This week the federal three-judge court over the state’s prison overcrowding case ordered the parties to immediately meet-and-confer in an effort to achieve the court’s previously prescribed population cap of 137.5 percent of design capacity. 

Counties will recall that the Legislature, in the last weeks of the 2013 session, approved a bipartisan, bicameral compromise to deal with the impending December 31, 2013 deadline for reducing the state’s prison population. Governor Brown has already signed SB 105 into law (see summary of key elements of the bill) that, among other provisions, authorizes up to $315 million in 2013-14 expenditures to develop in- and out-of-state capacity to avoid prison releases. That expenditure authority is effectively frozen by the court’s most recent order.