It was a great opportunity to orient the members to the very real threat a federal court, confronted with systemic inadequated in prison health care, would issue sweeping reform -- just like Judge Justice did from 1980-2001, and the kind the Supreme Court upheld in its 2011 Brown v. Plata decision.
The solution is simple -- sentencing reform. We put 70,000 people in prison a year, half (35,000) for 2-years or less, in no small part because of the Legislature's hunger for creating new felonies, without any real thought for the cost ($16,500 per year, per inmate, on average).
Realizing the solution would be simple, too. In January 2013, the Legislative Budget Board recommended the Legislature convene a new sentencing commission (the first since 1993) to make sure we're spending money wisely on criminal justice, i.e. whether it makes sense to blow tens of millions of dollars on imprisoning thousands of people low-level, non-violent crimes.
Tons of states have done so in recent years, and they're saving tons of money as a result, with no loss of public safety. If we saved money by reducing our prison population, we'd have more money left over to run our prisons in a constitutional manner.
All the Lege needs to do is pull the trigger and convene a new commission.
