California prison authorities have traditionally been much slower to punish the lawbreakers on their own payroll than those they incarcerate. But two significant court cases over the last decade and a half have begun to force state officials to reluctantly address systemic illegalities in the penal system.
Both cases were filed by the Prison Law Office, the plucky not-for-profit public interest organization based near San Quentin. One of the cases, a class-action suit in U.S. federal court, was launched 14 years ago challenging conditions in the "super maximum" Pelican Bay State Prison. The case revealed a culture of terror, brutality and excessive force among the guards at Pelican Bay; as one court-appointed investigator described it, "rather than ... correcting the prisoners, some correctional officers acquire a prisoner's mentality: They form gangs, align with gangs and spread the code of silence."
In response to what went on at Pelican Bay -- as well as at Corcoran State Prison and elsewhere in the system -- the Legislature five years ago dramatically expanded the powers of the state inspector general to oversee California's prisons and investigate misconduct.
But the code of silence has remained in place, guards and prison officials have continued to stonewall, and the Legislature's bipartisan majority eviscerated the inspector general's office by cutting its annual budget from $11 million in 2001-02 to less than $3 million today.
Given what he calls a "miserable" record of complying with the law, the federal judge in the Pelican Bay case last month threatened to put the entire state prison system into federal receivership -- effectively taking it over entirely.
In a last-ditch effort to maintain control of the system, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed a new inspector general and promised to increase the annual budget of the office slightly. He also is expected to install at least five more deputy inspectors general in the next two months. Before his recent action, the governor had proposed further reducing the inspector general's personnel, from 24 to six positions -- insufficient for a unit that investigated 1,400 allegations of guard misconduct in the last three years.
