CDCR STAR - Corrections Clips

NEWS STORIES:

Institutions:

Chavez Takes Over The Reins At Sierra Conservation Center
By Bill Johnson, My MotherLode -- Frank Chavez, a 35 year employee of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, has officially taken over the reins as Warden at Sierra Conservation Center. Chavez is no stranger to S.C.C. The 35 year C.D.C.R. veteran has been at the Jamestown facility since March of 1997 being named as Associate Warden. Last year he was asked to serve as Acting Chief Deputy Warden and when Ivan Clay retired Chavez moved into the empty chair in the Warden's Office.

Programs:

Prison Education Cuts: Could Affect Your Safety
KION -- Jobs and programs are being cut at prisons across California and the changes could lead to more crimes. Printing and Graphic Arts is one of the programs being eliminated due to budget cuts in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Correctional education at the CTF in Soledad has slipped from being maybe 5%-7% percent of the CDCR budget to 2%. The most recent cuts now mean inmate education will represent about 1% of the entire CDCR budget.

Death Row:

Kevin Cooper responds to state in Supreme Court filing
By Will Bigham, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin -- Attorneys for death-row inmate Kevin Cooper filed their response Monday to the state's opposition to Cooper's petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the response, Cooper's attorneys repeat his claims that he's not responsible for killing four people in Chino Hills in 1983 and asked the high court to intervene in his case. Monday's filing is the last procedural step before the Supreme Court decides whether to hear Cooper's case.

CDCR Related & Miscellaneous:

Supreme Court seems likely to limit life sentences for juveniles
By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times -- Confronted with the stark reality of a 13-year old sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, the Supreme Court justices signaled Monday that they were inclined to limit, or perhaps abolish, the use of life terms for young teenagers whose crimes do not involve murder. The high court often has invoked the Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" to restrict the death penalty.

ONLINE COMMENTARY:

Where's rehabilitation commitment?
Steve Nolan, San Bernardino Sun -- Relationships between labor and management, adversarial at best, are still based on trust, built on the premise that cooperation is paramount in achieving a set of agreed-upon goals. Now, in the case of the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation, the pinnacle of their leadership has seen fit to compromise those goals, replacing courage with cynicism, trust with political expediency, and honest representation with deception. Rolling out its "cost-saving measures," it is now crystal clear to labor that the initial "R" that CDCR provocatively "hitched" to its departmental name - signifying that it was indeed fostering and endorsing rehabilitation - was a sham of the first order.