California, just as many other states, have violent offenders that are trying their best to get an appeal or find some way to prove their innocence…even if they’re not. But, the Supreme Court made a detrimental decision Monday to dump inmates into the street at an alarming rate.
The Supreme Court’s decision will not go over well with victims’ families or the neighborhoods that will be the recipients of their new neighbors. The prisons massive overcrowding led the Court to a 5-4 decision to release more than 33,000 prisoners between now and 2013, according to the L.A. Times.
Because of the overcrowding, the prisons have given less than humane medical treatment to prisoners as well as not providing necessary accommodations, like toilets, to prisoners. The prisons that were built for 80,000, instead house 156,000.
One of the justices, Anthony M. Kennedy, who is a Sacramento native, spoke to the court about prisoners being suicidal held in “telephone booth-sized cages without toilets”. he said “Some have been sick and died before they could get proper health care. As many as 200 prisoners may live in a gymnasium, and as many as 54 may share a single toilet.”