San Quentin State prison

We’re still overcrowded and set up for disaster.

Incompetence and inaction by California’s leaders are driving illness and death inside the state’s prison system.

All lawmakers have a duty to use every available lever to reduce the number of people in prison, whether by compassionate release or expanded use of furloughs or some other mechanism. Taking these steps will demand immense political courage. But not doing it means consigning people—some just months away from release—to die preventable deaths.

All but nine of California’s 35 prisons house more people than the facility was designed to hold.

About 20 people in the prison’s Badger section have been on hunger strike for the past few days, three people incarcerated there say.

Prisoners are reluctant to report when they’re feeling sick, because they know they’ll be sent to solitary confinement.

“They are treating it like any epidemic in prison—that is to isolate, treat and then release back to the population.”