(Newser) – A panel of federal judges ruled yesterday that overcrowding in California's 33 prisons—158,00 inmates in space meant for 84,000—poses a threat to inmate health. The court tentatively required the state to reduce the prison population by up to 57,000, the LA Times reports. The governor’s corrections secretary says the ruling “poses a significant threat to public safety.”

Of course, to the California correctional establishment, releasing even one non-violent inmate is "a significant threat to public safety." That's how they've managed to create an extra-judicial process that locks up twice as many people as the national average, with no meaningful due process, to create a prison system bigger than the United States Federal prison system. And they're not going to give it up without a fight, even if it bankrupts the state or kills the inmates.

But we talked about this more than five years ago: California's broken parole system.