CDCR Star - Corrections Clips

CDCR NEWS:

Juvenile Offenders Learn New Life Skills In Dog Training Program
Nine juvenile offenders from the Southern Correctional Reception Center and Clinic graduated today from a unique program that teaches personal skills that will help them live more constructively when they return to their communities. They received informal diplomas in patience, compassion, discipline and responsibility after spending the last 12 weeks caring for abandoned and abused dogs rescued from a Southern California animal shelter and training them in basic obedience skills so that the dogs could be united with new owners who adopted them.

NEWS STORIES:

Programs:

Inmates graduate from Seminary at San Quentin Chapel as part of Southern Baptist program
By Peter Menkin, San Francisco Examiner -- The program for ministry at maximum security prison San Quentin in Northern California, outside San Francisco, proves the maxim, minister where you are at the moment. For inmate Mark Baldwin, serving a life sentence, he will prove the maxim well for with his new diploma in ministry earned from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary based in the town Mill Valley, which is near the prison, will be ministering to fellow inmates for a long time—lifelong.

Institutions:

Escape spurs Coalinga prison lockdown
By Eddie Jimenez, Fresno Bee -- Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga is on lockdown after a minimum-security inmate escaped early this morning, a spokesman said. Antonio Montelongo Jaureque, 24, who was housed in a dormitory outside the prison's medium- and maximum-security areas, was last seen about 1:50 a.m., said Lt. Aaron Shimmin, a prison spokesman.

Corcoran inmates end strike protesting lockdown
Fresno Bee -- Inmates on Sunday night ended a hunger strike and work stoppage that they held this weekend at Facility-A of the Corcoran State Prison California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility in protest of a lockdown that started Friday, a prison official said.

McFarland to reopen as women's prison
Associated Press -- State officials say they're planning to reopen a correctional facility in Kern County, which was closed last year, as a privately run women's prison. Officials with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation say they've awarded a five-year contract to the GEO Group to run a 200-bed facility for women at the former McFarland Community Correctional Facility.

Tough Love For State's Transgender Inmates
By Isabella Cota and Karen McIntyre, News 21 -- Unique Roberts sprays Paris Hilton perfume on her neck. With perfectly lined eyes and cornrow hair, she's on her way to meet her boyfriend in the yard of San Quentin State Prison, an all-male facility. Roberts is not a visitor there. The 32-year-old is one of more than 300 California prison inmates who identify as trans gender women and are being housed in male facilities because they are biologically male. "I identify myself as a woman in the streets," she said. "In here, they consider me just a male because I haven't had any sex change operation or anything, but I consider myself a woman... And I was blessed to actually look the part," she added.

High Profile Case:

Schwarzenegger signs $20M settlement with woman who was kidnapped, held captive
Associated Press -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a $20 million state settlement with a woman who was held captive for 18 years and the two daughters she bore to her suspected abductor.

Governor signs Jaycee Dugard $20 million settlement
By Marci Stone, San Francisco Examiner -- Friday, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California signed the $20 million settlement for Jaycee Dugard that was recommended by state officials last week; Dugard was held captive for 18 years by Phillip Garrido, a convicted rapist who the state determined was improperly supervised by parole officers during the time Dugard was living on his property.

CDCR Related & Miscellaneous:

The Loneliness of Governor Schwarzenegger
By Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times -- If the mark of a real independent is lack of friends, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the quintessential nonpartisan in American politics right now. His approval rating has not risen above 30 percent since May 2009. California remains in deep fiscal distress. He is despised by the state’s workers (whose pay he cut), Democrats (who loathe his aversion to new taxes and his desire to cut entitlements) and Republicans (who wish those respective aversions and desires were stronger), as well as college students, public school parents and people who hate the smell of cigars.

What Mehserle Faces In State Prison
KTVU -- Though Johannes Mehserle won't be sentenced until August, his involuntary manslaughter conviction could mean that he'll do time in a state prison. Should that be the ex-BART policeman's fate, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) won't be caught by surprise. Spokeswoman Terry Thornton couldn't comment on Mehserle's case specifically, but she said that while there are risks for former law enforcement officers in prison, there is a system to keep high-profile offenders safe. "There are some inmates who are warped enough to want to take them down," said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the CDCR. "They think they'll go down in the history books." Such "celebrity" trials draw considerable attention inside prison walls, Thornton said, and can result in violence and even murder at the hands of inmates.

Polanski free, Swiss reject US extradition request
By Bradley S. Klapper and Frank Jordans, Associated Press -- The Swiss government declared renowned film director Roman Polanski a free man on Monday after rejecting a U.S. request to extradite him on a charge of having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl. The Swiss mostly blamed U.S. authorities for failing to provide confidential testimony about Polanski's sentencing procedure in 1977-1978.

States resisting Adam Walsh Act
By Michael Gardner, San Diego Union Tribune -- It was milestone legislation hailed at the White House, the culmination of an exhaustive campaign by bereaved parents to help prevent future abductions and murders of children. Yet, nearly four years after the Adam Walsh Act was signed by then-President George W. Bush, California and 46 other states have refused to follow through and implement the law, despite its potential political appeal and the threat of losing federal funding for noncompliance.

State pay cut could ravage Sacramento region
By Phillip Reese and Dale Kasler, Sacramento Bee -- A summer of minimum wage for state workers would likely make Sacramentans nostalgic for Furlough Fridays. The region could lose about $60 million a week in wages if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger succeeds in cutting most state workers' pay to $7.25 an hour, according to a Bee analysis of state salary data. The weekly loss would be roughly equal to the city of Folsom's general budget for an entire year – and would do additional damage to a region still bleeding from a collapsed housing market and 17 months of state worker furloughs.

OPINION:

Costly errors
Press Democrat -- How does one put a dollar figure on the physical and emotional damage inflicted upon Jaycee Dugard over the 18 years she was held captive? Jaycee Dugard. We’re not sure. But the state of California managed to do that last week, settling on $20 million. That’s what taxpayers will pay Dugard and her family for the series of blunders made by state officials in supervising paroled rapist Phillip Garrido and not discovering that Dugard, now 30, and her two daughters, 12 and 15, were being kept prisoner in his backyard shed in Antioch. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put his seal on the settlement on Friday.

Reentry group aids vets
By Patrick Stasio, Luther Flynn, Kathy Watson, Vacaville Reporter -- On behalf of the North Bay Stand Down, Disabled American Veterans Chapter 84 (Vacaville) and Sacramento Valley National Cemetery Support Committee Wreaths Across America Project, we would like to thank the Veterans Reentry Group, CSP Solano for its generous donations to our organizations on behalf of their fellow veterans.

ONLINE COMMENTARY:

What happened to this private prison?
Bakersfield Californian -- The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation issued a closure notice for that and a couple other privately run correctional facilities, including the McFarland Community Correctional Facility, late last year due to declining numbers of minimum-security inmates to fill them. At the time department officials said Mesa Verde could bid on a state contract to house female inmates. But this past week they said Mesa Verde did submit a bid but was rejected because it didn't meet the state's criteria.