Declaring an Impasse, Judges to Order Solution on Prisons

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Jerry Brown and lawyers for state prison inmates have failed to agree on a plan to handle crowding in the state’s prisons, and the judges who ordered the two sides into talks said they would now order a solution themselves.

The judges gave Brown and the prisoners’ attorneys until Jan. 23 to file proposals for achieving “durable compliance” with population limits that are scheduled to go into effect April 18.

The federal jurists — U.S. District Judges Thelton Henderson in San Francisco and Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento, and 9th Circuit Appellate Judge Stephen Reinhardt in Los Angeles — had set last Friday as a deadline for a negotiated solution to overcrowding that they say endangers inmates’ health and safety.

But after three months of talks, “it now appears that no such agreement will be reached,” the judges said in an order released Monday.

The jurists said they would make their decision within a month, possibly extending the April deadline.

Brown said Tuesday that any deal permitting the early release of offenders would have been untenable.

Full story by Paige St. John and Anthony York at latimes.com/local.