California's deadline to cut its prison population has been extended until April 18th.
A panel of federal judges previously had moved the deadline to February while a court-appointed mediator works to find a long-term solution with Governor Jerry Brown's administration and attorneys representing inmates.
The judges ordered that those talk continue until January 10th. But the one-paragraph order released yesterday warns that they plan no further extension in the negotiations, "absent extraordinary circumstances."
The state now faces a spring deadline to reduce the prison population to about 110,o0o inmates.
The state is pushing for a three-year delay in the court-ordered deadline to give rehabilitation programs time to work as an alternative to housing thousands of inmates in private prisons and county jails.