Last Friday, a Federal Three-Judge Panel (TJP) issued a new ruling requiring California to speed up its processing time to release specified nonviolent inmates to be in compliance with a previous federal court order, which mandated the State to reduce the state prison population to 137.5 percent of design capacity, or roughly 37,000 inmates.  According to recent media reports, California has released approximately 25,000 inmates since the initial federal court order.  In a follow-up to the February 2014 ruling, the TJP gave the State until January 1, 2015 to begin recommending eligible inmates for parole.  Last week’s ruling was largely in response to attorneys’ representing eligible inmates’ claims that the State was slow to develop a parole process as mandated by the federal court order.