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California unlikely to meet prison crowding reduction requirement
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prisons-20120811,0,6752352.storySACRAMENTO — California's progress in relieving its teeming prisons has slowed so much that it probably won't comply with a court-ordered population reduction, and judges have raised the prospect of letting some inmates out early.
Three federal jurists have given the state until Friday to come up with a schedule for identifying prisoners "unlikely to reoffend or who might otherwise be candidates for early release" and to detail other ways to hasten the emptying of double-bunked cells.
In the interim, the judges have ordered California to "take all steps necessary" to meet their existing deadline for population cuts.
A recent flurry of legal motions that provoked the judges' Aug. 3 order shines the first light on shortcomings in California's plan for fixing its prison system — one so overburdened, with healthcare so poor, that the U.S. Supreme Courtsaid incarceration there was tantamount to "cruel and unusual punishment."