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With California slipping into a financial sinkhole, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing to save more than $180 million by cutting short the sentences of thousands of immigrants in the state's prisons and turning them over to federal authorities for deportation. The idea faces certain hurdles — for one thing, commuting some sentences will require court approval — and immigration authorities warn that a mass release of inmates from California and other states could swamp the federal system, which is already at capacity. But Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Lisa Page said: "Every dollar not spent to house an undocumented immigrant inmate is a...

Juan Pedro Panuco said he and other immigrant inmates at Folsom State Prison have heard that California is so cash-strapped, some of them could get sprung early and then deported. "Some of them are excited," said Panuco. He's not. At 36, he's been in California since he was 18, is married to a legal U.S. resident and has three small children. He is nine months into a 13-month sentence he got for selling drugs. Panuco may not want it, but the Mexican inmate is likely a prime candidate for early release under a cost-cutting plan on the table now from...

Sacramento, CA (AP) -- The Schwarzenegger administration and a federal court appointee have agreed to the framework of a legal settlement to overhaul the way medical care is delivered to prison inmates. The outline of the proposal was given Thursday to The Associated Press and would be the first step toward ending a long-running legal drama that appeared headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The proposed agreement, if accepted by the federal courts and the Legislature, would call for a sharply scaled-down and far less expensive plan to improve poor inmate medical care than the one the federal receiver previously...

California's prison and parole system will lose about 5 percent of its sworn officers as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's layoff order takes hold over the next four months, according to administration figures released on Friday. Another 10 agencies, including one that serves veterans and another that collects taxes are also cutting staff, but none as many as the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

A male prisoner can be strip-searched by a female guard even if male officers are available, a federal appeals court has ruled. In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco dismissed an Arizona inmate's claims that jail officials had violated his rights by having a female guard trainee search inside his shorts and pat down his genitals. The inmate, Charles Byrd, was in Maricopa County's minimum-security Durango Jail awaiting trial in October 2004 when officials ordered searches of everyone in his unit after a series of fights. Byrd was ordered to strip down to...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) states that California prisons were “eminently capable” of housing detainees. She accuses conservatives for “fear-baiting”: FEINSTEIN: Yes, we have maximum security prisons in California eminently capable of holding these people as well, and from which people — trust me — do not escape. So I believe that this has really been an exercise in fear-baiting. I hope it’s not going to be successful. Video at link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lAjiNkn75I

The California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, wants to sell state property, including the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and San Quentin State Prison, to raise $600 million to $1 billion over the next two to five years. He said that thousands of state employees must be laid off and billions of dollars must be slashed from the budget to deal with a deficit that tops $15 billion and could widen again within days. The state approved billions in budget cuts and revenue increases earlier this year but they were not enough to keep up with a sharp drop in tax revenue as...

On Jan. 10, 2008, it was 22,000. This past New Year's Eve, it was 15,000. Two weeks ago Friday, it was 8,000. Now, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration – looking down the barrel again at a massive budget crisis – is talking about letting 38,000 inmates out of prison before their time is up. Proposals 1 and 2 never got off the ground when the governor's budget writers eventually found the money to keep the prisons full. More recently, the administration never followed up with legislation to enact the early releases corrections Secretary Matt Cate announced on April 24. The latest...

SACRAMENTO (CBS 5) ― Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that thousands of inmates could be forced out of state prisons if his proposed ballot measures fail in the upcoming special election. Schwarzenegger said he will open prison doors if voters don't approve the measures to close a projected $6 billion budget hole during the May 19th vote. ... The governor's plan would release 38,000 inmates, 19,000 of those are what the state considers low risk. The other 19,000 inmates are illegal immigrants whose offenses are said to be non-serious. The governor would commute their sentences and release all of them...

Fifteen years after Congress promised that Washington would help states pick up the tab for imprisoning illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, California is receiving but a fraction -- less than 12 cents on the dollar -- of its nearly $1-billion annual cost. The unfulfilled promise is perhaps the most glaring example of the federal government shortchanging California. Officials from states greatly affected by illegal immigration long have argued that their taxpayers should not have to bear the burden for Washington's failure to control the border.

Appeals court OKs Schwarzenegger contempt hearing By DON THOMPSON Wednesday, Mar. 25, 2009 SACRAMENTO -- A federal judge will be allowed to proceed with a contempt hearing against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for refusing to pay for improvements to inmate health care, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal from the administration that attempted to block the contempt hearing before U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson. The contempt motion stems from a legal tussle between Schwarzenegger and the federal receiver who was appointed by the courts to oversee reform of the medical system...

SACRAMENTO (AP) ― A federal judge is threatening to hold Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration in contempt if they don't quickly come up with a plan to take care of thousands of mentally ill inmates. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento says he is appalled by evidence the state is not capable of doing its duty. He called it "mind-boggling" that the state still doesn't have a mental health treatment plan 14 years after a class-action lawsuit was first filed on behalf of inmates. On Tuesday he ordered the state to consider moving hundreds of inmates to vacant beds at...

Even amid the real-estate bust, waterfront property in the San Francisco Bay area is a luxury few can afford. That's why some California lawmakers want to sell San Quentin State Prison -- which houses more than 5,300 inmates on prime land with stunning views of the bay -- to developers who might pay as much as $2 billion. State Sen. Jeff Denham, who has sponsored a bill to sell the complex of historic buildings for private development, thinks the proceeds could help replenish California's recession-depleted coffers. "I believe maximum-security inmates shouldn't have waterfront property," said Mr. Denham, a Republican from...

California corrections officials say the state will no longer spend the estimated $10 million a year it costs to lock up undocumented immigrants with prior convictions who reenter the country illegally after being deported. In the past, the state kept them on parole after deportation and incarcerated them for parole violations when they reentered the country illegally. But a federal court has ordered California to reduce the population of overcrowded prisons.

California corrections officials announced today that they will seek to have more paroled and deported undocumented immigrants who return to the state illegally transferred into federal custody. The result would be potentially longer prison terms for the offenders and a reduction in the state's average daily prison population by 1,000 - a cost savings to the state of $10 million a year, according to California corrections chief Matthew Cate. "When they return across the border, we are finding that far too often, rather than being prosecuted for the federal crime of returning as a felon, they are being instead revoked...

Inmates executed by lethal injection may in some cases die by "chemical asphyxiation" while conscious but unable to move, according to a new analysis of California and North Carolina executions released Monday. The study appearing in the online edition of PLoS Medicine -- a San Francisco-based medical journal -- was authored by the same team of doctors and death penalty opponents who raised similar concerns about the procedure in the British medical journal The Lancet in 2005. That earlier study, which said sub-potent amounts of the anesthetic sodium pentothal were found in the corpses of executed inmates, helped to propel...

It's been three years since the night a federal judge blocked an execution at San Quentin State Prison because of concerns that the state's haphazard lethal injection methods could inflict prolonged and excruciating pain on a condemned inmate, violating the U.S. Constitution. Today, the state is no closer to executing the Stockton murderer-rapist who was to have died that night, Michael Morales, or any of the other 679 prisoners on the nation's largest death row. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration says it's trying to break the logjam by agreeing to let the public comment on proposed new procedures for executing convicts,...

Accused rapist escapes while receiving medical treatment By Bill Lindelof Saturday, Feb. 14, 2009 A prisoner being treated at an Oroville hospital escaped this morning and has not been found. Michael Dean Nunley II, 52, was being guarded by a private security company at 3:30 a.m. today when he slipped his restraints, ran past the security officer and out of Oroville Hospital.

By DON THOMPSON SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A special panel of federal judges has tentatively ruled that California must release tens of thousands of inmates to relieve overcrowding.

ORANGE, Calif. — A Southern California county will allow jailed Muslim women to wear headscarves after settling a lawsuit with a woman who claims that deputies violated her religious freedom by making her remove her hijab. The settlement agreement signed by the county last week and released Monday specifies that Muslim women must be provided a private area to remove their headscarves after arrest and must be provided with county-issued headscarves to cover themselves when they are in the presence of men. The county, which did not admit wrongdoing, will also pay $45,000 in damages. Plaintiff Jameelah Medina will get...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The lawyer representing California in a lawsuit over prison health care said today that state officials aren't ready to comply with a federal judge's order to turn over $250 million for new hospitals for inmates, despite the possibility of a contempt-of-court order against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson ordered Schwarzenegger and state Controller John Chiang on Oct. 8 to tell him how soon they would provide the money, the first installment in an $8 billion construction plan that a court-appointed manager drew up to raise the prison health system to constitutional standards. Henderson said...

San Francisco, CA (AP) -- The Schwarzenegger administration and a federal court receiver are heading toward a showdown over states' rights in the escalating fight over inmate health care. In a Monday hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson said he will proceed with a contempt hearing against the administration for not providing the money sought by the court-appointed receiver. He said it will raise significant constitutional issues about state sovereignty. The judge said the inmate medical system remains in crisis. "We cannot afford to have more delays," he said. Clark Kelso, the receiver in charge of California's prison medical...

The federal receiver in charge of California's inmate health care system is asking a judge to seize $8 billion from the state's treasury over the next five years. Court-appointed receiver Clark Kelso on Wednesday said he needs the money to build new medical units for 10,000 sick or mentally ill inmates.

Sacramento, CA (AP) -- The court-appointed receiver who oversees medical care in California's prisons is asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to invoke emergency powers and borrow $7 billion. Court-appointed receiver Clark Kelso wants Schwarzenegger to bypass the state Legislature and issue bonds to build seven inmate health care centers around the state. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter Kelso sent Monday to Schwarzenegger's legal affairs office. The receiver's request comes after the state Senate blocked his borrowing twice last month. Kelso has been given broad authority by federal courts to fix the prison system's medical and mental health...

SAN FRANCISCO—A federal court referee is recommending that California's prison population be cut by nearly 40,000 inmates over the next four years. There is little agreement over how to accomplish that, leading a special judicial panel on Friday to grant more time for settlement talks. The three-judge panel says it will set a trial in November if the state, inmate advocacy groups, law enforcement organizations and others fail to agree on ways to solve prison crowding. They have 30 days to reach a settlement. The federal courts could order an immediate release of inmates or cap the prison population, actions...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- In a drastic change, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration has committed California to reforming the way it treats youthful offenders, promising to replace more punitive measures with therapy and positive reinforcement. The agreement was announced Monday to settle a lawsuit. Only last year, the juvenile system was criticized by national experts as draconian. Among the methods they cited was the use of cages and drugs to subdue mentally ill or substance addicted youths. Under a timetable set for the agreement, reforms will be implemented gradually. The body that oversees the system, the California Youth Authority, set a...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing the early release of more than 20,000 low-risk prison inmates as a way to save money amid a worsening budget crisis. The Sacramento Bee reported on its Web site Thursday that the governor will ask California lawmakers to authorize the release of certain non-serious, nonviolent offenders. The prisoners would have less than 20 months to go on their terms. Sex offenders would not be eligible for release under the proposal. The plan would cut the prison population by 22,159 inmates and save the state $256 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1, the...

The California Senate soon will show whether it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the prison guards' union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA). The union, which is in the midst of contentious negotiations over a new contract with the state, opposes confirmation of the state's chief labor negotiator, Dave Gilb. The Senate Rules Committee must vote on Gilb's nomination this week or next to meet a July 1 deadline. The union is displeased that the state asked for negotiations to be submitted to mediation. Where Gilb believes mediation is the "best path to get to an agreement," a...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Legislators hoping to avoid a federal takeover of California's overcrowded prisons approved a $7.3 billion plan on Thursday to add beds and beef up rehabilitation programs. The bill, negotiated by Democratic and Republican leaders, passed unanimously in the Assembly but barely got the required two-thirds majority in the Senate with a 27-10 vote. The plan, which now goes to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, would add 53,000 beds for inmates, including 13,000 at county jails. It would also boost rehabilitation programs, including education and job training, and let the governor continue to transfer thousands of inmates out of state....

SACRAMENTO An arbitrator has ruled that state officials miscalculated wages and benefits for corrections employees, a mistake that will cost California taxpayers an estimated $440 million over two years and force cuts to other state departments. The ruling, made public Friday, means the state will pay $200 million for back pay and health benefits to about 30,000 prison guards, probation officers and other correctional employees, retroactive to July 1, 2005. In addition, the employees are due a 3.1 percent pay increase retroactive to the start of the year under a provision that ties their wages to those of other law...

SACRAMENTO - California taxpayers will be asked to spend billions of dollars to reform the state's overcrowded and mismanaged prison system. Before they do, however, they are spending millions to employ the federal overseers who will direct those reforms and their staffs. An Associated Press review of spending within the various federal offices guiding prison reform found that California is spending more than $10 million a year for their advice, most of which goes to salaries. One office - the federal receiver overseeing reform of the prison's medical system - includes five of the 10 highest paid jobs in California...

County officials in California are expressing concern to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation over a proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to raise the minimum state prison term from one to three years. Under California's current sentencing and incarceration arrangement, convicted criminals who are sentenced to 12 months or more are ticketed for a state penitentiary. But in an effort to reserve limited prison space for the worst convicts in California, the administration is asking the Legislature to lift the jail-prison cutoff and shift some of the offender population to the counties, even though 20 of them are already operating...

Law enforcement agencies in Orange County are working with the federal government to deport illegal immigrants serving time in U.S. jails. The news could mean as many as 11,000 illegal aliens could be handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. Latino advocacy groups said the program contributes to the targeting and racial profiling of all persons who appear to be "illegal." Agents said that is not true because they are checking the immigration status of all inmates, not just those that appear "illegal."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Thursday he will seek a review of California's prison sentencing guidelines, a politically risky undertaking that is part of a wide-ranging plan to address the state's burgeoning prison crisis. The governor also is proposing an $11 billion building program to add space for thousands of additional inmates and changes to the state parole system. Schwarzenegger characterized the state's prisons as in crisis and "in deep need of reform." "My administration inherited a system that was dangerously overcrowded, poorly managed and out of control," he said during a Capitol news conference to release his plan. "Now we...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday proposed an $11 billion plan to repair and expand California's troubled prison system. The Republican governor called for a 78,000-bed expansion of state prison and jail capacity to ease overcrowding, changes in the parole system to reduce the high rate of recidivism, and formation of a commission to propose revisions to California's criminal sentences. The proposal would be backed partially by $10.6 billion in bonds.

SAN FRANCISCO — Two former prison chiefs handpicked by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday that election-year politics had thwarted their efforts to fix the crisis gripping California's correctional system, prompting them to resign in frustration earlier this year. Testifying in federal court, the two corrections secretaries singled out the prison guards union and a pair of Schwarzenegger's top aides for most of the blame, saying the aides had given the union veto power over candidates for top jobs and a say in other key decisions. One of the aides, Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy, said she planned to play a...

A federal judge sentenced three suspected leaders of the violent Aryan Brotherhood prison gang to life terms Tuesday, saying the sentences were the only just response to three decades of orchestrated murders and attempted murders in some of the nation's toughest penitentiaries. Barry "The Baron" Mills, 58, was sentenced to four consecutive life terms without possibility of parole, a sentence automatically imposed after a jury deadlocked earlier this year on the death penalty. Tyler "The Hulk" Bingham, 59, also escaped the death penalty but received three consecutive life terms without possibility of parole. A third defendant, Edgar "The Snail" Hevle,...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - California prisons quietly halted what was supposed to be a sweeping review of employee safety spurred by a guard's stabbing death last year, officials said in response to a records request from The Associated Press. Just seven of the expected 41 evaluations were completed before the first-in-the-nation program was abruptly ended after Corrections Secretary Roderick Hickman resigned in frustration in February, officials said after months of inquiries. The disclosure came in the past week as the prison system's new administration counters criticism from state lawmakers and federal judges who have complained that inmates often live in...

Locked up in a state prison cell in Tracy, Alan Mann was so excited he had to put down his newspaper when he got word that Gov. Gray Davis had been tossed from office in the historic 2003 recall election. As a convicted felon serving a life sentence for killing his best buddy in a San Jose field in 1980, Mann couldn't vote. But he had more than a passing interest in seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger replace Davis -- ... snip ... For Mann and the 29,000 state inmates serving life sentences for murder and other serious crimes, there was virtually...

California will begin shipping thousands of inmates to prisons in four other states next month at a cost of more than $51 million a year, corrections officials said Friday. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared an emergency this month to speed up the no-bid contracts with two private companies. He said the transfers are needed to ease crowding in the nation's largest prison system, where more than 172,000 inmates are crowded into space designed for about 100,000, forcing some inmates to sleep in gymnasiums and auditoriums. The GEO Group Inc. of Florida will be paid an estimated $28.7 million a year to...

The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation signed two contracts Friday to begin moving California inmates to out-of-state private prisons beginning as soon next month. Deals with the GEO Group and the Correctional Corporation of America will result in the transfer of 2,260 prisoners to institutions in Indiana, Oklahoma, Arizona and Tennessee. The GEO contract will run at $28.7 million a year while the CCA deal is pegged at $22.9 million. The average daily per inmate cost under the agreements will amount to $63 a day, compared to the average cost of approximately $90 a day the state is paying...

The state plans to house up to 1,200 prisoners from California in unused portions of the New Castle Correctional Facility, a move that Gov. Mitch Daniels said Thursday would create up to 200 jobs. The announcement came a day after California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in that state's critically crowded prisons, a step that allows him to use his executive powers to ship inmates elsewhere. Daniels said the arrangement will benefit both states. Under a contract between California and Florida-based GEO Group Inc., the company Indiana hired to operate the New Castle prison will be paid...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a prison overcrowding emergency Wednesday in California, paving the way for inmate transfers to out-of-state institutions within a month. Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary James Tilton said that the state is on the verge of signing no-bid, sole-source contracts with three private prison companies and that he expects to begin sending inmates to Indiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arizona at a rate of 100 to 200 a month within 30 days. In a recent survey, Tilton said, 19,000 inmates expressed interest in doing their time in other states. He said his immediate goal is to get...

SACRAMENTO Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared an emergency Wednesday over prison crowding, a step that lets him use his executive powers to free space by shipping inmates to other states. The move comes five weeks after state lawmakers failed to act on a $6 billion prison building plan Schwarzenegger sought after calling a special session of the state Legislature. That proposal also included involuntarily sending inmates to prisons in other states. "Our prisons are now beyond maximum capacity, and we must act immediately and aggressively to resolve this issue," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. California has the nation's largest state prison...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill Wednesday that includes a provision added in the waning days of the legislative session allowing his administration to nearly double the pay of 50 top state bosses. Under Assembly Bill 2936, the workers -- mostly heads of agencies and departments -- could get as much as 125 percent of the governor's salary, although the governor says he intends to extend the raise to only one or two officials. Schwarzenegger doesn't take his pay. But in 2007, the salary assigned to his office is scheduled to increase to $206,500. That would mean the top administrators...

CROWDED PRISONS: California's survey offers 23 states in which they could finish their terms. California Corrections officials, who expect to run out of prison beds by June, are asking inmates if they would volunteer to do their time in other states. To ship prisoners out, California must sign up enough volunteers and negotiate deals with other states willing to take them, said Bill Sessa, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The state has 172,000 prisoners, and officials predict capacity will be reached next summer. Male inmates surveyed this week were given a choice of 23 states to...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is considering using emergency powers to ease crowding in the nation's largest state prison system, after lawmakers rejected his $6 billion prison building plan this week. That could mean contracting with other states to take as many as 10,000 inmates and opening some buildings that are unused, such as a women's prison in Stockton and a youth detention center in Whittier. Schwarzenegger also could take money from other areas in the state budget to add prison beds at existing prisons. "The administration has not ruled out any solution for the overcrowding problem," his communications director, Adam Mendelsohn,...

Public health agencies and nonprofits would begin distributing condoms to California prison inmates under a bill sent this week to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a measure modeled after similar programs in other states and cities. Democrats who support the effort said making condoms available will help control the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. "Everyone knows that sex happens in prison, and short of solitary confinement for all ... inmates, the state is unable to prevent it," Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood, said in a statement. Various studies put the incidence of homosexual activity inside prisons at between 30...

Newly released details of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's prison plan show a portion of one of Chowchilla's two women's prisons being converted to a men's prison -- a proposal that local officials say they will do everything they can to stop. "People are really opposed to this," said Chowchilla Mayor Ron Harris. "We'll probably raise a stink." The proposal, part of a nearly $6 billion prison-crowding relief plan, calls for 800 male beds at the Valley State Prison for Women. The prison, listed as having capacity for 1,980 women, would essentially be split in two -- a male prison and a...

It has been more than a month since the labor contract between California and the state's prison guards expired and the union now says it is digging in and preparing to go without a contract until at least 2007. Discussions have stalled as negotiators face a deadline--which could be as soon as today--to hammer out a deal and have it ratified by the Legislature before the end of the year. The negotiating teams have not met for more than a week after a late July session when tempers flared and both sides walked away displeased. The state and union have...