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Source: www.sacbee.com --- 19 days ago
Once again, progress has stalled in the efforts to fashion a fix for California's overcrowded Prisons. ...
Source: www.prx.org --- 14 hours ago
California's prison crisis--how it started and possible solutions. ... Source: www.offbeat-news.com --- 41 days ago
Now that same-sex couples can get married in California, state prison officials are trying to figure out what that means for gay inmates. No prisoners so far have sought to arrange weddings with same-sex partners since the state Supreme Court granted same-sex couples the right to wed as of mid-June, according to Michele Kane, spokeswoman [...] ... Source: www.racewire.org --- 24 days ago
Tell the State Commission on Juvenile Justice: Shut It Down! On September 25th, the State Commission on Juvenile Justice -- the agency in charge of setting the direction for the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) -- will consider following the Little Hoover recommendation and closing the DJJ. The Commissioners need to know there is public support for this plan. Please take a moment to tell your story or describe why you support shutting down the DJJ. ... Source: news.yahoo.com --- 28 days ago
The rate at which inmates are dying in California Prisons is dropping, a possible result of a federal takeover of the medical system. ... Source: www.latimes.com --- 11 days ago
The far-reaching measure would increase treatment and eliminate incarceration for those convicted of nonviolent, drug-related crimes. But opponents see another agenda. In a state that has consistently boosted penalties for criminals, packing California's Prisons to bursting, sponsors of the far-reaching Proposition 5 are asking voters in November to go in the opposite direction. ... Source: www.latimes.com --- 28 days ago
A court-appointed monitor says the drop indicates progress is being made in reducing the number of preventable deaths in the state's Prisons. The death rate of California prison inmates has dropped almost 30% since the beginning of 2006, a court-appointed monitor reported today. ... Source: www.latimes.com --- 15 days ago
Federal funding to pay for the care of uninsured illegal immigrants must not be allowed to end. So many unfunded federal mandates regarding illegal immigration stick in the collective craw of border states -- whose schools, Prisons and healthcare systems bear a disproportionate responsibility for the country's broken immigration policies -- that it's hard to single out just one. But near the top of the list is Congress' requirement that hospitals provide emergency treatment to illegal immigrants and its amnesia about paying for it, an act of neglect with special implications for Southern California. ... Source: www.latimes.com --- 18 days ago
With the state scrambling for funds, Proposition 6 would add $1 billion in confused anti-crime spending. California just cut, borrowed and wished its way out of a $15.2-billion budget shortfall, but it still must find $8 billion to bring its severely overcrowded Prisons up to constitutional standard. The state got into this fix by blindly adopting programs that swallow huge chunks of the budget but add no new money. Voters make it worse by passing tough-on-crime laws that fill up the Prisons -- or would, if the Prisons weren't already bursting. ... Source: www.marketwire.com --- 4 days ago
LOS ANGELES, CA (MARKET WIRE) It's not exactly a "get-out-of-prison-free" card, but a new innovative, statewide public-private partnership will help pay for energy-saving building retrofits at more than a dozen Prisons in California. Representatives of the state's investor-owned utilities -- Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas Co. -- gathered today at Wasco State Prison in Wasco, Calif., to jump-start the program with a $6.5 million incentive check to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) Secretary Matt Cate. ... Source: jurist.law.pitt.edu --- 4 days ago
[JURIST] A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the administration of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to give its position on providing $250 million this year toward the $8 billion needed to reform the state's prison health care system. US District Judge Thelton Henderson of the Northern District of California said the administration must provide details of when and how the money will be disbursed to the court-appointed prison medical overseer, J. Clark Kelso. In August, Kelso asked the court to force the state to pay $8 billion over five years to improve prison hospitals. Kelso had previously said that the California Senate was unwilling to authorize borrowing money for the project. He appealed to Schwarzenegger to use his emergency powers to raise the needed funds but has accused the governor of failing to heed a federal order to secure the money. The administration is scheduled to present its response during a hearing on October 27. AP has more. The San Francisco Chronicle has additional coverage. In January, a federal judge ruled that the health care provided in California Prisons does not meet constitutional standards, even though medical services have improved significantly since the court assumed oversight of the system in 2005. Bringing the system up to standards could take as long as four years, according to officials at California Prison Health Care Services. Last year, the court created a three-judge panel to overs ... Source: www.kentucky.com --- 7 days ago
A federal judge has scolded California officials for failing to provide the billions of dollars a court-appointed receiver says is needed to upgrade the state's prison health care system. U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson made it clear Monday he expects California to pay $8 billion for seven new inmate medical facilities. But he stopped short of immediately holding Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Controller John Chiang in contempt for failing to turn over the money. Medical care in California's Prisons is so bad it has been ruled unconstitutional. Henderson appointed a receiver to run the prison medical system after finding that an average of an inmate a week was dying from neglect or malpractice. The judge says he is likely to order the state to pay $250 million as a first installment to demonstrate good faith. J. Clark Kelso, the receiver, said he needs that amount to start designing three new medical and mental health units. Kelso said he will need more than $3 billion before July 1 to begin building them. The rest of the $8 billion would come in later years. ... Source: www.kqed.org --- 3 days ago
A federal judge has ordered state officials to return to court later this month to say how they'll pay a first installment of $250 million to improve health care at California Prisons. ... Source: www.portfolio.com --- 28 days ago
Schadenfreude Alert: Convicted felon Bill Lerach's generous ways -- some would say unethical behavior -- in a federal prison camp have landed him in a higher-security lockup. According to the Bureau of Prisons, on September 9, the flamboyant plaintiff's lawyer was transferred from a low-security prison camp in Lompoc, California, to a medium-security prison in Phoenix, Arizona. As previously reported on Portfolio.com, Lerach got into trouble for offering a prison guard the use of his season tickets for the San Diego Chargers, in violation of prison policy. He had spent time in lockdown at Lompoc pending an administrative review. The bureau does not comment on disciplinary matters, and a call to Lerach's attorney was not immediately returned. by Matthew Malone Related Links Lerach Can't Change His Stripes Chargers To Host Sunday's Game at Home as Fires Subside Wildfires May Force Chargers Game Shift to Texas ... Source: www.grist.org --- 3 days ago
Woe to California inmates whose lunches don't agree with them: As part of a conservation program in the state-prison system, at least one prison has introduced a water-saving measure that makes toilets temporarily unflushable if they're flushed three times in five minutes. As for what else the Prisons are doo-ing: A partnership with the state's public utilities will see energy retrofits at 16 facilities, and is expected to save $3.2 million annually. "We're trying in the Prisons to be smart on crime," said Matthew Cate of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "This is an example to be smart fiscally and [on] the environment as well." Gov. Arnold "That's Kindergarten Cop to You" Schwarzenegger hailed the agency, which runs the largest state-prison system in the U.S.: "This environmental initiative sets an example for the rest of the country. I applaud CDCR for their ... groundbreaking action on climate change and energy efficiency." sources: Marketwatch , Central Valley Business Times , KGET ... Source: www.portfolio.com --- 33 days ago
Does Bill Lerach have no shame? You will recall that the onetime scourge of Corporate America just this May began serving a 24-month sentence for his role in a scheme to pay secret kickbacks to plaintiffs in securities lawsuits. At the federal prison in Lompoc, California, he is showing no signs of being a changed man. Lerach spent some of his summer in solitary confinement ---- or "administrative segregation," in the parlance of the federal Bureau of Prisons -- because he is said to have offered a prison guard the use of his season tickets to San Diego Chargers games, reports the Recorder , a daily legal paper in San Francisco. The guard reported the offer to authorities, kicking off a disciplinary investigation that could result in his transfer out of the minimum-security camp, and into a low-security prison. Let us pause for a moment and reflect on the nature of the crime Lerach pleaded guilty to: greasing the palms of shareholders so that his firm could have "lead plaintiff status" in class actions and make hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees. If he indeed offered the Chargers tickets as some sort of inducement, Lerach is, at the least, consistent. Indeed, the day after he was sentenced, the once powerful lawyer told the Wall Street Journal that he was counting on his many newspaper subscriptions to use as currency while in prison. So he was already getting ready to work the prison system! "A sports section is suppo ...
Source: yubanet.com --- 17 days ago
California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today filed a motion in federal court demanding public disclosure of Federal Receiver J. Clark Kelso's $8 billion prison construction plan. "If public money is being spent, the public has the right to know how it's going to be spent," said Attorney General Brown. "To date, the proposed $8 billion medical upgrade for California's Prisons has not been shared with the public. The people of California are entitled to see for themselves whether or not the plan meets constitutional minimums or instead goes way beyond what the Constitution requires under the Eighth Amendment, prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment." ... Find more results for California Prisons on RSSMicro.com |
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By Peter Schrag Although hardly anyone's noticed, billionaire financier George Soros and some other very deep pockets are back on the California ballot with a drug and criminal sentencing reform measure that makes their prior efforts seem modest. Given the prison mess we've locked ourselves into, Soros' proposal may be the brightest light on a bleak horizon. This one, Proposition 5, called NORA, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act, is a monster plan designed to direct many more drug using lawbreakers to treatment and keep them out of the slammer. It puts more money into diversion and rehabilitation for both adults and youthful offenders, for whom there is now no drug treatment program at all. It's a complicated and costly plan, running to an estimated $1 billion a year. It would allocate more resources to treatment, probation and parole. But the Legislative Analyst's Office believes it could save the state as much money, especially in prison construction, as it will cost, and maybe more. The numbers are a little iffy. Nonetheless, the LAO says the program could reduce the state's adult inmate population, now roughly 171,000 prisoners, by 18,000 – at $46,000 per year apiece, that's not peanuts – and reduce the rolls of parolees by an additional 22,000. NORA is part of what's become a long procession of drug reform and criminal sentencing reforms underwritten by Soros, John Sperling, the founder of the private for-profit Univ ...
By Herman Atkins Over 20 years ago, a woman was brutally raped and robbed in a shoe store in Riverside. To this day, no one knows who committed the crime. But because of other people’s mistakes, I spent almost 12 years in prison for his crime—until the Innocence Project used DNA to prove I was innocent. Even though I lost 12 years of my life and suffered the indignities and horrors of more than a decade in California’s Prisons, I am one of the lucky ones. For most people, there is no DNA to prove their innocence and no free lawyers to help them. Four bills that would help reduce wrongful convictions in California were introduced in the legislature this year, and two have finally made it to the Governor’s desk . The state’s budget crisis killed the other two bills even though they had very moderate price tags. Nonetheless, the two bills on Gov. Schwarzenegger’s desk are important first steps and he must sign them now . Failing to enact these reforms puts public safety at risk. As in my case, when an innocent person is convicted, the investigation stops and the real perpetrator is often never found. We cannot wait one more year to take action to reduce wrongful convictions. The first bill, SB 1589 , would require corroboration for jailhouse informant testimony . Informants have good reasons to lie: they are getting something in exchange for what they say. Yet, they are persuasive. In fact, informants are the leading cause of wrongfu ...
By Marty Hittelman President California Federation of Teachers The November 4th general election is an important election for public education, even though none of the Propositions directly address schools. That’s because many of the propositions would have an impact on the conditions under which education takes place, and would have a deep impact on our students and their families. Prop. 9, for example, could siphon hundreds of millions of dollars from public education. It takes money away from schools, children’s healthcare and other programs to incarcerate future criminals. Prop. 9 requires increased spending on corrections, but doesn’t provide one additional dollar. Thus, its passage means money would be taken from education and other programs to fund Prop. 9. That’s just what we don’t need. California already has a 15 billion dollar budget deficit. California cannot afford to SPEND ANY LESS ON schools while spending even more on a Prisons plan that does not address the real needs of victims. Prop. 9 is a misleading proposition that exploits Californians’ concern for crime victims. It preys on our emotions in order to rewrite the State Constitution, and change the way California manages its Prisons and jails, threatening to worsen our overcrowding crises, at both the state and local levels. Prop. 9 is a costly, unnecessary initiative. It does little to extend the current Victims’ Bill of Rights. In addition, Prop. 9’s tremend ...