CCPOA news
August 11, 2009
City-run prison holding CA state inmates to be sold to privateer for feds?
Grappling with depleted reserves amid a cash-flow crisis, the city is looking to sell the city-owned Adelanto Community Correctional Facility to a private corporation for $28 million.
"It would give the cash infusion that would help us be able to continue city services until we are able to get back on our feet from the economic situation," said Adelanto City Manager Jim Hart.
City officials said they are confident that the proposed sale to Florida-based The Geo Group Inc. would not result in substantial layoffs to the facility's roughly 100 employees…
LINK - VVDailyPress.com
August 11, 2009
Salinas K-9 unit finds, injures wanted parolee hiding in backyard of home
Salinas police said they arrested a wanted parolee early this morning with the help of a K-9 unit.
At 11:30 p.m. Monday, Sgt. Dave Shaw said, an officer spotted 37-year-old Romero Rodriguez driving on Pajaro Street.
Recognizing Rodriguez as a wanted parolee, Shaw said, the officer immediately gave chase. After finding Rodriguez's car abandoned on Chestnut Street, responding officers began a search of the block between Chestnut and Maple streets…
LINK - TheCalifornian.com
August 10, 2009
Lawmakers question origin of prison riot, future of inmates, prisons
As state prison officials investigated the cause of the weekend riot at the California Institution for Men in Chino, local leaders and lawmakers started using the riot - which hospitalized 55 inmates - to frame the debate over a federal order to reduce the state's overall prison population.
While some officials said the apparently race-motivated riot is evidence that prisoners are dangerous and should be kept behind bars, others said the riot shows how dangerous the state's overcrowded prisons have become."Without a doubt, given that racial tensions exist, they are only exacerbated by the fact of our overcrowded prisons," said Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, chairman of the state Senate Public Safety Committee. "This could happen at any moment at any one of our overcrowded facilities. It would not take much to spark it."
The Reception Center West at the Chino facility, where Saturday's riot took place, was housing 1,280 men at the end of July. It was designed to hold only about 615…
LINK - DailyBulletin.com
August 10, 2009
Riot at crowded California prison as budget cuts loom
Inmates at an overcrowded California prison tore doors from their hinges and broke off toilets and sinks in a four-hour riot that injured 175 people, and many fear the crowding that may have helped escalate the brawl will only get worse with $1.2 billion in budget cuts.
A national expert warned 20 months ago that the Chino prison, which held nearly twice as many men as it was designed for, was "a serious disturbance waiting to happen" because of crowding.
Budget cuts
The fight, which appeared to be racially motivated, comes at a critical time for California prisons…
LINK - MercuryNews.com
August 10, 2009
No inmate release plan yet at California Men’s Colony
California Men's Colony officials don't yet know how the prison may be affected by the potential release of inmates statewide — but they acknowledge the San Luis Obispo facility is overcrowded.
Three federal judges have ordered state officials to come up with a plan by mid-September to shrink the California prison population by 40,000 to reduce overcrowding.
CMC spokesman Michael Siebert said that the current inmate population in the medium-security facility is 6,256; the prison is designed for a capacity of 3,884…
LINK - SanLuisObispo.com
August 10, 2009
Chino prison still locked down
The California Institution for Men remained on lockdown Monday after a 4-hour riot over the weekend hospitalized 55 inmates and injured 175.
All 10 prisons in Southern California were placed on lockdown until further notice, said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Prison spokesman Lt. Mark Hargrove said 80 officers responded to the riot Saturday night, which involved some 1,300 inmates in eight barracks. The uprising lasted for about four hours. At least one housing unit caught fire…
LINK - SBSun.com (San Bernadino Sun)
August 9, 2009
Deputies fatally shoot parolee in Carson
Authorities say deputies shot a man to death when he tried to grab a deputy's gun during a confrontation in Carson.
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Keith Ho says deputies approached a group of men smoking marijuana in an alley of a housing complex Saturday.
Most of the men dispersed but at least two remained and argued with deputies. Ho says one of them, a parolee with a warrant out for his arrest, refused to cooperate…
LINK - MercuryNews.com
August 7, 2009
Rural Health Care Equity Program
The $14.6 million General Fund reduction reflects the elimination of the Rural Health Care Equity Program effective August 1, 2009. This program provided a payment to employees who live in rural areas to cover higher health care cost due to the lack of managed care providers in many rural areas of the state...
August 7, 2009
CCA tries to keep court settlement payments secret
On July 27, 2009, The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri arbitrated on behalf of Prison Legal News, a monthly publication that reports on criminal justice-related issues, in a class-action lawsuit against Corrections Corp. of America (CCA), a private prison company based in Nashville.
ACLU moved to intervene in the suit for the sole purpose of unsealing the settlement agreement. As a matter of public policy, documents filed in federal court should be open to inspection by the public. "It is important to ensure the availability of court records for public accountability. It serves the interests of the 1st Amendment", said Doug Bonney, Chief Counsel for the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri.
The class action suit was settled on February 12, 2009; however, the settlement was sealed by the court upon motion by the parties. Thus, the exact terms of the settlement are unknown, including the maximum monetary amount that CCA will have to pay…
LINK - KCTribune.com
August 6, 2009
Jerry Brown denounces court order on release of California prisoners
Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown has denounced a court order to release more than one out of every four state prisoners in California as counterproductive interference by judicial activists, and said state officials were still deliberating Wednesday whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
While acknowledging that Tuesday's ruling by a three-judge federal panel aims to resolve the same problems with severe prison overcrowding that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to, Brown said the court's latest edict on how to improve the corrections system has only contributed to the "Kafka-esque nightmare" confronting the cash-strapped state.
Federal court edicts already have imposed 19 consent decrees on state agencies trying to improve conditions in the prisons, requiring state officials to devote scarce resources to legal reports and to pay the costs of prisoners' lawsuits as well as those of the state attorneys who defend against them, Brown said…
LINK - LATimes.com
