L.A. Now Live: Discuss latest on prison crowding, Brown’s court win

A panel of federal judges granted Gov. Jerry Brown a two-year delay in orders to reduce prison crowding.

Join Times reporter Paige St. John at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday for an L.A. Now Live chat about the judges’ decision and the state of prison crowding in California.

Brown won the delay with promises to consider a sentencing commission and “comprehensive and sustainable” changes in prisons. He now has until Feb. 28, 2016, to reduce crowding to 137.5% of what the state’s prisons were built to hold.

The order puts California on a timetable for those reductions, requiring that prison crowding be lowered to 143% by June 30 of this year. And it limits the number of inmates California can send out of state to private prisons to current levels, about 8,900 inmates.

The order “acknowledges” that the state intends to meet crowding caps in part by increasing its use of contracted prison cells in county jails, community-run correctional facilities and private prisons within the state’s borders.

Questions can be submitted live during the 12:30 p.m. chat or by tweeting them to @LANow.