Yesterday, lawyers for inmates signed on to the Schwarzenegger Plan B for the prisoner release.  If you’ll recall, Arnold and Krew originally brought a [plan to the court to release just 27,000 prisoners, short of the target 40-44,000. The Court rejected that first plan and Arnold had to bring a new plan, leading us to this point.

Lawyers for California’s sick inmates said Monday they like the Schwarzenegger administration’s plan for reducing the prison population and urged a three-judge federal panel to let state officials decide what methods to use.

The plan calls for a reduction in the population of 33 adult prisons to 137.5 percent of design capacity within two years, thus meeting the requirement of the panel’s Aug. 4 order.

“Rather than ordering the state to utilize particular population reduction methods, the court should leave to the state the discretion and flexibility to choose which methods it uses to accomplish the reduction,” the inmates’ attorneys said in their response to the plan.(SacBee)

The fact that the inmates’ attorneys signed off on this plan saves a lot of drama, but not all that much in actual litigation. The Administration still plans on appealing this decision even if their Plan B is approved, as they want to go back to Plan A. The decision would need to go to the 9th Circuit, and if necessary, to the Supreme Court.

What is clear, however, is that we simply can’t build our way out of the prison crisis. We need to find ways to reduce recidivism by putting back the “Rehabilitation” in CA Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation in more than name.