Could Alex Jones’s “revolution” actually happen?

Piers Morgan had it easy. Radio show host and author Alex Jones threatened the rest of us with a ”revolution” if the government decides to confiscate guns from the homes and glove compartments of law-abiding Americans. It’s almost too easy to dismiss Jones as a fringe figure, especially since fringe ideas make their way into the mainstream with (exciting? alarming?) frequency these days. So let’s take him seriously.

Let’s accept his premise. Actually, let’s dismiss it first but then turn around and accept it for the sake of argument. The government has not the means nor the mechanism nor the credibility to confiscate 100,000 guns, much less 600,000,000. And those in the government doing the confiscating would be neighbors and relatives of the confiscatory victims: police officers, national guard members, Army reservists. Of course, Jones might say that their intent is bad enough. But “they” — the Obama administration, I assume — have no such intentions, and never did.

But OK. Let’s say that the government tries to confiscate guns and “the people” attempt to revolt.  No doubt that civil disobedience can spring up rather spontaneously and even be organized very quickly, but if rioting were to somehow break out in American cities, it would be isolated and theoretically containable. Organizing a “revolt” would require extensive planning, including the massive transportation of citizens from their homes to wherever the rally points were, a communications infrastructure, and leaders. The same Open Source culture that would make it difficult for the government to plan a confiscation in secret makes it just as unlikely for citizens to plan a feasible response to that confiscation in secret.

One of Jones’s obsessions, which, I confess, I share, is the militarization of the American homeland, and he is not promulgating a conspiracy here. The military has expanded its presence on American soil, and crucially, has expanded the way it is organized to respond to mass contingency events of any kind, including natural disasters and rioting. The U.S. Northern Command does receive intelligence briefings about domestic disturbances from the FBI and DHS, so commanders would be somewhat prepared to deploy troops. Thousands would come from the standing Army, but the bulk would be drawn from state National Guard detachments. It is exceedingly difficult to picture weekend warriors following blind orders en masse to detain or harm U.S. citizens when local police resources are stretched. The government has the power of command and control, but the people have the power of fellow-feeling. The government’s response to any real revolt would probably be quite restrained. There’d be too much attention paid to every movement of every tank to act harshly. The strategy to contain any “revolt” might therefore depend on a period of people letting out their energies and then returning to their normal business. 

Ah, but what if the government controls the communication nodes?  Well, corporations do; I assume Jones would have them immediately bend to a secret executive order shutting down serves and clouds and services like Twitter, but even if corporations agreed to do this, together, it would take days to get even a fraction of the telecom infrastructure offline. Maybe the government would order a mass power outage. But that’s why so many Americans have generators in the first place!  Although government “boards” comprising major telecom and infrastructure executives do exist, the most they’ve ever contemplated doing is to shut down a narrow slice of an infected communications node. These days, they’re focused on the cyber threat.  In the early days of civil defense planning, when there were a few television networks an AT&T had its monopoly, the threat of a government takeover of TV, radio and telephones was technically feasible. Today it is not. Actually, it does not make sense. What’s turned on really cannot be turned off.

But wait. if Jones’s “revolution” is to succeed, he needs to take over the government, because he’d need to dominate communications as well, unless he assumes that his movement would be organic and immune to arguments from elected officials asking for stability and calm.

An objective of anyone who wants to take over the government would be a seizure of the Emergency Broadcast System, which allows the President to speak to the nation through almost any mechanism of communication at any time. The EBS lives at Mt. Weather, the massive FEMA bunker in Virginia, but it can be activated and controlled from at least a dozen other places, including the briefcase of the Emergency Actions officer who travels with the President.  A coordinated violent action to seize control of this key portal would require an incredible amount of prior planning.

Assuming even that the government’s response to isolated-turned-mass rioting is uneven, the President would be able to address Americans anytime he wants. In theory, Jones’s followers could try to take over every broadcast entity in America, or could try and jam the broadcasts using sophisticated electronic warfare technology available to the military, but once again, the practicalities are not possible.

Because there will be no revolt over gun control, because there will not be and cannot be a mass confiscation of guns, playing with these ideas is fanciful and fodder for a sequel to Seven Days in May. Heck, we haven’t even addressed the FEMA concentration camps (which don’t exist).  But that isn’t to say that nothing discussed above will ever be relevant. It is much easier to imagine a small-scale revolt, a series of pre-planned violent protests against the powers that be, perhaps because the political system seems so non-responsive to the worries of people who listen to Alex Jones.  It would not take much to make Americans nervous about the government’s ability to restore law and order. And that frission itself is probably the most unknowable of all these factors.

Patriotic citizens aren’t supposed to speculate about these extremely unlikely events, but the government certainly thinks about them. So maybe we should too.

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Whoa! Check Out Taylor Swift’s Sexy Breakover!

Stylewatch
Style News Now

01/09/2013 at 09:30 PM ET

Steve Granitz/WireImage

Don’t worry about changing your relationship status on Facebook, Taylor, since this dress sends the message loud and clear.

For her first official appearance after breaking up with One Direction’s Harry Styles, the newly single star showed a side of her we’ve never seen at the People’s Choice Awards in L.A. on Tuesday night.

Clad in a plunging white gown with cap sleeves, plus turquoise danglers and an intense smoky eye, Swift created quite a buzz when she hit the red carpet.

PHOTOS: SEE MORE PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS RED CARPET STYLE!

Swift has been venturing away from her signature sparkly princess dresses and taking more fashion risks lately, but this is her most revealing look yet.

Now if only she could stay sans boyfriend long enough to keep up this sexy style streak … Tell us: Do you like Swift’s hot new look?

–Jennifer Cress

RELATED: TAYLOR SWIFT GETS KANYE’D … AGAIN!

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Iranian Captives Freed in Major Prisoner Exchange in Syria

ISTANBUL — More than 2,000 prisoners incarcerated by the Syrian authorities were being released on Wednesday in return for 48 Iranians freed by rebels after five months in captivity, Turkish and Iranian news reports said, in what appeared to be the biggest prisoner swap since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began almost two years ago.

The exchange, brokered by Turkey and Qatar, came days after Mr. Assad warned on Sunday that he would not abandon the fight against armed adversaries pressing on the approaches to the Syrian capital, Damascus, and brushed aside calls for him to quit.

The swap started in more than one location near Damascus after months of diplomatic efforts that also involved the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, an Islamist-leaning aid organization based in Istanbul and widely known as I.H.H., according to Bulent Yildirim, the head of the foundation.

“Some of our friends are with the opposition groups, and we are heading to the area where the prisoners are to be released,” Mr. Yildirim told Turkey’s semiofficial Anatolian news Agency.

He added, “Efforts under the Turkish and Qatari mediation continue, while the exchange started at several locations where prisoners were kept.”

Mr. Yildirim told Reuters that, after their release, the 48 Iranians were escorted to Damascus by Iranian and Syrian officials.

The aid group has set up an operation center in Damascus to unite 2,130 prisoners, including 73 women, at one base while another aid team remained in Douma, near the Syrian capital, to oversee the return of the 48 Iranians.

The Syrian opposition has claimed that the Iranians are members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, but Tehran has denied the assertion, saying the captives are Shiite civilian pilgrims. The Iranians were seized in August while traveling on a bus from Damascus International Airport to a Shiite shrine on the outskirts of the capital, Iran’s Press TV said.

Opposition fighters had threatened to kill the Iranians unless Mr. Assad’s forces halted military operations. But since then the fighting around Damascus has intensified.

Iran is Mr. Assad’s main ally in a region where many Arab states and neighboring Turkey have turned against him, seeking his ouster. The Iranian captives offered the rebels holding them a source of pressure on the Syrian leader to push for the release of prisoners.

“We expect the swap to be completed in the next hour,” Huseyin Oruc, a member of the aid group’s executive board said in a telephone interview around midday.

“Among the 2,130 there are Syrians, four Turks, and a Palestinian, names of whom we will announce later in the day.”

Diplomatic efforts to release more prisoners would continue, he added.

“It is the first time that the ‘humanitarian diplomacy’ we initiated succeeded in releasing such a large group of people at once,” Mr. Oruc said. “There are many more held captive and our efforts to free them will continue without delay.”

The aid group gained international attention in 2010 for organizing a flotilla of boats heading to Gaza, ostensibly with relief supplies, that prompted a deadly Israeli commando raid in which nine Turks died. At the time of the raid, the group was reported to have extensive connections with Turkey’s political elite. The episode began an unraveling of Turkey’s once close ties with Israel.

In recent months, the aid group has also been part of negotiations to free smaller numbers of prisoners, including two Turkish journalists held in Syria, Reuters reported. The organization has been active since the early 1990s in charitably works in Middle East and Africa, focusing most recently on Gaza.

Since the start of the uprising against Mr. Assad, the organization has also cast itself as a leading private charitable organization in Syria, delivering food and other basic supplies and pursuing what it calls “humanitarian diplomacy” to help free captive civilians.

While the numbers involved in Wednesday’s exchange seemed dramatic, some rebel commanders said more modest prisoner exchanges have become a feature of the conflict.

The leader of a rebel fighting group in the central city of Hama, reached via Skype, said pro-government militia had captured his uncle and two other relatives in a village in the northern Idlib province more than a month ago.

 “The  only  way  to  release them  is capturing  hostages,” the commander said, adding that negotiations were under way to win the release of his relatives in return for 12 captives held by the rebels. Two months ago, the commander said, nine members of the pro-government shabeeha militia were  exchanged for five captured rebels. Syria’s uprising began in March 2011 with peaceful demonstrations, but a brutal crackdown broadened into civil war with an estimated 60,000 people killed, according to United Nations estimates.

Sebnem Arsu reported from Istanbul and Alan Cowell from London. Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Charlie Sheen downplays Baja encounter with L.A. mayor

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa found himself sucked deeper into the Charlie Sheen-TMZ-Hollywood gossip vortex Tuesday, with the actor speaking out again about the night they met up at a hotel in Mexico over the holidays.

Sheen made news last month after he tweeted a picture of himself with his arm around Villaraigosa the night of Sheen's bar opening in Baja California, Mexico. The former star of "Two and a Half Men" praised the mayor as a man who "knows how to party." But Villaraigosa downplayed the significance of the image, telling KNBC's Conan Nolan over the weekend that he had only "bumped into" Sheen and engaged in a three-minute conversation.

On Tuesday, Sheen challenged Villaraigosa's account, telling celebrity website TMZ that the mayor was drinking in Sheen's hotel suite in a room full of beautiful women, including at least one porn star. "I memorize 95 pages a week, so the last thing that I am is memory challenged," Sheen told the website. "We hung out for the better part of two hours."

Hours later, Sheen issued a more muted account, saying the mayor had spoken to many other people at the opening of the bar. "I am a giant fan of the mayor's and apologize if any of my words have been misconstrued," the statement said.

By then, however, Villaraigosa found himself fending off related questions at a news conference meant to be devoted to billionaire Eli Broad's new downtown art museum. "Can you just set the record straight for us?" asked one reporter. "What was it? Two hours or three minutes?" asked another. Then came the zinger: "Does what happens in Cabo stay in Cabo?"

Villaraigosa cackled at the Cabo crack but refused to take the bait. "I've said what I'm going to say on that, everybody," Villaraigosa declared. "You had fun. Let's talk about the important things, like a thousand jobs today" — a reference to construction work going on at Broad's museum.

Villaraigosa has frequently bristled at media questions about his personal life, going silent on some occasions and becoming visibly angry on others. Last week, he told KNBC's Nolan that Nolan had asked a "bozo question" about the Sheen photograph. He also noted that Nolan and other newsroom staffers have, like Sheen, asked the mayor to pose for pictures with them.

Sheen has been a TMZ staple, using the website as a platform to talk up his $100,000 gift to celebrity Lindsay Lohan and his porn star "goddesses." And Villaraigosa has glided easily between the world of politics and the entertainment industry since being elected in 2005.

"He's a celebrity mayor. And he's always wanted to be that," said Jaime Regalado, professor emeritus of political science at Cal State L.A. "If you're going to be a celebrity mayor, you have to take the good and the bad and everything in between" when it comes to news coverage.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

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NRA, video game makers to meet with Biden gun task force this week

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, is slated to meet with Vice President Joe Biden as he considers recommendations on how to respond to a mass shooting last month in Newtown, Connecticut, the White House said on Tuesday.

After the Newtown school shooting, which President Barack Obama called the worst day of his presidency, he asked Biden to come up with a broad range of ideas to curb gun violence – ideas he will unveil in his annual State of the Union address, traditionally given in late January.

Obama has said he wants new gun control measures passed during the first year of his second term, but gun control is a divisive issue in the United States where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution.

Biden’s task force is examining legislation that would ban assault rifles, but is also looking at the role of violent movies and videogames in mass shootings and whether there is adequate access to mental health services.

Biden and his task force are slated to hold meeting this week with victims of gun violence, gun safety groups, hunting groups, and gun owners, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

“His group will also meet with representatives of the entertainment and video-game industries,” Carney said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will meet with mental health and disability advocates, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan is slated to meet with parent, teacher and education groups, Carney said.

The NRA has proposed armed guards in schools, an idea about which Obama has expressed skepticism.

The group’s top lobbyist, James J. Baker, will attend the task force meeting on Thursday, an NRA spokesman said.

“We are sending a representative to hear what they have to say,” NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said in an e-mailed statement.

(Additional reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Sandra Maler and Jackie Frank)

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Brooke Burke-Charvet Reveals Thyroid Cancer Surgery Scar

01/09/2013 at 07:25 AM EST

Brooke Burke-Charvet put on a brave face Tuesday morning, recounting the emotional distress she endured leading up to her thyroidectomy.

Managing to stay smiling, the typically upbeat Dancing with the Stars co-host, 41, told Good Morning America her initial diagnosis was "shocking," adding, "I never thought I'd hear the word 'cancer' in relation to myself. The [thought] in my mind when I [heard the news] is that I'm a mother, I've got four children, I've got a family counting on me."

Burke-Charvet's brood was very supportive of her health condition, but it was especially tough for her older daughter.

"It was in the news, and her friends had to come to her and say, 'Oh, we heard about your mom. We're so sorry,' " Burke-Charvet said. "She cried."

Now healthier, the TV personality has a permanent reminder of that tough time in her life.

"[There's] no makeup [on my scar]," she said, revealing her bare neck. "This is a first for me. I've been scarfing it up."

But a little scarring is now the least of her concerns.

"It's fresh, it's a month old and I think scars tell a story," she said. "And I think I'm so fortunate."

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Afghan Soldier Kills British Soldier, Wounds 6

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan soldier turned his weapon against foreign and Afghan troops in a southern province, killing one British soldier, another attack by a member of Afghanistan's military against its foreign allies, officials said Tuesday.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting, the first insider attack of 2013. Several British soldiers were also reported wounded.

Such "insider attacks" by Afghan soldiers and police, or men wearing their uniforms, rose dramatically last year. The attacks come as NATO and Afghan forces are in closer contact, as foreign troops hand over security to the Afghans and train them before an almost total withdrawal by the end of 2014.

NATO command spokesman Brig. Gen. Gunter Katz identified the dead soldier in Monday's shooting as British, but his name was not released.

"Yesterday, a suspected member of the Afghan national army shot and killed a British (NATO) soldier," Katz told a news conference. He said the shooting occurred at a patrol base in Nahri Sarraj district of Helmand province and that the shooter fired at both Afghan and British troops. He said the incident is under investigation.

An Afghan Defense Ministry official said the shooter was an enlisted soldier, and six British soldiers were wounded. The official spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to brief reporters.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said in an email that "an infiltrator" staged the attack and managed to escape from the scene but was then shot and killed after opening fire on a checkpoint. The Taliban have used the term "infiltrator" in the past to refer to members who have enlisted in the military to conduct such an attack. They identified the assailant as Mohammad Qasim Faroq.

In London, the Ministry of Defense said the soldier, who was attached to the 21 Engineer Regiment, was killed by small arms fire at Patrol Base Hazrat.

Several similar attacks have occurred in Helmand, the country's most violent province, where almost all British forces have been concentrated. Capt. Walter Reid Barrie was shot and killed in Nad Ali district of Helmand Nov. 11, the last British soldier to die before Monday's incident. Two British soldiers were killed by an Afghan policeman last October, and the same month a police officer and militants poisoned their colleagues and shot others, leaving six Afghans dead.

British Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman said Tuesday that in light of the increase in insider attacks, measures have been taken to increase security in Afghanistan — including better vetting and screening of recruits and bolstering counterterrorism efforts.

"These are clearly very, very serious incidents," spokesman Jean-Christophe Gray said. "We have taken a number of measures, and the military always keeps force protection measures under review."

Insider attacks killed 61 people in 45 incidents last year, compared to 35 killed in 21 attacks a year earlier, according to NATO. This tally does not include the Dec. 24 killing of an American civilian adviser by a female member of the Afghan police, because an investigation of the reportedly mentally unstable woman is continuing.

In some cases, militants have donned Afghan army or police uniforms to attack foreign troops. A number of attacks have also been carried out by members of Afghan security forces against their own comrades.

A total of 439 British forces personnel and Ministry of Defense civilians have died during the 11-year war, the second highest toll in the NATO-led coalition after the United States. Of these, 396 were killed as a result of hostile action, according to official British death tolls.

___

Associated Press writers Cassandra Vinograd in London and Amir Shah in Kabul contributed.

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Brown seeks to lift state inmate caps

Gov. Jerry Brown says there's no need to do more to reduce crowding in state prisons, and population caps should be lifted.

In a legal filing late Monday, state lawyers balked at the federal court requirement that California outline plans to further reduce prison crowding. Instead, lawyers insisted that conditions have improved sufficiently, even in prisons with thousands more inmates than they were built to hold.

"The overcrowding and healthcare conditions cited by this court to support its population reduction order are now a distant memory," the filing said.

It is now up to a panel of three federal judges, presiding over class-action lawsuits over inmate medical, dental and mental health care, to decide the next step. Their options include accepting the state's position, previously rejected, or ordering the state to release prisoners early, a possibility backed in 2011 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Civil rights advocates who are upset by the state's refusal to produce a court-ordered reduction called it "business as usual."

"Insisting that we maintain a horrendously bloated prison population will only ensure that California remain near the bottom of the nation in per-pupil spending on public education," said Allen Hopper, director of criminal justice and drug policy for the ACLU of Northern California.

California currently has 133,000 prisoners, nearly 120,000 of them housed in its 33 prisons. That population is far below the 173,000 inmates crowded into the state in 2007, but more than 9,000 above what federal judges say they will allow. The deadline for the reductions is June 30, but the judges have said they will allow California to argue for an extension to December.

State records show that Brown has recently reduced crowding by sending inmates to private prisons out of state. After months of decline, the number of inmates transferred every week began to rise in November. The state is now operating near its contractual maximum, paying more than half a million dollars a day to house prisoners as far away as Mississippi.

Last year, Brown's administration vowed to save money by canceling those contracts.

In Monday's filing, Brown's lawyers told federal overseers that instead of scheduling early releases or championing new sentencing laws, the governor wants the court to declare that crowding no longer interferes with the delivery of prison healthcare. Among those experts the state cites is Jeffrey Beard, the former Pennsylvania prisons chief who last month took over as Brown's new corrections secretary.

Prisoner advocates criticized the governor's contention.

"This is the latest in a long string of delaying tactics by the state," said Don Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, lead attorney for inmates. "The care in California prisons remains unconstitutional and it is unfortunate that the state continues to litigate instead of spending the time and money to fix these life-threatening problems."

Brown scheduled dual news conferences in Sacramento and Los Angeles on Tuesday to explain his stance.

Inmate exports were to have been cut in half by December 2013 and stopped by the end of 2015, according to the governor's May 2012 blueprint, part of a plan that was billed as saving "billions of dollars."

"It's a shuffling of the deck chairs, instead of looking at concrete proposals," said Emily Harris, director of Californians United for a Responsible Budget, an alliance of organizations opposed to increased incarceration. Organizations such as Californians United for a Responsible Budget and the American Civil Liberties Union hoped California's prison crowding crisis would push the state into early release programs, alternative sentencing and decriminalization of some drugs.

The out-of-state transfers alone are not enough to meet federal orders to reduce California's prison population to below 137.5% of what its prisons were built to hold. Slapped with findings that inmate care was so poor it amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment," California is struggling to show it can improve conditions without resorting to mass releases.

In 2011, Brown proposed to solve most of those problems by requiring counties to take custody of tens of thousands of nonviolent felons and parole violators who otherwise would be sent to prison. In selling the plan, Brown insisted the state had no choice.

"The force we can't avoid is the United States Supreme Court," Brown said in September 2011. "That court said … let out 30,000 prisoners, so that's what you've got to do."

His office has acknowledged for a year that the state's reductions won't meet the federal target.

Though inmates are no longer triple-bunked in gyms and other open spaces, some facilities remain at 170% of their intended capacity. The Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, in mid-conversion from a women's prison to a men's facility, last week was at nearly 300% capacity.

California spends more than $440 million a year to buy space at prisons operated by Tennessee-based Corrections Corp. of America. The number of out-of-state inmates has run from a high of 10,000 in 2010 to a low of 8,500 last October as the state rolled out plans to shutter those contracts.

In November, under renewed court demands to meet population caps, California once again began increasing the number of inmates it contracted out. State prison reports show that population returned to nearly 9,000 by the end of December. To go over 9,038 will require modification of California's contract with Corrections Corp. of America.

"There's always an availability of capacity," said Corrections Corp. of America spokesman Steve Owen.

The transfers have always been opposed by the state prison guards union, which loses jobs, and by inmate advocacy organizations that contend uprooted inmates lose touch with their families and have a harder time of adjusting to post-prison life.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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