Prisons

Small and easy to conceal, the cellular telephone is fast becoming hot new contraband in America's lockups, adding to the custody woes compounded by crowding, violence and longer sentences, according to penal experts. "The contraband is really changing along with the gadgets of our times, especially the cellular phone," said Jess Maghan of the Center for Research in Law and Justice at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

What can $110 buy? Until this week, it paid for one day in the El Segundo jail, but no more. The City Council has voted to do away with a program that allowed convicted criminals who wanted to avoid doing time in the overcrowded County Jail to stay at the more comfortable El Segundo facility for a fee. Zsa Zsa Gabor served her infamous cop-slapping sentence there and had her meals catered.

For $100 a night, the amenities are few. Your room is a 20-square-foot cinder-block box with barely enough room for a metal bunk bed, toilet and sink. * The meals come straight from the freezer to the microwave to you: Salisbury steak for dinner, macaroni and cheese for lunch. The floor is cold concrete, and the only views are from behind steel prison bars. The Fullerton City Jail is no vacationer's paradise.

The county's top prosecutor and other elected officials shared a podium with youthful offenders Friday to oppose state budget cuts that could cripple the state's youth camp system, particularly in Los Angeles County. The hearing, held at Camp Karl Holton, a juvenile probation camp in the Angeles National Forest north of San Fernando, was called by Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills) in response to Gov.

The county's top prosecutor and other elected officials shared a podium with youthful offenders Friday to oppose state budget cuts that could cripple the state's youth camp system, particularly in Los Angeles County. The hearing--held at Camp Karl Holton, a juvenile probation camp in Angeles National Forest north of San Fernando--was called by Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills) in response to Gov. Pete Wilson's decision to cut funding for the camps in his proposed 1995-96 budget.

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.

Orange County's acting Sheriff Jack Anderson on Thursday proposed pulling hundreds of deputies from the state's second-largest jail system and replacing them with career correctional officers. The move, which would dramatically change the way Orange County jails are operated, would create a new career path in the Sheriff's Department: employees who are permanently assigned to the county jails.