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Page Number: 90.0

16 

BROWN v. PLATA 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

in  California  has  led  to  decreased  crime,  it  is  entirely 
possible  that  a  decrease  in  imprisonment  will  have  the
opposite effect.

Commenting  on  the  testimony  of  an  expert  who  stated
that he could not be certain about the effect of the massive 
prisoner  discharge  on  public  safety,  the  three-judge  court 
complained  that  “[s]uch  equivocal  testimony  is  not  help-
ful.”  Id.,  at  247a.    But  testimony  pointing  out  the  diffi-
culty of assessing the consequences of this drastic remedy 
would have been valued by a careful court duly mindful of 
the overriding need to guard public safety. 

The  three-judge  court  acknowledged  that  it  “ha[d]  not 
evaluated  the  public  safety  impact  of  each  individual 
element”  of  the  population  reduction  plan  it  ordered  the
State  to  implement.  App.  to  Juris.  Statement  3a.  The 
majority  argues  that  the  three-judge  court  nevertheless
gave substantial weight to public safety because its order 
left  “details  of  implementation  to  the  State’s  discretion.” 
Ante,  at  41.  Yet  the  State  had  told  the  three-judge  court
that,  after  studying  possible  population  reduction  meas-
ures,  it  concluded  that  “reducing  the  prison  population  to
137.5%  within  a  two-year  period  cannot  be  accomplished
without unacceptably compromising public safety.”  Juris. 
App. 317a.  The State found that public safety required a
5-year  period  in  which  to  achieve  the  ordered  reduction. 
Ibid. 

Thus,  the  three-judge  court  approved  a  population 
reduction plan that neither it nor the State found could be
implemented without unacceptable harm to public safety.
And  this  Court  now  holds  that  the  three-judge  court  dis-
charged  its  obligation  to  “give  substantial  weight  to  any 
adverse impact on public safety,” §3626(a)(1)(A), by defer-
ring to officials who did not believe the reduction could be 

—————— 

rence?  100 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 765, 801 (2010) (citing research

on this issue).