California to Cut Prison Population by 30,000

California prisons are jam-packed, which has resulted in defying constitutional standards of health care system.

Thus the U. S. Supreme Court has now ordered on Monday that California must reduce the prison population by more than 30,000 in two years in order to repair a health care system, which according to the lower courts was defying constitutional standards and endangering guards as well as inmates.

California prison since over a decade is holding approx twice the population that it’s designed capacity allows, which has been stated as the main cause of “grossly inadequate provision of medical and mental health care” by the Federal judges, the court said in a 5-4 ruling.

"Needless suffering and death have been the well-documented result", Justice Anthony Kennedy said in the majority opinion. Kennedy also noted that shoddy prison health care in California has been responsible for the death of at least one inmate a week.

"The medical and mental health care provided by California's prisons falls below the standard of decency that inheres in the Eighth Amendment", which bans cruel and unusual punishment, said Kennedy, joined by the court's more liberal justices.

Thus the court has now ordered the California prison to reduce its population of 143,000 to 110,000 by mid-2013.