Governor Schwarzenegger has four specific proposals for improving the over-crowded system.  They include building more prisons using lease-revenue bonds, as well as speeding up spending on prisons. The Governor also has a plan to transfer some 45-hundred low-risk female inmates to community correctional facilities, and he says he wants to establish re-entry facilities, where inmates would go 90 days before their release. 

 “If we don’t address this very dangerous situation as quickly as possible, the courts may very well take over the entire system and would order the early release of tens of thousands of prisoners.”

Senate Majority Leader and Democrat Gloria Romero – a long-time advocate of prison reform, says it’s just politics at play:

“It won’t work.  We’ve got to deal with rehabilitation and reducing recidivism.  We don’t have to build a single prison in order to do that.”

Administration officials say they haven’t yet worked out details, such as how much this would all cost.