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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Groups disagree if California crime rise related to prison plan

Public policy groups are seizing on new statistics from the FBI to claim California's prison realignment plan is causing "significant increases" in crime, even as others say the numbers show no connection at all.

The Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation said the FBI numbers released this week show a 7.6% increase in homicide and double-digit increases in burglary and auto thefts the first half of 2012 when compared to the first six months of 2011. Foundation President Michael Rushford said the cause is obvious: Gov. Jerry Brown's 2011 plan to cut state spending and ease prison crowding by making nonviolent felonies county jail offenses. He said the numbers give credence to anecdotal stories of increased crime across California since the plan took effect.

“This report tends to confirm what police chiefs, sheriffs, parole officers, and even some judges have been warning us about over the past year. Crime in California is increasing under realignment,” Rushford said.

Not so fast, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.

The center agrees that violent and property crimes in California rose in 40 of California's 69 large cities, the biggest crime increase the state has seen in 20 years. Those crime rates varied greatly by community, rising as high as 33% in San Mateo and dropping as low as 13% in Santa Barbara.

Researcher Mike Males said there was no connection between those changes and places with the largest proportion of "realigned offenders," individuals who would have gone to prison in the past but are now the wards of counties. In fact, crime rates dropped in five counties receiving a disproportionate share of those new prisoners.

"Analysis of the best data available to date suggests that offenders and parolees who have not committed violent or serious crimes can be supervised at the local level without jeopardizing public safety," Males said.

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Appeals court upholds order to end race-based prison practices

This post has been updated. See the note below for details.

A California appeals court Wednesday upheld an order for the state's super-max prison to stop punishing inmates by race, following four-year lockdowns of southern Latino inmates because officials feared their gang ties.

The warden of Pelican Bay State Prison contended race-based practices were forced by "long-standing and constant hostilities between rival Hispanic prison gangs," whose "repeated efforts to attack each other at every opportunity" threaten prison safety.

California prison manuals identify seven prison gangs along racial lines, including Latino inmates from Southern California with the Mexican Mafia and Northern California Latinos with La Nuestra Familia. A Del Norte County trial court found Pelican Bay "has an unwritten policy of using race as the primary factor determining housing assignments, activity levels, and restrictions among the general population of inmates."

The trial court found a prison committee divides inmates in five racial or ethnic groups: white, black, northern Latino, southern Latino, and a fifth group of mostly Asian inmates. Cells are even color-coded by those assignments, such as red for southern Latinos. Prison officials testified that the system merely reflects the way inmates themselves break into groups.

The court case was filed by the Prison Law Office on behalf of a Latino inmate who was denied visits and other privileges because of his race, and contended the prison uses race "as a proxy for gang membership" without proof of any gang affiliation.

[Updated 4:55 p.m. Jan. 23: State prison officials responded by calling management of gang-related violence "complex and challenging." Agency spokeswoman Terry Thornton said the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is reviewing the decision, to decide if updated policies address the issues raised by the court, and whether to appeal to the California Supreme Court.

While the San Francisco appellate court concurred Wednesday that racially motivated violence is a problem at Pelican Bay, the justices said the prison takes the practice too far, using race to segregate prisoners, deny family visits and to issue assignments for work, religious services and yard time years at a time.

Pelican Bay imposed a general lockdown after a 2000 prison riot, but only southern Latino inmates were kept on lockdown and denied exercise for four years after. At another time, only Asian inmates were given work assignments and the privileges that go with them. Those practices were to end under a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, but were reinstituted at Pelican Bay sometime before 2009.

The appellate decision notes Pelican Bay has been ordered to cease race-based practices as far back as 10 years ago.

"If the warden doesn’t cease these racially discriminatory practices he will be in contempt of court," said Don Specter, lead attorney in the case for the Prison Law Office.

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Image: inmates in 2010 on the exercise yard at California State Prison in Los Angeles. Photo by Gary Friedman/ Los Angeles Times.

Study: Those on parole, probation involved in one out of five arrests

 

A national research group that monitored crimes in four California cities says one out of five adults arrested for a crime is someone on parole or probation.

California corrections officials said the findings released Tuesday by the Council of State Governments' Justice Center suggest public perceptions that those on parole and probation are a high crime risk are not supported. The study found that nearly two-thirds of those arrested, 62%, had never been under law enforcement supervision.

Terri McDonald, undersecretary for prison and parole operations at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the report's findings that parolees and probationers are twice as likely to be arrested for drug-related offenses points to the need for alternatives to incarceration.

"You cannot just use the jail bed for every problem," she said. "This reinforces the importance of us focusing on substance abuse treatment." 

The study examined criminal patterns in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco and Redlands from 2008 to June 2011. It did not directly capture the impact of California's prison realignment law, which in October 2011 shifted responsibility for low-level offenders and parole violators to counties.

Arrest rates for supervised offenders varied greatly by community. In San Francisco, just 11% of adults arrested were on parole or probation. In Sacramento, that figure was 30%. Los Angeles and Redlands had roughly the same rate of arrests of supervised adults -- between 22% and 23%.

The report also does not look at recidivism. State corrections officials in October reported that nearly two out of three people released from California prison are arrested for a new crime within three years.

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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 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.