September 15, 2010, 12:06 AM
State prison officials are disputing findings from a new federal study that identified two California prisons as having some of the highest rates of sexual violence in the nation. The Bureau of Justice Statistics ranked two California adult men’s prisons among six others nationwide as...
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September 7, 2010, 12:05 AM
Authorities are planning to expand efforts to shut down the 45-year-old Nuestra Familia prison gang following a massive sweep in the Central Valley last week that netted dozens of alleged Nuestra Familia street operatives on drug trafficking charges. Measures targeting gang leaders...
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August 30, 2010, 12:05 AM
Fifty years ago, guards fired shotguns loaded with sawed-off broom handles to control threatening inmates. Then came wooden and rubber bullets as a means to keep inmates under control without killing those on the receiving end. Stun guns emerged from another evolutionary line, with the Taser...
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July 30, 2010, 12:05 AM
A computer algorithm determined that Javier Joseph Rueda would go on nonrevocable probation in January and live unsupervised without risk of incarceration again unless police arrested him for a new crime. Based on the particulars of Rueda’s criminal history, the California Department of...
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July 26, 2010, 12:05 AM
Facing a threatened legal battle over alleged racial discrimination, California prison officials have agreed to meet with the Prison Law Office over the department’s controversial use of lockdowns on general population inmates. In a July 17 letter to the secretary of the California...
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May 11, 2010, 12:22 PM
Four years ago the California Department of Corrections launched a controversial pilot project: to create special units where troublesome inmates - but not the worst men in the system - were denied simple amenities in order to compel them to change their ways. A California inmate locked in one...
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April 22, 2010, 4:26 PM
Inspector General David Shaw's long-awaited investigation into last year's riot at the California Institution for Men at Chino could not substantiate allegations that prison staff locked inmates in outdoor cages and denied them food, water and medical attention for days after the melee. But...
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March 17, 2010, 12:05 AM
In 2008, the United States passed a dubious milestone when researchers at the Pew Center on the States determined that one in every 100 adults in America was in jail or prison. The report, “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008,” calculated that 2,319,258 adults were behind bars...
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March 15, 2010, 7:49 AM
Last January, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation unveiled an overhaul of parole and rehabilitation programs to satisfy a court order to drastically reduce the inmate population. Prison officials said the changes would prevent thousands of convicts from returning to...
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March 2, 2010, 10:01 AM
As California’s troubled prison system struggles to meet a court order to cut its inmate population, the number of juvenile offenders in state custody continues a dramatic decline. According to latest figures from the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), the population of California...
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February 23, 2010, 11:14 AM
Many of the juvenile inmates at California prisons are male and booked in Los Angeles County, according to a recent report by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
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January 14, 2010, 12:20 AM
KPCC has now posted many of the hand-written letters at the center of allegations that the staff at California Institution for Men in Chino held inmates in metal, outdoor cages before and after an Aug. 8, 2009 riot. The letters paint a stark picture of a desperately over-crowded prison...
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January 12, 2010, 5:51 AM
The Office of the Inspector General is probing allegations that inmates at the California Institution for Men in Chino have been locked in outdoor, cage-like enclosures for extended periods, possibly days. OIG investigators are assessing recent claims that inmates at the prison’s...
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January 8, 2010, 6:04 AM
When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger talked this week about the divergence between state spending on higher education versus prisons, he left out an important part of the higher education equation: community colleges. UC Berkeley grads According to data from the California Postsecondary...
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January 7, 2010, 7:05 AM
In 1952, John Irwin arrived at Soledad prison to serve a five-year sentence for armed robbery. He was 23 and enthralled by a criminal lifestyle. “I wanted to be a thief,” he recounted later. “I was drawn to it.” So began Irwin's remarkable lifetime journey...
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