Schwarzenegger
California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. v. Schwarzenegger
Opinion
Opinion
Scotland, J.
— In October 2005, California’s prison system reached a milestone that its facilities were ill equipped to handle. Prison inmates numbered 166,148, a historic high greatly exceeding the capacity for which the prisons were designed. It is undisputed that severe overcrowding of state prisons posed a serious threat to the health and safety of inmates, correctional officers, and the general public because it (1) heightened the risk of inmate violence against other inmates and prison staff, (2) caused power failures that jeopardized prison security, (3) resulted in sewage spills and environmental contamination that polluted groundwater and increased the risk of the transmission of infectious illnesses, and (4) required the early release of offenders from county jails because of the inability of California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to expeditiously move inmates from jails to state prisons.
After the Legislature rejected his proposals to deal with the problem, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called a special session of the Legislature to “address this crisis.” However, the Legislature adjourned without taking any remedial action.