Shirin
Rajaee, CBS Sacramento
SACRAMENTO
(CBS13) – Military men and women and prison inmates are coming together for a
first-of-its-kind program in California, if not the country.
Seventeen
inmates at California Medical Facility state prison in Vacaville were carefully
vetted to participate in the military assistance program, known as MAP.
The
inmates, many of them former military, are helping deter airmen from Travis Air
Force Base from a life of crime and imprisonment.
Josh
Copitch, KRCR News
REDDING,
Calif. - The Shasta County District Attorney's Office has completed their
review and evaluation of the California Supreme Court's reversal of the death
penalty sentence in the Gary Grimes case, in which they concluded that they
will not seek a retrial of the death penalty.
Pursuant
to California law, Grimes' sentence will automatically default to life in
prison without the possibility of parole.
Grimes
was originally found guilty of the 1995 murder of 98-year-old Betty Bone and
sentenced to death in January of 1999. Besides Grimes, two other suspects were
arrested: John Morris and Patrick Wilson. The murder occurred after the three
suspects forcibly entered the victim's house for the purpose of committing a
burglary.
CORRECTIONS RELATED
Proposition
57 expands on existing court orders that helped reduce prison population
KCRA
3 News
Voters'
approval of Gov. Jerry Brown's sentencing reform initiative may finally give
California the long-term solution it needs to end a decade-long legal battle
over prison conditions that twice reached the U.S. Supreme Court and has cost
taxpayers billions of dollars.
Proposition
57 was pitched as a safety valve to reduce an inmate population that is
steadily increasing despite state efforts to shift felons from overcrowded
state prisons into equally burdened county jails over the past five years.
Don
Thompson, The Associated Press
SACRAMENTO
– Voters’ approval of Gov. Jerry Brown’s sentencing reform initiative may give
California the long-term solution it needs to end a decadelong legal battle
over prison conditions that twice reached the U.S. Supreme Court and has cost
taxpayers billions.
Proposition
57 was pitched as a safety valve to reduce an inmate population that is
steadily increasing despite state efforts to shift felons from overcrowded
state prisons into equally burdened county jails over the past five years.
The
initiative incorporates rules into the state Constitution to speed up how
quickly felons can be paroled. It also grants the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation broad discretion to give more early release
credits to inmates who complete rehabilitation programs.
States
are weighing whether solitary confinement, or segregated or restrictive housing,
creates more problems than it solves.
Teresa
Wiltz, The Huffington Post
Last
month, New Jersey lawmakers voted to stop isolating prison inmates for as long
as 23 hours a day for months or years on end after deciding it was abusive and
hampered a return to society.
…
California
has begun moving nearly 2,000 prisoners out of solitary confinement as part of
a settlement of a 2009 lawsuit brought by inmates who’d been on an extended
hunger strike. Many of the prisoners had been placed in solitary confinement
units because they were believed to be in a gang. Many had been in the units
for decades. So far, the state has moved 1,557 inmates out of solitary units,
said Scott Kernan, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation. Prison officials have to carefully review each case before
transferring an inmate into the general population, Kernan said. “It’s been a
monumental task,” he said. “It’s so fraught with potential danger, if you let
out an inmate and something bad happens.”
Posts
