SACRAMENTO – The number of state prisoners arriving in county jails under California’s prison realignment program is significantly higher than many county officials had estimated, adding new pressure on sheriff’s departments to figure out what to do with thousands of extra convicted offenders.
RIVERSIDE – County board of supervisors approved charging prisoners $142.42 per day for their incarceration, CNNMoney reports. The plan is intended to save an estimated $3 to $5 million per year. Not every prisoner will be forced to pay up, however. The county will review each prisoner’s case individually to determine if they can afford the fee.
SACRAMENTO – California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation paid $2.25 million to the family of a prisoner left severely brain-damaged after she tried to hang herself in the mental health unit of the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility in Camarillo.
LOS ANGELES – Conrad Murray’s conviction for the involuntary manslaughter of Michael Jackson could result in a maximum of four years in prison, but it’s possible that the doctor may not go to prison.
SACRAMENTO – The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Office of Victim and Survivor Rights and Services recently announced that victims of crime will be able to receive automated electronic notification of an offender’s release or scheduled parole board hearing.
SALINAS – The Correctional Training Facility in Soledad is donating 30 bunk beds and 60 mattresses to Victory Mission Homeless Shelter, 43 Soledad St. CTF spokesman Lt. Darren Chamberlain said the shelter requested help after discovery of bed bugs forced them to throw out its mattresses and bed frames.
WASHINGTON – According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Restorative Justice is a process that involves the victim, the offender and the community that does not seek to undermine or mitigate the punitive characteristics of incarceration. Restorative Justice facilitates changing the offenders’ thinking and raising their level of moral reasoning. Go to: Restorative Justice. Org
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases brought by prisoners in Alabama and Arkansas who were sentenced to life in prison without parole for killings they committed as 14-year-olds.
Vacaville – More than 32 prisoners graduated from the Mountain Oaks Adult Educational Center. Of the 23 who attended the graduation ceremony, six earned GED certificates, three graduated from the center’s disability placement program, six graduated from the office services and related technologies category, and eight graduated from electronics services occupations.
San Bernardino – The county’s drug court has become one of the first seven Mentor Courts in the nation. Drug Court is a drug-intervention program administered through the court system to divert defendants from jail and into drug treatment and rehabilitation. According to the California Association of Drug Court Professionals the annual cost of a year in prison for a convicted felon is $47,337. But, the annual cost of drug court per participant is $13,000, a savings of about $34,000 per participant, each year.
SACRAMENTO – Gov. Jerry Brown and lawyers for death row prisoners have agreed that the soonest they will finish their legal challenge to the state’s lethal injection procedures will be September 2012. If that schedule holds true, California voters may have the option of eliminating the death penalty before this case is decided. A ballot initiative that could end capital punishment is tentatively slated for the November 2012 ballot.
WASHINGTON – A Supreme Court case could determine whether thousands of prisoners in privately run prisons have the same rights to sue in federal court as prisoners in facilities run by the U.S. government. The case, Minneci v. Pollard, involves a federal prisoner who wants to sue his jailers for damages over alleged violations of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The prisoner claims he was painfully mistreated after an accident at a for-profit prison, operating under contract for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
