April 2010 News
April 27, 2010
Prison privateer CCA gets sued again over inmate beating
A former Idaho inmate is suing a private prison company, saying guards watched as he was beaten by a fellow inmate in an attack that went on for so long that his assailant had time to stop and drink some water before continuing.
Attorneys for Hanni Elabed filed the lawsuit against the Correction Corporation of America in U.S. District Court last week, saying their client was left brain-damaged and may never fully recover from the assault at the Idaho Correctional Center near Boise.
Steven Owens, the public affairs director for CCA, says the Tennessee-based company doesn't comment on lawsuits other than through court filings...
LINK - WashingtonPost.com
April 26, 2010
Infant removed from parolee’s home after found crawling near drugs
A routine parole check by four police officers last week led to the discovery of an infant boy crawling over his mother’s drug-addled torso near a syringe.
The four officers were working the weekly felony parole check detail in downtown Santa Barbara on a typically postcard-perfect “chamber of commerce” day on April 19, when they visited the residence of Judith Zamora Lopez just after noon.
Lopez was on parole for convictions relating to the prior use of controlled narcotic substances. The four officers entered her downtown apartment complex with the intention of interviewing her and ascertaining that she was abiding by the terms of her parole as she had for several prior months. But as they approached her apartment unit, they passed by her living room window and immediately observed Lopez sprawled on the living room couch, unmoving...
LINK - CrimeVoice.com
April 26, 2010
Parolee arrested in burglary of Oakland home
A convicted burglar paroled from prison just a month ago was arrested Sunday night after burglarizing the East Oakland home of an 89-year-old invalid who did not know he had been victimized until told by police, investigators said today.
Investigators said Justin Brooks, 25, of Oakland, had some of the stolen items in his possession when he was arrested after a brief foot chase. He refused to talk to police, Officer Ed Somarriba said.
Police initially responded to reports of two men acting suspiciously while walking between some houses on Lockwood Avenue about 9:40 p.m. Sunday. When Officers Miguel Masso and John McDonell stopped the men, they began running away in opposite directions...
LINK - InsideBayArea.com
April 26, 2010
Update on Issues Concerning Supervisor Members
Dear Supervisory Member,
First off thank you for the e-mail responses to my last memorandum. Some were quite informative, and some were shall we say less than flattering. But that’s okay, when I woke up this morning this is still the United States of America and many fine individuals have given, and continue to give, their lives so that you can share your point of view. I don’t have to agree with you or you with me. But the issues are important. Sometimes you have to lance a wound to make it heal. I plan on opening a few of those wounds to do just that...
April 22, 2010
Private prisons give big $$$ to CA lawmakers
A company that operates private prisons – and which is hoping to pluck inmates out of California’s overcrowded lockups and into its for-profit prisons – has donated $1,000 each to 10 state lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats alike, in recent days.
Private prisons could be a hot-button issue during this summer’s budget talks. In January, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a constitutional amendment to require the state to spend more on universities than keeping inmates behind bars. Privatizing prisons is one way to do that, the governor has said.
Schwarzenegger, whose ballot measure efforts last year received $100,000 from the Corrections Corp. of America, has been supportive of sending inmates to private prisons. More than 8,000 state inmates are already housed in the company’s out-of-state lockups, with the governor’s proposed budget funding more than 10,000 private prison beds, according to the Department of Finance...
LINK - LATimes.com
April 22, 2010
Supreme Court rejects Schwarzenegger furlough consolidation
The California Supreme Court has rejected Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's request that it take up seven key furlough lawsuits now in two appellate courts and freeze more than a dozen others in trial courts around the state. The decision ends the possibility for a relatively quick resolution to about two dozen furlough lawsuits in courts around the state.
The court posted the decision on its website this morning: "The application to transfer and consolidate appeals now pending in the Court of Appeal to this court is denied." Justice Joyce Kennard dissented.
Schwarzenegger is embroiled in 25 active lawsuits in various stages of litigation in courts from Sacramento to Los Angeles. On Mar. 2, his attorneys asked the state's high court to consolidate and review seven cases related to the governor's furlough authority, including a three Alameda Superior Court decisions on "special fund" workers that the administration lost and has appealed...
LINK - SacBee.com
April 21, 2010
Supervisory Letter: “It’s Time”
Dear Supervisory Member,
It’s Time
It’s time to mend the fences. There seems to be a prevailing attitude throughout our institutions of us against them, and rightfully so. However, at one time it was easier to determine the us and the them of this statement. Not so long ago it was us (staff) - green and them (inmates) - blue. It seems we have digressed to CCPOA Vs. Arnold, CCPOA Vs. CCSO etc.
It’s time to bring all of our members together on the same page, be they R06, S06 or even M06. How many times have you heard “He/She has changed since he/she promoted?” Occasionally animosity grows from there. The truth of the matter is promoting does require a certain degree of change. The individual that promotes is now responsible for things that were someone else’s responsibility in the past...
April 21, 2010
Editorial: Voters Agenda: Sensible parole policies needed amid tough-on-crime talk
Beware candidates touting new "tough on crime" policies – and hold on to your wallet. Year after year, this state spends a steadily increasing portion of its budget on the prison system – without increasing public safety. Yet candidates in each election cycle try to appear ever tougher.
Here's one area where California is an anomaly among the states: Since 1979, those who complete their prison sentences are placed on a three-year period of post-sentence supervision, called parole.
California stands virtually alone in paroling all prisoners. Most states reserve parole for the most serious offenders. New York, Florida, and Texas place about one-third of prisoners in parole supervision...
LINK - SacBee.com
April 21, 2010
A Neighborhood Braces for an Influx of Parolees
...This year, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will cut $250 million in funding for adult rehabilitation programs, including $50 million for parole operations. Places like the Freedom House are among the casualties of the state's cuts, which refocus limited resources on parolees with a higher risk of recidivism.
But the majority of inmates set to be released under the state's plan to reduce its prison population will be low-risk offenders. The state plans to reduce its prison population by 6,500 in the next year and as many as 40,000 in years to come under a program known as non-revocable parole. They will not be supervised by parole officers.
As a result, service providers say, those parolees will lose eligibility for programs like the California New Start program, which helps parolees find jobs. A parole officer's referral is required...
LINK - VoiceofSanDiego.org
April 21, 2010
California public employee unions won’t face ballot fights
Public employee unions have dodged a bullet this election year.
Proponents have stopped pushing a measure to prohibit unions from deducting political money from public employee wages.
Supporters of the measure had trouble raising enough money to gather the 694,354 valid signatures they needed to qualify the constitutional amendment for the ballot, said Lew Uhler, president of the advocacy group the National Tax Limitation Committee, which worked with the initiative's proponents...
LINK - SacBee.com
April 21, 2010
Corrections officers say cuts raise safety issues
NORCO - Less than a year after Chino's destructive prison riot, state corrections officers say cost-cutting could contribute to another just like it.
The safety of the public and of prison officers is imperiled by a 3 percent to 5 percent reduction in staffing levels statewide, according to dozens of local corrections officers who protested the decreases on Tuesday at the California Rehabilitation Center.
The officers said inmates receive less supervision, which encourages them to take advantage of less-secure situations.
"My main concern is knowing the troops are being denied proper coverage," said James Howell, a corrections officer at the CRC.
"We're already outnumbered from the get-go. This is about safety. Somebody is gonna get hurt..."
LINK - DailyBulletin.com
April 20, 2010
Furlough Summary
April 20, 2010
General Layoff Update
April 19, 2010
Inmate escapee (walk-away) from camp, captured in Stockton
Prison officials tracked a man who escaped from a work camp in Tehama County back to a Stockton home where was with his wife, a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman said today.
Phillip Joseph Guthmiller, 29, walked away from the minimum security Ishi Conservation Camp in Paynes Creek on April 8, where he was serving time for 2008 second-degree burglary conviction in San Joaquin County.
Corrections Agents and Rancho Cordova Fugitive Apprehension Team took Guthmiller into custody at 7 a.m. Saturday at the Stockton home without incident, CDCR spokeswoman Margaret Pieper said...
LINK - Recordnet.com
April 16, 2010
Corrections Dept. admits inmate release mistake
California is reversing course tonight after releasing several hundred potentially violent inmates with absolutely no supervision. Now the Department of Corrections is trying to track them down -- something that may prove easier said than done.
A new law allowed the California Department of Corrections to release more than 6,600 low-risk inmates on unsupervised, non-revocable parole. But the agency now says about 500 of those need to be supervised after all.
Its software program that helps assess the risk of them committing another crime has been upgraded-now taking into consideration an inmate's previous county convictions...
LINK - ABCLocal.go.com
April 15, 2010
Calif. returns 656 parolees to active supervision
California is changing how it applies a new law allowing some parolees to go unmonitored after their release from prison, and will return 656 of the parolees to active supervision after learning they are at high risk of committing new crimes, prison officials said Wednesday.
Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate told The Associated Press that upgrades to a computerized risk-assessment program found that some parolees had committed more crimes than officials previously believed.
So far, 6,667 ex-convicts have been placed on non-revocable parole under the new law that took effect in January...
LINK - SacBee.com
April 14, 2010
Private (CCA) Prison Guards Let Man Die, Family Says
Private prison guards let a suicidal prisoner suffer seizures, lapse into a coma and die of a drug overdose, and merely "put the decedent in an observation cell and ... check(ed) his vital signs every six hours," his family claims in Federal Court. The family sued the Corrections Corporation of America and several of its employees, including two doctors.
Corrections Corporation of America runs the West Tennessee Detention Facility, where Alan Young died on April 11, 2009, according to the complaint. Young's family claims the prison staff knew he was suicidal and that he was saving up the psychotropic medications he was given daily so that he could take them all at once to commit suicide.
The staff "did not take any measures to ensure that he was actually taking the medication that they were giving him," according to the complaint...
LINK - CourthouseNews.com
April 14, 2010
Inmates being released with non-revocable parole
Seven Tehachapi prison inmates released since Jan. 25 were freed in conjunction with a new, less-stringent type of parole that cannot be violated, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Those inmates were put on what is known as non-revocable parole, which went into law Jan. 25.
Non-revocable parolees are released at their regularly scheduled dates, but are not monitored the same way regular parolees are, CCI public information officer Jon Bartelmie said...
LINK - TehachapiNews.com
April 14, 2010
Colorado investigates disturbance at prison
HUDSON, COLO. — The Colorado Department of Corrections is investigating a disturbance at the Hudson Correctional Facility, a private prison that houses inmates from Alaska.
Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti says the disturbance happened late Tuesday or early Wednesday and is reportedly under control. Details of the disturbance were not immediately available.
Cornell Companies Inc. built the 1,250-bed, medium security prison last year and hoped to house up to 1,000 Alaskan inmates there. Company spokesman Charles Seigal did not immediately return a message...
LINK - SFExaminer.com
April 14, 2010
Inmates Take Over Part Of Private Colo. Prison
HUDSON, Colo. - A private prison in Hudson was locked down Wednesday morning after a handful of inmates took over part of the facility.
The Hudson Correctional Facility at 3001 N. Juniper St. houses about 100 inmates from Alaska, according to a spokesman for the facility.
Charles Siegel of the Cornell Companies in Houston said that 7 or 8 inmates took over one module of the 1,250-bed, medium security prison. No guards were injured and there were no hostages, Siegel said...
LINK - TheDenverChannel.com
April 13, 2010
AB 900 Jail Beds to Move Forward in Calaveras County?
San Andreas, CA - The jail project will top the Calaveras County supervisorial meeting Tuesday at the Government Center.
It was back in February that three of the five Calaveras County supervisors voted to halt the Jail Project planning phase due to too many uncertainties. Tomorrow they may change their votes now that the state has somewhat cleared the muddied waters.
From CAO Jeanne Boyce, "The state has really engaged in helping us look at the lease revenue bond financing and the contractual agreement and they really want to work with the County to make those financial arrangements work for the County...
LINK - MyMotherLode.com
April 12, 2010
Critics say new California parole policy is costly, dangerous
On a Wednesday morning last month, Nicole Clements walked into her Sacramento parole agent's office about 9:40 and signed a one-page document.
The "Notification of Non-Revocable Parole Requirements" spelled out the rules for the 37-year-old Clements, who had been on parole for identity theft and has a history of arrests or citations for drug, theft and other crimes.
"You do not have a parole agent," the document states. "You do not have a requirement to report to a parole office..."
LINK - SacBee.com
April 12, 2010
Parolee Housing Regulations Changing
RIALTO - Citing public safety concerns, the City Council tonight will discuss an urgency ordinance limiting the number of parolees that can live in boarding homes.
If passed by a 4/5 vote, the ordinance would prohibit room and board facilities from having more than one parolee living on site.
The emergency ordinance would take effect immediately and last 45 days. After 45 days, the council would then take up the issue of extending the ordinance...
LINK - ContraCostaTimes.com
April 10, 2010
Guest View: Early release places all at risk
Chelsea King now joins Polly Klass, Bill Reagan and thousands of other Californians who have been and will be the victims of ill founded, short sighted sentencing and parole policies. Decisions of governors, legislators, ivory tower criminal justice intellectuals and particularly the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) are major factors in criminality.
The 1977 Determinant Sentence Law gave us Richard Davis who raped and murdered Polly Klass in 1993. In 1992 Senate Bill 92, a parole reform bill, gave us a rash of victimization that included the murder of Bill Reagan on the streets of Sacramento. Current policies give us Chelsea King.
History repeats! Contemporary experts and CDCR leaders pronounce their bright ideas "good for public safety," then run for cover and cover-up while legislators who voted for these policies are "born again" crime fighters when the predictable victimization occurs...
LINK - RedBluffDailyNews.com
April 10, 2010
Tentative prison deal in Stockton
Local leaders reached a tentative agreement Friday with state corrections officials and prison health care receiver J. Clark Kelso to build an inmate medical facility southeast of Stockton.
The settlement ends nearly six months of tense negotiations and resolves a lawsuit over the 1,722-bed prison for physically and mentally ill prisoners. Once built it will be called the California Medical Facility, Stockton.
"There's been lots of animosity and hard feelings, but in the end I think everybody wins," San Joaquin County Supervisor Leroy Ornellas said. "That's good news..."
LINK - Recordnet.com
April 9, 2010
CCPOA Interim Supervisory Vice President Introduction
As the recent appointee to the CCPOA Interim Supervisory Vice President I would like to introduce myself to you and to communicate what you can expect from me. As well I look forward to interaction with you to determine what you expect from me. This appointment is pending State Board of Directors approval at the April CCPOA State Board meeting. However, with the challenges facing our supervisors I don’t think it would be prudent to wait for that approval before making contact with you...
April 8, 2010
In the Line of Duty Scratchers
April 8, 2010
CDCR: New MRSA Policy & Training Procedures
CDCR HQ has issued a memo (see attached) directing all institutions to develop local MRSA procedures. Therefore, if they have not already begun, local institutional management will shortly begin to develop the local MRSA IIPPs which will include site specific issues. The statewide MRSA settlement agreement allows for local discussion regarding the content of the local MRSA OPs.
We suggest you contact your Warden as soon as possible to set up meetings for discussion regarding MRSA issues. Some areas of consideration when reviewing the local MRSA policy may include...
April 5, 2010
Hearing delayed for suspect in Pasadena girl’s 2007 murder
A pretrial hearing for Johnl Reynolds, a parolee charged with murder in the 2007 shooting of 17-year-old Ebony Huel outside an underground nightclub, was postponed Monday.
Reynolds did not appear in Pasadena Court for the scheduled hearing, which was continued until April 12, court officials said.
Reynolds is facing one count of murder, one count of attempted murder and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon. Huel was shot outside of an illegal teen nightclub on Aug. 17, 2007...
LINK - PasadenaStarNews.com
April 5, 2010
East Bay braces for influx of released prisoners
Bracing for an influx of newly released prisoners, East Bay leaders are working with social services groups to prevent the former inmates from returning to lives of crime.
The concern has reached a critical point because state legislation has relaxed restrictions on parolees and led to the early release of prisoners considered low risk. The state sought the changes to save money and to ease prison overcrowding and health care problems.
The state aims to decrease the prison population by tens of thousands over the next two to three years...
LINK - InsideBayArea.com
April 4, 2010
Fed Receiver, Locals (in Stockton) Just Keep Pounding Away At Each Other
"We're equally frustrated that it's taken us this long to get to this situation," J. Clark Kelso, the federal prison receiver, said last week.
Kelso and Brett Morgan, chief of staff of the state's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, met with The Record's editorial board a few days after the board met with local officials who have litigation pending against the project.
They wanted to give their side of the medical prison impasse. About 10 days ago, the board, of which I am a member, met with about eight officials from the city of Stockton and San Joaquin County who came in to discuss the 1,734-bed inmate medical facility proposed for the shuttered Karl Holton Youth Correctional Drug and Alcohol Treatment Facility on Arch Road, east of Highway 99 and southeast of Stockton...
LINK - Recordnet.com
April 2, 2010
Billions wasted in CA government?
A report from the California Taxpayers Association says that California state employees have wasted $19 billion over the last 10 years.
Here are a few examples:
Example number one: The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation gave free apartments and free hotel rooms with cable TV and free breakfast to paroled sex offenders. Cost to taxpayers: $22 million.
Example number two: Prison officials rented empty offices for four years. The cost to taxpayers? $580,000...
LINK - CBS13.com On the Money
April 2, 2010
Don’t Believe the Bull
CDCR says 12-hour shifts are a pay raise.
But that’s only because you’ll be working more hours.
Here’s how else 12-hour shifts hurt you:
April 2, 2010
Governor files opening brief in CCPOA furlough appeal
With all the recent furlough court action, we're just now getting to the latest development in the fourth of the four Alameda cases ruled on by Judge Frank Roesch and now with San Francisco's 1st District Court of Appeal, CCPOA v. Schwarzenegger.
When we last left this case, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's legal team had won a decision from the appellate court to temporarily block Roesch's order to end self-directed Corrections furloughs pending a resolution of the appeal or another order from the appellate court.
On Feb. 26, the appellate court denied CCPOA's motion to dismiss the governor's appeal, although it also said the union's arguments about the timeliness of the appeal had merit. The court said it would treat the appeal as a request for a writ of mandate and set a schedule for the two sides to submit documents to support their positions...
LINK - SacBee.com
