Supreme Court’s Scary Power Grab

The U.S. Supreme Court effectively ordered California on Monday to release 33,000 inmates over two years from an in-state prison population that numbers about 143,000.

Kent Scheidegger of the tough-on-crime Criminal Justice Legal Foundation blogged that Californians shouldn’t “bother investing much in a car. It will be open season on cars, given that car thieves (nonviolent offenders) will never go to prison no matter how many times they are caught.”

The 5-4 Plata decision upheld a federal three-judge panel that in 2009 found that overcrowding in California prisons is “criminogenic” — likely to produce criminals — and ordered state prisons to run at 137.5 percent of design capacity. The state’s prisons are designed to hold 80,000 inmates. (Be it noted, 100 percent capacity means one inmate per cell.)

Read More at Real Clear Politics By Debra Saunders, Real Clear Politics