Releasing Felons: Two federal judges held a hearing on Wednesday where inmate rights advocates argued that prison overcrowding in California requires the early release of 37,000 felons from prison. A Sacramento Bee article by Andy Furrilo reports that Judges Thelton Henderson and Lawrence Karlton may be on the verge of recommending that a three judge panel be convened to decide if an inmate release should be ordered. The recommendation would be made to the Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit, who would choose the members of the panel. If the panel ordered that inmates be released, the state's appeal would bypass the Circuit and go directly to the United States Supreme Court as provided by The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, available here, and the statutes on three-judge courts, 28 U.S.C. § 2284, and appeals from their decisions, 28 U.S.C. § 1253.

British Crime Numbers: The British organization Civitas claims that the British Crime Survey seriously understates the crime rate in that country by arbitrarily excluding repeated crimes against the same victim, Philip Johnston reports for the Telegraph. This is one of the factors that make international comparisons problematic. Statistics are gathered with different methodologies.