August 5, 2011
LAO: Reducing Prison Overcrowding in California
August 2011 Report from the Legislative Analyst's Office:
On May 23, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in a lawsuit against the state involving prison overcrowding. Specifically, the court upheld the ruling of a federal three-judge panel requiring the state to reduce overcrowding in its prisons to 137.5 percent of its “design capacity” within two years. Currently, the state prison system is operating at roughly 180 percent of design capacity—or about 34,000 inmates more than the limit established by the three-judge panel. The ruling, however, did not specify the particular measures that the state must implement to comply...
