Lawsuits seek to limit new inmates

SACRAMENTO —  Five weeks after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in California’s jampacked prison system, inmates went to court Monday to limit new admissions until the population declines.

In legal papers filed in Sacramento and San Francisco, lawyers for the convicts said only a population cap imposed by a federal court would remedy prison conditions that amount to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.

Among the symptoms revealing a prison system in distress, the lawyers said, are a “skyrocketing” number of inmates seeking treatment for mental disorders and an inmate suicide rate that is twice the national average, with 37 convicts taking their lives behind bars this year.”

“Court intervention is necessary because this state has simply been unable to take any meaningful action to resolve the prison overcrowding crisis,” said Donald Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office, which filed one of the motions.

The Legislature’s failure to act during a recent special session on prison crowding, Specter added, was final proof of government’s refusal to address a teeming, violent system packed to twice its intended capacity.

Attorneys said that for now, they are not pushing for a court-ordered release of inmates to thin the population. Instead, they suggest diverting certain low-risk convicts, especially parole violators, away from prison and sanctioning them in the community.

Nearly 21,000 parole violators are in state lockups, serving terms rarely lasting more than six months. Many, Specter argued, are imprisoned on relatively minor violations and could be punished through home detention or electronic monitoring or sent to residential drug treatment programs.

The legal action follows Schwarzenegger’s declaration that conditions in California’s $8.6-billion correctional system have created a health risk and “extreme peril” for officers and inmates.

Crowding is so severe, the governor said, that it has overwhelmed water, sewer and electrical systems at some prisons and fueled hundreds of riots, melees and smaller disturbances in the last year.

Schwarzenegger issued his emergency decree in part to give him legal authority to ship thousands of inmates to prisons in other states. That process began earlier this month, when 80 inmates were flown to a private facility in Tennessee.

Contracts to house 2,200 more convicts in other states have been signed, and corrections officials are canvassing the population for more volunteers. If they do not reach their target of 5,000 felons who volunteer to be transferred, officials said, the moves would become mandatory.

Bill Sessa, spokesman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, acknowledged Monday that overcrowding is a problem but said prison leaders are addressing it. Sessa said officials would return to the Legislature in January with plans to add beds at existing prisons, build community reentry facilities and take other measures to create space.

Sessa expressed skepticism about any proposal to divert parole violators away from prison to cut the incoming population: “These people don’t go back to prison for a trivial reason, contrary to popular myth,” he said.

The legal motions were filed Monday before two federal judges handling ongoing class-action lawsuits over prison medical care and mental health treatment. The motions ask that a three-judge panel be convened to weigh the proposed population cap, a step mandated under the Prison Litigation Reform Act passed by Congress in 1995.

Although county jails have often been subject to court-imposed caps, it is rare for an entire prison system to be subject to such a limit, experts said. The legal papers suggest the population should range from 111,300 to 138,000. It numbers 173,000.

“Ideally, you want to see the executive branch bring this under control on their own steam,” said Michael Jacobson, author of the book “Downsizing Prisons” and the former commissioner of corrections and probation in New York City. “But this could be a catalyst to spur California to undertake some serious, systemic reform, which it clearly needs to do.”

Lawyers seeking the action say the governor’s declaration of an emergency lays out a solid foundation for a population cap.

They also note that the federal receiver appointed this year to take over the disgraced prison healthcare system, Robert Sillen, has said overcrowding may make his court-ordered task of improving medical care to constitutional standards impossible. That statement could further influence judges evaluating the request, the lawyers said.

Over the last 25 years, the California prison population has grown by more than 500% and the system has expanded from 12 penitentiaries to 33. Projections show that 23,000 more convicts will be added within five years, bringing the incarcerated total to 193,000. More than 15,000 inmates are housed in areas not designed as sleeping quarters, including hallways and gymnasiums. About 1,500 are sleeping in triple-decker bunks.

In their legal papers, lawyers said the crowding has caused many prisons to operate on continual “lockdown” status, meaning that a “shockingly high” percentage of inmates are confined to their cells around the clock. While on lockdown, prisoners do not receive therapy, recreation time, educational programs or other services and are released only for an occasional shower.

Concerns about crowding are not limited to California and are not new. In 2004, an independent review panel appointed by Schwarzenegger and led by former Gov. George Deukmejian concluded that crowding was at the root of the system’s myriad problems.

“The key to reforming the system,” the commission wrote, “lies in reducing the numbers.”

Since then, the population has increased by nearly 10,000 prisoners. And new laws toughening criminal penalties -- including Proposition 83, which passed last week and lengthens prison terms for sex offenders -- will intensify the growth.

On Monday, a second lawsuit was filed to block enforcement of Proposition 83. Filed in federal court in Los Angeles by a sex offender on parole, the suit says the measure is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy because it requires ex-offenders to undergo electronic monitoring for life.

Forcing sex offenders to wear tracking bracelets on their ankles equates to “a badge of shame, a scarlet letter, that guarantees a life as a pariah,” said the lawsuit, filed anonymously to protect the plaintiff’s safety.

A separate suit, filed last week in San Francisco, has temporarily blocked enforcement of another provision of the initiative that bans ex-offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park. A federal court hearing on that suit is scheduled for the end of the month.

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jenifer.warren@latimes.com