California embarked on a “grand experiment” in 2011 with a massive prison downsizing. Responding to a 2009 order by a federal three-judge panel, California had to reduce its overpopulated prisons by 25 percent within two years. This amounted to a reduction of nearly 46,000 prisoners, within a very short time period. The state appealed but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the mandate in May 2011, in a 5-4 decision. In a dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said it was “perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history.”

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