More than 40 000 prisoners could be released from California prisons in the coming months. Not because of an amnesty, or the expiration of their sentence and procedural situation, but thanks to a ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States. The nine judges of the Court - a majority, 5 against, 4 - have determined that the living conditions in overcrowded and unsanitary prisons are "incompatible with the concept of human dignity." Hence the order to empty them.
The California prison system can accommodate 80 000 people. At the time the inmates are double. The indication is down to a figure still higher, but more realistic about 110 000 inmates, resulting in release of more than 40 000 people. This is a resounding decision, that no accident has raised the ire of more conservative judges of the Court, especially Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
The order to free thousands of people is "the most radical injunction issued by a court in the history of the United States," said Scalia, who foresees a rapid rise of crimes in the streets of California. "There can be risks, errors, including damage to citizens," the courts have responded favorable to the decision.
But the prison situation is now unsustainable, they said, "contrary to the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment." In fact, for years that prisons are a state issue, and a scandal, nationally and internationally. The 33 California prisons are home to a suicide a week.
Each week a prisoner dies of an illness out of jail easily curable. 54 prisoners are divided by average only one bathroom. At its most crowded, in 2006, when the prison reached 172 thousand units, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger finds it necessary to send 10 thousand in prisons in Arizona, Mississippi, Oklahoma.
The prisons are not a problem only in terms of human rights. The California prison system drains 10% of the total budget of the State, more than us each year for public education. Every bed in a prison costs $ 44,000 a year. The transformation of the "Golden State" in a brutal prison machine has precise historical and political reasons.
First of all there was, since the seventies, the criminalization of the struggle against poverty and the drug. Increase in consumption of drugs, the spread of economic crisis, unemployment, petty crime, politicians and authorities have reacted with the instruments of repression, incarceration, stiffer penalties.
The Three Strikes Law, the law imposes a life sentence in the third sentence, is an example of the victory of the options most repressive. The private sector has obviously seen in prisons is a lucrative business. Open a prison means assigning hundreds of contracts: construction, plumbing, catering, maintenance and cleaning.
In 1997, Corrections Corporation of America built a 100-bed prison without ever having received the consent of the State of California. Their motto was: "If we build it, if you will take it." At the end of the Leviathan prison has probably cleaned the streets of California (but research shows that crime has fallen in the United States, even where the authorities have used the hand so heavy).
Surely, this system has produced a situation is no longer sustainable. Not if they have noticed only the Supreme Court, but also politics. The State governor, Democrat Jerry Brown, has just decided to transfer thousands of inmates convicted of minor offenses from state prisons in those counties (which will then in turn leave their dungeons).
Hopefully, in this way, easing pressure on prisons. Above all, it is hoped to alleviate the finances of the state. 
The California prison system can accommodate 80 000 people. At the time the inmates are double. The indication is down to a figure still higher, but more realistic about 110 000 inmates, resulting in release of more than 40 000 people. This is a resounding decision, that no accident has raised the ire of more conservative judges of the Court, especially Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
The order to free thousands of people is "the most radical injunction issued by a court in the history of the United States," said Scalia, who foresees a rapid rise of crimes in the streets of California. "There can be risks, errors, including damage to citizens," the courts have responded favorable to the decision.
But the prison situation is now unsustainable, they said, "contrary to the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment." In fact, for years that prisons are a state issue, and a scandal, nationally and internationally. The 33 California prisons are home to a suicide a week.
Each week a prisoner dies of an illness out of jail easily curable. 54 prisoners are divided by average only one bathroom. At its most crowded, in 2006, when the prison reached 172 thousand units, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger finds it necessary to send 10 thousand in prisons in Arizona, Mississippi, Oklahoma.
The prisons are not a problem only in terms of human rights. The California prison system drains 10% of the total budget of the State, more than us each year for public education. Every bed in a prison costs $ 44,000 a year. The transformation of the "Golden State" in a brutal prison machine has precise historical and political reasons.
First of all there was, since the seventies, the criminalization of the struggle against poverty and the drug. Increase in consumption of drugs, the spread of economic crisis, unemployment, petty crime, politicians and authorities have reacted with the instruments of repression, incarceration, stiffer penalties.
The Three Strikes Law, the law imposes a life sentence in the third sentence, is an example of the victory of the options most repressive. The private sector has obviously seen in prisons is a lucrative business. Open a prison means assigning hundreds of contracts: construction, plumbing, catering, maintenance and cleaning.
In 1997, Corrections Corporation of America built a 100-bed prison without ever having received the consent of the State of California. Their motto was: "If we build it, if you will take it." At the end of the Leviathan prison has probably cleaned the streets of California (but research shows that crime has fallen in the United States, even where the authorities have used the hand so heavy).
Surely, this system has produced a situation is no longer sustainable. Not if they have noticed only the Supreme Court, but also politics. The State governor, Democrat Jerry Brown, has just decided to transfer thousands of inmates convicted of minor offenses from state prisons in those counties (which will then in turn leave their dungeons).
Hopefully, in this way, easing pressure on prisons. Above all, it is hoped to alleviate the finances of the state.
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