By Brad Branan
Sac Bee
SACRAMENTO — California will move nearly 10,000 inmates to county jails, community correctional facilities and out-of-state prisons by year’s end in response to a federal court order, the state’s corrections secretary said Monday.
Jeffrey Beard described the plan to The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board three days after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Gov. Jerry Brown’s request to delay a court order to reduce inmates by December. The reduction is necessary to improve substandard health care in the prisons, the courts have ruled.
How much the state will use each reduction option depends in part on how the three-judge panel overseeing the case responds to questions from the state, Beard said. The Brown administration needs to know if it can pay for increased prison costs without legislative approval, he said.
The court must approve the state’s options for inmate reduction in general, he said.
California’s plan would meet the requirements of the court’s order but still represent “bad policy,” said Donald Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, which represents inmates in the case.
“Those are all expensive options, and they don’t do anything to get low-risk prisoners out of prison and into the community,” he said.
Full story: California corrections chief outlines plan to reduce prison population