This week, in Brown v. Plata, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a three-judge district court order directing California to remedy two ongoing constitutional violations in California's prison health care system. The first violation, involving prisoners with serious mental disorders, is the subject of a case filed in 1990, Coleman v. Brown. The second violation, involving prisoners with serious physical medical conditions, is the subject of a case filed in 2001, Plata v. Brown. In both cases, federal courts found that deficiencies in the prison health care system were so severe that they violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Most recently, the Plata court described the system as "broken beyond repair" and causing an "unconscionable degree of suffering and death." In 2006, I wrote about this problem in a post for the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum titled The Hidden Costs of a Cruel and Unusal Prison Health Care System. In this post, I describe many of the horrific details about the individual and systemic abuses that have been occurring inside of prisons, and the hidden consequences these abuses have for the public's health and safety.
This ruling is receiving a great deal of attention because it upholds an order to reduce the prison population, which could, but does not necessarily have to, result in the release of prisoners. The focus of most commentary has been on whether this means that dangerous criminals will be put back on the street. But despite the alarms sounded by some editorials and the dissent in the case, the state has not been ordered to release dangerous criminals. Moreover, it is clear from the Supreme Court's opinion that the three-judge district court was very concerned about public safety. The district court heard from many experts, including former corrections officials, that reducing the prison population does not have to threaten public safety and, in fact, will likely improve it. The court was also careful to give the state a great deal of discretion over how it addresses the overcrowding problem.
