California Gov. Jerry Brown wants to spend $315 million from state reserves this year to meet a federal court order to reduce overcrowding in the state's prisons.
The announcement came three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Brown's bid to delay a lower court's order to shrink California's prison population to 137.5% of designed capacity by Dec. 31. Without added space, Brown had said the state would be forced to release almost 10,000 inmates.
"In the short term, this meets the court order," said Brown, a 75-year-old Democrat. "This is the sensible, prudent course."
The spending would consume almost a third of the $1 billion reserve Brown and fellow Democrats built into the $96.3 billion budget they passed in June.
The state would lease a private prison in the Mojave Desert from Corrections Corp. of America and pay for more cells in county jails and other states, Brown said Tuesday.
Federal judges seized control of the state's prison health system in 2006, saying inmate care was so bad it amounted to cruel and usual punishment and violated the U.S. Constitution. The judges cited cramped conditions where inmates were lodged in gyms and dayrooms because there weren't enough cells.
Twice this year, a three-judge panel has chided Brown over his resistance to reducing the population any more. In April, the judges said in legal filings that they had "exercised exceptional restraint" in not citing the governor for contempt of court.
California has lowered the count by 43,000 since 2006 and spent $1 billion on improving care and conditions, according to the governor's office. Brown in 2011 won approval of a program shifting felons convicted of nonviolent, low-level crimes to county jails, or to alternatives such as house arrest and electronic monitoring.
Under the proposal, the state would shift about 5,000 inmates to prisons in other states, joining 4,000 currently housed there. Brown previously said he wanted to bring all out- of-state inmates back to California to lower costs.
The state also would look to reopen some shuttered local jails and use the space for state inmates. The state would staff the Mojave Desert prison it leases from Corrections Corp. of America with state prison guards, a move intended to placate the correctional officers union.
The spending would need approval by lawmakers before their scheduled adjournment on Sept. 13. Democrats control both chambers, though not all support the proposal. Standing by Brown's side when he made the announcement were the state's leading legislative Republicans and the Assembly Speaker, John Perez, a Democrat from Los Angeles.
Absent was Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento, who has urged alternative spending on rehabilitation, drug treatment and mental health programs instead of prisons.
"The governor's proposal is a plan with no promise and no hope," Steinberg said in a statement. Brown in 2011 canceled half of a $7.4 billion bond program to build lockups for 53,000 inmates that lawmakers and former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger approved in 2007 to ease overcrowding. Brown said the additional space wasn't needed and was the wrong approach.
