A scathing report about California's troubled prison system increased pressure Friday on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to press ahead with sweeping changes in the $5.3-billion program.
Schwarzenegger's chief spokesman Rob Stutzman said in Los Angeles that the governor is "very concerned by what the federal master has reported."
In a 78-page draft document prepared for a federal judge in San Francisco, Special Master John Hagar found that top officials in the Department of Corrections, under pressure from the powerful prison guards union, have been unwilling to discipline officers involved in attacks on inmates or other misconduct.
Stutzman said Schwarzenegger has "the utmost confidence" that Roderick Q. Hickman, his new secretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, will "restore order to the department and that agency."
Tip Kindel, the agency's assistant secretary, said the new administration is "developing a comprehensive program so that we have an investigations process ... that will have integrity and will be credible, thorough and fair."
Kindel said Hickman has met with the special master and made a "personal commitment" that investigations will be free of inappropriate outside influences.
"The secretary is committed to restoring public and employee confidence in the discipline process," Kindel said.
But it will take more than statements of confidence to satisfy key Democrats who are planning two days of hearings starting Tuesday on investigations of misconduct in California's prisons.
State Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough), chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Government Oversight, said she has "never read such a hard-hitting indictment of a department in all my years in public service."
Speier said the state has "to bring that system under control" or risk seeing a federal judge take over supervision. "We have to restore strong leadership so that correctional officers who want to do the right thing will not fear for their lives."
The lawmaker said she received a call Wednesday from "a big, burly man" -- Max Lemon, the associate warden of Folsom Prison -- asking for protection because he had "broken the code of silence" about a riot at the prison in April 2002. Lemon is to testify before the Senate committee Tuesday in Sacramento.
Speier said the special master's report should set off an alarm in the Capitol about the need to change the prison system. "This culture has to be turned around," she said.
