Governor Jerry Brown is stepping up his campaign to end federal oversight of the state's prison system and quash a court order for further cuts in the inmate population. KQED's Michael Montgomery says Brown's message is simple: California's prison crisis is over.
Inmates at Chino State Prison walk the hallway on December 10, 2010 in Chino, California. The U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to hear arguments to appeal a federal court's ruling last year that the California state prison system would have to release 40,000 prisoners to cope with overcrowding so severe that it violated their human rights. More than 144,000 inmates are currently incarcerated in prisons that were designed to hold about 80,000.
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