by Marvin Mentor
Los Angeles (L.A.) County jail prisoners have been locked in interracial gang-controlled violence for the past year, and the unrest has spread to other jails and into California state prisons as prisoners pursue their simmering racially-charged disputes. Future stability seems doubtful. If California's prison system "desegregates," as ...
The Marin County Superior Court, which had directed the California Board of Parole Hearings (Board) to take the necessary steps to cut its lifer hearing backlog in 2001 when it was 2,058 hearings behind (and would take 21 months to abate), was distressed to learn in February 2006 that the ...
California Sheriff's Authority to Fire Rogue Guard is Validated
by Marvin Mentor
The California Court of Appeal held that the San Diego County Civil Service Commission abused its discretion when it overturned the Sheriff's firing of a deputy who lied to cover-up his physical abuse of a prisoner. The Sheriff ...
A prison guard at the California Institution for Men (CIM) at Chino was stabbed to death in the Sycamore Hall housing unit on January 10, 2005 by an East Coast Crips gang-affiliated prisoner who had just begun a 75-year-to-life three-strikes enhanced sentence for the attempted murder of a Los Angeles ...
Five California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) employees, testifying under subpoena at a February 27, 2006 State Senate Government Oversight Committee hearing, revealed the use-it-or-lose-it practice of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars allotted to prisoner drug treatment programs on such items as guitars, pianos, a portable stage, plasma ...
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that a California Muslim prisoner who was attacked by fellow Muslims stated two Eighth Amendment claims against prison officials by alleging that (1) they failed to protect him and (2) that his conditions of confinement during nine months in administrative segregation exposed ...
The California Court of Appeal upheld the Del Norte County Superior Courts 2003 ruling [case no. HCPB 00-5164] requiring supermax Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) officials to cease locking down Southern Hispanic prisoners endlessly solely based upon their ethnicity. In an unpublished ruling in 2004, the appellate court rejected PBSP ...
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations (CDCR) Prison Industry Authority (PIA) loses money in 20 of 28 enterprises it operates in CDCR prisons, provides rehabilitative work for a declining number of prisoners in spite of a meteoric climb in prison population, and lacks a marketing plan, according to the ...
California Legislature Reorganizes DOC To Add Rehabilitation
by Marvin Mentor
Via legislative enactment (SB 737) effective July 1, 2005, the California DOC (formerly CDC) was renamed the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), the Board of Prison Terms (BPT) was replaced with the Board of Parole Hearings (BPH), and numerous ...
Continued Reliance on Commitment Offense to Deny California Lifers Parole Denies Federal Due Process
by Marvin Mentor
The U.S.D.C. (E.D. Cal.) granted habeas relief to a California lifer whose parole had been repeatedly denied based upon the commitment offense, and ordered the California Board of Parole Hearings (BPH) to release ...
