Supreme Court: California prison overcrowding violates 8th Amendment

Wow. Stunner. Rarely is the 8th Amendment ever invoked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24scotus.html?_r=1&hp

As an advocate of prisoner rights, my first impulse is to be pleased with the results of the decision. I'm interested to dig in, however, particularly upon reading this sentence:

Justice Scalia summarized his dissent, which was pungent and combative, from the bench.

When Scalia is fired up, there's usually something to it.

 

The summary of Scalia's dissent went more like this:

BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!

 

In other news, Raider Nation has doubled in size.

 

Remember when we used to tell ghost stories about escaped mental patients?
Nowadays they involve a judge and a court order.

 

The quickest way to ease prison overcrowding would be to stop re-jailing people for technical, non-criminal parole/supervised release violations. That way, you ease overcrowding while not releasing "intimidating," muscled specimens into society before their time.

 

Scalia might be right.

Thanks to this ruling, California could wind up full with lecherous criminals like this pumped-up dude:

 

The "booga, booga, booga" legal argument isn't taught in law school, is it? Next up, empty county jails of people busted for bounced checks and other non-violent misdemeanors. Move non-violent felony inmates from state prison to county jails.

 

The booga-booga stuff doesn't seem to have much to do with his actual legal argument here. It's just an old Scalia saw: First he makes his legal argument, which is usually pretty sound, though often mockable because he starts pulling out the old dictionaries and so forth, and sometimes a little convoluted and frequently long-winded. Then, he follows up by explaining how the decision contrary to his will just coincidentally rain chaos upon this great nation.

 

I'm just thrilled that with everything else that's going wrong in California that they're making sure the convicts are comfortable.

 

One has nothing to do with the other.

 

Sure it does. The state and the country are falling apart and we're worried about the convicts.

 

California did not make this decision. It was imposed on California.

And one could argue that one of the reasons that the country is "falling apart" is because of wasteful spending on overcrowded prisons.

Anyway, we're worried about lots of things. We didn't decide yesterday to forgo job creation because nine people were working on this decision. The nation didn't grind to a halt while Anthony Kennedy made up his mind. Our government is capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.