Prisons

State budget: Charts with an article in Sunday's Section A about attempts to trim the state's budget reported 2008-09 expenditures in millions of dollars rather than billions. The correct amounts are $59.7 billion for education, $39.4 billion for health and welfare, and $10.4 billion for prisons.

State budget: Charts accompanying a May 24 article in Section A about attempts to trim the state's budget misstated 2008-09 expenditures. The correct amounts are $59.7 billion for education, $39.4 billion for health and welfare, and $10.4 billion for prisons; the charts said "million" instead of "billion."

The lawyer for "Survivor" winner Richard Hatch said Wednesday that her client was taken to jail because he granted two TV interviews without getting the required permission from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Hatch had been serving the remainder of his prison term for tax evasion on home confinement at his sister's home in Newport, R.I. He granted three television interviews this week -- to NBC's "Today" show, NBC affiliate WJAR-TV and the NBC-owned "Access Hollywood." The Bureau of Prisons would not comment on Hatch's case, but spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said prisoners on home confinement cannot grant interviews without first getting permission.

The state Assembly will return Monday after adjourning late Thursday night without acting on a controversial bill passed earlier by the Senate to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in spending on state prisons. Legislative leaders are preparing a competing proposal to bring up for a vote early next week. The plan approved by the Senate, which was championed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, would reduce the time lower-level inmates spend behind bars and on parole. It stalled as a host of Assembly members vying for higher office refused to vote in a way that could portray them as soft on crime.

GOP leader: A California Briefing item in Thursday's Section A about state Republican lawmakers appealing a court order on prisons identified the Assembly GOP leader as Bruce Blakeslee. His first name is Sam.

Re "The California fix: Cuts dim inmates' hope for new lives," Oct. 17 As a society, we seem more interested in saving money in the short term than saving lives in the long term. Only by investing in the future of our most vulnerable citizens can we break the cycle of poverty and crime that engulfs so many of the inmates in California. The overcrowding in California prisons is shameful and a symptom of man's inhumanity to man. Until we invest in the welfare of our inmate population in California, we have failed as a society and have become a society that is only concerned with materialistic matters.

The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will close two of the state's eight juvenile prisons by July. The department said Friday that the Dewitt Nelson Youth Correctional Facility in Stockton and El Paso de Robles Youth Correctional Facility in Paso Robles would close. Together they house about 400 inmates and employ about 800 workers. A declining juvenile prison population and a new state law that aims to keep less serious offenders in their communities prompted the closures.

Michael Vick left Virginia on Monday to enter a drug treatment program at a Kansas prison, a move that could reduce the former NFL star's 23-month sentence on a federal dogfighting conviction. The suspended Atlanta Falcons quarterback is now at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons minimum security facility in Leavenworth, his attorney, Billy Martin, said. "Mr. Vick hopes to participate in programs offered at that facility, including the Bureau of Prisons drug treatment program," Martin said in a statement.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is exploring a settlement of two lawsuits that would require California to dramatically reduce the number of inmates in its overcrowded prisons -- and limit the Legislature's influence on the issue, according to participants in the discussions. The settlement discussions in the federal court cases, which have been consolidated, are in an early stage, and the framework of a deal has not been ironed out.

Lawmakers should reject Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed 5% raise for California's politically powerful prison guards' union, the state's nonpartisan fiscal watchdog said Thursday. Correctional officers have received more than adequate pay increases in recent years that have far surpassed those of other state workers, Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G. Hill said.