California sheds light on plans for out-of-state prisoners

California inmates serving their sentences in private prisons out of state now have their first glimpse at whom the state intends to bring back, and when.

In documents filed Wednesday with a U.S. District judge presiding over inmate mental health care, the state disclosed that it intends to let inmates whose prison terms end before July 2016 to serve out the remainder of their sentences in those contract facilities.

That covers 4,527 of the 8,852 California prisoners housed in four prisons run by Corrections Corp. of America.

The state told the court that it will bring back the remaining 4,325 inmates to California in stages. The first stage involves deactivating all contracted CCA beds in Oklahoma and Mississippi by Dec. 27, 2013. That would leave all California inmates at two CCA prisons in Arizona.

California intends to drop the first 1,900 of those Arizona beds by June 30, 2014, lose another 1,536 Arizona beds by June 2015, and the last 1,160 Arizona prison beds by June 2016.

The state's contract with CCA allow inmates to be moved between those facilities, meaning there is no way for current Oklahoma and Mississippi inmates to count on the first wave of returns.

Population projections included in California's filing to the court also show that the state expects a reduction in the number of inmates who are considered eligible for a tour of duty at firefighting camps. That is because under AB 109, newly sentenced low-level, nonviolent offenders now serve their time in county jails. The fire camp population, currently at 4,480 inmates, is projected to drop to 2,500 prisoners by the start of the 2013 fire season.

However, the number of prisoners housed in maximum security and segregated housing units is expected to remain unchanged the next three years, at a little over 20,000 inmates.

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Judge seeks California's out-of-state prison plan

This post has been updated. See below for details.

Gov. Jerry Brown must explain to a federal court by the end of Wednesday how he plans to fit 9,000 inmates currently housed in out-of-state facilities back into California lockups.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton directed California to explain in writing its exact plan to stop sending inmates to private prisons as far as Mississippi. The administration announced its intention to return the inmates months ago, at the same time it also seeks an end to court-ordered prison population caps.

Karlton's order requires California to stipulate the total number of inmates the state plans to return to California prisons from out-of-state facilities, the planned timetable for their return, and where the state plans to house those inmates. As of Jan. 30, according to state prison population reports, California had 8,852 inmates in four prisons run by Tennessee-based Corrections Corp. of America.

[Updated, 4:50 p.m. Feb. 6: Brown's lawyers filed papers late Wednesday afternoon arguing that the end of private prison contracts has no bearing on the delivery of mental health care to inmates, the core issue before Karlton.

[Nevertheless, California said its 4,527 inmates will finish their prison terms out of state. An average of 110 inmates are paroling out of those prisons each month.The remaining 4,325 will be returned in stages through June 30, 2016.

["The gradual return of these inmates will allow the state to avoid bunking inmates in prison gymnasiums or other makeshift housing units again," state lawyers told the court.]

A three-judge panel that includes Karlton recently gave California an extra six months, until December 2013, to reduce its prison crowding to 137.5% of design capacity. The state has said it expects to be over that mark even without the return of out-of-state prisoners. Brown contends further reductions are not necessary and in January he issued an executive order claiming the 2006 "emergency proclamation" that allowed prisoners to be moved against their will is terminated, as of this coming July.

Karlton's order for more information did not come out of the three-judge panel, but was delivered in Coleman vs. Brown, the class-action lawsuit over mental health care for inmates. Along with a general bid to lift court-ordered prison caps, Brown's lawyers filed a motion seeking to terminate that case. Karlton has set a March hearing.

In the interim, he ordered Matthew Lopes, the special master overseeing inmate mental health care, to produce as quickly as possible a report detailing inmate suicides for the first half of 2012. Lopes recently filed his annual report on the status of prison mental health care, raising concerns over what he said is a climbing suicide rate in California prisons.

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Federal courts give California more time to ease prison crowding

Three federal judges on Tuesday agreed to give California an additional six months to reduce prison crowding to contested levels.

The U.S. District Courts' order that moves the deadline from June to December also demands California divulge whether it intends to file a motion to cease federal oversight of its prison healthcare system. The state in early January filed such an action to end oversight of the care given to mentally ill inmates, and Gov. Jerry Brown had vowed to seek a similar end to healthcare oversight as well. In the meantime, the judges put California’s motion to dismiss prison population caps altogether on hold.

Last week, one of those judges also ordered the state to produce details of its plans to return some 9,000 prisoners now housed in private prisons out of state, and to tell the court where it intends to house them.

California contends it no longer needs to meet court-ordered population caps in order to provide adequate care to inmates. In multiple orders, the judges have insisted the state reduce prison crowding to 37.5% above capacity, or to about 110,000 inmates. California is currently at nearly 150% of capacity.

Lawyers for inmates in the class-action lawsuits complain California's bid to rid itself of federal oversight came without warning. California last fall blocked efforts by plaintiffs to gather information on how the state was planning for prison population changes, saying such fact-finding was premature. Inmate lawyers have told judges they now are hard-pressed to conduct discovery and gather evidence in the three months allowed under federal law.

"They started a war basically. It was a surprise attack," said Don Specter, lead attorney for the Prison Law Office. The Berkeley firm is handling a 12-year-old inmate class action against the state over prison medical care.

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Federal receiver says California prison claim "distorts" his position

This post has been updated to include response from state agency officials.

The overseer of California's prison healthcare said Friday that Gov. Jerry Brown's claim he supports California’s contention that prison crowding no longer is a problem is untrue, and   "distorts" and "misrepresents" his true position.

J. Clark Kelso's lengthy status report, filed Friday before a federal judge in San Francisco, gives California credit for continued improvements to its troubled prison system. However, Kelso concludes with a sharp rebuke to Brown's declaration earlier in the month that California is ready to shed federal oversight.

"The State attempts to cite our recognition of the State’s prior compliance with Court orders and our silence regarding particular problems caused by overcrowding as an endorsement of the State’s position that further compliance with the overcrowding order is unnecessary," Kelso wrote. "That distorts the content of our reports and misrepresents the Receiver’s position."

Brown and his lawyers argue that California can deliver constitutionally adequate care to inmates even at crowding levels 45% above what the state's 33 prisons were designed to hold.

[Updated 5:30 p.m. Jan. 25: State corrections officials on Friday again contended crowding no longer impairs medical care. “We have shrunk the prison population by more than 25,000 inmates just since realignment has been in effect, and by more than 43,000 inmates since 2006,” said Deb Hoffman, undersecretary of communications for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “The Court itself has said that due to the tremendous improvements in prison medical care, the end of the receivership is in sight.”]

Kelso disagreed. He argued that overcrowding continues to be a chronic problem that creates "a cascade of consequences that substantially interferes with the delivery of care."

Kelso said there is inadequate evidence to support Brown's assertion the state can deliver adequate medical care. "Instead," he wrote, "the available evidence supports only the more limited conclusion that significant progress and improvements have been made, without establishing that the constitutional threshold has been crossed."

At this point, California has only asked federal judges to set aside oversight of mental health care in the prisons, and to drop population caps the state admits it cannot meet. Brown said he intends to also file motions seeking to dismiss oversight of prison medical care.

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Court grants reduced sentence to juvenile lifer

A Riverside County judge on Friday granted a new sentence to Sara Kruzan, originally sentenced to life without parole for murdering the man for whom she worked for three years as a prostitute. She was 16 at the time.

Kruzan's case was cited repeatedly by politicians seeking to overturn California's law allowing juvenile offenders to be sentenced to life without possibility of parole. However, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2011 reduced her sentence to 25 years to life.

A Riverside judge's decision to convert her conviction to second-degree rather than first-degree murder further reduces her sentence to 19 years minimum, making Kruzan immediately eligible for parole.

California lawmakers in 2012 passed legislation allowing courts to review other cases involving juvenile offenders and to grant similar 25-to-life sentences to those who have served at least 15 years in prison.

“There are many more Sara Kruzans out there who also deserve a more appropriate sentence and fortunately under SB9 they will have that chance," said Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), a sponsor of that bill.

Kruzan contended her abuser assaulted her when she was 11, and then groomed her for prostitution. She said she began working for him at 13, and killed him in 1995 when she was 16.

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Special master says prison mental health care inadequate, suicides increase

A court-appointed monitor on Friday told federal judges that mental health care in California’s prisons remains inadequate and in some areas is deteriorating, especially in regard to inmate suicides.

The legal filing is a setback to Gov. Jerry Brown’s push for California to take back full control of the prison system, which he argues no longer mistreats those in its custody. Brown last week asked a panel of federal judges to lift population caps on the state's 33 prisons and asked one of those judges to dismiss the 2001 class action over mental health care, Coleman vs. Brown.

Special master Matthew Lopes in his report Friday noted gains in how the state documents and reports mental health care, but not in how California is geared to improve those conditions. He cited needed changes that went undone because of a lack in statewide monitoring and central oversight -- steps he said California would need to address if it were to take over mental health care on its own.

Lopes was especially critical of suicide rates in California prisons.

He said there were at least 32 suicides in state prisons in 2012, averaging one suicide every 11 days. Lopes notes that translates to almost 24 suicides per 100,000 inmates, an increase over 2011, and well above the national suicide rate of 16 deaths per 100,000 prisoners.

The state's high suicide rate prompted a 2010 court order to adopt suicide prevention practices. Lopes said the state has made progress on those steps, but fewer than one out of four prisons hold suicide prevention team meetings as required, and only three prisons complied with the requirement for five-day follow-ups of inmates discharged from crisis care.

"The problem of inmate suicides in CDCR prisons must be resolved before the remedial phase of the Coleman case can be ended," Lopes wrote. "The gravity of this problem calls for further intervention. To do any less and to wait any longer risks further loss of lives."

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State's Judicial Council puts new courthouses on ice

Paying heed to cuts and shifts proposed in Gov. Jerry Brown's state budget, California's Judicial Council has put construction on courthouses in four counties on hold, including Los Angeles.

The council's vote Thursday halts almost all activity on those projects pending completion of the state budget for 2013-14, meaning delays even if lawmakers come up with money to go ahead. The projects are in Sacramento, Nevada, Los Angeles and Fresno counties. The council is allowing the Sacramento project to continue with any needed land purchases.

Brown's budget proposal relies on using courthouse construction money to pay for financing of one in particular, a courthouse in Long Beach named after former Gov. George Deukmejian. Brown proposes using an additional $200 million in construction money for general operation expenses -- a shift that would bring diversions from the fund to more than $2 billion.

It is a one-time fix for court operations, and Brown warns that spending cuts are needed for the years after that.

Justice Brad Hill, chairman of the Judicial Council's construction working group, said court officers are "scouring every opportunity" to free up funding for construction.

"We have watched as more than a billion dollars has been taken from the construction program," he said. "We don't know what to plan for, or what lies around the corner."

Hill sits as an appellate court judge in the Fifth District.

The council has also recommended dropping a proposal to create 50 new judgeships, in light of the state's failure yet to fund the creation of the previous set of 50 judgeships.

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State says crowding report for Valley State Prison was overstated

California's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says that its past reports showing male inmates packed at 350% capacity in Valley State Prison near Chowchilla were in error.

The agency on Thursday revised its population reports for the prison, showing 1,562 men in space intended for 1,468, or just 5% over design capacity. The women's portion of the prison is being emptied as they are shipped out. California has converted a substance abuse treatment facility adajcent to Folsom State Prison to house female inmates.

"We learned from our Data Analysis Unit that the design capacity on our population report was incorrect," said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the corrections department. "The shifting of men and women in and out of the facility resulted in some confusion about the design capacity where the men were being moved."

The error was included in material California filed with a panel of three federal judges hearing the state's case that prison crowding is no longer a serious enough problem to require federal oversight. The state failed to meet a Dec. 27 benchmark of 145% crowding overall, and has acknowledged it is unlikely to comply with a June 30 deadline to reduce crowding to 137.5%

The federal judges, presiding over class-action lawsuits that claim substandard prison mental, dental and medical care, have yet to respond to California's request that the caps be lifted. A federally appointed receiver in control of the state's prison medical care is due to file his own status report Friday.

Advocacy groups seeking to lower the state's incarceration rate and beef up community programing criticize the shift of female inmates from Valley State in Madera County in California's Central Valley to Folsom outside Sacramento.

"Opening 400 beds in Folsom and converting Valley State to a prison for men doesn't solve the state's crowding crisis," said Debbie Reyes of the California Prison Moratorium Project. "CDCR has reverted to their old line that they can build their way out of any problem."

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Photo: Valley State Prison near Chowchilla has been converted into a men-only facility. Credit: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

State misses prison benchmark on overcrowding

It's official. In a federal court filing Tuesday, California told federal judges that its prisons remain crowded beyond benchmarks set by the court nearly two years ago.

The state said its 33 prisons on average are at 149.4% of design capacity. Nearly half of the individual prisons are much higher than that: 172% at North Kern State Prison, 187% at the Central California Women's Facility, and the men's section of Valley State Prison in Chowchilla is now at almost 352%.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced Wednesday that the last female inmates at Valley State have been moved out, freeing up 1,536 beds that can now be used for the male prisoners housed there. Starting next week, the state will begin moving female inmates into a converted 403-bed women's facility adjacent to Folsom State Prison.

The court-ordered target was 147% crowding by Dec. 27, and California is required to bring its prison population down to 137.5% capacity by June 30, a target the state for months now has admitted it can't meet.

The state's monthly status report to the court notes what Gov. Jerry Brown made very public last week -- that California contends it has improved living conditions within its prisons to the point it no longer needs to meet court-ordered caps on prison crowding.

"Based on the evidence submitted in support of the state's motions, further population reductions are not needed because the prison system already provides healthcare that far exceeds what is legally required under the Constitution," lawyers for the state told federal judges Tuesday.

The three judges, each overseeing class actions over inmate medical, dental and mental healthcare, have not yet responded to California's motions to shed federal oversight of the prisons. The state's federally appointed healthcare receiver, J. Clark Kelso, is expected later this month to provide his own report on the status of medical care in those prisons.

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--updated 10:57 a.m. to note transfer of female inmates out of Valley State Prison.

 

Brown looks to fee hikes to fund courts

California residents who want to fight a traffic ticket from home or get copies of legal paperwork would have to shell out more money under Gov. Jerry Brown's "austerity" budget plan for state courts next year.

The governor's spending plan adopts 11 recommendations for increased costs or reduced services that were recommended last month to the state Judicial Council. They help offset some $200 million in cuts Brown warns the state's trial court system will have to make starting the 2014-15 fiscal year. Brown proposes borrowing $200 million from courthouse construction accounts to get the system through the next year.

The fee to oppose a traffic ticket by mail in your home county would go to $50, bringing in $3.2 million more to the state. 

The cost for clerks to search and retrieve multiple case files would go to $10 for every record searched. Clerks blame "data mining" companies for the need to charge more, but the bill would be footed by everyone.

The price for a paper copy of a court record would double, to $1 per page.

Courts would cut costs by eliminating some procedures, such as not collecting Social Security numbers on court orders for debt collection, not destroying records relating to marijuana possession, and providing transcripts of preliminary hearings only in homicide cases. 

The Judicial Council notes that as of October, six out of 10 counties in California have had to reduce hours, close offices or courtrooms, even as it calculates the state needs 264 more judges to handle the state's growing caseload. 

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