A Germ of Goodness: The California State Prison System, 1851-1944 (Law in the American West, Vol 3) The Rise and Fall of California's Radical Prison Movement The Reproduction of Social Control: A Study of Prison Workers at San Quentin The Animal Factory The San Quentin Story Star Rover This Is San Quentin The Road to Hell: The True Story of George Jackson, Stephen Bingham and the San Quentin Massacre San Quentin Inside the Walls

• Subject Prev Subject Next Subject Index Harrassment by CDC administrators at California State Prison, Solano.
• Subject: Harrassment by CDC administrators at California State Prison, Solano. ...
• Solano State Prison doesn't only control inmates but they control co's as well.

• The state of the art may have changed since the publication date. ...
• State Prison Releases Woman Dying of AIDS .
• Mark Arax; Times Staff Writer FRESNO -- A 35-year-old woman dying of AIDS has been released from state prison after a three-month campaign by other inmates and AIDS activists who demanded her freedom on grounds of compassion. ...
• Betty Jo Ross, who suffers from AIDS-related dementia and blindness, was released Tuesday night from the Central California Women's Facility at Chowchilla after serving four months of a two-year sentence for assault with a deadly weapon. ...
• Ross' mother picked her up at the prison 35 miles northwest of Fresno and drove her home to East Palo Alto. ...
• James Gomez, the state's director of corrections, had twice rejected Ross' plea for early release, saying she was a violent offender who posed a threat to residents of a boardinghouse where she wanted to live with her mother. ...
• Inmates at the Chowchilla facility, which houses 3,861 prisoners, protested Gomez's decision, gathering more than 1,000 signatures and donning signs stating "Free Betty" and "Don't Let Betty Die in Prison. ...
• "Betty would still be inside if it wasn't for the campaign by the inmates, the support of the prison staff and the pressure put on the Department of Corrections by us," said Judy Greenspan of the ACT UP chapter. ...
• Tip Kindel, a state corrections official, said the decision to grant Ross early release had nothing to do with the protest inside or outside the prison. Instead, Ross' mother, who ran the boardinghouse where Ross wanted to live, relinquished the business and assured state corrections officials that her daughter and grandchildren would be the only residents. ...
• According to prison officials, Ross has a criminal history dating to 1976 and once spent 16 months in state prison for drug and property offenses. ...
• Shortly after arriving at the prison in September, Ross became so weak that other inmates had to carry her to the dining hall, according to ACT UP. The HIV-positive section of the prison, in which 52 infected inmates live, lacked a wheelchair. ...
• Ross spent a month in the prison infirmary, where the staff determined that she was in the final stages of AIDS. ...
• Keywords: PRISONERS -- HEALTH; PRISONER RELEASES -- CALIFORNIA; ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME .

• Mule Creek State Prison.
• On October 23, 1998, the Amador County Grand Jury Law Enforcement Committee toured the Mule Creek State Prison. ...
• Under California Penal Code, Title 4. ...
• Follow-up contact was made on February 19, 1999, when the Law Enforcement Committee met a Mule Creek State Prison to review use of force procedures. ...
• Mule Creek State Prison was opened in June 1987 as one of 33 state prisons. ... Currently, there are 981 employees, making the prison one of Amador County's largest employers. ...
• As the prison population has increased, bunks for the inmates have been stacked two (2) high. ...
• In this respect, the prison is like a small town. ... In case of total disaster, there are plans in place to evacuate the inmates to other facilities in the State. ...
• College level classes are not offered by Mule Creek State Prison. ...
• Food preparation is done at the prison central kitchen and dispensed through mess halls. ... Visitors are screened as the law allows, but the visitation program introduces contraband into the prison environment. ...
• Mule Creek State Prison conforms to the standards set by the State of California Department of Corrections. ...
• Overcrowding exists at Mule Creek State Prison as evidenced by a capacity of 190%. ...
• Educational and vocational opportunities are available within the prison. ...

• San Quentin California, Images by Wernher Krutein, and PHOTOVAULT.
• PHOTOVAULT contains images of San Quentin State Prison. ...
• Included in the Vault are images of: Concentration Camps, Guard Towers, Jail Cells, Alcatraz Island, Auschwitz Poland, Buchenwald, Electric Chair, Manzanar Relocation Camp, Mens Colony San Luis Obispo California, Robbin Island Prison South Africa, San Quentin California, Bail Bonds, Watchtowers, Hand Cuffs, Stocks, Dunking Stock.

• No Pride in Davis' Prison State.
• On October 7, queers and their allies demonstrated against Governor Gray Davis' prison policies during a fundraiser at the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center. ...
• Protesters expressed our anger with Davis' policies that strip resources away from education, health care, housing and other social services and funnel millions of dollars into the prison system. Demonstrators stood in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in prison, demanding that Governor Davis end his assault on prisoner's rights. ...
• No more prison construction .
• Fund education, not prison guard salaries .
• Under Davis' watch, queer prisoners often face even harsher forms of discrimination, neglect and abuse than other inmates by prison guards. ... Although he may pay lip service to the LGBT community, his alliances are exposed by his recent approval of a 34% raise in prison guard salaries. ... We refuse to sit back while he locks up our brothers and sisters, allowing them to be tortured, abused and killed by the prison system. If you agree, then let him know it! Send your thoughts to: Governor Gray Davis/ State Capitol Building/Sacramento, CA 95814 Phone: 916-445-2841/ Fax: 916-445-4633 Prisoner Rights=Queer Rights=Human Rights .

• California SB470 as Introduced 2/17/95.
• This bill would delete those provisions and would specifically prohibit inmates imprisoned in a state prison from possessing or using tobacco products. ...
• (2) Existing law lists certain civil rights to which a person sentenced to imprisonment in a state prison is entitled. ...
• (3) Under existing law, the Department of Corrections is required to require of every able-bodied prisoner imprisoned in any state prison as many hours of faithful labor in each day during the term of his or her imprisonment, as prescribed by the Director of Corrections. ...
• This bill would require each inmate imprisoned in a state prison to work, unless there is a medical or security reason why he or she cannot work, as determined by the prison warden. ...
• (4) Existing law sets forth the terms of parole for inmates imprisoned in the state prison. ...
• (5) Existing law authorizes the Department of Corrections to maintain a canteen at any prison or institution under its jurisdiction for the sale to inmates of toilet articles, candy, tobacco products, notions, and other sundries, as specified by the director. ...
• State-mandated local program: no. ...
• (B) Establish reasonable restrictions as to the number of newspapers, magazines, and books that the inmate may have in his or her cell or elsewhere in the prison at one time. ...
• Inmates imprisoned in a state prison do not have the right to, and shall be prohibited from, the following: .
• The Department of Corrections shall require of every able-bodied prisoner imprisoned in any state prison as many hours of faithful labor in each day and every day during his or her term of imprisonment as shall be is prescribed by the rules and regulations of the Director of Corrections. ...
• Each inmate imprisoned in a state prison shall be required to work, unless there is a medical or security reason why he or she cannot work, as determined by the warden of the prison in which he or she is confined. ...
• The department may maintain a canteen at any prison or institution under its jurisdiction for the sale to persons confined therein of toilet articles, candy, tobacco products, notions, and other sundries, and may provide the necessary facilities, equipment, personnel, and merchandise for the canteen. ...
• The canteen operations at any prison or institution referred to in this section shall be audited biennially by the Department of Finance, and at the end of each intervening fiscal year, each prison or institution shall prepare a statement of operations. At least one copy of any audit report or statement of operations shall be posted at the canteen and at least one copy shall be available to inmates at the library of each prison or institution. ...
• (b) It is the intent of the Legislature that both the Department of Corrections and the Department of the Youth Authority eliminate or restrict access to weights and weight lifting equipment where it is determined that the particular type of equipment involved or the particular prison population or inmate involved poses a safety concern both in the correctional facility and to the public upon release. ...

• State Fumbles Prison Lab Testing.
• A California laboratory that processed medical tests for thousands of state prisoners in the 1990s was shut down by health inspectors in 1997 for faking results on screens for AIDS, hepatitis and other serious diseases. But more than three years later, there is little evidence of any attempt by the California Department of Corrections to retest inmates or notify them that their test results were faked, a Chronicle investigation has found.
• Without retesting, potentially thousands of prison inmates who had lab work done by B. ...
• Donna Wilson, chief of quality programs for the department's Health Care Services Division, said she believes individual prison medical officers took the appropriate steps to retest any prisoners whose health was in question.
• Prison rights attorneys who learned about the B. ...
• Clinical Labs, situated in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Fe Springs, is described in federal and state documents obtained by The Chronicle through state Public Records Act requests.
• They reveal for the first time how a reckless medical testing laboratory --which had been warned by prison officials for late and shoddy work since 1995 -- won low-bid contracts to run thousands of medical tests on state prisoners and faked the results in a scam inspectors call "dry-labbing. ...
• Tipped off by the chief medical officer at Chuckawala Valley State Prison in Imperial County, inspectors paid a surprise visit to B. ...
• "Basically, we caught them with their hand in the cookie jar," said Tom Barr, an investigator for the Laboratory Field Services branch of the California Department of Health Services.
• Seven state prisons received notices from federal regulators in March 1997 warning that the problems at B. ...
• Prisons notified were: Northern California Women's Facility, Stockton; Calipatria State Prison, Calipatria; Lancaster State Prison, Los Angeles; Chuckawala Valley State Prison and Ironwood State Prison, Blythe; Central California's Women's Facility, Chowchilla; and Deuel Vocational Institute, Tracy.
• The Corrections Department's Wilson said there may be no directives from top department administrators to retest inmates because medical decisions were delegated to each prison. ...
• At one facility, Chuckawala Valley State Prison, prison doctors sent some test samples to local hospitals to be reprocessed after the doctors realized they could not rely on B. ...
• Culton said he urged state health inspectors to check out the company. ...
• One of the prison facilities, Central California Women's Facility, calls itself the nation's largest women's prison, with 2,600 inmates. ...

• 'Green Wall' protected rogue prison guards, report finds .
• SACRAMENTO (AP) -- Guards at a California state prison formed their own gang-like organization, inventing hand signals and codes to telegraph their membership to inmates and other officers, state investigators concluded in a confidential report this month.
• The Office of Inspector General found that a group of correctional officers at Salinas Valley State Prison near Soledad formed an alliance in 1999 that they called the "Green Wall," after the color of their uniforms.
• "Numerous incidents" involving the group took place over the next two years, including the vandalizing of prison property with markings of "GW" and "7/23," which stood for the seventh (G) and 23rd (W) letters of the alphabet.
• Members developed a hand signal -- fingers folded into the shape of a W -- to "represent" their alliance to inmates and other employees, a whistleblower testified to a joint state Senate committee hearing last week.
• The prison's own internal investigators smuggled into the prison a green-handled knife engraved with "7/23" as a promotion gift for a sergeant, according to the report obtained by The Associated Press.
• LaMarque had a special relationship with several members of the prison's internal affairs unit, the report found: He ignored reports that they might be involved in the Green Wall, and refused to transfer them during an investigation of allegations that they used excessive force against inmates and engaged in other misconduct.
• The warden "wouldn't be able to comment because it's pending litigation right now," said prison spokesman Lt. ...
• 5 report was sent to the California Department of Corrections for "appropriate action," but department spokesman Bob Martinez said he couldn't comment because the report is supposed to be confidential.
• Vodicka sued the state and corrections officials in September for allegedly violating his whistleblower rights by retaliating against him with a demotion, defamation, and infliction of emotional distress. ...
• Lance Corcoran, vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, said a vehicle belonging to Eugene "Gino" Carranza, president of the union's Salinas Valley Prison chapter, was vandalized after he reported wrongdoing by two supervisors at the prison in 1999 or 2000.
• "It was the Sharks at Corcoran (State Prison), maybe we'll have the Jets (as in "West Side Story"). ...
• ------ On the Net: Salinas Valley State Prison: www. ... gov/InstitutionsDiv/INSTDIV/facilities/fac--prison--SVSP. ...
• California .

• Inside the US prison system—frame-ups, brutality and murder.
• America's prison system is notorious around the world for both its vast scale—more than 1. ...
• These are cases which could potentially result in long prison sentences or the death sentence. According to Scheck, if even 1 percent of these people were eventually convicted it would amount to thousands of innocent people in prison.
• Vincent Jenkins, a prisoner in upstate New York, received a life sentence on a rape conviction and has served nearly 17 years in prison. ... They will most likely allow his conviction to be vacated in state court, but they have opposed Jenkins's lawyers efforts to have a federal judge rule that he should be freed because he is innocent.
• Gregory Taylor, 37, is serving 25 years to life in California's Corcoran State Prison as a result of the state's "three strikes" law. ...
• The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), the union representing prison guards, has successfully lobbied to prevent passage of a bill that would have placed investigation of prison brutality cases under the jurisdiction of the state Attorney General's office.
• Despite the shooting deaths of 39 inmates and the wounding of 200 more over the last 10 years in the state's 33 prisons, no district attorney in the state has ever prosecuted a guard.
• Investigations of police brutality have centered around Corcoran State Prison in San Joaquin Valley. Last year four prison officials were indicted in connection with a rape case against Corcoran's so-called "Booty Bandit," a prisoner who reportedly raped "problem" prisoners under the direction of prison staff in exchange for extra food and other perks.
• Florida prison guards suspended following prisoner's death.
• Nine Florida prison guards have been suspended following the death of Frank Valdez, 36, a prisoner on the state's death row at Florida State Prison. ...
• Valdez was sentenced to died by the electric chair for the killing of a Palm Beach County prison guard during an attempt to free a friend from the prison.
• All executions in the state take place at Florida State Prison. Since 1924, 240 inmates have died in Florida's electric chair, the state's sole method of execution. ...

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• The corruption in California's prison system is revealed .
• Scandalous! The time has finally come for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association and the $5. ...
• It is apparent that top officials of the Department of Corrections neither understand nor care about the need for fair investigations, nor are they likely to impose discipline in the face of CCPOA (the prison guard union) objections. The Sacramento Bee said the report "painted a picture of a prison discipline system that covers up for brutal correctional officers but punishes whistle-blowers among the correctional staff. ...
• How did it all unravel? Edward Alameida, the head of the Department of Corrections until a month ago, killed an investigation at Pelican Bay State Prison and then crafted a cover-up after his top deputy Thomas Moore botched the investigation and lied to the federal court. All under enormous pressure from the prison guard union, of course. ...
• Last month, Hagar recommended an outside agency be tasked with monitoring the prison system: It will be impossible for the Department of Corrections to ever check itself given the politics and perhaps the incompetence that exist in certain levels of the department .
• Lest anyone forget, Gray Davis was in bed with the prison guard union and it became a huge issue in the recall election. ... Schwarzenegger never took money from the union, so our new governor is in the perfect position to massively overhaul the prison system -- something Gray never would have done.
• Categories - California - Corruption .
• So it wasn't the end of California to have a Republican elected governor. ...
• There has already been a lot of talk about major changes to California's penal system, including the possibility of releasing a large number of non-violent offenders.
• State governments need to be more business friendly than the federal government because they're competing with other states, and a very moderate Republican works nicely for that.
• I have been a prison reformer in this state for over 15 years and I have some things to tell people about the abuses in the prison system, does anyone want to listen? Our new Govenor did not. ...
• I'm a college student and I'm doing my term paper on the corruption that goes on in the prison system, and the untold stories of the abuse the prisoners have to go through. ...

• SuperCell in California.
• Today SuperCell in California includes 33 state prisons and 38 camps, and about 7,326 community facilities holding a total of 159,390 inmates as of about 6/15/2003. 148,166 of these inmates are held in prison. ... The Community Correctional Facilities, most of which operate under contract with the California Department of Corrections, include thirty-two re-entry centers, one restitution, one (1) drug treatment facility, and sixteen community correctional facilities, which hold a total of 7,096. ...
• 0 per 100,000 California population. ...
• California's SuperCell 5. 237 billion budget for 2002-2003 consumes about 10 percent of the entire State budget and 6. ...
• Who knows, maybe the new state governor will cut CDC's budget: thus far (late November of 2003) SuperCell hasn't been cut a penny during the severe budget crisis faced by the state. ...
• The return rate of parolees with a new prison term is 10. ...
• The return rate for parole violation is over 5 times the rate for new prison terms. ...
• 1 per 100,000 California state residents age 18-49. ... California has the largest prison building program in the U. ... Some officials routinely state that high incarceration levels have caused the dramatic decline in crime. However, jurisdictions without increases in prison populations or three strikes laws have likewise shown dramatic declines in crime in both the U. ...
• At present California prisons are at about 200% of their rated capacity.
• The state will need tens of thousands of additional beds very soon to keep up with the expected growth--that is, if we continue to choose to build our way out of the demand for prison space. This is a political decision, just as our decision was to embark on the unprecedented growth in prison building.

• GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER REQUESTS UNITED STATES ATTORNEY TO WEIGH-IN ON 2002 FOLSOM STATE PRISON RIOTS.
• Taking unprecedented action to root out corrupting influences within the California prison system, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today announced he is requesting the United States Eastern District Attorney McGregor Scott to undertake an independent review of the circumstances surrounding the April 2002 riots that occurred at Folsom State Prison. ...
• "I am gravely concerned with what I have recently learned about internal operations within the California prison system. Prison employees who engage in misconduct bring disgrace and dishonor to the many hard working professionals who daily go to work and do their best to serve the public and effectively manage this state's criminal population. It is a priority of my administration to reform the California prison system and bring to justice those individuals who do it dishonor by their misconduct," said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. ...

• Corcoran State Prison:.
• CORCORAN STATE PRISON:.
• SHOOTINGS AND TORTURE!! Gladiator fights turn the prison yard.
• 8 Corcoran officers have been indicted for arranging prison fights for recreation. ... Department of Correction officials continue to deny the prison was mismanaged. FBI was called in to investigate when the California Department of Corrections found all of the abuse allegations groundless. ... 3 associate wardens were intimate with female subordinates on prison grounds. ...

• Schwarzenegger Deals With Prison Crisis .
• (AP) - While prison guards allegedly watched the Super Bowl and ignored his screams for hours, an inmate on dialysis died as most of his blood drained from his body. ...
• The death earlier this month was just the latest horror story to come out of the California prison system and confront Gov. ...
• Among other things, two teenagers hanged themselves last month at a juvenile prison. And in a recent series of scathing reports and hearings, legislators, outside experts and whistleblowers have charged that the nation's biggest prison system is plagued by out-of-control spending, inhumane discliplinary practices, and outright brutality on the part of guards. ...
• ``Most people in California aren't sent to prisons on death sentences,'' said state Sen. Gloria Romero, a Democrat from Los Angeles who is co-chairing legislative hearings now under way on the 160,000-inmate prison system. ...
• Last month, sobbing witnesses at Senate hearings told of a systemwide ``code of silence'' among guards and accused top Folsom State Prison officials of covering up their mishandling of a 2002 riot. ...
• Twenty-five inmates and one guard were injured, and a second guard committed suicide months later, complaining of his treatment by prison officials in the riot's aftermath. ...
• In recent weeks, a federal monitor said the state's former corrections director and chief investigator should be charged with contempt for blocking a probe of whether Pelican Bay State Prison guards lied to protect co-workers convicted of soliciting inmates to attack child molesters and others they disliked. ...
• The California Youth Authority, which is responsible for 4,600 juvenile offenders, came under fire recently from state-funded experts who said authorities overuse Mace, drugs, physical restraints and wire-mesh cages on misbehaving youths while ignoring or delaying mental or physical health treatment. ...
• Last month, Deon Whitfield, 17, and Durrell Tadon Feaster, 18, used bed sheets to hang themselves in their cells at a juvenile prison in Ione. ...
• 1 in his cell at Corcoran State Prison. The Los Angeles Times quoted unidentified prison officials as saying guards were busy watching the game and ignored his cries for help. ...
• In a confidential report obtained by The Associated Press, state investigators said guards at Salinas Valley State Prison formed a gang-like organization, called the Green Wall, to intimidate inmates and fellow employees, and even devised gang-style hand signals and codes. ...
• Last week, he asked a federal prosecutor to probe the Folsom riot; ended the youth authority's use of wire-mesh cages; and admitted his mistake in seeking to merge the watchdog inspector general into the very prison agency it is supposed to oversee. ...

• Home  |   Corporate-Sponsored Crime Laws  |   The Cops' Share  |   California's Prison Guards   |   .
• The Headquarters of the California Prison Guards Union. ...
• SLIDESHOW (will open new window)Prison Guards' Union Backs Victims Rights.
• Turning the Key: California's Prison Guards.
• More than 600,000 Americans work in a prison or jail - roughly the same as the number who work in the airline industry. ... In California, the prison guards' union has become one of the most powerful and politically aggressive interest groups in the state. ...
• In a crowded hearing room in the state Capitol, a middle-aged woman with red hair steps to the podium. ...
• "My name is Vivian Moen and I'm from Fountain Valley, California and my son was sentenced under the Three Strikes law for simple drug possession, 25 years to life. ...
• She spends a lot of her spare time as an activist with a group called Families to Amend California's Three Strikes, or FACTS. ...
• Rash is now in a state prison and he won't be free until at least 2014. ...
• They wear black t-shirts and carry signs like, 'Stop filling prisons with non-violent offenders!' They chant, "Let the time fit the crime!" They reflect a growing push in California, by ballot initiative and in the Assembly, to limit the state's Three Strikes law to violent felons. ...
• California enacted the nation's first Three Strikes law in 1994, after several high-profile murders by repeat offenders - most explosively, the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klass by Richard Allen Davis, a repeat offender on parole at the time of the murder. ... Not in California. Almost half of the state's third-strikers locked up since 1994 - more than 3,000 people - were convicted of non-violent third strikes such as drug possession, drug sales, and petty theft. ...
• He was sentenced to fifty years in prison with no chance for parole. ...
• This spring the United States Supreme Court agreed to use two of the California cases to decide whether states violate the Constitution's 8th Amendment ban on cruel or unusual punishment by using Three Strikes laws to give long sentences for minor offenses. ...

• California Suit Calls Prison Haircutting Unsanitary.
• ) announced Monday the filing of a class-action lawsuit asking that federal courts prohibit California prisons from cutting inmates' hair with unsterilized clippers. ...
• Stern said that while serving time in a state facility in Delano for passing bad checks, he observed inmates with bleeding scalps after getting haircuts with unsterilized instruments. ...
• A spokesperson for the California Corrections Department, Russ Heimerich, said the agency has adopted procedures that require barbers to sterilize implements between customers. "We don't believe that the risk of getting AIDS or hepatitis from a haircut in prison is any greater than anywhere else," Heimerich said. ...
• Rick Lopes, a spokesperson for the Barbering and Cosmetology bureau, said a state law exempts the prison system from bureau regulations requiring sterilized implements, but that prisons could choose to follow them. ...

• Yuma Territorial Prison.
• State Historic Park .
• Main Gate: This entrance (also called the sallyport) is the only original adobe structure remaining at the prison.
• Yuma Territorial Prison is a living museum of the Old West. More than 3,000 desperadoes, convicted of crimes ranging from polygamy to murder, were imprisoned in rock and adobe cells here during the prison's 33-year existence between 1876 and 1909. ...
• Yuma Prison State Historic Park is situated on 7 acres on a bluff above the Colorado River in Yuma, Arizona. ...
•  Model of the Territorial Prison at Yuma.
• The Territorial Prison at Yuma, Arizona, is a fascinating side trip to take when in the Yuma area. The entrance of this famous prison was shown in many western movies you might remember, where the bad guys ended up going in or coming out the main gate. The prison has been closed since 1909 and is now run as a state historical park.
• As one wanders through the old prison peering into the cells, you quickly notice the lack of plumbing and air conditioning. With only a bucket and an occassional breeze, it must have been a real challange for prisoners to survive in theTerritorial Prison at Yuma.
• On July 1, 1876, the first 7 inmates entered the Territorial Prison at Yuma and were locked into the new cells they had built themselves. A total of 3,069 prisoners, including 29 women, lived within these walls during the prison's 33 years of operation. ... No executions took place at the prison because capital punishment was administered by the county governments.
• Despite an infamous reputation, the historical written record indicates that the prison was humanely administered and was a model institution for its time. The only punishments were the "dark cell" for inmates who broke prison regulations, and the "ball and chain" for those who tried to escape. Prisoners had free time during which they hand-crafted many items to be sold at public bazaars held at the prison on Sundays after church services. ...

• Mitchell Where old prison counselors go.
• Correctional officers staging sometime-fatal gladiatorial fights between inmates at Corcoran State Prison. Guards at Pelican Bay State Prison aligning themselves with prison gangs and forming their own gangs.
• California’s incarcerating more than twice as many people as any other state. Violence between inmates, staff, and visitors in California prisons jumping 73 percent during the 1990s. ...
• In the past 15 years, there have been so many scandals in the California prison system that any newspaper who wanted to do its own exposé could have a piece of the action.
• Even this little paper with no state prison in its immediate readership area awhile back found it had part of the story – and not merely because several West Marin residents are incarcerated. ...
• Until September 1990, he had owned Oakland’s Highview Convalescent Hospital, but state health inspectors shut it down after concluding it could that as it was being operated it could kill or seriously injure elderly patients.
• Carr was "unprincipled," the deputy stressed, and with amazement noted that San Quentin State Prison was paying the con man ($55,000 per year) to counsel convicts. The Light repeatedly asked state officials how this could happen and was told that because Columbia Pacific and its operators, including Carr, had been tried in civil court, the rulings would not affect his prison position. Prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon, however, said that if Dr. Carr were to be convicted in a criminal court, he might lose his prison job because the Department of Corrections required him to maintain "professional integrity. ...
• The school secured a "private-school license" from the State of Wyoming and on its website claimed it had been accredited by the African Republic of Malawi. ...
• Carr or Columbia Pacific in years, but after the recent scandals at Pelican Bay State Prison, I spent about three hours Tuesday night on the web, tracking Carr and his schools around the world. ...
• Stephenson was unhappy with a 1997 story which quoted Louisville’s Courier-Journal, which described him as a 380-pound Kentucky politico who had his Columbia Pacific degrees fall under scrutiny when he attempted a power-grab in that state’s educational system.
• He had been convincing elected Superintendent of State Education in 1992, but subsequently the position was made appointive. ...

• HEADLINE: California Prison System Plans Sweeping Parole Changes .
• SACRAMENTO--Spurred by budget pressures, the California Department of Corrections plans to overhaul the state's parole system in a way that could help produce 15,000 fewer inmates and as many as five fewer prisons by mid-2005. ...
• More parole violators will be assigned to house arrest or sent to drug programs instead of back to prison as part of the changes officials disclosed in advance of a state commission report on parole reform scheduled to be released Thursday. ...
• But the measures are in line with some of the recommendations by the Little Hoover Commission, formally called the Commission on California State Government Organization and Economy. ...
• Currently, ex-cons who violate parole must either be sent back to prison or allowed to continue their previous release conditions. ...
• teams local police and state parole officers to track ex-cons and push them toward rehabilitation programs. ...
• In addition to the parole changes, inmates beginning their sentences at prison intake centers and unassigned inmates will be eligible for early release if they participate in or sign up for education or prison jobs, even if no openings are immediately available. ...
• Diverting parolees into drug programs instead of back to prison will save a projected $50. ...
• Some of the changes are self-defeating, said Judy Greenspan, a board member and spokeswoman for California Prison Focus, a San Francisco-based nonprofit prisoners' rights group. ...
• For instance, the department is eliminating community resource managers who work at each prison even as it beefs up other prerelease programs. ...
• Key, she said, will be measuring and monitoring results in California and other states, so the department can put its efforts into programs that prove most effective. ...

• SACRAMENTO (AP) -- The deeply flawed California prison system needs permanent oversight to force reforms, witnesses and senators said Wednesday during the second of two days of Senate hearings.
• The co-chairs of the Senate Select Committees on Government Oversight and the California Correctional System said they believe Hickman's vow to reform a system he inherited after Schwarzenegger took office in November.
• The monitor recommended the former corrections director and chief internal investigator be charged with criminal contempt of court for blocking a probe of whether Pelican Bay State Prison guards committed perjury in inmate abuse trials.
• A correctional officer from Salinas Valley State Prison testified wearing a bulletproof vest; an associate warden at Folsom State Prison asked for police protection after receiving death threats.
• Tuesday's hearing focused on problems within the California Department of Corrections, while Wednesday's was a search for solutions for problems particularly affecting internal investigations of employee wrongdoing.
• "The nation is watching how California" attempts to reform the country's largest prison system, said co-chair Sen. ...
• The California Correctional Peace Officers Association enjoys political and monetary influence that permeates every level and every decision in the department and Hickman's agency -- but only because "there's a vacuum of power where it belongs," White said.
• Donald Spector, director of the Prison Law Office that brought the Pelican Bay case on behalf of inmates, said the department "must teach a course in how to point fingers and avoid responsibility" because so many errant employees escape punishment. ...
• Spector said county prosecutors are often reluctant to pursue cases against prison guards because of the power of the guards' union and the political stigma against prosecuting a law enforcement officer. He said the state attorney general should be in charge of all such investigations.
• gov/oversight California Department of Corrections: http://www. ... gov/ California Correctional Peace Officers Association: http://www. ...
• California .

• California's Prison System Lags Behind.
• Policymakers in some very conservative places are modeCating their approach to crime and punishment, but in California, which imprisons more people than any other state, politicians still think more prisons are better. ...
• Rick Perry, a Republican, signed legislation passed overwhelmingly by Texas' Republican-controlled House and Senate to divert thousands of low-level drug offenders from prison into treatment. ... The Lone Star State's prison population is second only to that of California. ...
• Texas is far from the only state sensibly re-examining its imprisonment binge under growing pressure to cut prison spending. ...
• John Engler signed watershed legislation abolishing most of that state's mandatory sentencing laws and returning discretion to judges. ...
• Mike Foster of Louisiana signed legislation reforming his state's mandatory sentencing laws and returning discretion on non-violent drug offenses to judges, he stated, "There's nothing worse than having a state that is tops in incarceration. ...
• Bob Taft carefully "scrubbed" his state's prison population through revised sentencing and parole guidelines and by creating new treatment programs and other alternatives to incarceration. While prison populations in other Midwest states increased by nearly 4 percent between 1998 and 2000, Ohio's prison population declined by nearly 6 percent, allowing the state to close two of its prisons and save millions annually. ...
• Policymakers are finding support for such changes from a public that, across party affiliation, is disappointed with the war on drugs and supportive of diverting non-violent offenders into treatment instead of prison. ... In December 2001, four times as many Californians surveyed in a Field Poll reported that they preferred to reduce the state's prison budget rather than cut higher education. ...
• The budget proposal currently being debated by the California Senate includes just such common sense proposals. ... Even after the cost of the new treatment and education programs are accounted for, the state would save over $120 million next fiscal year by adopting these reforms. ...
• So it's not too late for California to become part of the "smart on crime" trend. ... If they can do it in Texas, you can certainly do it in California. ...

• Prison-Industrial Complex Fact sheet.
• Recycling companies that subcontract prison labor are already undercutting those companies that pay a living wage and benefits to free-workers. The federal prisons are now recycling electronic products at prisons in Florida, New Jersey, Ohio and Texas and a large new facility in Atwater, California began processing CRTs in 2002.
• The development of the occupational and educational skills of prison inmates is essential to their rehabilitation and to their ability to make an effective return to free society. ... Instead, prisons have become big business in which private companies that sustain their operations by warehousing prisoners and selling prison labor rather than rehabilitating inmates increasingly run US penitentiaries. ... i   In 1999 the US incarcerated 476 citizens for every 100,000 ii and in California the statewide recidivism rate is 75 percent. ...
• prison-industrial complex steals tax dollars from public  education and environmental protection programs and kills private sector development in electronic recycling. Continued support of prison-based electronics recycling businesses sustains a US policy that fails to protect human health and safety and that invest in low tech, labor-intensive recycling processes rather than invest in public education and research, or state sponsored recycling business development programs that attempt to financially assist legitimate recycling businesses.
• Prison Labor Discourages Investment in Recycling.
• Private sector companies are in no position to compete with prison industries that receive the benefit of warehouse facilities and utilities paid for by the taxpayers and prison workers that receive as little as 26 cent an hour. ...
• The prison industry does not have to pay workers compensation, unemployment insurance or obey many of the same environmental and employment laws as private sector businesses. ...
• The labor unions and the US Chamber of Commerce are on record opposing the monopoly prison industries have on federal procurement contracts. ...
• Prison labor is not protected by federal safety and health standards, nor is it covered by National Labor Relations Board policies. ...
• Alabama prison officials recently settled a lawsuit filed by inmates at Elmore Correctional Facility. ...
• Prison and security.
• Identity and data theft is the fastest growing sector of white-collar crime in the United State. ...

• Death in prison (contined).
• When people talk about crime and punishment, they rarely mention women in prison. ... 3 percent of all inmates in state and federal prisons nationwide, according to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service of the U. ...
• Analysts say that this is a clear result of the introduction of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses in both California and federal courts. One third of the women incarcerated in California (and across the nation) are in for drug-related offenses, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Another third of women in California prisons are in for so-called property crimes, of which "petty theft with a prior" is the most common offense. ...
• At the same time, mandatory sentencing statutes such as "Three Strikes, You're Out" -- which imposes a 25-years-to-life sentence for people who are convicted of three felonies -- have created a new population of women inmates who are going to grow old in prison. ...
• Of the more than 145,000 people incarcerated in California, about 10,000 (6. ... They do their time in four large institutions -- CCWF and VSPW in Chowchilla, the California Institute for Women in Frontera, and the Northern California Women's Facility in Stockton -- and in a handful of minimum-security facilities, drug rehabilitation programs, and women's camps. ...
• But the Female Inmate Health Issues Task Force, which was mandated by the state assembly in 1991, found that incarcerated women still get less effective and efficient health care than do men. ...
• Corey Weinstein, a general practitioner and the treasurer of California Prison Focus, a statewide prisoners' rights and advocacy organization based in San Francisco, told the Bay Guardian. The reason: the health care delivery system in all of California's prisons was designed on a military model that only works for healthy young men. ...
• "When the typical woman arrives at jail or state prison, it's likely that she'll show up there with health problems," Stoller said. ... The general issues that face women in prison are health issues that face all women who are poor, health issues of women who are people of color, and also problems related to drugs and street life. ...
• Women in prison are at risk for many health problems that are not as common in the general population. ... He told the Bay Guardian that women in prison have an increased incidence of chronic health care problems, including asthma, gynecological diseases, nutrition problems, and convulsive seizure disorders, because of their exposure to violence. ...

• PRISON LORE AND LAW .
• Editor's Note: From time to time we come across articles, cases and links dealing with prisons and prison life in general.   Because much of what happens behind prison walls is hidden from the public view, we feel that there should be a place on the Internet where the public can learn about the prison system in America.   Thus, we will periodically add items of general interest to this section of our Web site with the hope that it can help to dispel some of the myths about the Law and the Lore of prison life. ...
•   The first of those decisions was Judge Henderson's lengthy expose of the conditions that exist at Pelican Bay Prison in California, which he described in his decision reported at Madrid v. ... The second was Judge Justice's equally stirring expose of the prison system in Texas, which was reported at Ruiz v. ...
• In Madrid, Chief Judge Thelton Henderson of the Northern District of California described, in lurid detail, the conditions at the infamous Pelican Bay State Prison in California. ...
• Judge Henderson explained that, in 1982, California had a total of 12 prisons, housing 31,000 prisoners. By 1998, California had a total of 33 prisons, housing 160,000 prisoners, at an annual budget of $4 billion.   (See, "California Examines Brutal, Deadly Prisons", The New York Times, Nov. ...    Pelican Bay was built to house the State's most incorrigible prisoners; and although it only opened in 1989, Judge Henderson found, in Madrid, that conditions at Pelican Bay caused "senseless suffering and sometimes wretched misery. ...
• Conditions like those found at Pelican Bay were so severe, and so unnoticed by the general public, that Sally Mann Romano wrote an extraordinarily revealing law review article, entitled , "If the SHU Fits: Cruel and Unusual Punishment at California's Pelican Bay State Prison,"   in the Emory Law Journal, Vol. ...
•   The decision stands out as a beacon in the raging fight over the controversial provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act which permit prison officials to terminate long-standing consent decrees that granted Federal district courts supervisory powers to correct constitutional violations in prisons. ...
• In his decision, Judge Justice concluded, after lengthy hearings, that although much had changed in the Texas prison system since he began his supervision, "The evidence before this court revealed a prison underworld in which rapes, beatings, and servitude are the currency of power" and he painted a picture of "a frenzied and frantic state of human despair and desperation. ...
•   In 1996, Congressman Bill Archer (R-Tx) made the following statement on the floor of the House, just after the passage of one of the many forerunners to the Prison Litigation Reform Act:  ""I am very pleased to see this legislation is on its way to soon becoming law. When I was in the Texas Legislature, the Texas prison system was a model for all other prisons, with a excellent rate of rehabilitation and costing just $1. ... We must get the Federal Judiciary out of our state prison systems and return the power to the states where it belongs. ...

• Sacbee: / Politics / California Politics .
• 24-HOUR NEWS · Politics WEBLOGS · California Insider · Fly on the Wall .
• ARCHIVES · Budget · California · Local · Nation · The Buzz .
• x - close Recent Stories By Niesha Gates Prison education plan hit.
• A teacher walks down the concrete hall of a housing unit at one of California's prison reception centers, pausing in front of a cell.
• Here, for a half-hour each week, the instructor teaches the inmate through the cell door, amid the din of prison life. ...
• For the state's prison system, this scenario -- one of the solutions the California Department of Corrections has come up with in its quest to save $400 million this fiscal year -- may soon become reality.
• The Bridging Program would allow inmates to earn day-for-day credits while serving time at reception centers, thus increasing their chances of winning parole sooner and, in turn, decreasing the prison population and saving the state money.
• But prison teachers, backed by their union, vehemently oppose the idea of teaching cell to cell, labeling it ineffective and potentially dangerous.
• "We don't see slipping packets under cell doors and shouting lessons through bars as educational," said Richard Rios, a physical education teacher for the California Youth Authority who is also vice chairman for the California State Employees Association *Bargaining Unit 3. ...
• All vocational programs were cut at California State Prison, Sacramento. ... Fred Schroeder, acting public information officer for the prison. Only one vocational program -- shoe repair -- was cut at Folsom State Prison, but funding was shifted and the program was reopened as an institutional support program.
• While prison educators agree that educating inmates sooner is necessary, they argue that classrooms, not cell-to-cell lessons, are needed.
• "We do want our people at these institutions, we just would like it to be a more credible program than this," said Andy Hsia-Coron, a teacher at Soledad State Prison and chairman of Bargaining Unit 3. "The idea that the teacher is going to the prison door, teaching through that door and giving a packet to an inmate, and that having a positive effect on the inmate is ludicrous. ...

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