Brown v. Plata: Prison Overcrowding in California

[摘要] California`s prisons are currently designed to house approximately 85,000 inmates. At the time of the U.S. Supreme Court`s 2011 decision in Brown v. Plata , the California prison system housed nearly twice that many (approximately 156,000 inmates). The Supreme Court held that California`s prison system violated inmates` Eighth Amendment rights. The Court upheld a three-judge panel`s order to decrease the population of California`s prisons by an estimated 46,000 inmates. They determined that overcrowding was the primary cause of the inmates` inadequate medical and mental health care. As a result, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has been working to redistribute inmates and parolees safely and decrease the overall population to the mandated levels. These large-scale adjustments to California`s penal system create potential opportunities to study the long-term effects on affected inmates.

[学科分类] 儿科学

[关键词] Phytophthora cinnamomi;soil moisture;soil water table