CALIFORNIA USED TO need lots and lots of prisons. Big prisons, little prisons, prisons with special cells for gang leaders and prisons for those convicted of nonviolent financial chicanery. There were so many prisoners packed into so many prisons that federal courts intervened, mandating that the state find a way to alleviate the overcrowding.
At the inmate population’s peak in 2006, California incarcerated 165,000 people in state prisons.
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