On Wednesday, I commented negatively on the Supreme Court’s recent vote of 5-4 that California’s overcrowded prisons violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

However, after speaking with friend and prison expert, Jesse Jannetta, I learned a thing or two about the California prison system, and why this recent decision will not result in a Californian Apocalypse.

Source: Jesse Jannetta

Jesse Jannetta is a research associate in the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center. He directs projects relating to community supervision and reentry from both prison and jail. He is the project director for the Transition from Jail to Community Initiative, and the principal investigator for the process evaluation of the Transition from Prison to Community Initiative.

Before joining the Urban Institute, Mr. Jannetta was a research specialist at the Center for Evidence-Based Corrections at the University of California, Irvine, where his work included projects on GPS monitoring of sex offender parolees, policies on parole discharge and violation response, and assessment of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s programs according to the principles of evidence-based design. He holds a master’s degree in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Tune in tomorrow for Jesse’s non-partisan perspective on the Supreme Court’s decision and the dynamics of prison overcrowding in California. This will be a personal blog post, and the opinions Jesse expresses are his own and not those of the Urban Institute.