A panel of federal judges on Thursday ordered California Gov. Jerry Brown to release thousands of state prison inmates before their full sentences are served. Hit the jump.

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The three federal judges wrote in a 51-page order that regardless of any existing local laws, the governor must immediately take steps to release prisoners, perhaps by expanding good-behavior time credits that would allow inmates to finish their sentences early.

The ruling allows the state to decide how to carry out the order, enabling officials to, for example, substitute other prisoners for early release. But the judges said they expected the prison capacity to be down to 137 percent — roughly 110,000 inmates — by the end of the year. The prisons are currently at 150 percent capacity, nearly 10,000 short of the order, according to the state.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the current state prison system amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and demanded changes to improve health and living conditions for prisoners. Gov. Jerry Brown has aggressively fought the court orders in recent months, arguing that state’s prison crisis is over and demanding an end to federal oversight, but the judges have threatened to hold him in contempt. Even before Thursday’s ruling, he made it clear that he would appeal for a second time to the Supreme Court.

The judges cited the state’s “repeated failure to take necessary steps to remedy the constitutional violations” in their latest ruling and said that any appeal of the plan would not push back Thursday’s order. The state must report its steps to reduce the population to the court every two weeks or be held in contempt, the judges wrote.

“The governor is supposed to act immediately,” said Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office, which initially sued the state over prison conditions in 1990 and argued in front of the Supreme Court. “As the court made clear, there should not be any significant impact on the public’s safety.”

But in a statement on Thursday afternoon, the governor made it clear he had no intention of releasing prisoners swiftly. “The state will seek an immediate stay of this unprecedented order to release almost 10,000 inmates by the end of this year,” Mr. Brown said.

The prisons are overcrowded but is this the right decision. Let us know what you think.

via NYTimes