At the time the District Court issued its order, this release requirement meant that, at the greatest level, somewhere around 46,000 inmates would have to go free to meet the two-year goal. That figure has dropped somewhat, and current estimates are that perhaps 37,000 will have to be released, unless state officials come up with alternatives to outright release.
Although Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the main opinion’s author, anticipated that a massive release of those dimensions could ultimately be avoided, he did concede that some releases could not be avoided. “Absent a reduction in overcrowding, any remedy might prove unattainable and would at the very least require vast expenditures of resources by the state,” Kennedy wrote. And there is nothing in the history of the two prisoner lawsuits decided Monday, Kennedy said, to suggest that the state will come up with the money needed to finance alternatives to reduced populations. (The two cases were decided under the combined titled of Brown v. Plata, et al. (docket 19-1233.)
The decision upheld what clearly is the most sweeping inmate release order in the 15-year history of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, a federal law that Congress passed to set new standards to govern when federal courts order prisoners be set free. The Act limits such orders to those that are “truly necessary” to avoid a violation of inmates’ rights, specifies that they can only be issued as a last resort, requires that prior court orders to protect inmates’ rights have been tried and failed, mandates that state officials be given time to pursue alternatives, and allows an actual release order only if overcrowding is the primary cause of the violation. (Before that law was enacted, federal courts for years had used their general powers to remedy wrongs, and did order actual releases.)