Many criticize life sentences for juveniles, Terms with no parole called 'cruel and unusual'

SAN FRANCISCO — Sara Kruzan was 17 when she was sentenced to die in prison for killing and robbing a pimp in a Riverside motel.

Now, at 32, Kruzan has a chance at being freed, along with thousands of other juveniles convicted of murder who were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Read more...

Shifting prisoners to counties could strain local services

California needs to pay attention to potential strains on county services as it implements Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to shift nonviolent criminals and parolees to counties, a RAND Corp. study says.

The study [PDF], “Understanding the Public Health Implications of Prisoner Reentry in California,” released last week, said the plan to shift low-level offenders to county custody could strain local health care and social services programs that already have been ravaged by budget cuts.

California began sending low-level felony offenders and parole violators to county jails on Oct. 1.

“There’s no turning back,” Brown said at a Sept. 29 press conference. “The only way is forward in a collaborative way.”  Read more...

California Paroling Medically Incapacitated Inmate

COALINGA, Calif. -- A California convict in prison for a violent robbery is the first in the state granted parole under a new law allowing release of medically incapacitated inmates.

A state Board of Parole Hearings panel ruled Wednesday that 48-year-old Craig Lemke, who has served less than four years of a 68-year sentence, poses no threat to public safety because he's a quadriplegic.  Read more...

Political paralysis' in Calif. over prison reform

As California deeply cut spending for public schools, social services and health programs in recent years, state leaders also found themselves grappling with a court order to reduce the prison population by tens of thousands of inmates.

Some civil rights groups and criminal justice experts are now seizing on this perfect storm of chronic deficits and crowded prisons to push for wide-ranging changes to the state's sentencing laws that would transform California's handling of crime and punishment. The California chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups want the state to reduce drug possession and low-level, nonviolent property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, and they want more community-based alternatives to incarceration. Read more...

Field Poll: California Voters Favor Re-Vamping "Three-Strikes Law"

Most California voters see a court order to reduce the state's prison population by 30,000 inmates as a serious problem, and nearly three out of four say it is time to revamp the state's "three-strikes" law, a Field Poll out today finds.

The poll comes on the heels of last month's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court ordering California to address its prison overcrowding problem, and 79 percent of those surveyed said the matter is serious.  Read more...

In 1st CA medical parole case, inmate rejected

A state board on Tuesday denied medical parole to a convicted rapist who has been a quadriplegic since he was attacked in prison 10 years ago, arguing that the inmate's verbal threats in prison to female staffers proves he would still pose a threat to public safety if he were to be released.

Steven Martinez, 42, was the first California inmate to be considered for medical parole under a law that took effect this year and is aimed at saving taxpayers the expense of providing medical care and security to incapacitated inmates. Under the law, inmates who are "permanently medically incapacitated with a medical condition" that makes them "unable to perform activities of basic daily living" may be released if they do not pose a threat to public safety.  Read more...

No easy fix for California's prison crisis

By Jack Dolan and Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Sacramento and Los Angeles -- California's effort to shift tens of thousands of inmates out of its chronically overcrowded prisons to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court order could be undone by the state's tough sentencing laws, persistent recidivism and recurring budget crises, analysts say.

More than 33,000 offenders must be moved out of the prisons under the high court's Monday decision, which upheld an earlier ruling that conditions in the teeming facilities cause preventable deaths and amount to cruel and unusual punishment.  Read more...

Despite medical parole law, hospitalized prisoners are costing California taxpayers millions

With California mired in a budget crisis, guarding incapacitated prisoners at outside hospitals continues to cost taxpayers millions as the state figures out how to implement a new medical parole law.

Reporting from Vacaville, Calif. — A degenerative nerve disease has left 57-year-old California inmate Edward Ortiz semi-paralyzed in a private Bay Area hospital for the last year. The breathing tube in his throat tethers him to a ventilator at one end of the bed; steel bracelets shackle his ankles to safety rails at the other.

Still, California taxpayers are shelling out roughly $800,000 a year to prevent his escape. The guards watching Ortiz one day last week said department policy requires one corrections officer at the foot of his bed around the clock and another guard at the door. A sergeant also has to be there, to supervise.  Read more...

What realignment means for California corrections

Gov. Jerry Brown's ambitious plan for balancing his state's budget includes moving parole services to county control and dismantling the DJJ

The current buzzword in California government fiscal circles is “Realignment.” This is what Governor Brown wants to do to many state services. Chief among these, at least for CorrectionsOne readers, is the idea of turning parole services over the county governments, along with a theoretically adequate funding level for these services. An important secondary consideration is the complete dismantling of DJJ (Division of Juvenile Justice) and turning it over to local control also.  Read more...

Supreme Court says state prisoners have no constitutional right to parole

In reversing the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for the third time in a week, the justices say the appeals court was wrong to second-guess the California parole board and the state courts for denying parole to a man convicted of attempted murder.

Reporting from Washington — Unanimously reversing the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for the third time in a week, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that state prisoners have no constitutional right to be paroled.

The decision rebuked the San Francisco-based appeals court for ordering the parole of several inmates who had been convicted of murder or attempted murder.

All three of the opinions overturned in the past week were written by veteran liberal Judge Stephen Reinhardt from Los Angeles.  Read more...

States Help Ex-Inmates Find Jobs

Faced with yawning budget gaps and high unemployment, California, Michigan, New York and several other states are attacking both problems with a surprising strategy: helping ex-convicts find jobs to keep them from ending up back in prison.

The approach is backed by prisoner advocates as well as liberal and conservative government officials, who say it pays off in cold, hard numbers. Michigan, for example, spends $35,000 a year to keep someone in prison — more than the cost of educating a University of Michigan student. Through vigorous job placement programs and prudent use of parole, state officials say they have cut the prison population by 7,500, or about 15 percent, over the last four years, yielding more than $200 million in annual savings. Michigan spends $56 million a year on various re-entry programs, including substance abuse treatment and job training.  Read more...

Jerry Brown pitches a shift to local governments

Gov. Jerry Brown, beginning the "complex undertaking" of shifting responsibility for many state programs to local agencies, started pitching the plan Tuesday to local leaders.

Brown has said he will propose a realignment of services, possibly far-reaching, as part of a proposal to resolve a state budget deficit estimated to be at least $25 billion over 18 months.  Read more...

Clemency of juvenile killer gives Yee hope

The last-minute sentence commutation of a woman serving life without parole for killing her pimp at age 16 has given a Peninsula state senator hope this is the year California abolishes the absolute term for all juvenile offenders.

As one of his final gubernatorial acts, Arnold Schwarzenegger granted clemency to convicted murderer Sara Kruzan by reducing her sentence to 25 years to life in prison. While the change doesn’t guarantee freedom to Kruzan, who fatally shot the man in 1994, it does offer the possibility.

State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco/San Mateo, has long argued that all juvenile offenders deserve the chance at rehabilitation and release rather than being incarcerated at a young age with no hope of parole. He initially proposed completely outlawing the sentence but it failed to pass. Last year, Yee successfully pushed a tweaked version known as the Fair Sentencing for Youth Act through the Senate with bipartisan support but it died in the Assembly during the final days of the session. He reintroduced the legislation, now known as Senate Bill 9, last month.  Read more...

Schwarzenegger veto of killer's parole overturned

The state parole board has approved Michael McDonald's release three times and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed it each time, saying the convicted murderer showed a "lack of insight" into his crime because he still insisted he was innocent.

But a state appeals court says that neither the governor nor the board can insist on a confession before paroling a prisoner who, based on the evidence, is not dangerous.  Read More...

Reforming Sex Offender Laws: California's Chelsea's Law rethinks the way state manages sex offenders who will return to society

After the rape and murder of Chelsea King, a San Diego County teenager, California legislators decided they had to do something. Amid the emotions of the tragedy, they passed a rational, thoughtful law.

That was an unexpected outcome, because many of the approaches that states take to prevent sex crimes are based more on fears than hard evidence. That’s as true in California as any other place. There, with the support of most of the state’s key politicians, voters approved a 2006 ballot initiative, known as Jessica’s Law, that barred sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools, day-care centers, parks or churches.  Read More...

Who's going back to prison (again and again)

San Francisco has one of the highest recidivism rates in the state—some 78.3 percent go back to prison within three years of release—according to a report released today by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

The study tracked about 108,000 inmates released from state prisons between 2005 and 2006 over the course of three years. Overall, the state recidivism rate, which has long been among the highest in the country, clocks in at 67.5 percent, which is not a significant change from previous statewide tallies.

“The recidivism rates in general, while not surprising, are disheartening, and attest to the complete failure of our prison system in achieving deterrence, rehabilitation, or both,” UC Hastings law professor Hadar Aviram writes in an email. “It is telling that the statistics haven’t changed significantly over time, despite increased punitive measures. Clearly, what we are doing under the title ‘corrections and rehabilitation’ does not correct or rehabilitate.”  Read More...

Mentally ill prisoners get a second chance

Mental health courts are operating in 29 California counties, helping offenders and reducing crime in their communities.

Milton Conley's mental illness has cost him — and society — more than he cares to tally.

An abusive father recruited Conley at age 9 into a life of what he calls "doing wrong things." A psychotic break in his 30s was followed by homelessness and four imprisonments, products of schizophrenia; addiction to crack cocaine and marijuana; and what Conley dolefully labels "being lonely."  Read More...

Governor OKs medical parole for incapacitated inmates

Schwarzenegger signs 21 bills, including one allowing the state to parole comatose and physically incapacitated inmates and another restricting motorcycle modifications. He vetoes 14 bills.

Reporting from Sacramento — State prisons can release comatose and physically incapacitated inmates on medical parole under a measure approved Tuesday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that is expected to save California at least $46 million annually.
 
The legislation was one of 21 bills the governor signed, including a ban on modifying motorcycles to make them more noisy, a scale-back of an early release program at county jails and a 5-year extension allowing shoemakers to import kangaroo parts to California.  Read More...

California has paid scores of criminals to care for residents

The rules of the state's home healthcare program, as interpreted by a judge this year, permit such felons to work as aides. Among their crimes are rape, assault and theft.

Reporting from Sacramento — Scores of people convicted of crimes such as rape, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon are permitted to care for some of California's most vulnerable residents as part of the government's home health aide program.

Data provided by state officials show that at least 210 workers and applicants flagged by investigators as unsuitable to work in the program are nonetheless scheduled to resume or begin employment.  Read More...

Governor signs law named after Chelsea King: Measure sets longer prison sentences, tougher parole conditions and targeted treatment for sex offenders

When Doug Lambell remembers searching for Chelsea King six months ago, he feels anew the sad invigoration of a community coming together to stop a family from falling apart.

The 49-year-old banker and father of two from Scripps Ranch remembers showing up in Rancho Bernardo to search for a teenager he didn’t know. He remembers seeing more than 1,000 people standing in the rain and being bowled over by the shared purpose of wanting to bring Chelsea home.

He still cries about it.  Read More...