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The [Supreme Court] ruling affirmed the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s ruling that called for the release of up to 46,000 prisoners. The state shed some prisoners after it temporarily sent inmates to out-of-state prisons, and sent those in state prison to county jails. The court’s mandate will force the state to reduce its prison population to 137.5 percent of its capacity.

“For years the medical and mental health care provided by California’s prisons has fallen short of minimum constitutional requirements and has failed to meet prisoners’ basic health needs,” Kennedy wrote. “Over the whole course of years during which this litigation has been pending, no other remedies have been found to be sufficient. Efforts to remedy the violation have been frustrated by severe overcrowding in California’s prison system. Short term gains in the provision of care have been eroded by the long-term effects of severe and pervasive overcrowding.”

Kennedy said in his opinion that prison overcrowding led to terrible conditions where more than 40 inmates had to share one toilet, or over 200 people were housed in a gym. Lawyers said that prison overcrowding and poor health care drove prisoners with mental illness to commit suicide in “holding tanks where observation windows are obscured with smeared feces,” and inmates were “discovered catatonic in pools of their own urine after spending nights in locked cages.”

There are about 146,000 inmates right now incarcerated in California prisons that were meant for just 80,000 people, Southern California’s KPCC reported Monday.

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