California: Start Sleeping With One Eye Open

Lock your doors, lock your windows, and double check them before you go to bed each night.  California just got a whole lot more dangerous.  And, it’s all brought to you courtesy of the most liberal judges on our Supreme Court.  Via FOX News:

A sharply divided Supreme Court Monday affirmed a controversial prisoner reduction plan forced on California prison administrators that requires the state to reduce its inmate population by tens-of-thousands to ease overcrowding.

The 5-4 decision authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, a California native, is a wholesale acceptance of a ruling by a special three-judge panel tasked with resolving chronic overcrowding in the state’s penal system. The February 2009 decision orders California to reduce its prison population that has at times run nearly double its capacity. Approximately 37,000 to 46,000 inmates will have to be released in order for the state to comply with the ruling.

This ruling leads to so many unanswered questions, along with common sense consequences that will come along with this incredibly huge decision.  First, how many of these criminals are violent offenders?  How many of them are predators?  Out of 46,000 inmates, how many of them have committed crimes against women and children?  How many of them are repeat offenders and how many of them will go on to become repeat offenders?  What makes these judges believe that releasing them onto the public will not result in another offense that will bring them right back into the judicial system?

Human rights activist have been crying for years that the California prison system is overpopulated, holding almost twice as many inmates as they were designed to hold.

Critics of California’s prison system contend the cells are so overrun with inmates that proper care has been obliterated. Kennedy cites examples of prisoners with mental or physical health needs having to wait months for inadequate care. He cites one example of an inmate who was held for nearly 24 hours in a cage and standing in a pool of his own urine.

I know that my heart bleeds for these criminals… (fingers are dripping with sarcasm).  Which leads me to yet another question.  How many of these inmates are illegal aliens?  Why are we are we using hard earned tax-payer dollars on housing these illegals instead of deporting them back to their countries of origin?  If we simply deported those who were in this country illegally, how much would that alleviate the problem and why didn’t we just begin with that?

I have to note that there was a sense of rational still detected among the highest court in our land and they came from the very outspoken Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas.

Justice Antonin Scalia fired away in a dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, calling the ruling a judicial travesty. “Today the court affirms what is perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history: an order requiring California to release the staggering number of 46,000 convicted criminals.”

They go on:

“It is also worth noting the peculiarity that the vast majority of inmates most generously rewarded by the release order — the 46,000 whose incarceration will be ended — do not form part of any aggrieved class even under the Court’s expansive notion of constitutional violation,” Scalia wrote in dissent. “Most of them will not be prisoners with medical conditions or severe mental illness; and many will undoubtedly be fine physical specimens who have developed intimidating muscles pumping iron in the prison gym.”

Chief Justice John Roberts joined a separate dissent written by Justice Samuel Alito that also questioned the wisdom of giving federal judges the authority to run state penal systems. Their dissent also faulted the majority for not taking into greater consideration the recent progress of state officials to improve prison conditions and the concerns about public safety.

What a reminder that every election has consequences.  These kinds of decisions that effect the safety of citizens in different states are determined by Justices who are put on the bench by elected Presidents and those Justices are chosen by the ideology of that President.

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