Prisoner Misconduct

A Death Row prisoner died after a fight with another condemned inmate in what San Quentin officials described as an increase in prison violence in the days before what was to be California's first execution in 23 years this week.

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.

Murder defendant David Alvarez has been arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor battery for allegedly punching a jail inmate last weekend. Authorities say the incident occurred Saturday afternoon at Ventura County's main jail, where Alvarez is being held without bail on charges that he strangled and tried to rape a 14-year-old Oak View girl in December. "While he was being moved from one cell to another, he ran and attacked another inmate worker," said Cmdr.

How could an accused Mafia "hit man" grow his jail-maintained bank account by more than $5,000 while sitting behind bars? That's the question the Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury asked in a report released Monday criticizing the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department policy that allowed inmates to engage in large cash transactions at the in-house bank with no questions asked.

Jailed rapper Shyne, who signed a $3-million record deal and recorded part of his new album while in prison, has had his phone privileges revoked and is barred from conducting in-person interviews as authorities investigate whether he may have violated prison rules in making about 100 phone calls. Shyne (real name: Jamal Barrow) has been in great demand in the media with last week's release of "Godfather Buried Alive."

Japan's justice minister disciplined nine officials -- and docked her own pay -- for overlooking the alleged torture and death of a prison inmate. Mayumi Moriyama will give up three months of her pay to take responsibility for the ministry's handling of the 2001 incident in which a warden allegedly tortured and killed an inmate by aiming a water cannon blast at his buttocks while he was restrained in handcuffs. The warden was arrested last month.

Nine inmates who were supposed to be planting trees on a work detail had been cultivating marijuana and were arrested trying to smuggle 31 pounds of their crop into prison, state police said Friday. The drugs were found Tuesday in a vehicle returning the inmates from a forest near Jewell, Sgt. Michael D. Stephenson said.

Six convicted killers held 21 prison staff members hostage on the Italian island of Elba for a fourth day Friday with negotiators refusing the convicts' demands for a helicopter to fly them to freedom. "We are waiting for a sign of good will from the convicts," magistrate Antonino Costanzo told reporters on the island that once served as Napoleon's exile home. "We are doing all we can to avoid a massacre."

Negotiations with six convicted murderers holding 21 hostages at a prison on the Italian island of Elba stalled, despite pleas from relatives of the hostages for the government to comply with the inmates' demand for a getaway helicopter. The inmates seized the hostages Tuesday.

An Oakland prosecutor has urged that a man accused of murdering six people as they slept be shackled during his upcoming court appearances. Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeff Stark told Municipal Judge Vernon Moore that the defendant, David Welch, has a history of assaulting guards during previous confinements in state and county prisons and that he attacked two deputies May 12 when they were removing a food tray from his cell.

Jailed rapper Shyne, who signed a $3-million record deal and recorded part of his new album while in prison, has had his phone privileges revoked and is barred from conducting in-person interviews as authorities investigate whether he may have violated prison rules in making about 100 phone calls. Shyne (real name: Jamal Barrow) has been in great demand in the media with last week's release of "Godfather Buried Alive."

Two Los Angeles County Jail workers who allegedly used their special status to gain access to and murder a fellow inmate got their trusty jobs in violation of jail rules, according to jail officials and authorities investigating a string of five killings.

Japan's justice minister disciplined nine officials -- and docked her own pay -- for overlooking the alleged torture and death of a prison inmate. Mayumi Moriyama will give up three months of her pay to take responsibility for the ministry's handling of the 2001 incident in which a warden allegedly tortured and killed an inmate by aiming a water cannon blast at his buttocks while he was restrained in handcuffs. The warden was arrested last month.

After weeks of being kept apart in segregated buildings, black and Latino inmates at the Pitchess Detention Center are again sharing dormitory space--and again brawling. More than 20 men were hurt, two seriously, in a surge of well-coordinated attacks July 8 and 9 at the Castaic facility. The first set of fights was incited by African American inmates who previously had been unable to avenge the beatings they took as a group in April, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Cmdr. Steve Day.

Murder defendant David Alvarez has been arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor battery for allegedly punching a jail inmate last weekend. Authorities say the incident occurred Saturday afternoon at Ventura County's main jail, where Alvarez is being held without bail on charges that he strangled and tried to rape a 14-year-old Oak View girl in December. "While he was being moved from one cell to another, he ran and attacked another inmate worker," said Cmdr.

Seventeen Corcoran State Prison inmates apparently were collecting photographs and autographs of Charles Manson to sell on the outside, state prison officials said Tuesday. "There's a whole market on the outside for these macabre kinds of memorabilia," said Corrections Department spokesman Tip Kindel. "[For] almost anybody that's a mass murderer, there's a market outside of prison."

Authorities found $216,000 in bogus bills in a printing press at a maximum-security prison as officials continued to investigate a behind-bars counterfeiting operation. The latest sum, in phony $100 bills, was found in the base frame of a printing press in Denver's Centennial Correctional Facility, but authorities don't think any of the money made it into circulation. No charges have been filed, and officials said it appears only inmates were involved in the operation.

The Federal Correctional Institution here is investigating whether inmates misused information from mortgage applications that they processed under a contract from the federal government, a published report said Sunday. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has stopped sending the mortgage applications to the prison pending the outcome of the investigation, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.

This is the gaping maw, the jaws through which convicts pass to be evaluated and processed before they are spit out once again and force-fed into California's swollen prisons. Every day of the week, buses from jails throughout Southern California roll into Chino to disgorge their forlorn and often dangerous passengers behind the faded beige walls of this Reception Center. And every day, buses roll out of Chino loaded with newly processed convicts bound for prisons throughout the state.

Leslie White, the Los Angeles County jailhouse informant who blew the whistle on perjurers-for-hire in scores of murder cases, pleaded guilty to two counts of perjury himself Tuesday and thus became the only person to go to prison in the scandal he sparked. White was sentenced to a prison term of three years by Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Czuleger. In a telephone interview from jail, White said he regrets that no law enforcement officials were prosecuted in the scandal.