California Prison Academy: Better Than a Harvard Degree

Prison guards can retire at the age of 55 and earn 85% of their final year’s salary for the rest of their lives. They also continue to receive medical benefits.

By ALLYSIA FINLEY

Roughly 2,000 students have to decide by Sunday whether to accept a spot at Harvard. Here’s some advice: Forget Harvard. If you want to earn big bucks and retire young, you’re better off becoming a California prison guard.

The job might not sound glamorous, but a brochure from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations boasts that it “has been called ‘the greatest entry-level job in California’—and for good reason. Our officers earn a great salary, and a retirement package you just can’t find in private industry. We even pay you to attend our academy.” That’s right—instead of paying more than $200,000 to attend Harvard, you could earn $3,050 a month at cadet academy.

It gets better.

Training only takes four months, and upon graduating you can look forward to a job with great health, dental and vision benefits and a starting base salary between $45,288 and $65,364. By comparison, Harvard grads can expect to earn $49,897 fresh out of college and $124,759 after 20 years.

As a California prison guard, you can make six figures in overtime and bonuses alone. While Harvard-educated lawyers and consultants often have to work long hours with little recompense besides Chinese take-out, prison guards receive time-and-a-half whenever they work more than 40 hours a week. One sergeant with a base salary of $81,683 collected $114,334 in overtime and $8,648 in bonuses last year, and he’s not even the highest paid.

Sure, Harvard grads working in the private sector get bonuses, too, but only if they’re good at what they do. Prison guards receive a $1,560 “fitness” bonus just for getting an annual check-up.

Most Harvard grads only get three weeks of vacation each year, even after working for 20 years—and they’re often too busy to take a long trip. Prison guards, on the other hand, get seven weeks of vacation, five of them paid. If they’re too busy racking up overtime to use their vacation days, they can cash the days in when they retire. There’s no cap on how many vacation days they can cash in! Eighty officers last year cashed in over $100,000 at retirement.

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The cherry on top is the defined-benefit pension. Unlike most Harvard grads working in the private sector, prison guards don’t have to delay retirement if their 401(k)s take a hit. Prison guards can retire at the age of 55 and earn 85% of their final year’s salary for the rest of their lives. They also continue to receive medical benefits.

So you may be wondering what it takes to become a prison guard. For one, you have to be a U.S. citizen with a high-school diploma or equivalent. Unfortunately, you can’t have any felony convictions, but don’t worry, possession of marijuana is only an infraction in California.

Read More @ Wall Street Journal

TX – New Hell Hole News #29 by Hank Skinner

March 30, 2010

Media distortion and error, by Hank Skinner

When I cut off the AP’s Michael Graczyk from any further interviews, he started writing lies about me. Read on…

Click here to access the PDF document > 

Thank you for your help. Please continue to support Hank!

www.HankSkinner.org

Brown departs from predecessors on parole for convicted killers

By David Siders
dsiders@sacbee.com

Gov. Jerry Brown is letting convicted killers leave prison on parole at a far higher rate than previous governors, only rarely using his power to block decisions of the parole board.

Early in his term, Brown has let 106 of 130 convicted killers’ parole releases stand – about 82 percent, according to Brown’s office and records provided in response to a California Public Records Act request.

Brown’s deference to the state Board of Parole Hearings is in contrast to his predecessors, who more aggressively used their power to overturn parole grants.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger let stand only about 27 percent of parole decisions. Gov. Gray Davis was even less lenient, letting only nine of 374 paroled killers out of prison while he was governor.

“If you take someone else’s life, forget it,” Davis said shortly after he took office in 1999. “I see no reason to parole people who have committed an act of murder.”

A spokeswoman said Thursday that Brown is basing his parole decisions on public safety concerns and a 2008 state Supreme Court ruling that a governor may not deny parole based solely on the gravity of a prisoner’s crime, but requires some evidence that he or she remains dangerous.

“Hundreds of cases were coming back where governors and the parole board were being sued,” spokeswoman Elizabeth Ashford said. “The two guiding principles are that law as well as public safety.”

Now 73 years old and in his third term, Brown, a Democrat and former attorney general, also may be less encumbered by political ambition.

“When someone’s running for election, a favorite question from the press is, ‘Didn’t you let X number of murderers out of jail?’ ” said law professor Heidi Rummel of the University of Southern California’s Post-Conviction Justice Project. “It’s a hard question to answer without a little bit of context.”

The political danger of prisoner releases was perhaps no better demonstrated than in 1988, when Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor, found his presidential campaign ravaged by ads featuring released killer Willie Horton.

That was the year Californians granted governors the power to reverse parole grants for murderers.

The relatively large number of cases in which Brown has not intervened alarms victim rights advocates, who were critical even of Schwarzenegger’s release rate.

Christine Ward, director of the Crime Victims Action Alliance, said Brown’s numbers are “absolutely worse” than Schwarzenegger’s, but she said she has not yet reviewed the cases he has considered.

“The large number does cause us concern, and we will be investigating,” Ward said.

Schwarzenegger, a Republican, suggested early in his first term that he would defer often to the parole board, allowing release of more convicted killers than Davis, a Democrat. But his reversals resulted in numerous lawsuits, with some prisoners freed on court-issued writs of habeas corpus.

Brown’s office referred a request for the identities of prisoners he has let out to the parole board, which did not immediately make them available Thursday.

Michael Satris, a Bolinas lawyer who helps life-term prisoners fight for release, said Brown’s record represents a “complete reversal.” He said Brown has let out a handful of his clients, including Reginald Scott, a Los Angeles County man who, according to court documents, had a previous parole decision reversed by Davis.

Scott, 80, was found guilty of second-degree murder in the beating death of a woman in 1980, according to a court document filed on his behalf.

“He’s just getting older and older,” Satris said. “Somebody like him is not going to go out and commit another offense at that age.”

Read More @ The Sac Bee

Lawsuit claims prison receiver is padding state pension with federal salary

- jortiz@sacbee.com

A Sacramento lawsuit alleges that prison receiver J. Clark Kelso – with help from a federal judge, the state courts and CalPERS – is padding his state pension with his federal salary.

Daniel E. Francis v. Board of Administration for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System contends that Kelso’s employment deal illegally washes his pay through the state’ Administrative Office of the Courts so that the money can be factored into his retirement.

Francis is bringing the suit as a taxpayer, retired state worker and CalPERS member.

Kelso’s total compensation came to about $270,000 last year, according to state payroll data, of which $214,000 was base pay. In 2009 his base wage was about $6,000 more, with other compensation totaling $107,000. Kelso’s pension is based on a percentage of his highest year’s base wage.

Kelso told The Bee last November that the arrangement, while unusual, was thoroughly vetted and is both legal and ethical. “That hasn’t changed,” said Kelso spokeswoman Nancy Kincaid said.

CalPERS declined to comment on the litigation.

Judge Thelton Henderson appointed the 51-year-old Kelso to take over the state prison system’s inmate medical program in 2008, the California Prison Healthcare Receivership Corp., the nonprofit business arm of the receiver, and the AOC agreed to put Kelso on the AOC payroll as a “consultant.”

Read More @ The Fresno Bee

Complaint says California prisons resort to excessive, race-based lockdowns

Julie Small | KPCC

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

A California Department of Corrections officer at Chino State Prison waits for a prison door to be opened on December 10, 2010 in Chino, California.

• Read the complaint
• Prison Lockdowns: How are you affected? Tell us.

Attorneys for prison inmates sued California Wednesday in federal court to end race-based lockdowns in state penitentiaries. Prisons lock down inmates after riots to quell the violence, investigate the cause – and isolate the inmates involved. The law gives prison officials a lot of discretion to use lockdowns – but there are limits. KPCC’s Julie Small reports the class action lawsuit alleges that race-based lockdowns violate inmate rights.

California’s High Desert State Prison in north eastern Lassen County, is a maximum security facility. Following a violent incident there in the warden locked down a group of African-American inmates for 18 months. One of them, Robert Mitchell, stayed in the double-bunked cell he shared with another inmate–24 hours a day – seven days a week. Prison Law Office attorney Rebekah Evenson who is representing Mitchell says the type of discriminatory deprivation the inmate suffered is common in California prisons—and illegal.

Read More @ KPCC/SCPR.org

FDOC Officers, Teamsters, Deliver Thousands of Postcards to Stop Privatization of Prisons

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla., April 26, 2011 — Privatization Will Cost Thousands of Jobs, Jeopardize Public Safety

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., April 26, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Florida Department of Corrections Officers (FDOC) and members of the Teamsters Union today delivered thousands of postcards to state Sen. Mike Haridopolos urging him not to support bills that call for privatizing the state’s prisons.

“These correctional officers and I are here today representing themselves as both public servants and voters,” said retired FDOC Col. William Muse. ”Many of these officers drove hours and even worked double shifts to be here today because of the responsibility to our families, their coworkers and our communities to fight the effort to privatize the state’s prisons.”

“Corrections officers see firsthand what the state’s most violent criminals are capable of and have pride in the job that we do to protect the public despite risks to ourselves,” Col. Muse said. ”Protecting our public safety should not be left to private companies that put profits over people. We are urging Senate President Haridopolos and our legislators to be real leaders and stand up to the effort to privatize the state’s prisons.”

“Privatizing prisons is bad public policy,” said Teamsters International Vice President Ken Wood, who is also President of Teamsters Local 79 in Tampa and President of Teamsters Joint Council 75. “It will put more communities at risk and not result in savings to taxpayers. The Florida Legislature needs to be focused on the needs of its citizens, not corporate interests.”

Read more @ The Sac Bee

U.S. Court Grants New Sentencing for Mumia Abu-Jamal

PHILADELPHIA — A U.S. appeals court is awarding death-row activist Mumia Abu-Jamal a new sentencing hearing in the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer.

Tuesday’s ruling is the latest in the former Black Panther‘s long-running legal saga.

The 58-year-old Mumia’s first-degree murder conviction stands in the fatal shooting of Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation responds to editorial

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Last Monday, The Sun-Star published an editorial titled “Brown regresses on prison pact” (originally published Sunday in The Sacramento Bee) that woefully mischaracterized the agreement between the state of California and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Opinions of the agreement aside, I was stunned by the many factual errors on which the Bee’s opinion was based.

Fortunately, the Bee chose to run a major correction on Wednesday; however, it did not cover all the misinterpreted points. Today, it’s important to clarify the state’s position and the facts regarding the contract it has reached with the CCPOA. The truth is that the Brown administration won major concessions from the union and negotiated a deal for taxpayers that is much better than anything achieved by recent administrations. For instance:

The new contract agreement actually removes any link between the average compensation for correctional officers and local law enforcement pay. Tying these together — which was done by the Davis administration — would have likely cost the state a billion dollars.

The new contract contains explicit terms that call for training against the code of silence to continue. The language encourages reporting of bad behavior by staff and discourages retaliation for those who choose to do what is right.

The 70/30 rule did not return, as suggested by the Bee and Sun-Star. It actually never went away. The same rule existed under Schwarzenegger and remains in this contract.

Contrary to the Bee’s report, the new agreement instead removes provisions that made it difficult to investigate and take corrective or disciplinary action for sick leave abuses. The Brown Administration didn’t give an inch to union demands to maintaining previous language.

It will be harder, not easier, for officers to earn overtime pay in the same month they call in sick. Language in the previous contract that allowed leave credits to be counted as time worked for purposes of overtime were actually deleted from the new contract.

Again, contrary to the Bee’s interpretation, the new agreement does not increase starting employees’ vacation accumulation. New employees get 12 days of vacation and all employees get two personal development days — the same as other state unions — in exchange for losing two holidays. Unfortunately, as a byproduct of the previous administration’s furlough program, employees are accumulating vacation time faster than they can take it. This has meant larger payouts at retirement or separation. However, the state anticipates that as furloughs end, these numbers will come down. And, no state employee has a “use it or lose it” policy in their contracts.

There is no monthly donation of leave credits to a “time release bank.” There is an annual contribution, however, that helps to reduce the unfunded liability of vacation accruals that the same editorial criticized.

The fact that the CCPOA could not “accumulate or use” more hours reduces the unfunded liability of vacation accruals. As to the release time to attend the annual convention, the Bee characterized this as something new but the same provision existed during all seven years of the previous administration.

The pay period is every 28 days. An employee is not considered full-time unless he or she works at least 11 days in that pay period. The provision the Bee misinterpreted was simply stating what the benefit is for full-time employees, including the standard criteria for a qualifying pay period.

Critically important to this discussion is the fact that the Brown administration negotiated an ability to reopen any agreement reached under the “entire agreement” clause. The fact that such an agreement previously could not be reopened by the state was seen as the major impediment to the exercise of management rights. Explicit language now exists that any implemented term can be re-opened. This achieves the only change that was demanded by the Schwarzenegger administration prior to reaching an impasse with the union concerning this clause. It’s important to also note that with the new agreement, management can reopen any problematic matter at any time and can implement its final offer if an agreement is not reached after a reasonable time period.

I appreciate the Sun-Star and the Bee correcting many of the matters I’ve addressed here, and I recognize that the Bee’s editorial writers have a right to express their opinion on such important and significant matters. But it is critical that their opinion be based on facts, not fiction. I encourage those interested in the facts to review the contract, which is posted on the Department of Personnel website at www.dpa.ca.gov.

Oscar Hidalgo, assistant secretary, Communications,

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation,

(916) 201-4165

A short stint in prison

Marty: A short stint in prison

Apr 20, 2011
By Marty Richman

I went to prison last week, but it was only for three and a half hours. And that was enough for me.

There is only one word for prison – depressing. When you take a short tour, it’s very easy to be distracted by the well-kept grass, ball fields, the chapel, the dispensary, the high degree of organization or the promise of education and substance abuse programs, along with other accouterments. But the underlying fact is prisons are primarily warehouses for human beings. Inmate movement is tightly controlled. There are the razor, wire-topped, chain-link fences and the active gun towers leave no doubt about where you are.

Steven Smith, experienced in law enforcement and a faculty member at Gavilan College where he teaches Administration of Justice, invited me to join him and 11 of his students on a tour of the state’s Correctional Training Facility at Soledad. The CTF provides housing, programs and services for medium-custody inmates. CTF is almost adjacent to, and often confused with, Salinas Valley State Prison (SVSP), which primarily provides long-term housing and services for maximum-custody male inmates.

Both facilities are part of California’s largest general fund agency, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation with 66,000 employees and a $9.5 billion budget. The department is responsible for 33 adult institutions, six juvenile institutions, 46 adult firefighting conservation camps, and two juvenile camps with an in-state institutional population of 151,635 and more than 100,000 parole cases. Correction and rehabilitation is an expensive proposition – $38,000 a year per inmate-parolee.

The CTF is celebrating its 65th birthday, and there are places in the buildings where its age shows. However, it’s generally well maintained. It’s a strange combination of old structure and modern technology. They have energy-conserving lights but only a minimum of surveillance cameras, and all the cell locks and most of the internal control locks are manually operated with big keys – that’s very labor intensive. I was keenly aware of the constant clunk-clunk of locks, but I wonder if the inmates and staff ever get used to the sound.

It was designed to house 3,312 inmates, one per cell, but last week it had 6,562 on hand, about 200 percent of designed capacity. This is actually a court-ordered reduction from a time when there were more than 7,000 inmates, some occupying so-called “dirty beds” set up in any available space, such as the gym. California has sent 10,358 inmates out of state to Arizona, Mississippi, and Oklahoma to reduce overcrowding, but the average adult male institution remains at 175 percent of designed capacity. The female facilities are not much better at 168 percent.

The staff is comprised of 1,119 custody and 524 support personnel. Custody personnel control and monitor the population until something out of the ordinary happens. Then they respond with calculated levels of intervention and force if necessary to restore order. Everyone understands that the inmates, who sometimes outnumber the unarmed officers hundreds-to-one in a small area, could take over those spaces whenever they want. But then what? The department’s “no hostage policy” means that they are not going anywhere.

Most inmates are housed in cells, and it’s only when you look into a standard cell that the crowded conditions really hit you. It’s tiny with two inmates, two bunks, a sink, a toilet and some personal gear all squeezed into a space of a medium-sized closet. The doors are solid, each with a reinforced glass panel. We visited one large communal housing area in a low-risk unit, and it was bursting at the seams with stacked bunks and inmates – all under the control of only two custodial personnel.

I never studied criminal justice or law but common sense tells me the official purpose of the system is to reduce harm from repeat offenders, bolster the citizens’ confidence in the ability of the government to keep them safe and deter potential criminals. Human psychology tells me that the public sees incarceration as some level of revenge – not an eye for an eye except for the death penalty – but certainly a kick in the butt.

Continue Reading @ The Pinnacle News

Marty Richman wrote this for Friday’s Pinnacle. He writes a column Tuesdays in the Free Lance.

Jerry Brown defends prison guard contract

Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writer

Gov. Jerry Brown this week slammed Republican lawmakers and other critics of a contract agreement he made with the 30,000-member prison guards union, saying the deal is virtually identical to pacts his Republican predecessor made with other unions that they readily supported.

The agreements with the California Correctional Police Officers Association and five other public employee unions representing another 20,000 state workers were seen as a victory for Brown’s administration until GOP lawmakers began picking them apart.

Critics say the contract proposals won’t cut state spending by nearly enough. That claim was bolstered this week when a nonpartisan analyst concluded the deals will save $129 million less than Brown estimated in his budget plan.

The governor said he deliberately overestimated how much savings would be achieved as a negotiating tactic.

‘A good deal’

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com