A decade after the state of California agreed to improve inmate health care in the state prison system, it is finally on track to fulfill that agreement.

This week, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced that it has met the first target set by federal courts to reduce the overall number of inmates.

At the end of 2011, the number of inmates in the state's 33 prisons -- including the two in Vacaville, the California Medical Facility and California State Prison, Solano -- was slightly under the 133,000 goal set by the court...

Frustrated by what he sees as a partisan rejection of his plan to cut prison costs and overcrowding, Assemblyman Tim Donnelly is pledging to take up the fight again when the legislature reconvenes this month.

"I'm going to push a bill to deal with some of the unintended impacts of AB 109," Donnelly said in a phone interview Friday.

His comments refer to side effects of a bill passed last year in Sacramento in response to a federal court's 2009 ruling that, because of prison overcrowding, more than 40,000 convicted felons would have to be released within two years...

After months of wrestling with public safety realignment, the county’s Probation Department is asking the public for its thoughts on how best to implement the state’s budget-balancing plan that shifted low-level state prisoners to local jails and parolees to local supervision.

Probation Chief Stuart Forrest and a mix of other stakeholders like judges and those in law enforcement, health and education have been meeting for months even before realignment officially began in October. They hoped to meet the switch head on with a smooth transition. Now, with the process a reality, the collective known as the Community Corrections Partnership is holding a town hall meeting prior to the final draft of the county’s own plan coming together in February...

Yesterday, officials from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation travelled to Chowchilla in the Central Valley to talk to locals about the pending conversion of Valley State Prison for Women into a men’s facility. Chowchilla, the closest town to two of the state’s three women’s prisons, has resisted the conversion, worried about the impact of bringing in thousands of male prisoners. CDCR, meanwhile, says that under realignment, the female prison population will drop so much that they won’t need all three women’s prisons. Joshua Emerson Smith covers Chowchilla as part of his job as a McClatchy Reporter with Merced Sun Star and Chowchilla News. Emerson Smith was at yesterday’s meeting and we checked in with him to find out what went down...

California has met the first target set by federal courts to reduce its inmate population as a way to improve health care in the nation's largest state prison system, prison officials said Tuesday.

Federal judges ordered the state to reduce the population by about 10,000 inmates by the end of 2011, to about 133,000 inmates, as a means to improve the care of mentally and physically ill inmates. The population in the 33 prisons for adults fell to 132,887 as of last week's court-imposed deadline.

"Based on that number, we have met the benchmark," said Jeffrey Callison, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "It's gratifying to see that we have in fact made it..."

Areas at risk of wildfires and mudslides could have fewer crews to help out in 2013. The pool of inmate firefighters who pitch in during disasters is shrinking.

For thousands of state prisoners, fighting wildfires offers a chance to earn credit toward their sentence and the opportunity to do more than sit behind bars.

But next year, the program run by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and Cal Fire will have to rely on fewer inmates due to prison realignment efforts...

Corrections officials tried to appease Chowchilla and Madera County leaders Tuesday during a special meeting to discuss the possible impact from the conversion of Valley State Prison for Women to a men's facility.

The meeting came less than a week before the filing deadline for legal challenges to a self-granted California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation exemption allowing the department to bypass an impact study of the conversion.

Local officials repeatedly have demanded that the state prison system do an impact analysis, accusing state prison officials of violating the California Environmental Quality Act...

State officials are moving ahead with their plan to convert the Valley State Prison for Women into a male prison to reduce overcrowding. There have been many concerns about the switch since the announcement was made last month and county leaders raised some of the financial issues at a meeting Tuesday morning.

State correction officials presented their conversion plan at a public meeting in the Madera County government center. "We won't be seeing the same number of female inmates coming into our institutions," said Dana Toyama, spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation...

California’s prison population has dropped by more than 8,000 inmates since October, when the state began shifting low-level criminals from state prisons to county jails. The state's prisons are under a federal court order to cut the inmate population by another 25,000 inmates by mid-2013. One way to do it is to assign more female inmates to do their time outside of prison.

Jessica Carrillo says she hopes to get out a month early from Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla. The 19-year-old from Merced County got sent to state prison for 10 months after she violated parole on a juvenile offense of grand theft auto. Carrillo is confident that she meets the criteria for alternative custody. Her crime wasn’t a serious, violent or sexual offense and she’s the breadwinner for her family - or will be. Carrillo is eight months pregnant...

A Camarillo camp where juvenile offenders have been trained to fight fires will close Friday, leaving only one similar camp open in California, authorities said Wednesday.

Youths who have been trained at the camp will be reassigned to a camp known as Pine Grove in Amador County in Northern California.

At its peak, the Camarillo camp, known as the S. Carraway Public Service and Fire Center, housed five fire crews, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire...