Deal to ease prison crowding sails through Assembly

SACRAMENTO--A deal brokered by Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders to ease prison crowding passed with overwhelming approval in the Assembly on Wednesday.

By a 75-0 vote, lawmakers approved the proposal, announced Monday, under which the state would ask a panel of three federal judges for time to expand programs aimed at reducing new crimes by ex-cons.

If the judges reject an extension, the state would spend $315 million this year to increase prison capacity in time to comply with the court's order to shrink the prison population by about 9,600 inmates by the end of the year.

The deal broke an impasse over how to comply with the order that pits the governor, Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) and Republican legislative leaders against Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), who sought more funding to address drug abuse and mental illness.

Pérez, speaking on the floor, said the compromise "allows for us to  comply with the three-judge panel’s order but also would not allow for any inmates to be released early from prison."

He took pains to thank the Republican leaders in both houses for coming on board.

"This is a solution that truly was only possible because of the early bipartisan work between the governor, myself and the two Republican leaders," he said.

Even Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-Twin Peaks), one of the most conservative lawmakers in the Capitol, chimed in to voice "rare support" of the speaker's comments.

The warm feelings did not extend to the federal courts. 

"We are here today because the federal courts have forced our hand," said Assemblyman Jeff Gorell(R-Camarillo).

"This is absurd. We ought to add extra desks so the judiciary can join us and continue to make decisions for this body," said Gorell. "It’s a ridiculous precedent."

The bill now heads to the Senate for final legislative approval.

LA Times -By Melanie Mason

PHOTO: Leftwing Nutjob 2011

State, prison guards reach deal on new contract

Caifornia's state prison officers will receive a 4 percent pay raise and earn overtime more easily under the terms of a tentative agreement reached with Gov. Jerry Brown.

The deal also allows the state to continue reassigning staff to cover vacancies and reduces the length of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's academy training.

"We feel that the deal that was agreed on was a fair and equitable deal that is reflective of the way the bargaining process should work," California Correctional Peace Officers Association spokesman JeVaughn Baker said in a telephone interview. "Both parties made some concessions, and both parties gained in the process as well."

CCPOA leadership met in Sacramento on Saturday and unanimously voted to send the deal to its 30,000 rank-and-file members for a ratification vote. The two-year contract would expire in July 2015 if approved by members and the Legislature.

Costs of the agreement aren't yet available. A phone message seeking comment from Brown's Department of Human Resources, which negotiates contracts with the unions representing state employees, was not immediately returned Saturday afternoon.

Baker said the agreement:

• Provides a 4 percent pay raise, effective Jan. 1, 2015.

• Replaces the current threshold for overtime in which officers are paid at a higher rate after working 164 hours over a 28-day period with a new standard in which the overtime pay kicks in after working 41 hours over seven days.

• Allows the state to reduce cadets' academy training to 12 weeks from 16 weeks. The precise terms – how to alter academy courses, possible on-the-job mentoring for new correctional officers and the like – must still be negotiated.

• Allows the state to continue redirecting staff from duties it deems less critical to duties it deems more critical through June 30, 2014.

• Increases members' contributions to their retirement benefits from the current 11 percent of pensionable salary to 12 percent in July 2014 and then to 13 percent one year later. (This is in line with the public pension law passed last year by the Legislature that requires employees to pay half the normal cost of their pensions.)

Perhaps the largest union concession is the agreement to cut academy training by 25 percent. CCPOA has long tied academy training and standards to professionalism, pay and workplace safety.

Shortening the academy will save the state millions of dollars, however, both in training costs and by reducing overtime for higher-paid senior staff.

The union's agreement to allow staff redirection to continue until next summer extends a policy that the union has fought for years but also ends it for the final year of the contract. CCPOA has argued that the state should hire more officers rather than apply managerial Band-Aids to cover critical shortages.

The state's prison system has more than 1,000 staff vacancies every day, Baker said, and redirection saves somewhere between $34 million and $40 million annually by moving staff around to cover the holes.

The return to a regular workweek for purposes of overtime was a significant concession from the Brown administration, since it has the potential to run up overtime in a department that is chronically understaffed.

Still, with the prison system much smaller because of realignment, and an influx of academy graduates entering the system more quickly, overtime demand should decline, Baker said.

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Inmate Housing Facilities Planned for California

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) received authorization from 2012 Senate Bill 1022 to begin the process of designing and constructing three new dorm buildings at any of four existing correctional center locations, including California Institute for Men in Chino, California State Prison and Sacramento/Folsom State Prison in Represa, California State Prison and Solano/California Medical Facility in Vacaville, Mule Creek State Prison (MCSP) in Ione or Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. Although planning has started, construction isn’t scheduled to begin until early 2014.

This project is a result of the 2011 state law requiring inmates who are non-violent and who have committed less serious offenses to be housed in local facilities. A restructuring of the classification system for inmates is resulting in a shift in the number of Level II and III inmates as well. “We’re expecting to have 7,000 inmates move from Level III to Level II. We need more beds,” said Dana Simas, information officer at CDCR.

The pending closure of the dilapidated California Rehabilitation Center (CRC) is another factor contributing to the growing need for more Level II inmate beds as those prisoners are transferred to other facilities.

The project is still in the early stages of development, and has several more rounds of planning to go through before any final decisions are made about the location of the new beds, according to Simas. Officials are considering several options for the placement of the facilities, including spreading the three dorm buildings across only two prisons.

Although discussions are still in progress about location and who the general contractor and architect will be, some things are certain. This project will increase the total number of Level II inmate beds in California by 2,376. The cost of building a double housing facility will be $533,792, while a single facility will cost $276,208.

Another perk to the project will be the addition of hundreds of new jobs. A double facility is expected to add 375 additional staff members, and a single facility will add 190. Simas said that the CDCR doesn’t anticipate facing any challenges with the future construction work yet, but did cite factors such as traffic, sewage and environmental elements as potential conflicts in the construction process.

via http://www.correctionalnews.com/articles/2013/07/17/inmate-housing-facilities-planned-california

Editorial: Brown needs to convene prison settlement talks

Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature did a heavy lift in reducing California's 33 overcrowded state prisons from 141,000 inmates to 119,000 in two years. But the effects of Brown's public safety realignment have plateaued.

The state still has 9,000 inmates to go to meet the population cap affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 – reducing prison population to 137.5 percent of design capacity (110,000) and sustaining that reduction.

Unfortunately, Brown has been bellicose in saying "no more" and he intends to appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, again. Appeals may delay the reckoning, as before, but are highly unlikely to end federal oversight.

All this fighting is sidetracking everybody from the real task – which should be finding common ground around durable remedies to reduce prison population. A better course would be for Brown to bring Assembly and Senate leaders, law enforcement officials, the federal health receiver and special master, the corrections secretary and Prison Law Office attorneys in the same room and hammer this out.

Further prison reductions need not be onerous, unworkable or detrimental to the public interest.

For example, to his credit, Brown says he is open to expanding prison fire camps, which are well below the 4,500 capacity. Brown wants to add 1,250 inmates by Dec. 31. He should go further. Today, inmates with serious or violent offenses are barred from fire camps, even if they are rated low risk. The Legislative Analyst's Office last year recommended changing the eligibility criteria to consider risk, looking at all 30,000 low-security inmates. The state needs more fire crews than ever.

Brown has given short shrift to expanding geriatric parole to address the rapidly aging prison population that is driving prison health costs. Many of the 6,500 inmates who are 60 or older pose little threat to public safety but cost the state a lot in health expenses. Brown believes 250 of these inmates could be paroled by Dec. 31. Legislators should change the law to expand that.

Brown also is dismissive of expanding earned-time credits for inmates who successfully complete education, vocational training and treatment programs that reduce recidivism rates. California only allows up to six weeks a year, well below other states. Why not increase the length of good-time credits to the national average of four to six months?

In addition, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg has a proposal to address mental health and substance abuse issues that get people cycling in and out of jail and prison. And while Steinberg was early to jump on Brown's appeal bandwagon, he is open to expanding fire camps, parole for elderly inmates and earned-time credits.

The big missing piece is sentencing reform, creating a sentencing commission to create a framework for organizing the state's piecemeal sentencing laws. In states such as North Carolinaand Virginia, sentencing commissions have brought longer sentences for violent offenders, tougher community punishments, more consistency and an end to prison crowding. Steinberg is strongly supportive. Brown should champion this.

Prison reform advocates say they are open to negotiating the crowding issue, though they have won most of the important court orders. Brown should take heed of this. Don Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, says sitting in a room together would go a long way in overcoming the balkanization and distrust that has built up.

California should build on the progress of the last two years, not stop the prison overhaul. The governor needs to get everybody to the table now and craft durable remedies that would end federal oversight of California's prisons.

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/08/5402832/brown-needs-to-convene-prison.html

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California Prisons Face Maximum Security Shortage

http://www.scpr.org/news/2012/02/27/31402/california-prisons-face-shortage-masimum-security-/
Feb. 27, 2012 | By Julie Small | KPCC

Last year, California began complying with a federal court order to reduce its prison population by shifting thousands of low-level felons to county custody. It’s called “realignment” and although it helped bring down the number of inmates in prison, it won’t solve another problem: Where to put the thousands of serious and violent inmates.

The number of inmates in state prisons has already dropped by 16,000 since realignment took effect in October. Corrections officials project that the diversion of low-level felons to counties will reduce the state prison population by 40,000 inmates within a few years. But California's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation can’t shift serious felons to the counties.

In a report out last week the Legislative Analyst’s Office projected that as realignment progresses, state prisons will have a surplus of 15,000 low security beds and a shortage of 13,000 high-security beds.

The non-partisan report suggest several ways to deal with the mismatch.

Analyst Drew Soderborg says, "One thing that we’re recommending is that they try to maximize their use of their existing space to house high security inmates."

Soderborg thinks CDCR should convert most of the reception centers used to temporarily house new inmates into the higher security housing the prison system needs.

Corrections is also in the process of converting Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla into a men’s prison. The LAO recommends that CDCR use the prison to house as many serious offenders as possible.

Soderborg also says, "We’re recommending that they identify if there’s any other facilities out there that they can use to house high security inmates."

Converting facilities from minimum to maximum security will require an investment in construction, equipment and additional staff.

Soderborg says the state could save money by shutting down some of its more expensive prisons: One example the LAO's report cites is the California Institution for Men in Chino. Its security level matches that of the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, but Deuel spends $10,000 less per inmate per year to house felons than Chino does.

Soderborg says CDCR could also consider shutting down remote prisons that are difficult and expensive to staff and transferring inmates to maximum-security prisons in other states. He says California could also keep some of its high security facilities "slightly overcrowded."

California Prison Riot: Guards Fire Shots, Many Injured

via Huffington Post

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Guards shot at least two prisoners Wednesday as they broke up a fight involving 50 inmates at a prison east of Sacramento, corrections officials said.

Inmates stabbed each other during the fight, and some employees suffered minor injuries as they intervened. The outbreak was in a maximum security area of the California State Prison, Sacramento.
The conditions of the two inmates hit by gunfire were not immediately known, but they were among 10 wounded inmates taken to outside hospitals, said correctional Sgt. Tony Quinn, a prison spokesman. The other inmates had stab wounds and blunt force trauma, he said. Their conditions also were not immediately known, Quinn said.

"There were guys being brought off the yard left and right" with injuries after the fight in a maximum-security exercise yard, Quinn said.

About 50 inmates were involved, and an unknown number of employees were injured, said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Besides firing about seven bullets, guards used pepper spray and fired rubber projectiles to break up the fight. The employees were hurt responding to the incident and were not targets of the inmates' attacks, she said.

Most of the prison's 2,800 inmates were locked in their cells while the disturbance was investigated.
The prison, which is also known as New Folsom, is next to the much older Folsom State Prison, about 20 miles east of the state capital. It also was the scene of a riot in May that sent six inmates to outside hospitals, and two of those inmates were treated for serious injuries.

Guards broke up that earlier riot with pepper spray and warning shots, without shooting any inmates. No employees were injured in that disturbance at the prison, which opened in 1986.