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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A panel of three federal judges, ruling that overcrowding in state prisons has deprived inmates of their right to adequate health care, indicated Monday they would order California to reduce the population in those lockups by as many as 58,000 people.
The judges issued the tentative ruling after a trial in two long-running cases brought by inmates to protest the state of medical and mental-health care in state prisons.
If the state is ordered to reduce the population, it probably would be able to do so over several years by limiting new admissions and other measures, so that it would not have to release large numbers of prisoners at once.
