On Sunday, the Sacramento Bee broke it’s first story in a series detailing its own months-long investigation into prisoner abuse at High Desert’s behavior modification unit. (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)

After more than 30 interviews with inmates, family, staff and experts, plus the review of studies, private memos, and assessments relating to the place, the Sac Bee’s Charles Pillar reported:

The Bee’s sources described strip-searches in a snow-covered exercise yard, as well as guards who assaulted inmates, tried to provoke attacks between inmates, and spread human excrement on cell doors. Prisoners depicted an environment of brutality, corruption and fear.

There was a whole section in the articles on suicides and suicide attempts at High Desert.

The rest of the details may be found here.

There will be more to come—both from the Bee and, down the line, from WLA, in an effort to determine if conditions are truly as bad as some of these reports suggest,

Meanwhile, the Bee reports that state prison officials have launched a “full investigation” that they “broadened” on Tuesday.

NOTE: Veteran investigative reporter Michael Montgomery at KQED has brief story here on the behavioral units in general.

AND NOW A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE DREADED PRISON CELL PHONE PROBLEM…..ABOUT TO BE SOLVED BY PHONE SNIFFING DOGS?

The CDCR says that, since January alone, 2500 cell phones have been confiscated from California prisoners.

(As a matter of fact, I myself am occasionally startled by cell phone calls from correctional institutions made by people who used to phone only collect, but now sound like they’re calling from down the block.)

But now, reports KCRA, prison officials may have a new secret weapon to sniff out (literally) cell phone outlaws inside the state’s correctional facilities.

Here’s a clip from the KCRA story:

Deimos, a K-9 officer, is trained to find drugs. K-9 Nikki is an expert in finding tobacco.

These K-9 officers are taking on a new job to try to sniff out cell phones in prison cells and dorms.

“They know that if they come into a housing unit, they are going to find something one way or another,” said dog trainer Wayne Conrad.

They’re being put to the test at the Richard McGee Correctional Training Center in Galt. At the facility, a mock prison cell has been stocked with electronics.

“It was difficult finding out what substance made the phone unique. Once we discovered it, we were able to train for it,” Conrad said.

Read on.

Okay, comparative cost time:

The state of California spends 35 percent of its budget, or nearly $50 billion, on its 900,000 students in K-12 education.

Even after all the budget cuts made this past year or two, California spends 11 percent of its budget, or $8.6 billion, on state prisons in order to house approximately 166,000 prisoners. That’s $52,363 per prisoner per year.

And we spend 5 percent of our state budget on higher education —not even half our prison bill.

Sacramento’s CBS affiliate, KBET, has a tidy little report in which it looks at the newest versions of all these depressing numbers.

In the course of the report, the KBET folks played my favorite teeth gnashing game, which is to compare the yearly price tag of keeping someone in an overcrowded lock-up, with the cost of sending a student to a top university, including tuition room and board.

Here’s what they found:

Compare the cost of housing a prison inmate in California–$52,363 —to room, board, and tuition for one year at a college or university. Some examples:

Stanford: $50,576

University of Pacific: $42,346

Sacramento State University: $14,916

University of Davis, California: $25,580

Of course, at the end of a nice four years at, say, the California Institute for Men at Chino, an inmate will have $200 “gate money,” and little or nothing in the way of new job or academic or skills, and his or her psychological health is likely to be worse, not better.

While at the end of four years at Stanford University, a student will have……well, a degree from Stanford—-plus, one hopes and assumes, a list of new skills and capabilities.

So why do prisons cost so much? It ain’t the amenities, folks. Guys in prison aren’t given adequate soap much less anything truly useful.

KBET reports that 35 percent of the per-year cost goes to staff, and 50 percent goes to “operations.”

(Interestingly, California inmates who were shipped out-of-state to facilities in places like Mississippi in order to relieve overcrowding here, said they liked the out-of-state facilities much better—even though those states spend less per inmate per year. I leave you to draw your own conclusions about those seemingly discrepant facts.)

Sadly, in a brand new display of penny-wise-and-pound-foolishness, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has just proposed cutting another $250 million out of neither staff nor operations costs but, instead out of the rehabilitation and educational programs budget. So whatever programs were in existence that might have helped a man or woman stay out of prison upon release, are about to be vaporized.

But, hey, that’s much easier than delving into the CCPOA’s overtime figures. (Regular readers will know by now that the CCPOA refers to the correctional officers’ union.)

Anyway, I thought you’d all want to be kept up to date on these cheery stats.

Aren’t you glad we had this little chat?

Like California, a number of budget-strapped states are crafting legislation that allows certain inmates to use rehabilitative programs to earn time off their prison and jail sentences.

And as in California, in other states, the very same usual suspects are freaking out and predicting a crime wave in reaction to the various earned early release programs that are being instituted.

Refreshingly, however, at Stateline.org, the online publication affiliated with the Pew Center on the States, there is a wonderfully impartial rundown of what the states are doing in the way of incentivized early release—and the reactions against such policies.

Here’re a couple of clips:

As to whether accelerated-release programs lead to more crime by those who are released, research shows otherwise. A review by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency of at least 12 studies, for example, found unchanged or lower recidivism rates among prisoners who benefited from accelerated-release programs in states including Illinois, Wisconsin and Florida.

[BIG SNIP]

“Length of stay has nothing to do with the recidivism rate,” Todd Clear, the incoming dean of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University in New Jersey, says. “If I let someone out (early), I’m not increasing the chances of them committing a crime. I’m just changing the date.”

Despite the studies, politicians and corrections officials are keenly aware that a single, well-publicized crime by an inmate who has been granted accelerated release can call entire programs into question, virtually overnight. In California, for instance, outrage over the state’s good-time credits has been exacerbated by the early release of a Sacramento County inmate who was arrested in connection with an attempted rape less than 24 hours after walking free.

For that reason, Clear believes, early-release initiatives are a recipe for political disaster. “The minute you let a bunch of people out early, you own everything they do,” he says

Sadly, yes. You do.

This just came out in the Sacramento Bee. Am headed off to teach shortly so my commentary will have to wait until later.

But suffice it to say that there is so much about every piece of this that is so, so fraught with politics not common sense.

Saying it was a “formula for disaster,” a Sacramento judge today blocked the Sheriff’s Department from granting any more early releases to inmates it is holding in the county’s jail facilities.

Sheriff’s officials began the releases last week in response to a bill passed last year and signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that will have the effect of reducing the state prison population by about 6,300 inmates, mostly through parole changes.

In his ruling today, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Loren E. McMaster granted a temporary restraining order that was requested by the deputy sheriff’s union. McMaster said in his two-page written ruling that the new state law only applies to state prisoners, not county jail inmates. The judge set a March 3 hearing date for the union’s request for a preliminary injunction.

The union’s lawyer, David P. Mastagni, argued in a hearing today that the release of the estimated 200 inmates since Jan. 25 before their previously-set release dates, combined with the layoffs of 122 sheriff’s deputies since August, posed a public safety problem for the county.

McMaster agreed.

“Releasing inmates early by the application of a law intended only for those in the state prison population at the same time that deputies in the field are being substantially reduced is a formula for disaster,” McMaster wrote.

Read the rest.

UPDATE: I wrote the above in something of a rush, so let me state more clearly why I think this is a perplexing decision.

The law that kicked in at the first of last month, plainly states that some of the law’s new credits that will shave days off a prison inmate’s sentence, also apply to jails> To wit:

This bill would also revise the time credits for certain prisoners confined or committed to a county jail or other specified facilities, as provided.

You can read it yourself.

Just to be sure, I spoke to the CDCR’s main spokesperson, Gordon Hinkle, the other day and he said that, yes, the new law, which among other things, expanded the credits an inmate would receive for time he or she had spent in jail prior to conviction, also applied to jails. BUT—and this is crucial—it doesn’t apply retroactively.

This lack of retroactivity is why not one single prison inmate has been released early under the program. Not one. They still have to qualify.

However, as Andrew Blankstein and Richard Winton report, a large number of the state’s county sheriffs have elected to apply the new law retroactively anyway. They say they have done so on the advice of counsel. Maybe yes, OR maybe they wanted to ease some jail overcrowding, and took the opportunity to do so, while getting to complain that the Big Bad State made them do it. I don’t know. But whatever the case, several counties have dumped hundreds of prisoners out early.

Interestingly, the sheriff overseeing the largest county jail system in the California—namely LA’s Sheriff Lee Baca—does not thing the law requires him to retroactively start dumping inmates, as he told Blankstein and Winton. ( In fact, Baca didn’t the law applied to him at all.)

So were the jails’ early inmate releases really legally necessary? No. It doesn’t seem so.

But does the earned time off one’s sentence principle also apply to jails?

Despite what the judge has ruled, I don’t see how the llaw can be read otherwise.

Here’s a video of CDCR’s Secretary Matthew Cates’ Monday press conference in which he briefly explained the new programs that began this week, and answered questions about same. (You’ll hear my questions asked via the phone near the end.)

Those criticizing the program would do well to listen just so you’re operating from a fact-based position rather than responding to the rumor mongering and unfounded hysteria that seems to be running rife through the countryside at the moment.

UPDATE: A case in point: Tuesday afternoon I received a copy of the letter that Paul Weber, the president of the LAPPL sent to LA residents in which he wrote: ” …yesterday was also the same day that the state began its program to release over 6,500 prisoners from state prisons…”

NO, PAUL, IT WASN’T. Nothing of the kind happened. And, with all respect, if you don’t know that, you aren’t bothering to check the facts that are available for checking.

AND IF YOU DO KNOW IT, that statement of yours is deliberate and mendacious. Which is not okay. We expect better.

I just got off the phone 2 minutes ago with the CDCR’s Gordon Hinkle to find out if there was any crazed or pretzeled way that Weber’s statement could have any shred of truth behind it. There wasn’t.

So, what’s the deal? Facts no longer matter? If the falsehood gets you what you want, then what the heck, go for it?

Paul Weber’s letter is intended to get residents to pressure their city council members to vote for money to hire more police officers. Hell, I’m for hiring more police officers. But, here’s the thing: I don’t need to be told an hysteria-promoting lie to in order to get me there. (When someone resorts to such tactics, one tends to distrust everything they say.)

A CHALLENGE TO PAUL WEBER: Either stop trotting out that 6500 early release figure—or prove it.

THE MEDIA’S MANUFACTURED CRISIS (HINT: FACT CHECKING IS YOUR FRIEND)

Monday’s (and today’s) local newspapers and news broadcasts were filled with alarmist rhetoric about the state’s early release policy that kicked in on Jan 25, and that would result in the release of a flood dangerous prison inmates on Los Angeles.

“Over 6K Inmates to be Released Early In LA?” shrieked Monday’s KNX headline.

NBC’s Scott Weber reported that the number of prisoners being released early. was, in fact, 21,000 over the next two years, with 6,000 of those early releases coming to LA.

The LA city officials that Weber quoted on the topic were quite horrified at the prospect.

Guillermo Cespedes, who runs Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development, called the situation “a bit of a crisis.”

He said the release of inmates who are notorious gang members could disrupt progress made by gang interventionists in attaining truces and in convincing youths to stay away from gangs.

Councilman Dennis Zine, a former police officer, was infuriated by the governor’s plan.

“It’s a disaster that’s going to happen,” he said. “It really frustrates me that we’ve reduce crime and all of a sudden we’re going to see a surge.”

There was only one problem with all this hysteria about the coming crime wave: That flood of prisoners that everyone’s warning about? It doesn’t exist. What has been reported by numerous news outlets and reinforced by clueless city officials about the state’s prisoner reduction plan that began on Monday—ISN’T TRUE. Really. I’m not kidding.

The truth is out there and easily accessible, but evidently no one is bothering to fact check.

EVERYONE IS NOT ENTITLED TO HIS OWN FACTS

Here is the actual factual reality of the situation: In the next year the CDCR intends to reduce the population of California’s overcrowded prisons by about 6500.

That part, at least, most people seem to have a grip on.

“Reduce” however, does not mean “release.”

Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, the LAPPL—the LAPD’s union— vigorously protested the upcoming release of between 5000 and 6500 prisoners starting on January 25, which is this coming Monday.

Here is how one of the resulting stories opens:

Starting January 25th, thousands of dangerous criminals will be released early from California state prisons — and for the first time in nearly 30 years, sent back to local communities without any supervision,” stated the Los Angeles Police Protective League.

“The County of Los Angeles will be dramatically impacted, with over 5,000 felons to be released to our city,” said Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) President Paul M. Weber.

And so on.

Now admittedly, if an extra 5000 or more newly released inmates were to be disgorged in California, the majority showing up in LA (as is always statistically the case) given our current job market (or lack thereof) even for non-felons, plus the cuts to the state’s social services….It is not a cheery prospect.

However, my read of the law that goes into effect next Monday—SB 3X 18—the piece of legislation that will supposedly trigger the above-mentioned flood of felons, it suggests nothing of the kind. (Here’s the CDCR press release about the law that will kick in on January 25.)

As outlined by the CDCR, the purpose of this prison reform bill, passed during the height of the legislature’s budget wrangling last year, is to reduce the California prison population by at total of 6500 inmates over a year’s time. (Not a huge reduction, but something is better than nothing.)

However, the reduction is to be accomplished through three new strategies, which primarily have to do with sending fewer people to prison, and not with bouncing menacing hoards of inmates out early.

The strategies include:

Parole reform that will:

1. Help reduce the crippling number of technical violations of parole that have tens of thousands of inmates cycling needlessly in and out of prison (on our dime) for infractions such as testing dirty in a mandatory drug test, or missing a meeting with a parole officer.

2. Eliminate parole for certain inmates, in order to provide better and more rigorous supervision for the parolees who most need it. This would be in lieu of what we do now, which is to insist on non-rehabilitative, ineffective supervision for everybody that is provided by over-burdened parole officers who are far too swamped to help or control any of those who crowd their respective caseloads.

3. Establish and expand drug and mental health reentry courts for parolees who can most benefit from such highly-structured treatment to prevent recidivism.

In addition, the new law raises the bar on certain low-level property crimes.

And, yes, there is one thing in the about-to-be-instituted program that has to do with what may legitimately be called early release. It is an earned credit incentive system in which certain kinds of inmates can choose to earn day-for-day credit by participating in rehabilitation programs that have been proven to reduce recidivism.

Others will be given credit for working in fire camps (which already only accept the cream of inmates) and a few related programs. Those inmates will earn the right to get out a little earlier—and, with any luck, in better emotional shape—than they would have without the earned credit system.

This is not prisoner dumping, nor is it likely to cause the crime wave we’re hearing so much about.

But if I’m missing something here, please prove me wrong.

PS: In a statement released last night, the Police union has opposed the release of the Onion Field killer. For the record, I do to. For some people life should be life.

In California, there are approximately 23,000 prisoners serving life sentences who are technically eligible for parole. Of course, being eligible does not necessarily mean inmates are suitable for parole. Some need to remain permanent guests of the state for their own and everybody else’s good.

Yet, even when a prisoner does not show evidence of being a further danger, the notoriously conservative California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation parole board rarely approves an inmate for release and so California’s lifer population continues to balloon (and age).

“When California courts sentence somebody to life with parole, it turns out that’s not possible after all,” Joan Petersilia, Stanford law professor and one of the country’s experts on parole policy told the New York Times’ Solomon Moore.. “Board of parole hearings almost never grant releases, and that’s the reason that California’s lifer population has grown out of proportion to other states.”

In the rare instance that an inmate does make it through with a positive recommendation (only around 1 percent are recommended for parole out of the thousands seen each year), the board has usually done a fairly thorough job of considering the matter. And even after approval, there will be another 120 days of painstakingly rechecking and researching the inmates background, and disciplinary record. The board will also examine any information received from victims and victims’ families, plus any other public comment that might come forth, searching for the slightest reason that the person should not be let loose among the rest of us. If after all this, the parole board still thinks it’s time to hand the inmate their $200 gate money and send them on their way, one would think that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would go along with the recommendations of his appointed board.

But he doesn’t—particularly if the inmate in question has committed murder.

In his tenure, Arnold Schwarzenegger has allowed four convicted murderers to be paroled. (Gray Davis was worse. He let 0 be paroled.)

For example, Margo Johnson, 48, has served 24 years of a life sentence for a 1984 murder. The NY Times reports that Johnson has been recommended for release four times by the state parole board, but the governor “rejected the board’s recommendation each time.”

It was therefore heartening to find that talented independent radio journalist Nancy Mullane has Soros Foundation grant to produce a two-hour, four part radio documentary on this issue called “Life After Murder.” It will debut in April of this year.

In the meantime, one story out of Mullen’s project had its debut on This American Life this past week.

It’s about a man named Don Cronk who shot and killed a man in a home burglary gone hideously wrong. He was righteously convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years-to-life in prison with the possibility of parole. More than a quarter of a century later, he was facing his seventh parole hearing. Mullane tells the story.

(Note: The show has a prologue and two acts. The Mullane/Cronk parole story is Act 1.)

It is a compelling and very human tale about the issue of murder and parole. So listen.

PS: Carol J Williams of the LA Times reports on the history of California governors and their parole boards as well as an ongoing legal challenge on the issue.

PPS: Act two of This American Life has exactly zero to do with corrections or parole or Arnold Schwarzenegger but is a long personal essay by short story writer Wells Tower, and it is—wonderful.

NOTE: On an unrelated note, in Tuesday’s LA Times, Senator Ted Kaufman called for a broad, blogger-included federal shield law for journalists. Thank you, Senator Kaufman.

[NOTE: The photo above of the cage was taken by Michael Montgomery at Pelican Bay Prison, not at Chino. But the Chino enclosures are thought to be similar.)

After last August’s 1300 inmate, eleven-hour riot at California Institute for Men in Chino—informally known by its location “Chino—CDCR officials congratulated themselves for how well they handled the riot and its aftermath.

Now, Steven Cuevas of LA’s NPR station, KPCC, has uncovered some allegations by dozens of prisoners, made in letters and telephone calls to their families, which suggest that after the riots inmates were kept outdoors in literal cages—enclosures about 20-feet long and 10-feet wide—for days at a time, stripped to thier underwear, without blankets or running water, some of the men needing medical attention.

On Monday’s Airtalk Cuevas will talk about what he has learned and the allegations that prisoners and their families have made to CDCR officials—and now to the press.

Last week, Michael Montgomery of California Watch put up his own report about letters he had read from inmates who recounted the same alarming allegations and more. Here’s a clip:

…Now, inmates themselves appear to be entering the debate, with claims that prison staff inflamed racial tensions, failed to take adequate measures to contain the violence and left many prisoners zip-tied and in extreme conditions for hours after the riot was over.

A new Web site has posted more than 50 letters and comments which it claims are from inmates — most still behind bars at Chino — who witnessed the riots. The letters are emotional and filled with graphic details but are anonymous. Here’s one sample from a man identified only as inmate 1081:

My story is just as drastic as the others. Three nights in a cage with 10 other men. And no water, no restroom facilities. I have kidney problems. It was torture for me.

When Cuevas first went to Chino a month ago to ask officials about the allegations, one official denied them altogether. In subsequent inquiries officials admitted to keeping men in the cages for an hour or so, but no longer.

KPCC has posted an audio montage of the men’s letters—on its website, and they tell a very different story.

There will be much more information to come on this issue. Count on it.

(In the meantime, read some of the letters for yourself.)

Once big question that I know Michael Montgomery is planning to dig into—namely: when did officials know of the allegations and what did—or didn’t—they do about them.

Last February I linked to an NPR report by Michael Montgomery about a man named Ernesto Lira, a low-level but chronic petty thief and drug user, who was arrested for 3 grams of meth, and put in solitary confinement in Pelican Bay for nearly eight years.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sent Lira to the high tech super max prison, and then confined him to isolation in the SHU (Security Housing Unit) because they believed Lira was a member of a powerful prison gang—although the evidence CDCR officials used to determine this classification was mighty thin.

Nevertheless, for the next 7 plus years, the consequences of the prison officials’ questionable assumption about Lira were stark:

Lira was locked in a windowless, 8-by-10-foot cell in the prison’s Security Housing Unit, or SHU, where there were no phone calls, no family visits, no programs of any kind.

According to Lira, being deprived of human contact or even sunlight, he slowly decompensated mentally and emotionally.

From isolation, Lira wrote hundreds of journal entries, which he says trace his slide into mental illness.

“This isolation is wearing me down,” he wrote. “I can’t believe I’ve been in the hole five years. I believe I’m losing my mind.”

After he was released from prison last year, Lira sued the CDCR for wrongly classifying him. Interestingly, he didn’t sue for damages, but rather to clear his name of the gang accusation and to get the State of California to admit that that it was wrong.

Last month, Montgomery reports, Lira won his case.

Lira’s situation brings to mind the recent highly regarded New Yorker article, by physician/writer Atul Gawande in which Gawande posed the question: Is solitary confinement torture?

By the article’s end it is clear that Gawande thinks it is indeed torture.

Ernesto Lira has lived that question, and contends that solitary broke him mentally.

It now seems that a Federal judge has agreed.

In a 49-page decision, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Ilston wrote that the evidence did not support Lira’s gang classification, and that he was denied due process when he tried to contest it. Most importantly, the judge found that solitary confinement can be the cause of mental illness, and that this mental illness can continue long after the prisoner is released.

Prison reformers hope that the Lira decision will be set a precedent that will eventually allow a challenge to the use of units like the SHU altogether.

How all of this helps Lira, however, is far from clear. When I exchanged emails with Montgomery over the weekend about the story, I asked him how he thought Lira was doing. Not well, he wrote:

I wish Ernesto’s story had a happy ending. Certainly, his family is helping him, as is his girl friend. And the judge’s ruling–affirming all of his central arguments–means a lot. Ernesto feels a weight has been lifted an he can finally move on with his life. But the question is: where can he go? What kind of life can he create for himself, especially as a felon suffering from mental illness living in one of the most economically depressed areas of California? It’s not surprising that so many men like Ernesto drift back to jail and prison. I truly hope he can break that cycle, but I’m not certain he will.

By the way, thank you to Michael Montgomery and to NPR’s California Report for following this important case.

Sadly, thus far I can find no other California media outlet that felt the story merited even the slightest mention.