By C1 Staff
CHINO, Calif — The California Institution for Men in Chino’s population has been reduced per Supreme Court orders, but the state still has a long way to go from reducing its overall prison population by 30,000.
According to the NY Times, Gov. Jerry Brown declared this month that “the prison emergency is over in California,” arguing that federal courts should relinquish control of the state prison system and that placing more demands on correctional facilities was simply “nit-picking.”
In response, a court-appointed monitor said that Mr. Brown’s demand to end oversight is “not only premature but a needless distraction that could affect care for mentally ill inmates.” The monitor cited dozens of suicides and long periods of isolation instead of treatment.
Other changes, such as leaky toilets being repaired and prisoners are being let out into the yard, are called by critics to be nothing more than cosmetic and that the system does not provide adequate care to the physically or mentally ill inmates.
“To pretend everything is OK is just crazy,” said Donald Specter, the executive director of Prison Law Office. “There are still prisoners who are not getting the care they need, and there is no way they have timely access to a doctor.”
The reduction in overcrowding has not been uniform; in Chino, the prison is operating at 120 percent capacity. The prison population in Avenal, a state facility for men in Northern California, is at 160 percent of capacity.
The state says that the figures used to determine the capacity of the prisons are arbitrary and out of date. The vast majority of cells that on paper are designed for only one inmate can easily accommodate two, says Terri McDonald, the state’s under secretary of corrections.
“The system is constitutional systemically,” she said. “If you were to ask if there was an individual case that could be handled differently, that is going to be a problem anywhere. Anybody looking for perfection is going to be disappointed.”