Budget
February 2, 2012
Refusal to fund California prison construction could delay end of federal oversight
For six years, a federal receiver has been in charge of fixing California’s broken-down prison medical system.
The receiver says he can finish the job soon, but he needs state lawmakers to pay the full $2 billion they promised for medical facilities. The state has already spent a billion dollars on improvements. Lawmakers now say they don’t need to spend any more. The receiver worries that the improvements in prison medical care could slip away...
LINK - SCPR.org
February 2, 2012
Realignment presents challenges in housing, mental health treatment
After four months of California’s realignment program, jail overcrowding, homelessness and inadequate mental health reporting have overburdened local agencies now responsible for prisoners shifted from state to local institutions.
County parole agents and mental health workers have had to deal with a growing number of state prison returnees who have mental health issues, which county officials say were poorly described in their state prison information packets that preceded release...
LINK - PE.com (The Press-Enterprise)
February 1, 2012
Editorial: State must grapple with aging prisoners
California finally is making headway in reducing numbers in overcrowded prisons – enough to get the federal courts to say that the end of federal receivership "appears to be in sight."
But to get California prisons back under state control, the state will have to provide a credible plan by the end of April for tackling the other major problem in the prison system: An aging inmate population....
LINK - SacBee.com
January 27, 2012
Public Officials Talk About Public Safety Realignment
"If California took the resources made available for prison expansion or realignment, and invested them in re-entry services, affordable housing and jobs and all of the programs that are being cut ... that's going to have much more impact on public safety than building law enforcement.” Emily Harris, Statewide Coordinator for Californians United for a Responsible Budget Daily Breeze, Christina Villacorte, January 25, 2012
“We’re going to make some adjustments, and sometimes they will be some fairly large adjustments. With sufficient resources, I do believe counties can and do already perform some of these services.” Sacramento County Supervisor Don Nottoli Elk Grove Citizen, Brian M. Gold, January 25, 2012...
LINK - Turnto23.com
January 27, 2012
Darrell Steinberg: Pension reform must pass ‘strength test’
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said today that the Legislature will consider some sort of pension reform bill this session, and he didn't rule out sending a hybrid plan for new hires to Gov. Jerry Brown for a signature.
The Sacramento Democrat talked at length about pensions during a morning meeting with the Capitol press corps on Thursday. The Bee's Torey Van Oot was there and passed this six-minute audio file from the event.
(Warning: To hear the file, you'll need software that plays m4a files, such as RealPlayer or QuickTime. The recording is clear but low-volume, so turn up the sound on your listening device.)...
LINK - SacBee.com
January 26, 2012
Number of Older Inmates Grows, Stressing Prisons
The number of Americans in prison older than 55 is growing at a faster rate than the group’s share of the population at large, and many prisons are unprepared to provide them with health care, which can cost as much as nine times more than for younger inmates, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Friday.
The complications in handling the swelling number of aging prisoners range from making allowances for those with Alzheimer’s or dementia and finding sufficient ground-floor cells for inmates in wheelchairs to ensuring that older prisoners are not exploited or robbed by younger inmates...
LINK - NYTimes.com
January 24, 2012
San Bernardino County pension reform measure moves forward
The president of San Bernardino County's most powerful labor union announced Tuesday it is bankrolling an initiative to reduce county supervisors' jobs to part-time status.
The announcement by Laren Leichliter, president of the San Bernardino County Safety Employees Benefit Association, or SEBA, came hours after he appeared before the Board of Supervisors to protest pension reforms proposed by Supervisors Janice Rutherford and Gary Ovitt.
On a narrow vote, the board authorized county counsel to draft a ballot measure requiring any proposed pension increases for county employees be put to a vote by taxpayers....
LINK - ContraCostaTimes.com
January 23, 2012
Reform Washington state’s pension system to help state close its budget gap
Washington state must reform its overly generous pension system. The Seattle Times editorial board favors pension reform of the type proposed by state Sen. Joseph Zarelli.
IN the work to balance the state budget, short-term gains are nice, but the long term is critical. One of the most fruitful areas for saving money long term is public-employee pensions. This cannot mean taking away a benefit already promised, which is illegal. Surely it will mean changing what is promised to new employees.
An example is Senate Bill 6378, sponsored by Sen. Joseph Zarelli, R-Ridgefield. Under the bill, new state employees would no longer get a full pension at 62 after 30 years service or an 80 percent pension at age 55 — a benefit light-years away from what most private-sector workers have...
LINK - SeattleTimes.NWSource.com
January 20, 2012
Video: Meet a Town Bankrupted by Private Prisons
Real video from the town of Littlefield, Texas and the story of how the town was left with $10 million in debt by GEO Group after they built and abandoned a private prison in the community...
LINK - TheRealNews.com
January 18, 2012
2012 State of the State Address
The full text from the 2012 State of the State Address given by Governor Jerry Brown in Sacramento, California on January 18, 2012...
January 17, 2012
Cuomo Likely To Push Pension Reform, Overall Budget Reduction
In addition to highlighting Gov. Cuomo’s possible plans to link school funding to a teacher evaluation system, my story and the accompanying graphic today also hit on other parts of tomorrow’s budget announcement.
Cuomo’s budget is expected to reduce overall spending for the second year in a row, hike state taxpayer supported funding by just under 2%, close a $2 billion budget deficit and--and possibly include his new plan for pension reform.
Like the teacher evaluation system he is expected to include, the pension reform plan will likely raise the ire of the public worker unions...
LINK - NYDailyNews.com
January 17, 2012
Private Corrections Institute Opposes Prison Privatization Effort
The Private Corrections Institute, a Florida-based non-profit watchdog organization that actually opposes the privatization of correctional services, has -- as would be expected -- “sharply condemned” the latest state effort to privatize correctional facilities in 18 South Florida counties.
“While private prison companies will profit from expanded prison privatization contracts, should the legislature prevail in its mass prison privatization plan the loser will be Florida’s taxpayers, as public funds will be diverted from the state into the coffers of for-profit prison firms with no discernable (sic) benefit to the public,” Private Corrections Institute stated in a release...
LINK - SunshineStateNews.com
January 15, 2012
Gov. Jerry Brown plans $1 billion in prison cuts
Gov. Jerry Brown wants to cut state prison spending next fiscal year for the first time in nearly a decade, a departure from the goals of recent administrations, which consistently increased corrections spending and pushed for prison expansion.
Brown's budget would save California $1.1 billion on housing inmates and hundreds of millions more by allowing the state to halt some prison construction - savings largely due to his administration's recent overhaul of the state's criminal justice system.
General fund spending on prisons nearly doubled under Brown's Republican predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, from $5.2 billion in 2004 to $9.5 billion in 2011, when Brown, a Democrat, took office. The increase in spending was largely caused by an exploding inmate population and a court order to improve medical care in prisons...
LINK - SFGate.com
January 14, 2012
Washington: Lawmakers likely to reject prisoners’ early release as money-saver
With lawmakers showing little interest in letting hundreds of prisoners out early to save money, Washington State Reformatory's future as a medium security prison appears less in doubt.
Gov. Chris Gregoire put forth the idea of releasing inmates early, and, as those beds emptied, the state could close one unit at the reformatory and convert three others into less costly minimum security facilities. Roughly $12 million could be saved in this budget.
Lawmakers are giving her proposal a cold shoulder so far in a session that runs through early March...
LINK - HeraldNet.com
January 11, 2012
The 2012-13 Budget: Overview of the Governor’s Budget
The Governor’s proposed tax initiative is the cornerstone of his 2012-13 budget plan, which includes proposals to restructure education finance, reduce social services and child care programs substantially, and implement trigger cuts--primarily affecting schools--if voters do not approve the tax measure.
The Governor’s plan would continue the difficult task of restoring the state budget to balance, but the difficulty in knowing how much taxable income will be attributable to high-income Californians makes the state’s revenue estimates an even bigger question mark than usual.
With regard to the Governor’s major proposals, we think the Governor’s education restructuring proposals would institute lasting improvements to the system, and we observe that, while his social services and child care proposals have merit, they involve considerable drawbacks as well, given potentially severe impacts on affected families...
January 11, 2012
Stopping Prison Construction Important First Step (?)
Governor Brown’s surprised Californians by unveiling his 2012-13 budget five days early on January 5th. The Budget has Californians calling for additional cuts to the corrections budget to prevent even further slashing of welfare, childcare, health care, education, and job opportunities. The 2012-2013 proposal, which includes $8.887 billion in General Fund spending for Corrections, comes the same week as severe trigger cuts from last year’s budget and just days before 25 Counties are due to submit funding requests to build $602 million worth of jails across the state.
Until this year, when many of the state’s corrections needs were outsourced to the county level with Brown’s Public Safety Realignment, General Fund spending for prisons had climbed steadily from $604.2 million in 1980-81 to $9.6 billion in 2010-11, or from 2.9 percent to 10.5 percent of the state’s General Fund. This year’s Budget projects $8.9 billion of General Fund expenditure on corrections, down from $9.6 billion last year...
LINK - CaliforniaProgressReport.com
January 9, 2012
Governor’s Proposed Budget Concerns Prison Guard Union
The union representing state prison guards and parole officers says it's very concerned about the Governor's proposed budget.
Governor Brown's proposed budget unveiled Thursday would cut about 3,000 state jobs while avoiding any furloughs.
Brown's plan to reduce the state workforce would come mostly from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation or the prison system...
LINK - KIONRightNow.com
January 8, 2012
Sheriff runs jail better than CCA with $1 million savings!
A new report shows the Hernando County Jail successfully passed its first Florida Model Jail Standards inspection since the sheriff's office took over operations in August 2010.
The inspection examined facility structures, housekeeping, sanitation, policies and procedures. A second inspection, by a certified medical professional inspector, examined inmate medical charts, medications dispensed, treatments rendered and protocols followed.
"Through diligence and hard work by a professional group of personnel, (we) were able to meet the necessary standards," Sheriff Al Nienhuis said in a memo to the county...
LINK - HernandoToday.com
January 6, 2012
New Budget: Less Prison Time For Women, Juveniles
Under Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations will be cut by about $1.1 billion.
The department plans to eliminate the Department of Juvenile Justice and reduce the number of women in prisons.
The CDCR also will lose more positions than any other department...
LINK - KCRA.com
January 6, 2012
Jerry Brown budget would slash 3,000 state jobs, merge departments
Gov. Jerry Brown's 2012-13 budget proposal would cut state government by a few thousand jobs and consolidate nearly 50 state organizations, while avoiding furloughs.
Brown's plan would reduce the state's workforce by some 3,000 positions, mostly from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The savings would fill just a tiny fraction of the $9.2 billion budget hole projected through June 2013....
LINK - SacBee.com
January 4, 2012
The GOP’s California Pension “Reform” Plan Continues to Get Bad Reviews
With the Attorney General expected to release its Title and Summary for the pair of GOP pension-gutting measures any day now, we can only hope she comes to the same conclusion the Legislative Analyst did when it put its lump of coal into the stockings of the millionaires behind the proposals: The revelation that their sloppily-drawn "reform" plans in fact will cost state and local governments billions MORE in pension costs.
The LAO pegs the taxpayer cost of the pair pension-stealing ballot measures at no less than $1 billion dollars every single year for the next three decades. The Orange County Register warns that taxpayers aren't likely to see any savings until they are "grizzled and gray." And although the LAO sees "potential" savings in the distant future, “pension reform could actually cost governments, and the taxpayers who fund them, more,” says the Register...
LINK - CAMajorityReport.com
January 4, 2012
Cuomo Proposes Pension, Mandate, Education Reform
Before 2,000 onlookers, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo outlined economic growth measures, pension reform, mandate relief, and public education reform this afternoon, in his second State of the State Address.
He also announced plans to lay out a blueprint for economic development. Cuomo’s job creation measures were described as “$25 billion in state, federal and private economic activity,” through private-public partnerships. He described plans to rebuild the Tappan Zee Bridge, and the Jacob Javits Convention Center on Manhattan’s west side, and proposed an energy superhighway, among other proposals.
Meanwhile, Cuomo proposed amending the state’s constitution to further regulate and allow casino gaming...
LINK - TheDailyHarrison.com
January 3, 2012
Financial concerns with Chowchilla prison changes
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...
LINK - ABCLocal.go.com
January 2, 2012
Adelanto seeks 6,100-bed prisons from CDCR
Negotiating with the state to build a new prison, attracting industrial development and promoting recreation options at the city's first high school are among Adelanto's top priorities for 2012.
The city is now working up the drawings for a new prison that would be operated by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and could pour up to $5 million annually into city coffers.
The proposal is for the city to use bond or private financing to build two side-by-side facilities that house up to 6,100 inmates and staff roughly 2,000 employees. The proposed 226-acre site is in industrial area west of Highway 395 off Cassia Road, near the current San Bernardino County Adelanto Detention Center...
LINK - VVDailyPress.com
December 26, 2011
Juvenile offenders: Cuts put counties on the spot
Prosecutors and prisoner advocates are warning that an impending change in the way California handles juvenile offenders could threaten the success of criminal justice statewide.
At issue is a midyear cut that will essentially gut the Department of Juvenile Justice, the state agency that incarcerates California's most violent juvenile criminal offenders. Under the budget reduction enacted earlier this month, the agency will cease to exist unless counties pony up $125,000 a year per youth offender...
LINK - SFGate.com
December 19, 2011
Can county still lock up jail money?
Even without a formal invitation to apply for up to $100 million in state money, county officials still hope the plan for a new 576-bed jail in Redwood City can still quality for the construction funds if other counties drop out.
Circumstances haven’t changed since San Mateo County learned in late October it ranked low compared to other competing counties but could be different after next month’s deadline for complete applications, said Assistant Sheriff Trisha Sanchez.
If higher ranking counties don’t submit applications or further down the road aren’t ready with matching local funds or a site, San Mateo County might move closer to qualifying...
LINK - SMDailyJournal.com
December 18, 2011
Split (San Jose) council votes to place pension reform on ballot
Over the loud objections of city workers and retirees, the San Jose City Council voted 6-5 Tuesday to approve language for a pension reform measure that could go before voters in June.
The vote was a key political victory for Mayor Chuck Reed, who since last May has been trying to sell the council on a measure that overhauls pensions to prevent the layoffs of more cops and a severe reduction in city services.
"We need to move ahead," Reed said during a spirited three-hour debate that drew an overflow crowd of mostly city workers and retirees...
LINK - MercuryNews.com
December 16, 2011
New fees may force Tulare, Kings counties to bring juvenile offenders home
Dozens of juvenile criminals from the Valley now in state custody will return home to finish their sentences because of state budget cuts, officials said.
Under mid-year cuts taking effect Jan. 1, California counties must pay the state $125,000 per year for each juvenile offender held by the state Division of Juvenile Justice.
At least two Valley counties -- Tulare and Kings -- say they can't afford that, so they'll seek to have their juvenile offenders serve their sentences locally, even though local facilities aren't set up for long-term incarceration and rehabilitation of younger criminals...
LINK - FresnoBee.com
December 16, 2011
Million-dollar nurses at CDCR?
California has paid Lina Manglicmot $1.5 million since 2005, an average of $253,530 a year, to work as a prison nurse in the agricultural town of Soledad.
Manglicmot is one of 42 state nurses who each made more than $1 million in those six years, mostly by tapping overtime, according to payroll data compiled by Bloomberg News. Together, those nurses collected $47.5 million. In 2008, Manglicmot was paid $331,346, including $211,257 in overtime...
LINK - Bloomberg.com
December 5, 2011
Inmate Shift To Cost Riverside County $968,000
Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach will ask the Board of Supervisors tomorrow to earmark $968,000 to cover D.A. office expenses incurred from "realignment," which shifted responsibility for a number of criminal justice activities from the state to counties.
The allotment would come from roughly $24 million in state funding to Riverside County agencies and courts in the current fiscal year to mitigate realignment-related costs.
The county's general fund would not be impacted...
LINK - KESQ.com
December 5, 2011
San Diego City Council To Take Up Pension Reform Issue
An initiative to reform the city's debt-ridden pension system, which has qualified for public vote, will be taken up by the City Council Monday.
The council is legally obligated to place the measure on an upcoming election ballot since it received enough petition signatures from residents. Supporters want it scheduled for the June 2012 primary and said on Friday they were worried opponents would try to delay it until November.
The measure calls for new city hires -- other than police officers -- to be given 401(k) plans instead of being enrolled in the employee pension system...
LINK - 10News.com
December 1, 2011
How private prisons game the system
The United States, with just 5 percent of the world’s population, currently holds 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, and for the last 30 years America’s business entrepreneurs have found a lucrative way to cash in on the incarceration surplus: private for-profit prisons.
While the implications of an industry that locks human beings in cages for profit is an old story, there is an important part of the history of private prisons that often goes untold...
LINK - Salon.com
December 1, 2011
Local state senator leading pension-reform committee
The Golden State's pension systems are fraught with areas of concern.
A report last year by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research said retirement funds for 2.6 million California teachers, state workers and university employees have long-term unfunded obligations totaling as much as $500 billion.
At the center of the attempt to fix the state's pension system is an Inland Valley lawmaker who faces a difficult election bid next year...
LINK - DailyBulletin.com
December 1, 2011
Stockton police take unusual step in budget fight with city
In the annals of both labor and neighbor relations, a low point registered recently in Stockton, where the police union, feuding with the city manager, purchased the house next door to his.
While the union publicly contemplated whom to rent the house to – a police officer or a family in need of subsidized housing, perhaps – the city accused police of intimidating and harassing City Manager Bob Deis, and complained in court when a police officer on a backhoe clipped Deis' maple tree.
"Him and his wife yelled at me all day long," said Jose Ulloa, the officer who was using the backhoe. He said it was an accident...
LINK - SacBee.com
December 1, 2011
Public Pension Reform: State Lawmakers Urged To Look At Hybrid Plans
At the annual fall forum of the National Conference of State Legislatures, pension reform advocates briefed the nation's state legislators on hybrid pension plans on Thursday, saying there is "nothing more dangerous" to state fiscal health on legislative agendas today.
Lawmakers must address the pension reform issue in the face of rising pension costs, declining pension reserve funds and the current state of the nation's financial markets, they argued.
"The unfunded (pension) liability is somewhere between $1.5 and $3 trillion," said former Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Mark Singel (D) about the total liability among the 50 states...
LINK - HuffingtonPost.com
November 30, 2011
Opinion: Is realignment an opportunity? If so, let’s not waste it on building costly jail beds
November 17th's "California's Prison System - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly” conference, organized by Capitol Weekly and the University of California, brought together experts, advocates, and law enforcement and highlighted the devastating impacts of the expansion of California's prison system and consequent shift in state spending on education and social services. Conversations at the conference brought into sharper focus why California can't risk falling into the familiar pattern of failed corrections policies as it realigns public safety.
It has been seven months since the Supreme Court ordered California to drastically reduce the state's prison population. Beginning Oct. 1, responsibility for low-level prisoners was transferred from state prisons to counties. While politicians and undits called the move unprecedented, many counties drafted ill-conceived plans that simply shift overcrowding from the state level prisons to already crowded county jails...
LINK - CapitolWeekly.net
November 29, 2011
State will be paying $10 million for CCF
The state of California may be broke, but it is going to commit itself to paying nearly $10 million in lease payments over the next 5 years for a facility it has no plans to use -- the now-closed Taft Correctional Facility.
The Taft City Council approved a series of contract amendments with the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation at a brief special meeting Tuesday night that will continue lease payments for the CCF into 2017.
It was closed earlier this month when the CDCR removed the low security inmates as part of a state prison realignment...
LINK - TaftMidwayDriller.com
November 28, 2011
Prison doctors, barred from seeing patients, collect full pay
California prisons have paid doctors and mental health professionals accused of malpractice an estimated $8.7 million since 2006 to do no work at all or to perform menial chores like sorting mail, tossing out old medical supplies and reviewing inmate charts for clerical errors.
At least 30 medical professionals have collected their six-figure salaries for a cumulative 37 years in a kind of employment limbo after fellow doctors decided they were too dangerous to treat inmates but before the state's lengthy discipline appeals process made a final decision on whether they should be fired, state records show...
LINK - LATimes.com
November 21, 2011
2011 Thanksgiving Letter from CCPOA
Dear CCPOA Member,
With the Thanksgiving holiday just a few days away, now is the time for us to remember all the things in our lives we should be thankful for - our families and loved ones, our friends and neighbors, and for the men and women who walk the toughest beat.
This has been a year of challenges and successes for CCPOA, and I am thankful for the hard work and dedication shown by every member of our union. As many of you know, CCPOA board members recently convened to discuss the issues before us and to begin writing the next chapter in our union's history...
November 17, 2011
Massachusetts: Governor Patrick Signs Pension Reform Legislation; Saving MA $5 Billion
Governor Deval Patrick today signed comprehensive pension reform legislation, continuing the Patrick-Murray Administration’s efforts to end abuses and close loopholes to create a sustainable public pension system. The bill signed today, S. 2065, “An Act Providing For Pension Reform and Benefit Modernization”, builds on legislation signed during the Governor’s first term that eliminated the most egregious abuses in the public retirement system.
“We are committed to finding additional ways to eliminate costs in state government and end abuses within the system,” said Governor Patrick. “I’m proud to sign this third phase of comprehensive pension reform legislation that will improve the public’s trust in government and ensure the pension system’s economic sustainability for future generations...”
LINK - NewEnglandPost.com
November 16, 2011
California’s Fiscal Outlook: The 2012-13 Budget
The Legislative Analyst's Office has just issued the following report:
California’s Fiscal Outlook: The 2012-13 Budget
Our updated assessment of California’s economy and revenues indicates that General Fund revenues and transfers in 2011-12 will be $3.7 billion below the level assumed in the June budget package. This revenue shortfall would translate into $2 billion of potential “trigger cuts” to various state programs—including all of the “Tier 1” trigger cuts and three-fourths of the “Tier 2” trigger cuts. (The Director of Finance will determine the actual amount of trigger cuts next month.)
We forecast that the state will end 2011-12 with a $3 billion deficit, including the effects of the trigger cuts that could result from our revenue forecast. In 2012-13, we forecast that the state will face increased costs due to the expiration of a number of temporary budget measures, a significant increase in Proposition 98 school costs under current law, the required repayment of a $2 billion Proposition 1A property tax loan used to help balance the budget in 2009, and other factors. These factors contribute to a projected $10 billion operating shortfall (the difference between annual General Fund revenues and expenditures) in 2012-13. The $3 billion “carry-in” deficit from 2011-12 and the projected $10 billion operating deficit in 2012-13 mean that the Legislature and the Governor will need to address an approximately $13 billion budget problem between now and the time that the state adopts a 2012-13 budget plan. (50 pp.)
This report available using the following link: http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/PubDetails.aspx?id=2539
You can download and view the .pdf file of the report below.
In addition, click the lao.ca.gov link to see three videos summarizing the report. Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor provides an overview and Deputy Jennifer Kuhn discusses Proposition 98. Deputy Jason Sisney explains the revenue and economic outlook.
November 15, 2011
CDCR to spend $852,000 for EOP treatment, office space at CCWF
RENEWAL REQUEST
PMIB Department
Loan No. & Bond Act Amount a.1120017
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
$ 852,000.00
SPWB Lease Revenue Bonds, AB 900
Central California Women’s Facility: Facility A General Population/Enhanced Outpatient Program Treatment and Office Space
View the Full Document: http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/pmia-laif/pmib-agenda/2011/20111116.pdf
November 10, 2011
Private prison to close because it can’t operate cheaper than state
Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps says a privately run prison in Leflore County will close in January.
Epps says the state and Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America mutually agreed to cease operations. How the decision affects operations of the Leflore County jail at the same site is unclear.
Epps and CCA officials say plans are to cease operations of the 1,172-bed Delta Correctional Facility in Greenwood, Miss. on Jan. 15, 2012...
LINK - VCStar.com
November 3, 2011
Assembly budget aides expecting $5 billion to $8 billion state budget deficit next year
Assembly budget officials expect California to face a deficit of about $5 billion to $8 billion next fiscal year, higher than the $3.1 billion projected by Gov. Jerry Brown, according to a legislative memo obtained by The Bee.
The memo itself doesn't explain why Assembly officials believe the deficit will be larger than once projected, but one budget source said it was due to a variety of factors such as uncertainty over legal challenges, additional demand for public programs and a less optimistic view of the economy in the next fiscal year...
LINK - SacBee.com
October 7, 2011
Cost of cornfield manhunt near Tower City roughly $55,000
Local law enforcement agencies spent roughly $55,000 on the 22-hour manhunt earlier this week for the sex offender who escaped from a private prison transport van near Tower City.
And after speaking this morning with the owner of Extradition Transport of America LLC, Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney said the public safety agencies that were involved in the search believe they’ll get paid for those costs...
LINK - InForum.com
September 16, 2011
Private prison issues in Arizona
Whether more private prison beds will be added in Arizona — including perhaps here in the Yuma area — remains uncertain in the wake of a court ruling earlier this week.
Awarding of bids for private companies to build prisons to house thousands of prisoners are pending by the Arizona Department of Corrections. Among the bidders are two companies proposing to build prisons in Yuma County.
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) asked a judge early this week to immediately halt awarding of bids pending completion of a study of the effectiveness of private prisons. The judge declined to do so, but did schedule a hearing next week on the issue...
LINK - YumaSun.com
September 15, 2011
CA Budget Project releases report: “State Corrections Spending in California”
California Budget Project
September, 2011
California’s correctional system is on the verge of profound change. Beginning October 1, 2011, counties will assume responsibility for incarcerating, supervising, and rehabilitating “low-level” offenders – a change that is intended to divert, over the next few years, tens of thousands of men and women from the state’s correctional system to county custody and supervision.
This historic “realignment” of responsibility from the state to the counties was prompted by a number of factors, including rising state corrections expenditures, the costly cycling of low-level offenders through the state’s prison system, and a recent federal court order requiring the state to significantly reduce prison overcrowding over the next two years. Shifting low-level offenders to county supervision has the potential to substantially reduce state spending on corrections, thereby reversing the trend of recent decades, in which an increasing share of the state budget has gone toward state prisons and parole.
This Budget Backgrounder provides a snapshot of the state’s correctional system, highlights the increase in state corrections spending over the past generation, examines some of the factors that have driven the growth in corrections spending, and describes the major components of the criminal justice realignment that will take effect beginning in October...
For more, please click on link below to read entire report.
September 7, 2011
Do private prisons save money?
Private-prison detractors have long accused businesses in the incarceration-for-profit game of cutting corners to boost revenue. With dozens of for-profit corrections facilities across Texas housing a mix of federal convicts, undocumented immigrants, juvenile offenders, and local inmates, there’s ample anecdotal evidence to support their claims, including regular complaints of squalid facilities, wrongful deaths, shoddy medical care, and sexual abuse at the hands of private-prison guards.
Still, many counties have continued to turn to private prisons because of the supposed cost savings. As Bexar County Commissioner Kevin Wolff eyes the local jail, officials in Harris County, home to the state’s largest lockup with nearly 10,000 inmates, are also studying privatization...
LINK - Sacurrent.com
September 4, 2011
Prison privatization is hard to swallow
It's hard to find anything positive for Marion in the prison privatization deal announced by the state Thursday.
It is nothing like the deal that was described in the spring.
While we were apprehensive about the selling of state property in the community, we were bolstered by the possibility of opening a closed facility and the likelihood of adding a considerable amount of valuable property to the tax rolls...
LINK - AZCentral.com
September 2, 2011
Ky. jailers push state to end private prison deals
Members of the Kentucky Jailers Association are pushing the state to cancel contracts with a pair of private prisons next summer and transfer some of the inmates to county jails, a move that would also redirect millions of state dollars to the jails.
The jailers say that since the state Department of Corrections pays local jails to house state inmates, the move could help jails across Kentucky reduce budget deficits...
LINK - KnoxNews.com
September 1, 2011
Editorial: Prison spending is budget at its dumbest
We have all heard many times about how California's budget priorities are out of whack when it comes to corrections and education, so perhaps we can be forgiven for believing the problem somehow fixed itself.
Excuse yourself if you thought prison costs had gone down along with the crime rate. Don't feel all alone if you figured we were spending more on education, higher education especially, what with those big salaries for university presidents...
LINK - MontereyHerald.com
August 25, 2011
Re-alignment news - central Valley
More than 6,000 local felons are supervised by the Tulare County Probation Department and, in about a month, the department is going to get more.
With deep cuts to the state's public safety divisions, the county will soon see fuller jails, more probationers and the possibility that group homes will house ex-convicts from across the state.
On Oct. 1, when state bill AB 109 takes effect, thousands of inmates will move from California prisons to county jails...
LINK - VisaliaTimesDelta.com
August 23, 2011
Prison expert rips florida’s privatization plans
TALLAHASSEE -- A University of North Florida criminology expert who specializes in prison privatization issues is blasting the state's privatization plans for facilities in an 18-county area of South Florida.
Michael Hallett, chair of UNF's criminology program and author of Private Prisons in America, completed an unsolicited assessment of the state's call for vendors, which he then sent to Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Appropriations subcommittee and an opponent of privatization.
"There are so many serious problems with this RFP that it is not easy to digest in one document," he wrote in the memo he sent to Fasano...
LINK - Sun-Sentinel.com
August 23, 2011
Criminal justice re-alignment plan called ‘absurd’
With Los Angeles County set to start supervising thousands of nonviolent parolees by Oct. 1, local officials expressed anger Tuesday at flaws in the state program that could leave them short of funds and powerless to control the offenders.
Among the potential problems in the legislation that created Gov. Jerry Brown's realignment plan: County officers currently don't have the legal authority to chase after parolees who skip out on their duties.
Additionally, the state funding for the program is not guaranteed for next year, meaning the cash-strapped county could be stuck with a multimillion-dollar bill in 2012...
LINK - DailyNews.com
August 23, 2011
Taxing big pensions, eliminating collective bargaining initiatives collecting signatures
Taxing public pensions in excess of $100,000 a year could bring an extra $60 million into state coffers — – but would likely drive retirees from the Golden State, and would surely be challenged in court, says an analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.
We told you recently that Lanny Ebenstein, a rather quixotic visiting economics professor at UC Santa Barbara, filed this and two other initiatives for the California ballot – including one that would strip public employees of the right to collective bargaining.
In a separate analysis of the ban-collective-bargaining measure, the LAO concluded that state and local agencies could indeed save money on employee compensation costs, “because the overall effect of this measure would be to strengthen state and local governments’ authority to set employee compensation at levels that are lower than that which an employee association would agree to...”
LINK - OCRegister.com
August 22, 2011
Top 10 Lies Told By Private Prison Corporations at the Arizona Hearings
It’s been a hot summer in Arizona, but there were a lot of private prison corporate executives whose pants were on fire over the past two weeks. On the plus side, our crop yields will set records this year due to the amount of b.s. that we just got showered with.
Over the past two weeks, the Arizona Dept. of Corrections (ADC) conducted public hearings on proposed private prisons in 5 Arizona towns: Eloy, Goodyear, Winslow, San Luis/Yuma, and Coolidge. At each hearing, the ADC gave a presentation on the bidding process, the Corporation gave a (sometimes quite lengthy) presentation on how awesome they think they are, and members of the public got 5 minutes apiece to raise concerns, ask questions, or, in many cases, beg them for jobs...
LINK - TucsonCitizen.com
August 20, 2011
Prison privatization plan in Florida may stop if no cost savings
Gov. Rick Scott says a massive South Florida prison privatization plan won't fly if it doesn't save the state money.
Scott on Friday also downplayed the cost of laying off state employees at those prisons.
The Republican governor discussed the plan for privatizing 29 facilities in 18 counties during an interview with The Associated Press in Miami...
LINK - MiamiHerald.com
August 19, 2011
2011 Realignment Report (LAO)
As part of the 2011-12 budget plan, the Legislature enacted a major shift—or “realignment”—of state program responsibilities
and revenues to local governments. In total, the realignment plan provides $6.3 billion to local governments (primarily counties) to fund various criminal justice, mental health, and social services programs in 2011-12, and ongoing funds for these programs annually thereafter...
August 19, 2011
Prison privatization costs taxpayers more
There is a natural tendency among politicians new to Tallahassee to assume that when they encounter resistance to change it is because of inertia rather than informed experience. The latest debacle involves the bold and quick decision by the Republican-led Legislature to privatize 30 state prison facilities in 18 South Florida counties. A minor detail not discussed at the time: up to $25 million in public money to provide severance pay to more than 4,000 Department of Corrections workers.
Corrections staffers say they told the legislative staff about the expense, but it was never discussed openly nor addressed in this year's state budget. Now it appears the agency will need to find the money - a prospect the corrections secretary warned "may just cripple the agency" - or seek special dispensation from the Joint Legislative Budget Commission...
LINK - TampaBay.com
August 16, 2011
Hidden costs of prison privatization under fire
The chairman of a Senate budget subcommittee said Monday he wants to hold hearings next month on the costs of privatizing Florida prisons in South Florida.
State Sen. Mike Fasano, a New Port Richey Republican, said the possible $25-million cost of employee turnover was hidden from state lawmakers during the 2011 legislative session.
But Senate budget chief JD Alexander, R-Lake Wales, denied there was any politically driven effort to ram the privatization through without adequate analysis of its cost...
LINK - Tallahassee.com
August 14, 2011
Beware for-profit justice
When you march up to the front gate of a medium-security prison and find no one, you've got a problem. When you ring the alert button and no one answers, that's a problem, too. When you shine a flashlight at the security camera and no one notices, that's trouble.
This rapture-like scenario is not hypothetical. As The Post's Dara Kam reported, it's what state officials found after arriving at South Bay Correctional Institution, a private prison, for a surprise inspection in June. As Florida readies one of the largest prison privatizations in history, it's hard to ignore the implications.
Next year, Florida plans to privatize at least 13 prisons in the southern third of the state, shuttering Belle Glade's Glades Correctional Institution in the process. This overhaul supposedly will save the state at least $19 million a year. But the price of any savings could prove high. For while proof that private prisons cut long-term costs is still scant, there's ample evidence that their existence invites corporations to manipulate the criminal justice system for their own gain...
LINK - PalmBeachpost.com
July 25, 2011
Prisoner reduction expected slightly behind court schedule
The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a court filing last week that it has the funding to reduce its prison population in compliance with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling [PDF], but it anticipates it will meet the court’s first prisoner reduction benchmark a month behind schedule.
Under AB 109 [PDF], the state law to reduce overcrowding, the corrections department will be able to reduce its prisoner population by...
LINK - CaliforniaWatch.org
July 21, 2011
State Controller’s Office: CDCR Audit
July 21, 2011
Californians would rather ease penalties than pay more for prisons
Cash-strapped Californians would rather ease "third-strike" penalties for some criminals and accept felons as neighbors than dig deeper into their pockets to relieve prison overcrowding, a new poll shows.
In the wake of a court order that the state move more than 33,000 inmates out of its packed prisons, an overwhelming number of voters oppose higher taxes — as well as cuts in key state services — to pay for more lockup space.
The survey, by The Times and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, shows a clear shift in attitude by residents forced to confront the cost of tough sentencing laws passed in recent decades...
LINK - LATimes.com
July 20, 2011
Meth Addict with Flame Thrower to Be Spared Prison as States Cut Spending
Zackariah Lehnen, a 30-year-old transient, was paroled from a California prison in November after serving five months of a 16-month sentence for drug possession. He left under a program intended to reduce state costs by freeing nonviolent prisoners without supervision.
Six months later he was arrested and charged with murder in the torture and stabbing deaths of an 89-year-old man and a 27- year-old woman in a Los Angeles suburb, according to court documents. He’s in jail, with a plea hearing set for July 28...
LINK - Bloomberg.com
July 20, 2011
Controller Audit: prisons had lousy bookkeeping
California's corrections department overpaid some employees for salaries and travel advances and was slow to collect those funds, according to an audit the state controller's office released Wednesday.
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation gave one former employee a lump sum check for $14,950 to meet a deadline for leaving the state's employment, but the department did not deduct that from the employee's final paycheck, meaning that person received both a salary advance and a final paycheck.
Another employee received a salary advance of more than $8,000 in January 2008, plus a regular paycheck, the audit found. Three years later, the advance had not been collected...
LINK - MercuryNews.com
July 5, 2011
CDCR chief psychiatrist over $800,000 in 2010?
The chief psychiatrist for California’s overcrowded prison system was paid $838,706 in 2010, more than any other state employee that year, payroll figures released today show.
The doctor, whose name wasn’t released, had a salary range of $261,408 to $308,640, according to data released today by California Controller John Chiang. The total compensation was raised by bonuses or payout of unused vacation time, according to the controller’s office.
The figures show that the 10 highest-paid state employees each earned more than $500,000 in 2010, for a total of $6.2 million. All but three were doctors or dentists for the Corrections Department. Joe Dear, the chief investment officer at the California Public Employees Retirement System, ranked seventh with a gross pay of $548,142, the data show...
LINK - Bloomberg.com
July 5, 2011
No Guaranteed Funding for Realignment Yet, But Counties Not Worried
Back in April, Governor Jerry Brown spoke to local law enforcement officials nervous about starting realignment without the money to pay for it. Relax, Brown told them:
Brown: "The realignment is not going into effect unless we get the money. And we're not gonna get the money unless the people vote for it."
Turns out realignment is going into effect without a vote of the people. Last week's state budget includes the money to fund it for the next year. But that funding is not constitutionally guaranteed, because a budget deal that would have included a special election fell through...
LINK - Caprdio.org
July 4, 2011
Local law enforcement readies for state inmates
In just three months, Superior Court judges will start sending low-level felony offenders to county jail, instead of state prison, and law enforcement officials here are bracing for the event.
Some say the state’s decision to require local jails to house and supervise certain nonviolent criminals — one of the cost-saving measures used to balance the state budget by July 1 — is the biggest change to the local criminal justice system in at least 25 years.
“This is a major shift in public safety in the state of California,” Sheriff Bill Gore said. “And it’s happening so fast.”
Gore and other county leaders have been meeting for months to figure out how the plan will work. One thing is certain: They’ll have far less funding than they had hoped for...
LINK - SignonSanDiego.com
July 4, 2011
Calif. budget provides money for prison changes
California's budget provides the framework for the state to comply with a federal court order to slice its prison population by more than 20 percent over the next two years but also acknowledges the state is not likely to meet its initial deadline.
Plans for the change gained urgency this spring after the U.S. Supreme Court, on a 5-4 decision, upheld the authority of a federal judicial panel to order the release of inmates to relieve overcrowding and improve conditions.
The centerpiece of the state's response was funded in the budget that Gov. Jerry Brown signed last week. It will redirect $5 billion from state sales and vehicle taxes to local governments so they can accommodate some 40,000 lower-level offenders who otherwise would serve their sentences in a state prison...
LINK - MercuryNews.com
July 1, 2011
Preston may get ‘warm’ closure
The letters, the phone calls, the heartfelt pleas from residents, affected government workers and leaders alike — along with the persistent efforts of a historical preservation foundation — may have led to a “warm” closure of the Preston Youth Correctional Facility, slated to take effect today.
Past president of the Preston Castle Foundation Marie Nutting told the Ledger Dispatch that, although her group had not received any official notification, ongoing talks with state officials have led the group to believe administrators will leave the utilities operating at the site — at least for the time being...
LINK - Ledger-Dispatch.com
July 1, 2011
Gov Brown signs budget, sending influx of inmates to county jails
The new budget that Governor Jerry Brown signed Thursday will send thousands of low level inmates to county jails instead of state prisons.
The budget will provide about $5 billion to help county jails pay for the plan.
San Francisco's sheriff Michael Hennessey said he's luckier than most because his county jails have about 300 spare beds to accommodate incoming offenders.
But, that's about to change...
LINK - KTVU.com
June 28, 2011
How the new budget deals with prison overcrowding
A rainy day in California brings solemn news from Governor Jerry Brown’s office: budget compromise. Brown is walking away from his stalled plan to put tax extensions to the voters in a special election this fall. Instead, Brown will, with the legislature’s Democrats, put forth a budget that assumes the state will take in $4 billion more than it did last year (which is possible). If the state doesn’t take in enough revenue, massive cuts would go into effect, including a possible $20 million cut to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
As for the Governor’s plan to “realign” the prison system to reduce overcrowding and save the state money? KQED’s John Meyers explains the new plan well...
LINK - KALWNews.org
June 27, 2011
More on private prisons and JPI report
A new report by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) outlines how private prison companies have pushed punitive policies over the last few years–policies, the report says, aimed at increasing the demand for private prisons.
According to JPI, in 2009, there were about 129,000 people in private correctional facilities in the United States–a number that’s jumped 120 percent in federal and 33 percent in state facilities since 2000 . And while private prison companies ”may try to present themselves as just meeting existing demand for prison beds and responding to current market conditions, in fact they have worked hard over the past decade to create markets for their product.” A lucrative product: in 2010, revenues for the top two companies, Corrections Corporation of American and GEO group, exceeded $2.9 billion.
JPI reports on three strategies these two companies, which account for the majority of the market, have used to grow business...
LINK - KALWNews.org
June 27, 2011
DJJ problems in San Diego Tribune
In 2000, the state’s Office of the Inspector General issued a report strongly critical of how state corrections officials treated youthful offenders. Of specific concern was the practice of locking up about one-sixth of all youthful offenders for 23 hours a day with little or no documented explanation of the special detention. The report concluded that this not only probably violated due process rights but was likely to make youthful inmates even more troubled and inclined to commit new crimes upon release.
Now a new audit by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation concludes that 11 years later these practices are still common at state youth prisons. Yes, it is good to hear the department’s own audit owned up to this problem. And, yes, the explanation for the problem – the prison system doesn’t have the staffing or money to offer better conditions for youthful offenders – is quite plausible...
LINK - SignonSanDiego.com
June 27, 2011
Sen. Michael Rubio: Inmates shouldn’t receive better health care than the rest of us
A few days ago, I read about a man in North Carolina who was unemployed, sick and without health insurance. In an act of desperation, he decided to rob a bank, but asked that the clerk give him only one dollar. He then calmly waited for the police to arrive and arrest him.
The gentleman had apparently lost his job as a soda delivery man. His ongoing pain from arthritis, slipped disks and a growth on his chest had now driven him to do the unthinkable, all for the sake of being able to see a doctor.
Inmates today receive better and more efficient health care than hardworking people who have fallen on hard times or that have courageously defended our nation. This injustice is precisely why I introduced SB 484, which would require the prison system to cut health care spending per inmate to no more than the state pays per patient for low-income people on Medi-Cal by 2015...
LINK - Bakersfield.com
June 24, 2011
Private Prison Report: Gaming the System
Approximately 129,000 people were held in privately managed correctional facilities in the United States as of December 31, 2009; 16.4 percent of federal and 6.8 percent of state populations were held in private facilities. Since 2000, private prisons have increased their share of the‚ market substantially: the number of people held in private federal facilities increased approximately 120 percent, while the number held in private state facilities increased approximately 33 percent. During this same period, the total number of people in prison increased less than 16 percent. Meanwhile, spending on corrections has increased 72 percent since 1997, to $74 billion in 2007. The two largest private prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, combined had over $2.9 billion in revenue in 2010...
June 24, 2011
Inmate firefighters are crucial to battling wildfires
Fifteen firefighter handcrews worked in the June heat with several pounds of gear to cut a line in a hillside, preventing a wildfire from spreading to homes in the rural area of the Marianas.
They worked with hand shovels, axes and chain saws in nearly vertical conditions.
Smoke rose from the brush only a few dozen feet away from the crews clad in orange, busy at their tasks.
The men and women perched on the hillside were well-trained fire personnel — personnel that happened to be incarcerated...
LINK - VVDailyPress.com
June 23, 2011
City-run CCF in Coalinga (569-beds) to lose state inmates
A 20-year-old contract to house state prisoners here is set to end this summer, but city officials are hopeful that talks with Fresno County and city law-enforcement leaders might yield a reprieve for their jail.
The state, scrambling to meet a federal order and lower costs, is shifting responsibility for tens of thousands of minimum-security inmates to counties. Gov. Jerry Brown's plan counts on a proposed budget that includes extensions of state tax hikes imposed in 2009.
Many of those prisoners have been housed for years at places like Coalinga's Claremont Custody Center, a city-owned and operated prison. But without inmates to fill them, the state figures it doesn't need to pay for the extra prison space. It will end contracts with Coalinga and Delano in August and with Lassen County in July...
LINK - FresnoBee.com
June 23, 2011
CA budget cuts slash monitoring of gang parolees
While state prison officials plan to move tens of thousands of inmates to county jails in a highly publicized budget move, they began another money-saving effort last month: removing GPS tracking devices from hundreds of paroled gang members.
Corrections officials had been monitoring about 950 gang members statewide through GPS, but budget cuts are forcing them to cut the number to 400 by July 1, said Oscar Hidalgo, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
"We have to make some difficult choices," Hidalgo said. "Obviously, during better fiscal times, we would work to increase those numbers once again."
The reductions, which are saving the state $6 million, include the removal of tracking devices from 40 of the 60 gang members monitored in Sacramento County. The cuts come at a particularly difficult time for local law enforcement agencies, especially the Sacramento Police Department, which is disbanding its gang unit next week...
LINK - SacBee.com
June 23, 2011
Solano Grand Jury report on CMF, Solano (inmate rehab program cuts, etc.)
Following an inspection of the county's two prisons, the Solano County grand jury stated Wednesday that more could be done to reduce recidivism rates.
The grand jury's findings were published in a 10-plus page report after multiple visits to the county's two prison facilities, California State Medical Facility and California State Prison-Solano.
In its inquiry, the grand jury found that funding cuts to re-entry programs offered by the prisons have reduced the opportunities for inmates to learn skills that could help reduce the likelihood that they will re-offend and again land behind bars. To remedy the problem, the grand jury recommended the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) evaluate the programs it offers to inmates and redirect funding to those with the most impact on recidivism...
LINK - TheReporter.com
June 23, 2011
CA state Senator Doug LaMalfa on early prisoner release
The formula for releasing prisoners and cutting cops is not a smart one.” Attorney General Jerry Brown, Los Angeles Times, August 9, 2009.
I agree, and I trust that now-Governor Brown will stand behind those words. For without a doubt, the principle responsibility of government is to protect its citizens from those who would do us harm.
Yet, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that California must somehow reduce its prison population by approximately 33,000 inmates, and the first question becomes: Which ones?...
LINK - SiskiyouDaily.com
June 22, 2011
LA County juvenile hall problems in the news
Two new reports out this week bring troubling news from Los Angeles County’s beleaguered juvenile halls. According to the Crime Report, Los Angeles is not taking court-ordered reforms serious enough to accomplish them by a Fall 2011 deadline. The county has been under federal and state supervision since 2008, when regulators discovered abusive and unprofessional conditions in the juvenile halls. Since then, we’ve seen regular reports of misconduct emerge from LA:
For instance, on pp: 7-9 of the monitors’ report, one finds a section titled, “Abusive Institutional Practices,” that outlines “abusive and/or threatening behaviors” toward kids that staff are ordered to avoid. The behaviors include:
….“slamming” youth into hard surfaces such as walls, floors, doors or any other hard surface/object; or placing youth into uncomfortable positions for long periods of time that may be viewed by a reasonable person as inappropriate…. denial or limiting of restroom access….taking punishing or restricting the programming opportunities, including limiting outdoor recreation, for large groups of youth when one or two youth act out…”
LINK - KALWNews.org
June 17, 2011
Governor Vetoes State Budget
With one swoop of his veto pen, Gov. Jerry Brown placed himself at odds with both parties in the Legislature by rejecting a Democratic budget he called unbalanced and "legally questionable."
The Democratic governor's budget veto on Thursday, believed to be the first in state history, leaves the spending plan in limbo as Brown resumes his search for Republican tax votes.
Brown's rejection was not entirely surprising, given his pledge against papering over the state deficit with the types of accounting maneuvers and tax swaps in the Democratic plan. But the speed – about 16 hours after passage – seemed to catch Democratic leaders off-guard...
LINK - SacBee.com
June 15, 2011
Legislature passes state budget
The California Legislature today passed the central piece of a budget plan pushed by Democrats to close a $9.6 billion deficit budget.
The Senate voted 23-15 to pass the plan and the Assembly approved it on a 51-26 party line vote.
Today is the constitutional deadline for the Legislature to pass a balanced budget, and it is rare for lawmakers to actually meet the deadline.
However, legislators faced permanently losing pay for each day the budget was late...
LINK - SFGate.com
June 15, 2011
First California inmate cleared for medical parole
The first California inmate to get out of prison under a controversial new "medical parole" law will most likely be Craig Lemke, 48, who is serving 68 years for home invasion. The Board of Parole Hearings granted Lemke's request Wednesday morning, but still has 120 days to further review the decision.
Lemke is the second inmate to have a medical parole hearing under the law signed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year. The board denied the first, a convicted rapist who was paralyzed during an assault by other inmates, saying he remained a threat to public safety.
Officials would not provide details of Lemke's medical condition, citing health privacy laws. But a spokeswoman for the receiver put in charge of inmate healthcare by a panel of federal judges said the state will save $750,000 per year in security costs alone if Lemke is paroled...
LINK - LATimes.com
June 15, 2011
Moving more inmates out of state raises new questions
California’s latest plan to alleviate prison overcrowding and meet a federal court order – announced last week – relies heavily on the transfer of thousands of inmates to county facilities, as long as the state can come up with the funding.
But unless prison officials exceed that already-ambitious transfer target, California might need to keep thousands of inmates locked up in facilities outside the state for many years, according to state analysts. The question facing prison officials is how long the state will have the legal authority to hold inmates in those prisons.
The Supreme Court last month upheld a lower court ruling requiring California to cut its prison population by about 32,000 inmates within two years...
LINK - CaliforniaWatch.org
June 14, 2011
‘Political paralysis’ in Calif. over prison reform
As California deeply cut spending for public schools, social services and health programs in recent years, state leaders also found themselves grappling with a court order to reduce the prison population by tens of thousands of inmates.
Some civil rights groups and criminal justice experts are now seizing on this perfect storm of chronic deficits and crowded prisons to push for wide-ranging changes to the state's sentencing laws that would transform California's handling of crime and punishment. The California chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups want the state to reduce drug possession and low-level, nonviolent property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, and they want more community-based alternatives to incarceration.
Yet even modest changes have trouble getting legislative support from Republicans and Democrats alike in California - even as bipartisan groups of policymakers in conservative states such as Texas, Mississippi and Kentucky embrace sentencing reform and alternatives to incarceration...
LINK - SFGate.com
June 13, 2011
Another online news group blames CCPOA for CA’s financial woes?
The Supreme Court has affirmed a lower court order that tens of thousands of violent felons in the California prison system to be released or transferred to other facilities due to unacceptable conditions at the state's prisons. More than 143,000 inmates are housed in the state's 33 adult prisons, built to accommodate only 80,000 prisoners. The prison population remains about 32,000 more than the limit set in 2005 by a federal appellate panel.
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority said California prisons had "fallen short of minimum constitutional requirements" due to overcrowding. In some institutions, as many as 200 prisoners live in a gymnasium, with as many as 54 sharing a toilet.
In addition, health care for ailing prisoners has degraded to a point that one inmate a week died from ailments that could have been prevented. Judicial wrangling and administrative posturing have not corrected these inexcusable conditions...
LINK - Catholic.org
June 11, 2011
Private prisons pushed for in California
Gov. Jerry Brown's solution to meet a court-ordered prison reduction is to shift low-level state inmates to county jails, but others say turning to private prisons is a good idea as well.
Advocates say state partnerships with private prisons, like the kind found in Texas and Florida, save money and reduce overcrowding.
"It makes sense for California policy makers to explore increasing the use of public-private partnerships given that many other states are saving on the order of 5 to 15 percent, sometimes more, and that they are receiving quality correctional services," said Leonard Gilroy, director of government reform at Reason Foundation, a policy think tank advocating privatization...
LINK - SBSun.com
June 8, 2011
Monterey County can’t handle state inmates under realignment plan
Monterey County officials said that barring a miracle, they cannot quickly implement Gov. Jerry Brown's prison population reduction plans.
But state officials say they will have to.
Despite having no secure funding source to cover local costs, corrections Secretary Matthew Cate announced Tuesday that counties will have to begin absorbing more inmates almost immediately. Meanwhile, the dollar amounts Brown has proposed in negotiations with county sheriffs fall far short of costs for many counties, including Monterey...
LINK - MontereyHerald.com
June 7, 2011
Assembly Republicans respond to CDCR population reduction plan
Worst Features of the Public Safety Realignment Bill SB 85 (Senate Budget) and AB 109 (Assembly Budget)
Will transfer jurisdiction of many serious felony offenders from prison to jail. The proposal will prevent thousands of convicted felons, including those with very long sentences (e.g., major drug sellers, child abusers under Penal Code § 273d), from being incarcerated in prison.
Will lead to early release of felons. This proposal will have the effect of converting hundreds of felony offenses into de facto misdemeanors, because the bill gives sheriffs broader discretion than exists under current law to release them early, and over 2/3 of the state's jails are under federal or other court-imposed or self-imposed population caps...
LINK - CA.gov
June 7, 2011
CDCR confirms closure of public CCFs, private CCFs still undecided
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation this week responded to a letter from State Sen. Michael Rubio, the Bakersfield Democrat, regarding closure of some Community Correctional Facilities, which contract with the state to hold low-level prisoners.
In brief, the letter said closures looming in August for city-owned facilities in Delano and Coalinga would go forward as planned. About 190 people work at the Delano and Coalinga sites.
"The state cannot extend or continue contracts for a population that will no longer be under its supervision," wrote Matthew Cate, secretary of the corrections department, referring to Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to shift low-level prisoners back to county supervision. That upcoming shift has reduced the need for CCFs, a spokeswoman for the governor said last week...
LINK - Bakersfield.com
June 4, 2011
Republican Assemblywoman Shannon Grove on prisons, public employees & taxes
In the latest state budget debate, taxpayers are presented with this "choice": increase taxes or experience drastic cuts to education, public projects and safety.
This choice is false, cunning and, if you still have a sense of humor, laughable. California does not have a revenue problem. California has a spending problem. Legislators have used the general fund to binge on pet projects and public employee benefits, only to cry that there is not enough left for necessary services like education, veterans and public safety. These priorities are distorted.
Here are the recent issues I have focused on that play directly into this problem...
LINK - Bakersfield.com
June 4, 2011
Delano, Coalinga public CCFs set to close (over 1,100 beds vacant)
California has a huge prisoner surplus. Meanwhile, the state is shedding low-cost inmate beds.
Huh?
"It just doesn't make sense," said Delano City Manager Abdel Salem.
Some 594 beds at the city-owned Delano Community Correctional Facility are headed for mothballs when a state contract ends in August. About 87 workers will be laid off, worsening the city's 38 percent unemployment rate...
LINK - Bakersfield.com
June 1, 2011
CDCR headquarters gets budget cut, layoffs
Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday announced the layoff of more than 130 employees at the state prison system's headquarters.
Brown's office said the layoffs and the elimination of about 266 vacant positions at California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation headquarters would reduce general fund spending by $30 million.
The cuts were first suggested two weeks ago, when Brown released a revised budget plan that included eliminating 5,500 positions statewide. Employees started receiving pink slips over the weekend...
LINK - SacBee.com
May 27, 2011
CDCR to privatize GPS tracking of parolees
In California, convicted sex offenders and some gang members are fitted with GPS tracking devices when they get out of prison on parole. But that's a lot of little blips on a screen for parole agents to keep track of- too many, argues the state.
So they're asking for a private company to take-over some of the work.
In yearly operations, California Department of Corrections officers have made dozens of arrests at the State Fair. That’s some place with lots of kids, and lots of trouble for some convicts to get into.
So how did they know the parolees were there? GPS monitoring devices, strapped to he convict's ankles...
LINK - Fox40.com
May 26, 2011
Colorado: private prison savings questioned
In the wake of news that private prison corporations are spending millions of dollars lobbying for tougher immigration laws comes a study that says privatizing prisons does not save taxpayers any money and may increase costs in some cases.
With five private prisons currently operating in Colorado, the state seems to be benefiting from the arrangement...
LINK - ColoradoIndependent.com
May 25, 2011
CA budget plans sink CCA stock
Last week, we reported on how a Supreme Court decision had hammered shares of Corrections Corp. of America. That, says Avondale Partners analyst Kevin Campbell, was well wide of the mark: The real cause of investors' ulcers was an outline of California's proposed budget, which now seeks to cut almost $260 million in prison spending.
Austerity on that scale would take a big bite out CCA's bottom line, Campbell said, because California accounts for about 30 percent of the company's earnings per share. But, Campbell adds, the chances of the prison funding cuts becoming final is 10 percent at the most.
The proposals require the support of Republicans on multiple fronts, including the passage of the budget, the extension of tax increases, and a constitutional amendment to guarantee funding for a shift of inmates from state prisons to county jails. Even with support from Republicans, which we view as unlikely, the tax increase and constitutional amendment still require voter approval as well....
LINK - NashvillePost.com
May 25, 2011
Lawsuit Puts Private Prisons in Spotlight
The cost savings from for-profit incarceration are debatable, and an Idaho suit claims that profitability can come at the price of prisoner safety.
Antoney Jones, a gay African-American man imprisoned in Idaho, needed protection from other inmates who thrived on assaulting vulnerable prisoners, especially those who were black and gay, his lawyers said.
He especially needed protection after testifying against a criminal defendant for California prosecutors in an undisclosed case. Not only was he black and gay, but he was also considered to be a rat within the prison population. He was housed in 2007 at the Idaho Correctional Center in Kuna, just outside of Boise, which is a privately run prison considered so violent that it is dubbed "gladiator school" because of its kill-or-be-killed mentality among guards and prisoners, says Monica Hopkins, director of the ACLU of Idaho...
LINK - TheRoot.com
