Supreme Court Orders 46,000 Inmates Released in California!!!

[Forevermah]

Supreme Court Addresses Inhumane Conditions in California Prisons, Orders Release of 46,000 Inmates

May. 23 2011 - 4:01 pm |
By BEN KERSCHBERG

Source: U.S. Supreme Court's Opinion in Brown v. Plata (May 23, 2011)

In a highly controversial 5-4 decision today, the Supreme Court upheld with “undoubted, grave concern” a lower court opinion that held that no remedy for the systemic violation of constitutional rights in California prisons would be effective without reducing the State’s prison system population.

Brown v. Plata arose from two separate class actions: Brown involved a class of prisoners with serious mental disorders; Coleman v. Brown involves prisoners with serious physical conditions. (The “Brown” in question is Governor Jerry Brown, who was sued in his official capacity.) These cases were consolidated and considered together by a three-judge district court panel.

The Court ordered that the State reduce its prison population to 137.5 percent of design capacity — hardly ideal, but a figure supported by numerous experts in the field, as we shall see. Based on today’s California prison population, this would require a reduction of as many as 46,000 inmates. To say the least, this is serious business, but it’s a remedy that must be put into context by considering current conditions within that State’s penal system. As we shall see, it is also not a reduction that requires the release of felons, as Justice Scalia asserts in his important, blistering dissent.

The Situation Inside California Prisons

The degree of overcrowding in California’s prisons is “exceptional,” the Court notes. Designed to accommodate a prison population under 80,000, the State’s prisons operated at around 200% of capacity for at least 11 years. According to the State’s own Corrections Independent Review Panel, “severe overcrowding imperils the safety of both correctional employees and inmates.”

In addition to the Review Panel, it’s instructive to hear what others have said about the state of affairs in California’s prisons:

   1. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger — Hardly a softy, in 2006 then-Governor Schwarzennegger declared a state of emergency in the State’s prisons, stating that “immediate action is necessary to prevent death and harm caused by California’s severe prison overcrowding.” The consequences of inaction, he concluded, include “increased, substantial risk for transmission of infectious illness” and a suicide rate “approaching an average of one per week.”
   2. Former Head of Corrections in Texas — Having examined the California prison system, Doyle Wayne Scott described the conditions therein as “appalling,” “inhumane,” and “unacceptable.”  He added: “In more than 35 years of prison work experience, I have never seen anything like it.” (emphasis added).
   3. Former Administrator of California Prisons — Ms. Jeanne Woodford, who recently administered the State’s prisons, stated that “overcrowding in [California’s prisons] is extreme, its effects are pervasive and it is preventing the Department [of Corrections] from providing adequate mental and medical health care to prisoners.
   4. Former Head of the Correction Systems of Washington, Maine, and Pennslvania — Joseph Lehman stated that “there is no question that California’s prisons are overcrowded” and that “this is an emergency situation; it calls for drastic and immediate action.” (emphasis added).
   5. Former Medical Director of the Illinois State Prison System — Dr. Robert Shansky opined that extreme departures from the proper medical standards of care were “widespread” and that the proportion of “possibly preventable” deaths was “extremely high.”

Is this a group of unabashed Liberals trying to impose structural injunctions on a system that in fact hasn’t reached emergency proportions?

What’s Actually Going On In California’s Prisons?

What parade of horribles could possibly result in the descriptions set forth above by prison experts?

Let’s take a look. The Court provides the following examples:

Physical Illness

    * A prisoner with severe abdominal pain died after a 5-week delay in referral to a specialist.
    * A prisoner died of testicular cancer after prison doctors failed to do a work up for cancer for the prisoner, who was in pain for 17 months.
    * Physically ill prisoners were held together in one prison in a 12-by 20-foot cage with up to 50 sick inmates for five hours.
    * In Plata, the State conceded that deficiencies in prison medical care violated prisoners’ Eighth Amendment rights. That’s a pretty profound concession.
    * Overcrowding has increased the incidence of infectious disease and has led to rising prison violence and greater reliance on lockdowns. The average lockdown lasted 12 days. According to the district court, at least 20 lockdowns lasted for 60 days.
    * A review of referrals for urgent specialty care at one prison revealed that only 105 of 316 pending referrals had a scheduled appointment.
    * Urgent specialty referrals at one prison had been pending for six months to a year.

Mental Health

    * Wait times for mental treatment ranged as high as 12 months.
    * The suicide rate in California’s prisons in 2006 was nearly 80% higher than the national average for prison populations.  A court-appointed Special Master found that “72.1% of suicides involved ‘some measure of inadequate assessment, treatment, or intervention, and were therefore most probably foreseeable and/or preventable.’”
    * A federal district could found “overwhelming evidence of systemic failure to deliver necessary care to mentally ill inmates.”
    * In 2007, after 12 years of examining the California penal system, a Special Master appointed by the district court reported that the state of mental health care in California’s prisons was deteriorating.
    * One correctional officer reported that he had kept mentally ill prisoners in segregation for “6 months or more.” Some were held in tiny, phone booth-sized cages without toilets. “The record documents instances of prisoners committing suicide while awaiting treatment.”

According to a Receiver appointed by the federal courts in these two cases to oversee remedial efforts:

    Every day, California prison wardens and health care managers make the difficult decision as to which form of illness (mental or physical) they will ignore because of staff shortages and patient loads.

Preserving Human Dignity

Source: U.S. Supreme Court's Opinion in Brown v. Plata (May 23, 2011)

Once incarcerated, prisoners lose many things. Felons lose the right to vote. To a great extent, all prisoners lose the right to privacy.  They do not lose their human dignity. As Justice Kennedy write:

    Prisoners retain the essence of human dignity in all persons. Respect for that dignity animates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Moreover, prisoners rely on the State. Justice Kennedy continues:

    To incarcerate, society takes from prisoners the means to provide for their own needs. Prisoners are dependent on the State for food, clothing, and necessary medical care. A prison’s failure to provide sustenance for inmates may actually produce physical torture or a lingering death. . . . Just as a prisoner may starve if not fed, he or she may suffer or die if not provided adequate medical care.”

Alternatives to Reducing The Prison Population…..?

Justice Kennedy put it simply:

    When necessary to ensure compliance with a constitutional mandate, courts may enter orders placing limits on a prison’s population.

In reviewing the lower court, the Court here had to find “by clear and convincing evidence” that crowding is the primary violation of a federal right — the Eighth Amendment — and that “no other relief will remedy the violation of that right.”

The Court thus reviewed the lower court’s findings with respect to the possibility of hiring more staff. In both cases, the Court found, the Coleman and Plata courts — again, these cases were consolidated — had a solid basis to doubt that additional efforts to hire staff and build new facilities — not the actual hiring or construction thereof — would achieve a remedy. Why? Money, of course. The state’s fiscal crisis, which the Court considered as a practical prudential reason in reaching its holding, had led to

    vacancy rates for medical and mental health staff that ranged as high as 20% for surgeons, 25% for physicians, 39% for nurse practitioners, and 54.1 for psychiatrists. These percentages are based on the number of positions budgeted by the State.

According to Dr. Ronald Shansky, former Medical Director of the Illinois Prison System, added more staff won’t do the trick. He concluded that “even if the prisons were able to fill all of their vacant health care positions, which they have not been able to do . . . the prisons would still be unable to handle the level of need given the current overcrowding.” The Court stated: “Even on the assumption that vacant positions could be filled, the evidence suggests there would be insufficient space for the necessary additional staff to perform their jobs.”

Reducing The Prison Population

Source: U.S. Supreme Court's Opinion in Brown v. Plata (May 23, 2011)

The lower court three-judge panel deemed “chimerical” any “remedy that requires significant additional spending by the State” in light of California’s ongoing fiscal crisis.

The Court took note of this reality:

    The common thread connecting the State’s proposed remedial efforts is that they would require the State to expend large amounts of money absent a reduction in overcrowding. The Court cannot ignore the political and fiscal reality behind this case. California’s Legislature has not been willing or able to allocate resources necessary to meet this crisis absent a reduction in overcrowding. There is no reason to believe it will begin to do so now, when the State of California is facing an unprecedented budgetary shortfall.

The Court also made clear that the district court panel gave the State “substantial flexibility to determine who should be released.” Justice Scalia’s assertion that only felons will be released is as unfortunate as it as attention-grabbing. However, the States raises the possiblity that “release of seriously mentally ill inmates [would be] likely to create special dangers because of their recidivism rates.” Absent arrangements for proper care and medication, that could well be true. The Court noted both that the State could move for an Order limiting who could be released and that its decision upholding the lower court “encompasses the entire prison system.”

The Court pointed to three methods of reducing overcrowding that would have “little or no impact on public safety.”

   1. Expansion of good-time served credits would allow the State to give early release to only those prisoners who pose the least risk of reoffending.
   2. Diverting low-risk offenders to community programs such as drug treatment, day reporting centers, and electronic monitoring would “likewise lower the prison population without releasing violent convicts.”
   3. Rather than sending large numbers of persons to prison for violating parole, it could punish technical parole violations through community-based programs.

The Court upheld the decision of the three-judge district court panel and adopted its recommendation that the prison population be reduced to 137.5 percent of design capacity.

A Few Thoughts

The California Penal System did not reach this level of crisis overnight. Assigning blame — Democrats, Republicans — is futile. What’s important, I submit humbly, is acknowledging that the State has failed at a systemic level. Most legislators won’t vote for what’s needed — more prisons and staff — because they have their pulse on the political tide and the State is in financial crisis. Something has to give eventually.

The good people of California will soon face the release of 46,000 inmates. The unfortunate reality is that while many of these convicts can be integrated successfully into mainstream society, others probably cannot. Anyone not willing to acknowledge that need only remember one of the most galvanizing names of the 1988 presidential election — Willie Horton.

At some point, there will be hell to pay. No matter how many inmates reintegrate, there will always be a Willie Horton. There’s no way around it. I suppose Californians could then blame the Court’s opinion here and protest in the voting booth. But that won’t solve the problem, will it? Perhaps even fiscally strapped California should do the right thing — build more prisons and hire proper staff, even if that means raising taxes.

Californians should also ask — as we all should — how our society can possibly deem a prison population at 137.5 percent of design capacity — California’s newly mandated benchmark — to be anywhere near acceptable in any American prison system. To me, that — not the Court’s holding — is the real shame of Plata.


http://blogs.forbes.com/benkerschberg/2011/05/23/supreme-court-addresses-inhumane-conditions-in-california-prisons-orders-release-of-46000-inmates/

[Forevermah]

California promises to fix prison crowding, won’t release 33,000 inmates

The court’s order is expected to affect also other American states, particularly Illinois, Alabama and Massachusetts which also grapple with jammed jails.



California officials promised on Tuesday to find a solution to the state’s overcrowded prisons. They assured the state won’t just release 33,000 inmates, but will instead submit plans to the federal courts in the next two weeks.
clearpxl

The plans will outline specific ways how to address the ballooning California penitentiary population. The state’s 33 adult jails hold 143,435 inmates.

The Supreme Court ordered California last week to solve its prison overcrowding problem. The court’s order is expected to affect also other American states, particularly Illinois, Alabama and Massachusetts which also grapple with jammed jails.

Some legal experts, however, opined that the 52-page opinion penned by Justice Anthony Kennedy, specifically referred only to California’s problem.

Most of California’s penitentiary facilities such as the Corcoran State Prison in San Joaquin Valley, the Mule Creek State Prison and the Deuel Vocational Institution hold 150 to 200 percent their original capacity. The Supreme Court ordered the state to cut is overall prison headcount by about 30,000 because the overcrowding makes the prisons fall below the standard of decency.

Among the measures that California plans to submit to the three-man panel is to transfer low-level inmates to county jails from state prisons. Even before the Supreme Court’s order, California had moved 10,088 inmates to contracted out-of-state facilities to reduce the number of prisoners sleeping in gymnasiums, dayrooms and other places not designed for housing them.

 http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/90049526?California%20promises%20to%20fix%20prison%20crowding%2C%20won%26%23146%3Bt%20release%2033%2C000%20inmates#ixzz1NMOthPpg

[Marks_guy]

After reading this, the first thing that popped into my head was little kids pushing food around on their plates so that it looks like they ate! So far, California's big plan is to shuffle people around so that the prisons look less crowded? 

[bmonska]

If their prisons are overcrowded, their county jails must be also but they are going to ship low-level inmates BACK to county, like Mark's_guy said, to make it appear as if the prisons are no longer over crowded? Wow. Who is the genius who came up with that logic?

[rottiemama2003]

But our county jails are already full

[TimeStandsStill]

State will miss prisoner reduction deadline says report

SACRAMENTO
August 8, 2011 5:41am     

•  Says California needs to ask courts for more time

•  Impacting future prison construction


Current state plans to reduce prison overcrowding to conform with a federal court order will fall short in meeting deadlines, according to a report from the nonpartisan Legislative Analysts Office.

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in May requires the state to reduce overcrowding in its prisons to 137.5 percent of its “design capacity” within two years. That would mean moving about 34,000 felons out of state prisons in some fashion.


But a prison realignment plan that the Legislature recently enacted is unlikely by itself to reduce overcrowding sufficiently within the two-year deadline set by the court.


“This indicates to us that, as the U.S. Supreme Court suggested, a somewhat longer timeframe is warranted,” says Mac Taylor, legislative analyst. “In addition, we recommend that the Legislature consider how the overcrowding reduction will affect the types of prison facilities California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has planned to build. Finally, we recommend that the Legislature provide CDCR with more flexibility to use contract beds in order to manage overcrowding, particularly in the near term.”


Addressing these issues would help to better plan for a dramatically reduced state inmate population within the state’s current fiscal situation.


Under construction in Stockton is a new inmate hospital prison but it will not have a significant impact on overcrowding the report says.


“According to information provided to us by the department based on its current plan for … construction, the design capacity of the state’s prison system would increase by about 600 beds by July 2013 and by 13,500 beds by 2018,” says Mr. Taylor’s report.


“This means that the department’s current prison construction plan would likely have little impact on the state’s ability to comply with the … ruling in the next two years — although it could have a much larger impact in the longer term,” he writes.

http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=19064

[TimeStandsStill]

POSTED: Thursday, Sep. 29, 2011
UPDATED: Thursday, Sep. 29, 2011
California prison realignment to put more low-level offenders on streets
By TRACEY KAPLAN - San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE, Calif. - To trim its bulging prison population and cut costs, California is about to gamble on a strategy no other state has tried - unload the responsibility for punishing and rehabilitating thousands of nonviolent felons from the state prison system to local communities.

The state's new massive "realignment" plan - which begins Saturday - amounts to a dramatic retreat from California's costly, tough-on-crime, lock-'em-up approach. No matter how slowly the new strategy unfolds, it will ultimately put more low-level offenders on the streets sooner than they would be under the current rules, either because they are enrolled in rehabilitation programs outside the jail walls, or are serving shorter periods in jail or on post-release supervision.

"It's the biggest change in the criminal justice system in 35 years," since the state switched to imposing fixed-term sentences on most crimes, said Judge Phil Pennypacker, who presides over the criminal division of Santa Clara County Superior Court.

 
Still, the state has been quick to assure the public that switching low-risk convicts from prison blues to county jail jumpsuits will not jeopardize public safety. Killers, robbers and sex offenders like Philip Garrido, who kidnapped 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard and held her in Antioch for 18 years, will remain under the state's watch. No inmates will be released early from prison and bused home. Instead, the 58 counties will gradually begin housing and supervising nonviolent criminals and parole violators as they are sentenced or released.

Despite such assurances, California's plan - which comes after the U.S. Supreme Court in May found that the state's overcrowded prisons constitute cruel and unusual punishment - has touched off a fierce debate: Will changing how we punish low-level criminals like meth users and shoplifters make California more dangerous? Or might it actually make the state safer?

With the startup of realignment just days away, judges, sheriffs, lawyers and probation chiefs throughout California have been frantically meeting to figure out the complex rules. Before long, nearly everyone in county jail will be eligible to get out after serving half their sentence if they behave; currently, jail inmates have to serve two-thirds. Parolees who comply with the conditions of their release also can earn their freedom sooner - in six months, rather than a year.

And sheriffs in some of the 32 counties with court-imposed caps on jail populations or overcrowded jails are likely to release more inmates early.

The lack of jail beds is particularly acute in parts of the Central Valley and Southern California, especially Los Angeles County, which collectively released more than 68,000 sentenced inmates in 2009 before they were due to be freed.

The situation has raised a tense question about whether California's declining crime rate will shoot up as the state essentially steers its limited resources toward locking up serious offenders and encourages counties to experiment on a grand scale with cheaper alternative programs for less-hardened defendants such as electronic monitoring, vocational training and drug treatment. Some have compared it to medical triage; lower-risk offenders will be "treated" with experimental methods that have shown promise in states from Texas to Hawaii.

"It's the greatest opportunity California has had in decades to advance criminal justice reform," said Alex Busansky, president of the Oakland-based National Council on Crime and Delinquency. "The challenge is how to manage it so it's a success. Without the resources and the training, crime could spike and the political pendulum could swing back the other way."


Law enforcement officials already are predicting a surge in property crimes such as shoplifting, burglary and ID theft, particularly in communities that have had to lay off police officers. Sacramento County Sheriff Scott R. Jones went so far as to dub the state's plan to reduce the prison population by about 33,000 inmates primarily through realignment "asinine," and the top brass of the California Police Chiefs Association met with Gov. Jerry Brown this month to request money for new officers to fight the possible crime wave.

"I'd say to the community, 'Nail it down, chain it down, lock it down - be ever vigilant,' " said Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson, who had to release 2,601 inmates for lack of jail space in 2009, the latest year for which figures are available.


Yet in a trend that confounds researchers, crime has continued to drop - and is now at 1960s levels nationwide and in California - despite the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Some point to factors such as the end of the crack cocaine epidemic and advent of strategic policing for the safer streets, and others to the high incarceration rate. Proponents say California could be even safer as offenders respond to a carrot-and-stick approach - treatment programs and intermediate punishments such as short-term "flash incarcerations" of up to 10 days, rather than longer prison stints.


"I don't think this will cause a public safety disaster at all," said Jeanne Woodford, former San Quentin State Prison warden and acting head of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, who currently directs the nonprofit Death Penalty Focus. "I think it will make California safer."

The new strategy could change lives for the better, some say, while others contend the current system already provides plenty of second chances for this group of offenders.


San Jose ex-convict Glen Maxwell spent much of his adult life - 15 of the past 30 years - in prison for nonviolent drug crimes, at a cost of more than a half-million dollars to taxpayers. Under realignment, Maxwell, 49, might have been put in a cheaper drug treatment program well before he became a perennial inmate. There was no guarantee the program would have worked, but Maxwell said all that prison does is harden people, the opposite of what is needed to overcome addictions like his.

"In prison, it's a survival thing," he said. "You got your guard up to problems inside, and inside your head."

Realignment might have also made a difference in Brenda Valencia's life. But despite stints on probation, community service and in jail, she never really started to wake up until a judge sent her to prison for two months this year.

Her underlying offense - failing to pay speeding tickets and driving with a suspended license - mushroomed into a major legal ordeal after she ignored court orders and fled from police during a subsequent traffic stop.

Realignment supporters say what she really needed early on was a life skills class and economic assistance. Recently, the 29-year-old single mother of two boys relocated from San Jose to Santa Cruz after she secured federal housing assistance in the oceanside county.

"Prison was a big eye-opener for me, but it's the housing that really helped," she said.

Counties were given state funds totaling $400 million this fiscal year to spend on whatever mix of incarceration, supervision and programs they choose. State finance analysts say realignment will save about $53 million in prison costs this fiscal year, $125 million next year and $338 million the year after, even as the counties' allocation rises to about $1 billion in 2013-14.


But even if counties had the capacity or the staff to supervise more inmates, the state is not giving them enough money to simply lock them up. Incarceration is an expensive option; in the Bay Area, jail costs about $77 a day, compared with up to $49 for electronic monitoring. Drug treatment costs a little more than jail - $88 a day for a 90-day residential program - but if it works, it saves taxpayers money in the long run.

Many counties complain the funding falls far short of covering the cost of alternative programs - and they worry the state could cut it even more as the budget crisis worsens. The governor's first attempt to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot guaranteeing future funding failed, but he vowed last week to get such an amendment on the November 2012 ballot - even if he has to launch an initiative campaign himself.

A recent poll by the Los Angeles Times and University of Southern California found 80 percent of voters support realignment, though it's unclear whether they will agree to tax themselves to fund it or to designate a portion of the state's general fund to cover the cost. Nearly 70 percent even approve the early release of some low-level, nonviolent offenders. In a major shift, voters are fed up with prison spending, which exceeds what the state spends on colleges and universities, yet produces the second-highest recidivism rate in the country: 67.5 percent.


Even conservative states such as Texas have been steering nonviolent offenders into drug treatment and re-entry programs instead of building new prisons. The strategy has been so successful that Texas closed a prison this summer for the first time in its history. Research indicates prisons may actually increase crime for several reasons, partly because it gives inmates little practice in making decisions and encourages them to be distrustful.

But to work, realignment requires an enormous culture shift by both the jails, which are geared to incarcerating people short term and not rehabilitating them, and by probation officers, who must balance helping felons with protecting public safety.

"It's not going to work if we just go from prisons to bad jails," said Craig Haney, a professor of the psychology of law at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a widely recognized expert on prisons.


Even Santa Clara County officials worry, particularly about the parolees who will soon report to county probation officers instead of state parole agents. Although their current offenses are nonviolent, many have violent criminal histories. Probation plans to arm a handful of officers.

"I'm nervous about some of the people," county executive Jeff Smith said. "While I'm hopeful the programs will work, they are really not a panacea."



Read more: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/09/29/2206901/california-prison-realignment.html#ixzz1ZOl5tYHT

[rottiemama2003]

All of the state of IL county jails are full....

[TimeStandsStill]

Californians to Watch: Matthew Cate directs prison downsizing

By Jon Ortiz The Sacramento Bee
Published: Monday, Dec. 26, 2011 - 12:00 am 
Last Modified: Monday, Dec. 26, 2011 - 8:43 am

The usual measures of bureaucratic success for a state government agency are bigger budgets, expanding influence and a higher profile for the person at the very top.

Matthew Cate, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, lacks all but the last.

As 2012 begins, the 45-year-old former deputy attorney general finds himself steering the department's historic downsizing with a flat budget and a federal court looking over his shoulder.
 
Some people might see it as managing decline. Cate says it is a chance to remake California's penal system into a leaner, more focused institution.

"For the first time, maybe, there's a chance to run the prisons the way they were designed to be run," he said.

Lawmakers decided to lighten the department's workload through a "realignment" plan that sends more criminals to local jails instead of state prison, making Cate the face of a massive experiment that launched Oct. 1 but will take years to execute.

The goal: Reduce the inmate population at the state's 33 prisons from 144,000 in October to about 110,000 in about two years. As of Nov. 30, the state's prisoner head count was at about 137,000.

At the outset of Gov. Jerry Brown's comeback term in office this year, the Capitol swirled with rumors that Cate would be one of the first casualties of the administration's turnover.

Appointed to the job by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2008, Cate inherited a deeply troubled department under court order to relieve overcrowding and a prison medical system under federal control.

As the department struggled to cut costs, a Wall Street Journal story last April argued that pay, job security and pension benefits made graduating from California's correctional officer academy better than a Harvard degree.

Cate was also in the crossfire of a bitter contract fight between Schwarzenegger and the guards' union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. The GOP governor eventually declared impasse and imposed terms, putting Cate in the unenviable position of managing about 32,000 CCPOA members at war with his boss.

He nevertheless hung on when Democrat Brown took office.

"Usually, when the governor keeps on a senior appointee from the previous administration, it's a because of a need for continuity," said Dan Schnur, director of USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics. "You don't want to start from square one unless you have to."

As realignment takes hold next year, Cate wants to remake the prison system "instead of taking the same model and just making it smaller." So look for him to press for more money for inmate education and rehabilitation. He wants to take back control over prison health care. He'll have to manage shrinking the 63,000- employee workforce.

Meanwhile, some local officials say their jails are filling up more quickly than expected with offenders who used to go to state prison.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, a Republican, recently told a Southern California television station that realignment is an ill-conceived "fool's errand" that undermines state sentencing policies.

"Given not only the various challenges, but all the stakeholders involved," Schnur said, "Cate might have the most politically challenging job in the state."

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/26/4145670/californians-to-watch-matt-cate.html#storylink=cpy