Appeals court allows inmate transfers to resume

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to ease prison overcrowding by sending convicts out of state has been allowed to proceed while a state appellate court weighs a legal challenge to it.

Prison officials have said they intend to transfer 5,000 inmates to out-of-state prisons by the end of the year. Transfers will resume next month, said Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Bill Sessa.

Relocating prisoners is a key element of Schwarzenegger’s plan to show a federal judge that the state is moving aggressively to ease overcrowding.

Schwarzenegger signed legislation last month that allows the state to transfer up to 8,000 inmates against their will until 2012.

Roughly 360 inmate volunteers already have been moved to lockups in Arizona and Tennessee.

After Schwarzenegger announced in February that he would forcibly shift thousands of prisoners, the California Correctional and Peace Officers Assn. sued.

A Sacramento County Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the prison guards in late February, saying that overcrowding is not justification for suspension of civil service rules that prohibit the use of private employees for jobs normally done by public workers.

The Schwarzenegger administration appealed and won a temporary stay Friday from the 3rd District Court of Appeal pending its final decision, which could take a year or longer.

“Out-of-state transfers will improve the safety of California’s institutions for our correctional officers and staff, as well as the inmates,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement, “and will provide much-needed space for rehabilitation programs.”

Lance Corcoran of the prison guards union disagreed. He said the threat of being transferred thousands of miles from home will create “an extremely volatile situation” among inmates.

nancy.vogel@latimes.com