Husband and wife attorneys Michael Bien '77 and Jane Kahn '77, this year's Joshua A. Guberman Lecturers, spoke about their experience combating the overcrowding of and lack of mental health care in California prisons on Monday evening in Rapaporte Treasure Hall.

Bien and Kahn discussed their 21-year legal battle against overcrowding in California prisons, beginning with a class-action lawsuit filed in 1990 by roughly 36,000 mentally ill prisoners and culminating in the United States Supreme Court's decision to require California to reduce the number of inmates in its prisons.

Bien took the podium first to describe the initial lawsuit, which aimed to correct the poor conditions in California prisons, specifically for those with severe mental illness. The case was decided in the prisoners' favor in 1995, and efforts were made to provide adequate mental health care.

However, said Bien in an interview with the Justice, by 2006, "It was clear that it wasn't going to get fixed unless we also dealt with overcrowding."

According to Bien, California prisons were "far worse than Abu Ghraib," operating at 200 percent capacity in 2006.

Photographs shown at the lecture depicted gymnasiums filled with triple-stacked bunk beds, filthy cells containing only a mattress pad and blanket and what Bien described as "holding cages" containing prisoners waiting to get into the mental health unit. In her speech, Kahn called the conditions "degrading" and "inhumane."

Kahn and Bien's appeal to reduce overcrowding was granted by a special panel of three judges, according to California law.

The plan to reduce overcrowding includes parole reform but no sentencing reform, "which is what we really need," said Kahn in an interview with the Justice.

The panel's decision was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling in May of this year, and on Oct. 1, the Realignment Act took effect. The Act will eventually cut the state prison population by 40,000 to a total of 50,000 inmates, said Kahn, bringing the operating capacity to 137 percent by June 2013.

"I think we have a little bit more hope now than we've had in a long time," said Bien of the results of the case. "There's at least a path to fix things, but, day to day for our clients, there has been very little change."

After the lecture, Bien and Kahn took questions from the audience that addressed the controversial role of the judicial branch in the ruling and calling the period that will follow it "a vast experiment."

Said Kahn of the relationship of her experience at Brandeis to the case, Brandeis "challenged us to think about … how movements help society."

"I think it's great that they are able to do the sort of work … that helps people in a tangible way," said Clair Weatherby '12, who attended the lecture.

Gloria Cadder '15 also expressed her interest in "such a modern and relevant case."

Bien and Kahn, attorneys at Rosen, Bien & Galvan in San Francisco, were also presented with the first-ever Brandeis Alumni Activist Award on Monday, on behalf of the Brandeis Justice League and the Louis D. Brandeis Legacy Fund for Social Justice.

The lecture series, founded by the Guberman family in memory of prominent Boston attorney Joshua Guberman, brings a distinguished speaker or speakers in the field of law and social policy to Brandeis each year.

The event was co-sponsored by the Heller School of Social Policy and Management; the Legal Studies Program; the Brandeis Justice League; the Justice Brandeis Innocence Project at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism; and the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life. Coordination of the lecture was aided this year by the Office of Alumni Relations.