Three federal judges on Wednesday rejected the prison population reduction plan submitted to them by the state and gave the Schwarzenegger administration three more weeks to produce a plan that complies with their wishes.

If the court doesn’t get one by Nov. 12, the judges said they will order attorneys who represent sick inmates to submit a plan by the end of November, and the judges would order that plan be implemented.

In their seven-page order, the judges noted that, after the administration submitted its plan in September, inmates’ attorneys asked that contempt proceedings be initiated against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate.

The three-judge panel said it will stay sanctions, including contempt citations, pending the state’s response to Wednesday’s order.

“We have afforded the state every opportunity to (comply), even at the cost of delaying the reduction of the overcrowding of California’s prisons – a reduction that is necessary to the elimination of the unconstitutional medical and mental health conditions that lie at the heart of these proceedings, and that will, in addition, significantly reduce the prison system’s criminogenic effects so detrimental to public safety and welfare,” the panel said.

In the August order, the judges directed the administration to come up with a plan “that will in no more than two years reduce the population of (the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s 33) adult institutions to 137.5 percent of their combined design capacity.”

The design capacity is approximately 80,000 and the population is just under 150,000. The order requires a reduction of roughly 40,000 inmates, to a population of 110,000.

The state’s plan calls for a cut to 166 percent of design capacity within two years, the judges noted. Read More Has anyone commented below yet? Be the first.