeping people out of prison in the first place. Those in prison who are harmless should be released, he said.
One example would be Bernice Cubie, a 57-year-old Kern woman who is dying of cancer and kidney problems. Cubie, who has a long criminal history, is serving an 11-year term for possession of $10 worth of drugs, he said.
Kern has a major stake in the outcome.
It has four major prisons with an inmate population of 22,000, twice the design capacity. Jagels said that generally means cells have two bunks instead of one.
And the latest figures show Kern has sent 5,100 people to prison, which is three percent of the inmate population. Kern’s general population is 2.1 percent of the state’s population.
Jagels said if huge numbers of prisoners are released “we’re talking about a huge spike in the crime rate” where people would become victims of crimes that otherwise wouldn’t.
Arnold disagreed, saying the Department of Corrections is in the best position to judge which inmates can be released without harming the public.
The state simply cannot afford its current rate of incarceration. “Building more prisons than universities does not improve civility in our state,” he said.
The state can cut the population of its 33 adult prisons through changes in parole and other policies without endangering public safety, the judges said.
Jagels called that an “Alice in Wonderland” approach, bent on decriminalizing property crime.
One proposal currently before the legislature is to directly discharge inmates without putting them on active parole if they are non-serious, non-violent, non-sex offenders, Department of Corrections spokesman Seth Unger said.
Arnold said that underscores the need to battle the drug problem by treating -- not imprisoning -- the drug user. Plus, put more resources into prevention, he said.
Right now, Kern has 57 parole agents supervising nearly 4,500 parolees.
Unger said a comprehensive approach by state and local officials would have to plan how any inmate release will be carried out. It’s too early to speculate how parole would be impacted by a prison release, he said.
But as the panel’s ruling stands now, the corrections department feels that kind of release “would pose a significant threat to public safety. If the final ruling is the same, we will be appealing to the United States Supreme Court.”
Copyright 2009 The Bakersfield Californian