Prison Guards

State corrections officials placed California's entire adult prison system on lockdown Thursday afternoon after two gang members attacked four officers inside a Tehachapi facility, a spokesman said. The prison guards -- two sergeants and two correctional officers -- were injured in the 1:10 p.m. assault in an office at the California Correctional Institution. They were taken to area hospitals. Three officers sustained cuts and puncture wounds during the attack by the inmates, members of the Surenos, a Southern California gang, and two weapons were recovered, said officials with the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

SACRAMENTO - A catalog of recent misconduct cases in California's corrections system includes allegations that prison guards groped and grappled with inmates, brought them drugs, shared their booze and solicited them for sex. The two-volume report, issued this week by the independent Office of Inspector General, chronicles 278 disciplinary cases the watchdog agency monitored from July to December 2012. The report includes numerous allegations of prison workers delivering drugs and mobile phones to inmates, having sex with them and turning a blind eye to or even arranging inmate assaults.

Union members who are county employees paid the costs of their own pension increases in 2004, said an Internal Audit Department report Friday. The report validates the union's and Board of Supervisor's position that members, and not county taxpayers, paid a so-called 2.7% raise at age 55 benefit formula, said a union official. "We're vindicated," said Nick Berardino, general manager of the 13,300-member union. In recent years, county conservatives have hammered at what they called "labor giveaways" by the board, when in fact employees are paying for the added contributions, the report said.

A catalog of recent misconduct cases in California's corrections system includes allegations that prison guards groped and grappled with inmates, brought them drugs, shared their booze and solicited them for sex. The two-volume report , created by the independent Office of Inspector General, chronicles 117 incidents within state prisons and 93 investigations from July to December 2012. It starts with a cook at a central California prison accused of asking inmates to sit on his lap, "tickle and fondle him. " It ends with the tale of a parole agent who shot the charging dog of his parolee.

In graphic and tearful testimony, former inmate Eddie Dillard told a jury here Tuesday that he knew the fate that awaited him when guards transferred him to the cell of Corcoran State Prison's notorious "Booty Bandit." Telling jurors that his account was too painful to recall in every detail, Dillard said he pleaded with Officer Anthony Sylva that inmate Wayne Robertson was his documented enemy and a well-known rapist as Sylva led him to Robertson's cell that day in March 1993.

To New Mexico Atty. Gen. Gary King, a prison guard's slaying cried out for the death penalty: Inmates had stabbed him two dozen times. But when the defense ran out of money, the state Supreme Court ruled that King could not seek a death sentence until the lawyers were paid -- approximately $200,000 for each of the three defendants, King said. When state legislators refused to allocate more money, prosecutors dropped their pursuit of the death penalty.

A woman with a pistol forced a chartered helicopter to land in a prison compound Thursday, scooped up a killer and two armed robbers and flew away 90 seconds later after a gunfight in which one guard was wounded. In a daring escape reminiscent of the Charles Bronson movie "Breakout," the overloaded chopper lumbered off the ground amid a rain of bullets and barely cleared the 12-foot-high fence around Perry Correctional Institution.

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.

Charges that some guards at Folsom State Prison beat prisoners while other correctional officers cheered have led to the firing of a sergeant and the disciplining of a dozen other guards. Prison spokesman Lt. Cammi Voss said the cases have been turned over to the Sacramento County district attorney to determine whether felony assault charges are warranted.

In the final days before state lawmakers confront the state's staggering debt, three of the Legislature's four top leaders are among several elected officials being wined and dined by the well-heeled union representing California's prison guards at a Maui beach resort where the cobalt Pacific washes onto Kaanapali Beach.

Her father was a fireman, her mother was a teacher, and her brother was a sheriff's deputy. It's hardly a surprise that Terri McDonald would follow the family and wind up working in California government, in her case moving up the ranks through the prison system and now as the "assistant sheriff for custody," the woman brought in to clean out the Augean stables of the L.A. County jail system. Out of high school, earning her way through college, a friend told her about “a pretty good job that pays a little better than Burger King,” and she she began working in a mental health facility.

This post has been updated. See the note below for details. Gov. Jerry Brown's contention that California has fixed the problems of delivering medical care in its prisons collides with the first reviews of some of those prisons by court-appointed medical experts. All three of the first prisons that were evaluated failed, though two were deemed capable of passing if fixes continue to be made. Healthcare at the third, RJ Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego, was so bad that the court's experts questioned how it could have been given "high" marks recently by the state Inspector General.

The political prisoner looked ashen and bony - weary from the months of being held in his native Vietnam - as he was pulled into the tight embrace of his family. Nguyen Quoc Quan, a math professor turned democracy activist, had been detained almost as soon as he arrived in Ho Chi Minh City more than nine months ago, accused of attempting to overthrow the communist government. The government locked the 60-year-old from Garden Grove in a 9-foot-by-9-foot cell, his only company the minder assigned to watch his every move.

MEXICO CITY - A riot and foiled prison break late Tuesday in the drug gang-infested state of Durango left at least 23 people dead, including 14 inmates and nine guards, after prisoners attacked their captors with rocks and then firearms. The state-run prison in the central Mexican city of Gomez Palacio made headlines in the summer of 2010 when the warden at the time was jailed after inmates were allowed to borrow guns from guards. Those inmates also were allowed to leave the prison at night and committed killings while they were out, federal authorities alleged at the time.

A poet will face life in prison in Qatar after penning verses that state officials deemed insulting to the nation's emir and an incitement to topple the government, his attorney told news agencies Thursday.  Rights activists say Mohammed Ajami was arrested over his “Jasmine Poem,” which skewered governments across the region, at one point declaring, “We are all Tunisia in the face of the repressive elite.” He had previously recited a...

SACRAMENTO — California's policy barring beards on prison guards has come under scrutiny by the U.S. Justice Department after a discrimination lawsuit by a Sikh man who said he was denied a job because of his facial hair, which is part of his religious practice. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation settled the lawsuit last year by paying $295,000 to the plaintiff, Trilochan Oberoi, and giving him a $61,000-a-year administrative job. He had been told he would have to shave to be considered for a prison guard job. But the state has maintained its no-beard policy, citing safety issues.

State agencies and employees are sharing the pain of Gov. Gray Davis' attempt to reduce a numbing $17-billion deficit. No, wait. That doesn't include prison guards. In his new budget Davis not only spares them from belt-tightening, he hikes their pay 33.76% over the next five years. This shower of riches came four years after the guards union helped raise $2.3 million for Davis' first gubernatorial campaign and not long before the guards contributed $251,000 to his reelection.

State Sen. Richard Rainey's "Asking for Trouble in Our Prisons" (Commentary, Feb. 8) presents many valid points concerning the appalling lack of training given California's correctional officers. He emphasizes that the officers' substandard weapons training has led to unnecessary deaths and millions of dollars in legal settlements and judgments. The senator's call for the Legislature's attention to this problem is to be commended. However, his response appears to assume that the incredible level of weaponry and resort to firearms in California's prisons are appropriate and only the training needs to improve.

Twenty California prison employees suspected of smuggling cellphones to inmates have resigned or were fired in recent months, according to a report from the state's prison watchdog agency. Most of those employees were accused of taking the phones in for cash, while others were suspected of doing it for love or something like it, according to the report. One inmate caught with a phone had text messages and nude photos sent by a female guard, the report says. Another inmate was caught with love letters and a childhood photo from a guard accused of providing him the phone.

HOUSTON -- Texas border patrol agents were on alert Tuesday for more than 130 inmates who escaped from prison in a Mexican border town. The inmates escaped through a 21-foot tunnel from the prison in Piedras Negras, and more than half had been serving time for federal crimes, including drug trafficking, officials told ABC News . Piedras Negras is just across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, about 140 miles southwest of San Antonio. The attorney general of Coahuila state, Homero Ramos Gloria, said that three employees of the prison, including the director, were being questioned about the potential involvement of staff in the mass breakout, according to Mexican media reports.