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Updated Wednesday, May 25, 2011 11:02 am TWN, By Don Thompson, AP

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California ordered to cut number of inmates

SACRAMENTO, California -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that California must drastically reduce its prison population to relieve severe overcrowding that has exposed inmates to increased violence, disease and death.

The decision, however, doesn't mean the prison gates will swing open in an uncontrolled release.

The high court's decision calls on the state to cut the population to no more than 110,000 inmates, meaning California will have to shed some 33,000 inmates to comply over the next two years. State officials can accomplish that by transferring inmates to local jails or releasing them.

The 5-4 ruling revealed a sharp divide on the court between Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia.

Kennedy wrote for the majority and described dismal conditions where prisoners are denied minimal care and suicidal inmates are held in “telephone-booth sized cages without toilets.”

“A prison that deprives prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity and has no place in civilized society,” Kennedy wrote, joined by the court's four Democrat-appointed justices.

Scalia read a blistering dissent from the bench in which he called the ruling “perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation's history” and said it would require the release of a “staggering number” of convicted felons.

The ruling also raised concerns among California lawmakers and attorneys general from 18 states who argued that a decision ordering the reduction of California's inmate population infringes on states' rights and could leave their prisons open to similar lawsuits.

California has already been preparing for the ruling, driven as much by persistent multibillion U.S. dollar budget deficits as by fears for the well-being of prison inmates and employees. The state has sent inmates to other states. It plans to transfer jurisdiction over others to counties, though the state doesn't have the money to do it.

“Our goal is to not release inmates at all,” said Matthew Cate, the state corrections secretary. Shorter term inmates will leave prison before the Supreme Court's deadline expires, and newly sentenced lower-level offenders would go to local jails under the plan.

Concerns over prison crowding and security grew over the weekend with a pair of riots that injured inmates.

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