California Department Of Corrections

Until California eases prison overcrowding, it can't slow the revolving prison doors that return roughly 70% of freed inmates within a year, national experts reported to the Legislature on Friday.

California parole officials issued new rules this week that increase monitoring of thousands of sex offenders already required to wear global positioning system tracking devices, a move that comes after sharp criticism of high-profile lapses by the department. Parole agents must now track the whereabouts of the state's nearly 5,000 low-level sex offenders through ankle monitors at least four days a month. Previously, no policy mandated how often low-level offenders had to be tracked.

A federal judge is holding the California Department of Corrections in contempt for failing to provide adequate mental health care at the medical prison at Vacaville, and has taken the initial steps toward fining the state $10,000 a day. In a ruling issued Thursday, U.S.

A state judge on Thursday struck down Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's furloughs of correctional officers, who have been working on furlough days and banking the unpaid time off. Judge Frank Roesch of Alameda County Superior Court ruled that the governor's furlough order violated state law. He ordered the state to pay the prison workers for the unpaid hours they have worked. To save money, Schwarzenegger last summer began furloughing for three days a month nearly every category of state worker.

FBI agents arrested a Los Angeles woman Thursday on suspicion of using counterfeit documents and forging the names of two federal judges in an attempt to free her husband from state prison, where he is serving time on a murder conviction, authorities said. Danielle Denise Jones, 27, a supervisor with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was charged with forging court seals and judges' signatures on court documents, said Laura Eimiller, an FBI spokeswoman. Jones was released on $50,000 bond.

In a sudden reversal, the state has abandoned plans to reopen a private prison in Bakersfield, citing an unexpected dip in the inmate population, officials said Thursday. The move came less than a month after state corrections officials issued a written justification for granting no-bid contracts to two companies by citing "a drastic increase in the prison population."

When a woman reporter told Parole Officer Hugh Alcott that she wanted to interview convicted murderer Raymond George after his release to a North Hollywood neighborhood two weeks ago, Alcott responded in horror: "I think you're crazy as hell if you do. He likes to chop up women." The next day, Deputy Dist. Atty.

About 17 repeat violent offenders who believed that they were earning work-time release credits that could cut their prison terms in half are being notified by state officials that they will have to serve their full sentences. Atty. Gen.

A former correctional officer who was hazed by co-workers at Ironwood State Prison in Blythe -- and later stabbed outside his house after reporting the incident -- was pushed out of his job and eventually forced to retire because he was labeled a snitch, his attorney argued in court Monday.

The state's financially strapped corrections department is prohibiting inmates from leaving their cells at three prisons in an attempt to reduce overtime pay for guards and is considering further cost-saving restrictions at most of the system's 32 institutions, according to the chairwoman of the state Senate committee that oversees prisons.

FBI agents arrested a Los Angeles woman Thursday on suspicion of using counterfeit documents and forging the names of two federal judges in an attempt to free her husband from state prison, where he is serving time on a murder conviction, authorities said. Danielle Denise Jones, 27, a supervisor with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was charged with forging court seals and judges' signatures on court documents, said Laura Eimiller, an FBI spokeswoman. Jones was released on $50,000 bond.

California does a bad job of compensating people wrongfully convicted in its courts, a blue ribbon commission said Friday. Men and women imprisoned for years, even decades, for crimes they didn't commit are offered fewer benefits than convicts released on parole, the commission said.

The counselor at Salinas Valley State Prison paid a surprise visit to Nicholas Shearin's cell with good news: He would go home in two days, after a decade behind bars. She did not mention that he should have been freed eight months earlier. Shearin was among as many as 33,000 state inmates whose sentences may have been wrong because they were not given all the time off they earned for good behavior and for working in prison.

Terminally ill with a brain tumor, convicted sex offender Kenneth Hailey, 51, wants to spend the last months of his life living with his sister. On Friday however, Hailey found himself stranded in the emergency room of a Veterans Administration hospital in Los Angeles as the medical staff argued with corrections officers over his fate.

The chief executive of the state parole board, who was riding as a passenger when a subordinate was arrested last month on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol in a government car, submitted his resignation Monday to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. John Monday, 56, a 34-year veteran of state government, was appointed by Schwarzenegger in August and confirmed in the state Senate after serving as acting chief since May 2006. Monday was a passenger on Nov. 27 in a car driven by Robert T.

SACRAMENTO -- A high-ranking commissioner at the state parole board, which makes decisions about whether criminals should remain in prison, is on the job 11 days after he was arrested and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol at 2 a.m. in a state-owned vehicle, state corrections officials said Friday. Robert T. Rodriguez, 57, an associate chief deputy commissioner for the Central Valley, had a blood-alcohol content double the legal limit, police said.

Ambitious legislation designed to curb the soaring costs of state prisons by paying county sheriffs to keep nonviolent felony offenders in local jails won rare unanimous approval in the state Senate on Thursday. The bipartisan 37-0 endorsement sent one of the session's most important bills--SB 760, authored by Senate leader Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward)--to the Assembly, where Lockyer hopes it will "survive the minefields" of the strife-torn lower house and go on to be signed by Gov. Pete Wilson.

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to sue the California Department of Corrections in an attempt to bar construction of a state prison on the edge of downtown. The measure, sponsored by Councilwoman Gloria Molina, directs the city attorney's office to immediately file a lawsuit against the state.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A man who was mistaken for a deported felon and held in a Los Angeles County jail for 25 days may sue the state for negligence, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday. Rejecting lower court rulings, the state high court said Lenin Freud Perez-Torres, 35, may sue on the grounds that authorities knew or should have known they had the wrong man. Perez-Torres was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving in April 2000.

A mentally disturbed state prison inmate being transferred into a Los Angeles County jail last month was examined by mental health workers, who declared him fit to be placed in the general jail population. That finding caused Kurt Karcher, a convicted killer with a bipolar disorder, to be moved into a cell with inmate Jose Daniel Cruz.