New Prisons

SACRAMENTO - Jeffrey Beard's expert testimony was cited 39 times in the federal court order that capped California's prison population in 2009. He said the state's prisons were severely overcrowded, unsafe and unable to deliver adequate care to inmates. At the time, he was Pennsylvania's prisons chief. Now, he's Gov. Jerry Brown's new corrections secretary, and his first order of business is to persuade the same judges to lift the cap, as well as to end the court's longtime hold on prison mental health care.

Gov. Jerry Brown is pursuing a prison contract in California, too small to meet federal orders to reduce crowding, but enough to help Brown end the shipment of inmates to for-profit prisons out of state. According to bid documents, California offers to pay no more than $63 a day, on top of facility costs, to house up to 1,225 additional inmates in what the state calls "modified community" prisons. California currently has 600 inmates in one such private prison, paying more than $13 million a year to the GEO Group Inc . Bids for the new facilities are due May 28. At one point, California housed more than 5,600 inmates in 13 small "community" prisons built for state prisoners by local governments or by private prison operators.

The state chose two sites in Imperial County for new prisons that will house 4,400 inmates. The new prisons will be near Calipatria in the central part of the county and near Mt. Signal in the southern part, Corrections Director James Rowland said. The state already has legislative authorization for a $208-million, 2,200-bed maximum-security institution near Calipatria, Rowland said. The department will seek legislative authorization for the second site, a 2,200-bed medium-security facility, to be funded from a 1990 prison construction bond issue, Rowland said.

A judge Monday vacated the 124-year sentence received by convicted rapist Andrew Luster in 2003 and ordered an April 4 hearing to determine a new sentence. Luster, a great-grandson of cosmetics giant Max Factor, was convicted on 86 counts of rape and drug charges after a jury viewed videotapes he made of himself engaging in sexual acts with three women rendered unconscious by GHB, a "date-rape" drug. Although Judge Kathryne Ann Stoltz refused to grant Luster a new trial and expressed skepticism about most of the arguments made by Luster's attorneys in more than a week of hearings, she agreed that his unusually long sentence needed to be reconsidered.

"Bush to ask $1 Billion for New Prisons, No Assault Rifle Ban," read one of your Page 1 headlines (May 15), revealing to all what a clever plan-ahead guy President Bush is: Allow the import and sale of murderous assault rifles, but, in order to house the resulting murderous assaulters, spend $1 billion on new prisons. The only problem is, at the rate the nation's gun toters are popping off the populace we may run out of taxpayers to plunk out the billion dollars. WALT HOPMANS Santa Barbara

Fareed Zakaria: An article about Fareed Zakaria in the May 23 Calendar section quoted the author as saying that California "has not built a new campus in decades; meanwhile, it has built new prisons." In fact, California State University opened its Channel Islands campus in 2002 and the University of California opened its Merced campus in 2005.

I don't live in South-Central Los Angeles, but I'd say that Miles Corwin's unnecessary histrionic exaggerations only serve to exacerbate an already misguided stereotype of one of the more troubled areas of our metropolis, ("Murder on 49th Street," March 26). Such a depiction plays directly into the xenophobia of our society and results in abandoned social programs and decreased education budgets while we spend billions on new prisons. Kevin Southerland Playa del Rey

Gov. George Deukmejian says that he listened to Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson's telephoned complaint about Charles Rothenberg being paroled there, but that if he had had his way there would have been no parole at all. Rothenberg is the man who was released from prison in January after serving 6 1/2 years for the arson attack on his son, David. The son, now 13 and severely disfigured, lives with his mother in Orange County and says he does not want to see his father again.

With legislative leaders reporting progress in negotiations with Gov. George Deukmejian over the sticky Los Angeles prison issue, the Legislature recessed for the weekend Thursday. "A considerable amount of progress" was made toward resolving the stalemate over authorizing construction of the prison and funding for $283 million in budget vetoes, according to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco). Senate President Pro Tem David A.

In rebuttal to the letter "New Prisons" (May 24), it upsets me to hear someone say, "Why wait for fancy cells with indoor plumbing, etc. when Army-type detention camps can be built quickly at a modest cost to accommodate these chronic law-breakers." It's the same taxpayers that block the passage of new jail facilities because they don't want them built in or around their neighborhoods or communities. It's about time the man from La Quinta wakes up and looks around. The Orange County jail system has been housing about 350 inmates since mid-1985 in tents to relieve overcrowding in jails until a larger one can be built.

SACRAMENTO - California prison officials have opened a new psychiatric center for inmates, contending that the $24-million treatment facility is proof the state is ready to shed federal oversight of mental health care for prisoners. The new building, at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, will provide outpatient treatment for mentally ill inmates who do not require 24-hour care. "It's time for the federal courts to recognize the progress the state has made and end costly and unnecessary federal oversight," Jeffrey Beard, secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in prepared remarks.

SACRAMENTO - Jeffrey Beard's expert testimony was cited 39 times in the federal court order that capped California's prison population in 2009. He said the state's prisons were severely overcrowded, unsafe and unable to deliver adequate care to inmates. At the time, he was Pennsylvania's prisons chief. Now, he's Gov. Jerry Brown's new corrections secretary, and his first order of business is to persuade the same judges to lift the cap, as well as to end the court's longtime hold on prison mental health care.

CANON CITY, Colo. — Sometimes if you build it, they don't come. When construction was first planned in 2003 for a $184-million high-security facility within the Colorado prison complex in Canon City, the number of inmates being locked up in the state was increasing at what officials considered an alarming rate. But something happened between the first shovelful of dirt in 2007 and the final paintbrush stroke in 2010: The Colorado prison population started decreasing, first a little and then a lot. So much, in fact, that officials announced in March that the new facility — open just 18 months and two-thirds empty — would close next year.

Reporting from Sacramento -- California should hold off on building new medical facilities for prison inmates, according to the legislative analyst's office. That view contradicts plans by the court-appointed receiver who has run the prison health system since a federal judge declared it unconstitutionally inadequate. He has plans for $2.3 billion in new clinics and upgrades. Construction is one of the final sticking points before the state can end six years of federal oversight of inmate medical care.

California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown waded into the controversy Tuesday over a new law that aims to reduce the state prison population by saying it applies to county jails but should not be read as requiring immediate, large-scale reductions of their populations. The bulletin to law enforcement agencies throughout the state came as the union representing Orange County sheriff's deputies became the second major policing organization to go to court to block use of the law, which appears to speed the process under which county jail inmates are released by changing the formula used to determine time off for good behavior.

Fareed Zakaria: An article about Fareed Zakaria in the May 23 Calendar section quoted the author as saying that California "has not built a new campus in decades; meanwhile, it has built new prisons." In fact, California State University opened its Channel Islands campus in 2002 and the University of California opened its Merced campus in 2005.

The idea that the building of 20 new prisons can be equated by Gov. Pete Wilson with the founding of the University of California takes us to new heights of police-state doublespeak. The creation of a permanent prison population larger than many incorporated cities in California is described blithely by Wilson as a "capital improvement." No money for elementary schools, high schools, community colleges, universities; but billions for a prison society. No longer will any pretense be made of rehabilitation; inmates will do their time.

San Quentin Prison, for more than a century one of the toughest places in the nation to do time, has been emptied of virtually all its most hardened criminals. About 1,750 of them, more than half the population of the 137-year-old fortress that once held Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, have been sent to new prisons throughout California as part of a $5-billion prison expansion. In their place are minimum- and medium-security prisoners, including many who live in trailers outside the prison walls on San Quentin's fenced-in grounds and who have little contact with higher-risk inmates inside.

The federal Bureau of Prisons has reassigned former Gov. George H. Ryan to a prison in central Wisconsin to serve his racketeering and fraud sentence, his attorneys said in Chicago. The prison in Oxford, Wis., where various politicians, mobsters and others from Chicago have served time, is considerably closer to the city than his original assignment in Duluth, Minn.