The Supreme Court upheld an injunction today that will force California to reduce its prison population by more than 37,000 prisoners within two years, because the conditions in California prisons represent a violation of the Eighth Amendment. The conservative dissenters said that the majority's decision to uphold the injunction, in the words of Justice Antonin Scalia, "ignores bedrock limitations on the power of Article III judges, and takes federal courts wildly beyond their institutional capacity."
California had been operating at nearly 200 percent prison capacity for more than a decade -- 164,000 prisoners in a system designed for 84,000. Scalia's dissent involves a fairly traditional conservative view of the role of the courts, but the injunction wouldn't even be necessary if the state of California hadn't taken such a cavalier attitude toward violating the constitutional rights of its prisoners. This is the result of politicians adopting bad policies for more than 10 years and failing to correct them, and the conservative response would essentially leave inmates with absolutely no opportunity for relief. At best, the decision creates an incentive for other states to solve such problems before such drastic solutions are necessary; if the conservative majority had their way they'd have no incentive to do so. After all, it's not like politicians are really worried about losing the votes of convicted felons. This is far from an ideal solution to California's prison overcrowding problem, but owing to political irresponsibility, it was the only one left.
This doesn't mean they'll just be opening the doors and letting people out indiscriminately -- there are a number of policy options for reducing the prison population without hurting public safety. Still, you have to love Scalia's complaint: "One would think that, before allowing the decree of a federal district court to release 46,000 convicted felons, this Court would bend every effort to read the law in such a way as to avoid that outrageous result." No "results-oriented judging" to see here!
