California Panel Tackles Prison Overcrowding

November 18, 2008 12:10 p.m. EST

San Francisco, CA (AHN) - A three-judge panel will hear on Tuesday a historic lawsuit that takes a hard look at prison overcrowding. It is the result of a lawsuit filed two decades ago by California inmate Jay Lee Gates, who questioned the quality of health care while in prison.

Prisoners' rights lawyers took the cudgel for Gates and made the case a class action lawsuit on behalf of all present and future inmates of the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. The case, which included another successor class action suit, maintains overcrowding is the main reason why medical and mental health care are below standards throughout California's penal system.

The suits contend a very high prison population could not be handled properly by the state's health care providers. The lawyers of prisoners will ask that California's core prison population be reduced to 110,000 from the current 160,000 or 130 percent of the facilities' capacity versus the current 200 percent.

The panel which will hear the case is made up of district judges Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento, Thelton Henderson of San Francisco and Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt of Los Angeles.

At the last election, California voters rejected Proposition 5 which sought to widen programs to divert drug addicts and violent offenders from jails to rehabilitation centers and Proposition 6, which proposed to hike state spending on programs for police, prosecutors, jails and juvenile centers to $965 million a year.