In September 2009, the California State Auditor, responding to a request from the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, submitted a report to assess the effect of California’s rapidly increasing prison population on the state budget. The report found that in the past three years, while the adult prison population had decreased ...
In June 2008, the State of Washington entered into a stipulated judgment to settle claims for damages, filed in both state and federal courts, by Diana McKissen, who was raped, tortured, and severely beaten at gunpoint in 2004, when Community Corrections Officer Chris Leyendecker allegedly failed in his responsibilities to ...
In September 2009, Kern County (California) officials entered into a multimillion dollar settlement agreement with John Stoll, disposing of a federal lawsuit filed by Stoll in 2005, seeking compensation for damages allegedly sustained as a result of a violation of his civil rights, including 20 years of incarceration for crimes ...
Just days after being accused of violating state law by secretly recording telephone conversations with reporters, Scott Gerber resigned from his position as communications director for California Attorney General Jerry Brown.
In a move fit for airing on an episode of “America’s Dumbest Public Officials,” Gerber – who, one would ...
Following mediation in July 2008, Peter Cockcroft, proceeding pro se, agreed to a $12,000 settlement of his § 1983 suit for damages alleging Eighth Amendment violations that transpired between March 2004 and January 2006, when he was a prisoner housed in the Psychiatric Services Unit (PSU) at Pelican Bay State ...
In an effort to trim a $26.3 billion budget deficit, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger slashed $90 million from a diversion program designed to offer certain non-violent drug offenders the opportunity to participate in substance abuse treatment instead of going to prison.
In 2000, in a rare show of rationality by ...
In June 2009, the District Attorney’s office in Santa Barbara, California filed charges against Roland Ygelsias and Miguel Jacobo, former employees of U.S. Extradition Services, a company that contracts with law enforcement agencies to transport prisoners to and from prisons and jails.
Ygelsias and Jacobo were accused of engaging in ...
On February 13, 2009, following an investigation by the Los Angeles Times, the L.A. County Probation Department suspended its practice of billing parents and legal guardians for each day their children spent in juvenile detention.
The practice was generally legal under a 20-year-old California law intended to prevent families from ...
A December 2008 report by the California Sex Offender Management Board (CASOMB) has found that increased enforcement of laws adopted to protect communities from registered sex offenders has had the unintended effect of making those communities less safe from those offenders.
Created in 2006, CASOMB was charged with providing state ...
The American Friends service committee (AFSC) has taken the position that “long-term solitary confinement is ineffective and inappropriate in all circumstances.”
In May 2008, it launched a national STOPMAX campaign calling for an end to the use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. In conjunction with the launch of that ...
