Daily Corrections Clips

NEWS:

Secretary Cate

Q&A: CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate Discusses Prisons, Health Care and Realignment
By Lisa Kopochinski , Corrrectional News-- Matthew Cate has served as secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation since being appointed in May 2008. In this capacity, he and his staff’s mission is to improve public safety through crime prevention and recidivism reduction strategies.

Receivership

AP Interview: End of prison oversight not certain
By Don Thompson, The Associated Press-- The court-appointed receiver overseeing California's prison health care system said Friday the state must keep its promise to spend more than $2 billion for new medical facilities before the federal courts can end an oversight role that has lasted six years.

Federal receiver: California at risk of sliding backward on prison medical care
By Julie Small, KPCC-- The federal receiver in charge of California’s prison medical care said Friday he won’t return control to the state. He says he first has to get the money he was promised to build new medical facilities and upgrade old ones.

State Workers

Hundreds Of Calif. Prison Employees Get Layoff Notices
KSBW-- California prison officials sent layoff notices to 545 employees, including 140 guards, as the inmate population declines to comply with a federal court order.

Sentence overturned for prison guard
The Associated Press-- A federal appeals court panel has overturned the sentence of a former guard convicted of abusing two shackled inmates at California Institution for Men at Chino.

AB 109

San Diego jail inmates released to avoid crowding
The Associated Press -- San Diego County jail inmates are being released early to avoid overcrowding as a new state law sends criminals to local lockups instead of state prison.

California Parole

Judge tosses Calif. standards for revoking parole
The Associated Press -- California's voter-approved standards for revoking parole violate parolees' rights to legal representation and tips the scale toward sending them back to prison, a federal judge ruled.

SWAT team arrest barricaded parolee
San Gabriel Valley Tribune-- A parolee who shot at law enforcement then holed up in a garage was arrested by a sheriff's special weapons team just before 11 p.m.

CDCR Related

Gang bust gives rare glimpse of Mexican Mafia's grip on North County
By Brandon Lowrey, North County Times-- A federal indictment of 119 San Diego County gang members, including a Mexican Mafia boss arrested in a pre-dawn raid of his San Marcos home, portrays a sprawling, well-organized criminal network that ran drug dealing on the streets of North County and even extended inside the Vista jail.

Massive arrests target county gangs
By Greg Moran, U T Tribune-- More than 100 alleged members of street gangs from every corner of the county were arrested Wednesday in what authorities said was one of the largest operations of its kind in the San Diego region.

Mexican Mafia target of San Diego arrests
The Associated Press-- Two men who police said are members of the Mexican Mafia are among 119 people charged in a San Diego-area gang crackdown, authorities said Wednesday.

Ross Valley Sanitary District in $1 million dispute with Central Marin Sanitation Agency
By Richard Halstead, Marin Independent Journal -- …At the center of the dispute is a lucrative contract with San Quentin State Prison. For the last fiscal year, which ended June 30, 2011, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation paid the Ross Valley district nearly $3.9 million.

Assemblywoman Frustrated By Lack Of Action In Search For Victims
CBS-- A state Assemblywoman wrote a letter to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on Thursday expressing frustration in the lack of action regarding a search of victims from the “Speed Freak Killers.”

Sheriff to address victim remains search efforts
By Leigh Paynter, News 10-- The searches started 12 years ago. The San Joaquin County Sheriff brought out cadaver dogs, military radar technology, and field crews with shovels to dig up areas east of Stockton and remote areas of Calaveras County, all searching for remains of victims of convicted killers and boyhood friends Wes Shermantine and Loren Herzog.

Dig for remains of Cyndi Vanderheiden yields no results
By Katie Nelson, Lodi News-Sentinel-- A joint search between two county sheriff’s departments for the remains of Cyndi Vanderheiden yielded no results Friday.

Deputies Confirm Search For Vanderheiden
KCRA-- San Joaquin County authorities confirmed Friday that investigators conducted a search for the body of Cyndi Vanderheiden, who was last seen in 1999.

OPINION:

Death penalty not worth the cost
By Donald W. Blount, The Stockton Record-- … About 2,850 miles away, Wesley Shermantine sits in his cell on death row in San Quentin State Prison for four murders, including those of Cyndi Vanderheiden, 25, of Clements and Chevelle "Chevy" Wheeler, 16, of Stockton. He, too, sends letters to the local newspaper, The Record, claiming to include directions to the remains of one of his victims. And, of course, the so-called directions lead to no bodies.