California Department Of Corrections

A federal judge Thursday ordered California's top corrections official to reverse a recent decision abolishing drug treatment and other rehabilitation programs as possible sanctions for parole violators. In a victory for critics of California's widely maligned parole system, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton said that by failing to provide alternatives to a prison cell for parolees who slip up, state officials had violated a lawsuit settlement they reached in 2003.

A federal judge took a major step Tuesday toward seizing control of California's prison healthcare system, concluding that state inmates are needlessly dying and state officials cannot stop it on their own. U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco said he may be compelled to appoint "an interim receiver" to manage the California Department of Corrections healthcare delivery system. He called on Gov.

Corrections officials will scrap the centerpiece of their effort to reform California's beleaguered parole system because there is no evidence the new approach is working, according to a memo obtained by The Times. Beginning Monday, parole violators will no longer be diverted into drug treatment programs, halfway houses and home detention instead of being returned to prison, according to the memo.

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."

California's one-size-fits-all correctional system is failing one group of offenders more dramatically than any other: the 22,000 female convicts and parolees, whose crimes are overwhelmingly nonviolent, according to a study released Wednesday by a government oversight panel. Continuing its critical reporting on the state's $6-billion-a-year penal system, the bipartisan Little Hoover Commission said the number of women in California prisons has increased fivefold during the last two decades.

Unhappy with the pace of reforms designed to reduce the state prison population and save taxpayers money, Schwarzenegger administration officials are planning to shake up leadership of the program, prison sources said Wednesday. The key change will be the transfer of Richard Rimmer, deputy director in charge of the Department of Corrections' parole division, to another post later this month, the sources said.

A state senator who spent the past year investigating problems in California's $6-billion correctional system summed up the fruit of that labor Wednesday, declaring that many major reforms were blocked but that positive changes are afoot. In a briefing with reporters, Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) said that her top worry as chairwoman of a special committee on corrections remains California's prisons for the young, which she believes do little to rehabilitate delinquents.

Nearly three years after California prison officials vowed to make major improvements in inmates' medical care, the state is facing new criticism that many of its doctors are incompetent, leading to costly lawsuits and, at times, deaths. Documents obtained by The Times show that one in five prison doctors has been disciplined by the California Medical Board or sued for malpractice -- a rate almost five times that found statewide.

It has been a year of top-to-bottom scandal in California's sprawling prison system. Officer beatings of two young inmates were caught on videotape and broadcast nationwide. A convict bled to death in his cell after howling for hours. Whistle-blowers testified about corruption and coverups -- while wearing bulletproof vests. And severe crowding forced some lockups to house inmates in the TV lounge.

U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson, who warned Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger earlier this week that he might put the Department of Corrections under a receiver, does not make empty threats, lawyers who know him said Wednesday. "If I were the state, I would take his warning very seriously," said Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "He doesn't cry wolf."