The Supreme Court
Monday ordered California to release tens of thousands of
inmates or take other steps to ease overcrowding in its prisons
to prevent ``needless suffering and death.''

By a 5-4 vote, the high court told the nation's largest
state prison system to sharply cut its inmate population in
stages over two years in one of the biggest prison release
orders in U.S. history.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said for the court majority that
the medical and mental health care provided by California's
prisons had fallen below the standard of decency required by
the Constitution.

Kennedy cited suicidal inmates being held for prolonged
periods in telephone booth-sized cages, backlogs of up to 700
prisoners waiting to see a doctor for care and as many as 54

California's 33 adult prisons were designed to hold about
80,000 inmates and now have about 145,000.

In 2009 the state was ordered to reduce the prison
population by 46,000 inmates to get down to what judges decided
would be a reasonable level. It was the largest prisoner
release order ever from a federal court.

Because of prison population reductions while the case has
been on appeal, Kennedy calculated the state may have to
release 37,000 more inmates or take other measures, such as
putting low-risk offenders into community-based programs and
building more prisons.

Improving conditions in California's prisons has become a
major legal, political and financial issue in view of the
worsening budget crisis in the nation's most populous state.

The ruling involved two class-action lawsuits filed in 1990
and 2001 by inmates who challenged the inadequate medical and
mental health care conditions in the state's prison system.
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