Earlier this month, three federal judges -- Stephen Reinhardt, Lawrence Karlton and Thelton Henderson -- ordered the release of more than 40,000 of California's 160,000 inmates. No lie: They claimed that releasing one-quarter of state inmates would not have "a meaningful adverse impact on public safety."
They also wrote, "Evidence shows that mentally ill inmates who are released do not, by virtue of their mental illness, present any higher risk than other released inmates."
These three must live in an alternate universe -- one where a quarter of California inmates, many of them mentally ill, can be freed and no one gets hurt in a meaningful way.
It helps if you ignore the fact that California's violent crimes have fallen by about a third since California passed "three strikes" legislation in 1994 -- as the inmate population grew by 50,000.
As for the judges' contention that the state can release mentally ill inmates to no ill effect on public safety: All I can say is that it helps if you don't read a 2008 report commissioned by the Department of Justice on the California parole system. It found that parolees with a record of mental health problems have a 52 percent higher risk of committing the most serious violent offenses than other inmates.
Those who argue for releasing tens of thousands of prisoners may style themselves as realists, but they live in a dream world.
As I write this, scolds have been bashing Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Vista, because she reportedly pared back legislation to shave $1.2 billion from the state prison budget. The bill passed 21-19 in the Senate. It's part of follow-up legislation on the budget deal enacted with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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