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Judges grant California six additional months to cut prison population
January 31, 2013
On Tuesday, a panel of three federal judges granted California six additional months to comply with federal orders to reduce prison overcrowding. About six years ago, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson appointed federal receiver J. Clark Kelso to oversee the state’s prison health care system after determining that an average of one inmate per week died as a result of malpractice or neglect. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered California to reduce its inmate population to help improve prison health care.
Ammiano decries Gov. Brown’s veto of media access to prisoners
October 1, 2012
Assemblymember Tom Ammiano decried Gov. Jerry Brown’s veto yesterday of legislation that would have returned openness to California’s prison system. Ammiano’s bill, AB 1270, would have restored, not expanded as noted in the veto message, media access to the level that existed in 1996 when the CDC clamped down on the press’ ability to interview specific prisoners.
Starving in solitary: California prison hunger strikers’ health declines, but state will not negotiate
July 16, 2011
How long does it take for a man on hunger strike to starve to death? The answer depends on what kind of physical shape that man was in to begin with. In 1981, it took the 10 Irish Republican hunger strikers – who were drinking water – from 46 to 73 days to die in Britain’s Maze Prison outside Belfast. Will it come to this is California? Based on the response so far from the state, it appears that it could.
The Scott sisters’ ‘debt to society’ and the new Jim Crow
January 10, 2011
Jamie and Gladys Scott walked out of prison Friday into the free world. Yet the sisters’ “debt to society” is still far from paid. The conditions of their release stipulate that Gladys Scott must give Jamie Scott a kidney, and the sisters will have to pay out money to maintain their freedom.
Life, health care, prisons and cutting costs
October 4, 2009
Although much of prison health care is inadequate, many of its youthful captives can at least squeak by on what’s presently provided. Not so for those over 50 years of age, most of whom are beset by the common old age infirmities. The smartest and quickest way to begin reducing prison health care costs and prison overcrowding is to release aged and infirmed Lifers and those serving Life Without Parole (LWOPs).
Friday, Aug. 7, call Jerry Brown and tell him to drop the appeal!
August 6, 2009
On Tuesday, Aug. 4, a federal three-judge panel ordered California to release 44,000 people in prison. Call and fax Attorney General Jerry Brown all day Friday, Aug. 7, and demand that he not appeal the ruling.