Free Republic

Among the many pieces in the governor's ambitious $220 billion infrastructure investment plan, nothing screams Republican red meat quite like the prison bond. But strangely, the administration has not been able to find a Republican in the Senate to sponsor the governor's proposal for $6.8 billion in state borrowing to build new county jails and state prisons. In another twist, the bond is currently being opposed by the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, an organization that usually aggressively backs efforts to build new prisons. The opposition from CCPOA may be part of the reason the bond has not found a...

SACRAMENTO — Assemblywoman Nicole Parra and her father traveled to Cuba in early December on what has reportedly become an annual event organized by one of California’s most powerful lobbyists and political fundraisers. Parra, D-Hanford, and other participants said the trip was arranged by Darius Anderson, founder of one of Sacramento’s premiere lobbying firms and a top fundraiser for former Gov. Gray Davis. Since travel to communist Cuba is generally prohibited except under a license from the U.S. government, Anderson’s repeated trips there with lawmakers, business people and others raise a number of questions. Why is a lobbyist arranging religious...

Despite Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's promise of major parole reforms to reduce California's spiraling prison population, the number of inmates has soared to a record high as the parole programs have floundered, and the state says overcrowding will get much worse. In early 2004, the Schwarzenegger administration said the governor's programs, which emphasized treatment and rehabilitation of some nonviolent parole violators, would reduce what was then a statewide inmate population of 161,000 to 148,390 by mid-2005. Instead, many of the parole programs were either gutted or never implemented fully. As a result, the inmate count has rocketed to a record 168,000,...

WHEN GOV. Arnold Schwarzenegger came to office, his administration's goal was to reduce California's bloated prison population by 15,000. He also talked about putting a new emphasis on rehabilitation, even changing the name of the corrections department to the "Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation." All this made sense. With 163,000 inmates, our prisons are crammed to twice their capacity. Three quarters of inmates land back in prison within three years, usually for technical parole violations. That's why we are disturbed to learn that Schwarzenegger's $212 billion bond proposal includes billions of dollars to build two new prisons and increase the...

SACRAMENTO - Less than two months after giving $10,000 to an initiative campaign committee tied to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a well-connected private prison company was tentatively awarded a $20 million contract by the state of California to operate a San Joaquin Valley correctional facility. Altogether over the past two years, GEO Group has donated $68,000 to various Schwarzenegger committees, according to campaign reports. Officials with the state prison system insist there is no tie between the donations and the contract, which is part of a broader strategy to use less-expensive private beds to relieve severe overcrowding in the 33 state-run...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - The state has scrapped plans to reopen a private prison in Bakersfield, a week after a state senator called for an investigation into the deal. California Department of Corrections officials announced the sudden reversal Thursday, saying a dip in the inmate population made the prison unnecessary. CDC officials closed three minimum-security private prisons in December 2003, saying the number of prisoners had dropped significantly. By the end of last year, prison officials concluded the population was again rising. A decision was made to work on no-bid contracts with two firms to reopen the Mesa Verde Community...

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration this week abruptly canceled a no-bid contract it was set to award to a private prison company that employs two former high-ranking state corrections officials. After pursuing a deal with the company for several months, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections said the department decided Wednesday that it was no longer interested in finalizing a $5.7 million contract that would have reopened the Mesa Verde Community Corrections Facility in Bakersfield. The contract would have been with a Massachusetts-based company called CiviGenics, which recently hired two retired Department of Corrections officials. The company...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Driven by a rising inmate population, prison spending in California is scheduled to exceed $8 billion this year. But the real intrigue in the state's 2006-07 corrections budget is in what it's proposing for the near- and long-term future Spelled out in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's summary on the spending plan is a proposal "to pursue authority to secure additional inmate capacity through contracts with other providers." The wording is fleshed out in the actual budget bill, which calls for a virtual doubling in the number of private prison beds in California, from the current 8,500 to an...

SACRAMENTO — The Schwarzenegger administration has quietly moved to reopen two private prisons a year after mothballing them — and after a company that stands to profit retained consultants close to the governor and his inner circle. Administration officials attribute the reversal to an unexpected rise in the number of prisoners. Prisons Department critics point to the private prison company's lobbying. The administration has decided to reopen two facilities, one of which is a 224-bed prison in the Central Valley town of McFarland. A Florida company ran the McFarland facility for 15 years until Dec. 31, 2003, when the state...

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration has quietly taken steps to reopen two privately run prisons in Kern County -- with no-bid contracts -- that were shut down as a cost-saving move barely a year ago. The Department of Corrections said they were needed because of an unexpected increase in inmates. But the move sparked angry outbursts from critics who questioned the prison population figures and said lobbying by former administration insiders persuaded the governor to reopen at least one of the facilities. A Bakersfield man who ran one of the closed prisons sharply criticized the department for taking the...