Crime & Safety

'Public Safety Crisis' in Riverside County as Prisoners Ordered Free, Prosecutor Says

In Riverside County, a senior Deputy District Attorney said 11,000 prisoners have been freed already to overcome overcrowding.

Riverside County may see a "public safety crisis" because the U.S Supreme Court Friday reaffirmed its order ordering an immediate end to severe overcrowding in California's prisons, a county prosecutor said.

In a 6-3 decision Friday, the high court ordered California to find other quarters for nearly 10,000 inmates, easing what has repeatedly been ruled to be "cruel and unusual punishment."

Federal judges at the trial, appeals and Supreme courts have already ruled in favor in inmates. The governor had argued that recent shifts of prisoners to county jails, and other steps, have shown solid progress to eliminate those unconstitutional overcrowding conditions.

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Friday, the court ruled again that the prison population must be reduced, immediately.

Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, and wrote, "California must now release upon the public nearly 10,000 inmates convicted of serious crimes, about 1,000 for every city larger than Santa Ana."

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But the majority voted to back up its 2011 decision that putting three inmates in single-bunk cells, providing spotty and inferior health care and other serious overcrowding violations violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

It ordered the state to reduce the prison census to 137.5 percent of the prisons' design capacity.

An attorney with the Prison Law Office in Berkeley, Paul Clement, denounced the state's delaying tactics and appeals as "open defiance of the federal judiciary."

In Riverside, a senior Deputy District Attorney said 11,000 prisoners have been freed already to overcome overcrowding, and repeat crimes is now reversing past drops in crime rates.

"Realignment has created a public safety crisis," said Michael Hestrin, who is also running for District Attorney. "We have to come up with places to house prisoners.

"The answer is not flinging open the doors to the prison," he said. No other candidates could be contacted late Friday.

In Los Angeles, county supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said the governor should "stop pussyfooting and immediately utilize available detention beds, at less than half the cost of the state's prison beds."

Antonovich said those beds were at private and out-of-state prisons.

– City News Service.


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