Union Of the Snake: How California’s Prison Guards Subvert Democracy

• Sagar Jethani

Union Of the Snake How Californias Prison Guards Subvert Democracy

 

 

After being threatened with contempt by a panel of federal judges for failing to sufficiently reduce the number of prisoners in California’s jails, Governor Jerry Brown reluctantly unveiled a plan this month to further reduce the Golden State’s overcrowded prisons by another 9,000 inmates. Enthusiasm in Sacramento was in short supply.

Governor Brown argued that court orders were forcing him to jeopardize public safety by transferring prisoners to county jails and offering some of them early release.

Prisons chief Jeffrey Beard was more direct: “The plan is ugly. We don’t like it.”

Two years ago, California’s prisons held twice the number of inmates they were designed to hold, and that led to serious problems. In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Plata that California was violating prisoners’ Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. The Court estimated that an inmate in California’s prisons died every six to seven days due to inadequate medical care caused by overcrowding. Suicidal inmates were forced to stand in metal cages for 24 hours without access to restrooms. California was ordered to reduce inmate populations over two years from 150,000 to 110,000. When Jerry Brown crowed this January that California had done enough to satisfy the court’s requirements, he was threatened with contempt unless he continued reducing prison rolls down to the mandated target.

How did California’s prisons get so crowded in the first place? Golden State voters contributed to this crisis by approving some of the most stringent sentencing measures in the nation, including the 1994 Three Strikes Initiative. The law mandates 25 years to life in prison for three-time felons, even for nonviolent crimes. Strict sentencing laws enjoy bipartisan support in Sacramento. Republican legislators exult in preaching a tough-on-crime mantra — especially to the older, white demographic that tends to vote for them. And Democrats are surprisingly among the loudest voices calling for tougher sentencing laws lest they be called-out for being soft on crime.

Enter the California Correction Peace Officer’s Association, CCPOA, better known as the prison guards union.

Continue Reading @ PolicyMic

 

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Are California Prisons Punishing Inmates Based On Race?

Concertina razor wire at a prison (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Contributed By:

Christie Thompson

In several men’s prisons across California, colored signs hang above cell doors: blue for black inmates, white for white, red, green or pink for Hispanic, yellow for everyone else.

Though it’s not an official policy, at least five California state prisons have a color-coding system.

On any given day, the color of a sign could mean the difference between an inmate exercising in the prison yard or being confined to their cell. When prisoners attack guards or other inmates, California allows its corrections officers to restrict all prisoners of that same race or ethnicity to prevent further violence.

Prison officials have said such moves can be necessary in a system plagued by some of the worst race-based gang violence in the country. Just last week, at least four inmates were taken to the hospital after a fight broke out between over 60 black and Hispanic inmates in a Los Angeles jail.

The labels “provide visual cues that allow prison officials to prevent race-based victimization, reduce race-based violence, and prevent thefts and assaults,” wrote the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in response to a lawsuit.

But legal advocates say such practices are deeply problematic. “I haven’t seen anything like it since the days of segregation, when you had colored drinking fountains,” said Rebekah Evenson, an attorney with the nonprofit Prison Law Office.

A federal class-action lawsuit filed in 2011 by the Prison Law Office says race-based restrictions are an ineffective and unjust way of keeping prisoners safe. “Rather than targeting actual gang members, they assume every person is a gang member based on the color of their skin,” said Evenson, one of the lead lawyers in the case. According to the ACLU National Prison Project, California is the only state known to use race-based lockdowns.

State and federal courts have ruled against the practice multiple times. One state court judge concluded in 2002 that “managing inmates on the basis of ethnicity” was counterproductive, and instead increased hostilities among prisoners.

A recent review of corrections department reports, done for the Prison Law Office, suggests it’s still common practice. The analysis found that nearly half the 1,445 security-based lockdowns between January 2010 and November 2012 affected specific racial or ethnic groups. Inmates labeled as Hispanic were the most common targets, while inmates identified as “other,” (anyone not labeled black, white or Hispanic) were the least likely to be restricted.

Rejecting an inmate’s complaint in 2010, one prison’s inmate appeals reviewer noted that the department’s “policy is that when there is an incident involving any race, all inmates of that race are locked up.” Another review cited the same policy.

California’s corrections department spokesperson Terry Thornton said that’s not department policy. Thornton said policy dictates that restrictions will not “target a specific racial or ethnic group unless there is a legitimate penological interest in doing so.”

“A legitimate penological interest is safety, security,” Thornton said. “It’s protecting people’s lives.”

Prisoner advocates say race-based lockdowns may be yet another consequence of California’s crowding crisis. In 2011, the Supreme Court upheld a federal court ruling that crowding in the state’s prisons was severe enough to constitute cruel and unusual punishment, and required the state to cut its prison population.

Continue Reading @ OPB

 

 

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New Plan Would Return Calif. Inmates to State Prisons by June 2016

California inmates currently housed in out-of-state facilities will be returned to state prisons in stages through June 30, 2016, according to a plan submitted to U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Karlton on Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times‘ “PolitiCal” reports.

Karlton previously had directed state officials to explain in writing their plan to stop sending inmates to private prisons to reduce overcrowding (St. John, “PolitiCal,” Los Angeles Times, 2/6).

Background

About six years ago, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson appointed federal receiver J. Clark Kelso to oversee the state’s prison health care system after determining that an average of one inmate per week died as a result of malpractice or neglect.

In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered California to reduce its inmate population to help improve prison health care (California Healthline, 1/30). The state responded by transferring certain prisoners to private, out-of-state facilities.

However, the Brown administration several months ago announced its intention to return the inmates to California.

According to state prison population reports, California had 8,852 inmates in four out-of-state prisons run by Tennessee-based Correction Corp. of America as of Jan. 30.

Details of Plan

According to the plan filed by Brown’s lawyer, 4,527 inmates will finish their prison terms at out-of-state facilities. The plan noted that an average of 110 inmates are paroling out of the prisons each month.

The remaining 4,325 prisoners will be returned to California facilities in stages through June 2016, according to the plan.

The filing said, “The gradual return of these inmates will allow the state to avoid bunking inmates in prison gymnasiums or other makeshift housing units again.”

However, it stated that the end of private prison contracts will have no effect on the delivery of mental health care to inmates.

More Time To Reduce Prison Overcrowding

On Jan. 29, a three-judge panel — which included Karlton — granted California six additional months to comply with federal orders to reduce prison overcrowding (“PolitiCal,” Los Angeles Times, 2/6).

According to the judges, California officials have said that they cannot meet the federal deadline of June 30 for reducing the inmate population by 137.5% of design capacity. However, the judges said that state officials believe they can make the reduction by Dec. 31.

The judges wrote, “Accordingly, this court modifies the June 30, 2011, order by granting defendants a six-month extension in which to comply with its terms and provisions”

Via California HealthLine

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U.S. judges give California six more months to cut inmate population

By Sam Stanton and Denny Walsh

 

Three weeks after Gov. Jerry Brown declared the state’s prison overcrowding crisis over, a court of three federal judges said Tuesday that state officials can have six more months to reduce the inmate population to the previously ordered level.

The judges noted that California officials have said they cannot meet the court’s June 30 deadline for reducing its population to 137.5 percent of design capacity, but the officials believe they can hit that mark by Dec. 31.

“Accordingly, this court modifies the June 30, 2011, order by granting defendants a six-month extension in which to comply with its terms and provisions,” said the order from 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt, U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton of Sacramento and U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson of San Francisco.

Karlton and Henderson have overseen years of litigation aimed at bringing the level of mental and medical health care for inmates up to constitutional standards. Following a trial, the three-judge court appointed by the 9th Circuit’s chief judge ruled that the crowded conditions of the state’s 33 adult prisons were the primary reason for the unconstitutional care.

Prisoners were jammed into areas of the prisons not designed for housing. At some points, the number of inmates ballooned to double the designed capacity, and the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed the three-judge court’s order.

Since the governor instituted his so-called realignment program a year ago to divert nonviolent, nonserious offenders to county jurisdictions, the state has made progress cutting the prison population, but Brown said he cannot release additional inmates without putting the public at risk.

Corrections officials indicated they are pleased with Tuesday’s order but are still not satisfied.

“We are pleased the court recognized that releasing thousands of inmates to reach the arbitrary population cap by June would have jeopardized public safety,” the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement. “However, we believe the court should go further and terminate the population cap entirely, as CDCR is providing a constitutional level of health care at current population levels.

“It’s important to point out that the state has reduced the prison population by more than 43,000 inmates since 2006, and has spent billions of dollars to improve the delivery of care to inmates.”

It said even the December deadline is “an arbitrary number based on ‘original design capacity’ (that) would come at great risk to public safety or significant taxpayer expense.”

The federal court wants the prison population cut by the end of the year to about 110,000 inmates, down from about 119,000 currently. The design capacity of the state’s 33 adult prisons is about 80,000.

The court’s order noted that Brown’s administration declared earlier this month that “there are no ongoing systemwide constitutional violations in medical and mental health care,” and the state filed motions seeking to end oversight by the federal judges.

Michael Bien, lead attorney for the inmates, said Tuesday that “the order’s message is the judges are going to hold the state to the numbers. Corrections got an extension, but it didn’t get anything else. The question is still ‘Are they going to comply?’ “

Brown and his prison officials “are still saying everything is just fine and the courts should go away and leave us alone,” Bien said. “They claim the courts have no more jurisdiction since the constitutional standard has been met.

“It’s one thing to say that, it’s another to prove it,” he declared. “They have a long way to go to do that. They’ve made these claims before, but they’ve never been able to back them up.”

Throughout the rest of this year, he said, the state’s all-out push to rid itself of court supervision will be hotly contested.

Karlton has presided for more than 20 years over a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all seriously mentally ill inmates. The Brown administration has filed a motion to dismiss that suit and a motion to vacate the three-judge court’s ruling on population reduction. It has not yet filed a similar motion in Henderson’s court seeking to do away with the class action on behalf of all medically ill inmates over which he presides.

Karlton has scheduled oral arguments for March 27 on the motion to wipe out the suit on behalf of mental patients in the prisons.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/01/ 30/5150765/us-judges-give- california-six.html#storylink= cpy

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The turn-around state? Does California have one of the finest prison systems in the nation?

Those of us that deal with CDCr absolutely know better- all California has done is play a massive game of Chess through realignment…moving prisoners to county jails that were already over burdened, to out of state private prison facilities where there is now furor over prisoners being kept in ‘rest homes’ among the elderly; as for medical care…there is STILL a serious lack in medical care and qualified doctors. California has done nothing to actually SOLVE the many issues inside its prisons, resorting to playing games with prisoners LIVES.

 

Jonathan Simon, professor of law

As readers of this blog know, Gov. Jerry Brown of California has combined leadership on reducing California’s bloated prison population with relentless attacks on the courts whose orders have made that badly needed “realignment” political possible.  Still even I was surprised by the air of unreality to the Governor’s dual press conference yesterday, backing up the state’s legal filings yesterday seeking an end to the federal court oversight of California’s prison health system, and a respite from its prison population cap (listen to the California Report’s coverage here).

We’ve gone from serious constitutional problem (sic) to one of the finest prison systems in the United States.  Most of the people get far better care for mental health problems or physical well being inside prison then they’ll get when released on the streets. (Cecilio Padilla’s reporting on Fox 40 here)

The state’s main correctional problem now, according to the governor, is the court’s oversight and lawyers.

While acknowledging court intervention had forced vast improvements to a system that was in crisis, Brown said overly intrusive judges had unleashed a feeding frenzy of highly paid attorneys “running around the prisons looking for problems.”(Paige St. John in the LA Times here)

I have not had time to read the state’s legal filings (almost done grading, almost) but these claims are remarkable and possibly outrageous.  First let’s remember the context.  Judge Thelton Henderson put the state’s prison health care system in receivership in 2005 finding that after three years the state had accomplished very little toward a settlement agreement for improving health care and that a prisoner a week was dying of unmet medical needs.  In 2009 a three-judge court ordered the population cap finding that chronic hyper overcrowding (with many units housing 300 percent of their already optimistic design capacity) was exacerbating the medical and mental health problems and making improvements impossible.  Then Attorney General Brown appealed to the US Supreme Court.  In Brown v. Plata (he was now Governor) the US Supreme Court upheld that order against all the same arguments the Governor is once again making.  Describing the lack of health care as approximating “torture” in its significance, Justice Kennedy wrote:

Just as a prisoner may starve if not fed, he or she may suffer or die if not provided adequate medical care. A prison that deprives prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity and has no place in civilized society.

Continue reading @ The Berkeley Blog

 

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Californians- Call to action from CURB

For Immediate Release – January 8th

Governor Asks Court to End Prison Population Reduction Requirement

Makes Another Attempt to Justify Unconstitutional Prison Overcrowding

 

Contact:  Emily Harris

Californians United for a Responsible Budget

510-435-1176

 

Sacramento CA—Yesterday the State of California filed another response to the Federal Court order to reduce dangerous overcrowding in California’s prison, urging the court to end the 137.5% population cap. In the Motion to Vacate or Modify Population Reduction Order, the state claimed that “overcrowding and health care conditions cited by this Court to support its population reduction order are now a distant memory.” California’s prisons currently hold 133,000 in space that was intended for 80,000.

This is one in a series of attempts by the Brown Administration to evade the Court’s order to reduce the prison population. In September, the Court rejected Brown’s attempt to raise the population cap to 145%.

“If people’s lives weren’t at stake, claiming that caging one and a half times the people our prisons were built to hold isn’t overcrowding would be laughable.  But this isn’t laughable, it’s morally outrageous,” says Diana Zuñiga, Field Organizer for Californians United for a Responsible Budget.  “There are clear, safe ways to bring people back to our communities that would increase public safety and free more funding for social services and the education system the Governor claims to value so much. It’s time for this administration to stop dragging it’s feet and make the kind of change Californians have been demanding for years.”

 

Advocates have proposed a series of parole and sentencing reform measures to reduce incarceration rates and corrections costs while improving public safety, many of which have been proven to work in other states.  Examples include releasing prop 36 eligible strikers, releasing terminally ill and permanently medically incapacitated prisoners, implementing an older prisoner release program, expanding good time credits, and reforming drug sentencing laws.

 

According to weekly population reports from CDCR, California State prisons continue to remain crowded well-past intended design capacity.  Based on the CDCR January report the recently-converted Valley State Prison for Men is at 292% capacity, and as a result of the conversion, the Central Valley Women’s Facility at 184%. The total CDCR system is at 146.1%.

“Instead of releasing people and closing VSPW, they are squeezing over 1,000 women and transgender people into the two remaining women’s prisons. The conversion has only aggravated overcrowding, created dangerous conditions, and caused health care to deteriorate. What’s more, they have added yet another men’s prison to their inhumane system,” says Hafsah Al-Amin from California Coalition for Women Prisoners.

 

Hundreds of former prisoners, family members, and advocates will rally at Valley State Prison on Saturday, January 26th.

 

–
Emily Harris
Statewide Coordinator
1322 Webster St. #210
Oakland, CA 94612
510-435-1176
Californians United for a Responsible Budget
emily@curbprisonspending.org
http://twitter.com/CURB_Prisons

VIDEO: Jerry Brown defiant in fight over prison inmate crowding

Gov. Jerry Brown railed this morning against federal oversight of California’s troubled prison system, calling it “intrusive” and “nit-picky” and vowing to fight in court to get the state out from under federal control.

A defiant Brown also lifted a state of emergency declared in 2006 by his predecessor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, due to prison overcrowding.

“The prison emergency is over in California,” Brown said.

Brown’s highly public and combative appeal followed a court filing late Monday in which his administration asked a federal court to withdraw its requirement that California make further reductions in prison inmate populations, and also to end federal oversight of mental health care in state prisons. The court had requested documents explaining how the state would further reduce its prison population.

Brown said releasing prisoners would endanger the public and that options provided by the state were made “under protest.”

Following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year, the Brown administration has reduced California’s prison population by shifting responsibility for many newly convicted, low-level offenders from prisons to county control. Brown’s office said the inmate population in the state’s 33 prisons has been reduced by more than 43,000 since 2006, to just less than 150 percent of capacity. The state is under court order to reduce crowding to 137.5 percent of capacity.

Brown said inmates now receive better health care than outside prison and that overcrowding is no longer an issue. Brown said the California prison system is now “one of the finest prison systems in the United States” and that “the job is now complete.”

“We’ve got it,” he said. “Enough already.”

Following his morning appearance at the Capitol, Brown planned to travel to Los Angeles to address reporters this afternoon in the state’s largest media market.

“We can run our own prisons, and by God let those judges give us our prisons back,” Brown said. “We’ll run them right.”

Brown said he will fight in court “as long as it takes.” Asked why he thinks the administration could prevail in court this year, following setbacks previously, Brown said the state now has “documentary evidence to make our case.”

Brown also suggested the court may look favorably on his appointment last month of a former Pennsylvania prison chief to head California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Jeffrey Beard was a member of a 2007 panel assessing the effectiveness of California’s prison and parole systems.

“I’ve taken their own expert, and I’ve made him head of corrections,” Brown said. “What more do you want?”

Brown said further federal oversight will only waste money California can not afford to spend.

“We can’t pour more and more dollars down the rat hole of incarceration,” he said.

 

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Cleve Foster has seen death’s door and lived to tell about it

What Cleve Foster remembers most about his recent brushes with death is the steel door, the last one condemned Texas inmates typically walk through before their execution.

“You can’t take your eyes off that door,” he said

By Michael Graczyk

AP

 

But twice over the past year and a half, Foster has come within moments of being escorted through the door, only to be told that the U.S. Supreme Court had halted his scheduled punishment.

On Tuesday, Foster, 48, is scheduled for yet another trip to the death house for participating in the abduction and slaying of a 30-year-old Sudanese woman, Nyaneur Pal, a decade ago near Fort Worth.

It takes just under an hour to drive west from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Polunsky Unit, where the state’s male Death Row inmates are housed, to the Huntsville Unit, where condemned Texas prisoners have been put to death for nearly a century. The last 485 have been by lethal injection; the first 361, from 1924 through 1964, from the electric chair.

On execution day, the condemned inmate waits, usually for about four hours, in a tiny cell a few steps from the steel door to the death chamber.

Foster, a former Army recruiter known to his Death Row colleagues as “Sarge,” denies his role in the murder. Prosecutors say DNA ties him to the killing and that he gave contradictory stories when questioned about Pal’s death.

“I did not do it,” he insisted recently from a tiny visiting cage outside Death Row.

Appeals again were pending in the courts, focusing on what his lawyers argued was poor legal help both at his 2004 trial in Fort Worth and by attorneys early in the appeals process. Similar appeals resulted in the three previous reprieves the courts subsequently have lifted, but his lawyers argue his case should get another look because the legal landscape has changed in death penalty cases.

“I don’t want to sound vain, but I have confidence in my attorney and confidence in my God,” he said. “I can win either way.”

Execution day

Pal’s relatives haven’t spoken publicly about their experiences of going to the prison to watch Foster die, only to be told the punishment has been delayed. An uncle previously on the witness list didn’t return a phone call from The Associated Press.

Foster, however, shared his thoughts of going through the mechanics of facing execution in Texas — and living to talk about it.

The process shifts into high gear at noon on the scheduled execution day when a four-hour-long visit with friends or relatives ends at the Polunsky Unit outside Livingston.

“That last visit, that’s the only thing that bothers me,” he said. “The 12 o’clock-hour hits. A dozen or so guards come to escort you.”

By Foster’s count, it’s 111 steps to the prison gate and an area known as the box cage. That’s where he’s secured to a chair for electronic scrutiny to detect whether he has any metal objects hidden on his body.

It’s the legacy of inmate Ponchai Wilkerson. Wilkerson, asked by the warden if he had a final statement after he was strapped to the death chamber gurney for execution in 2000, defiantly spit out a handcuff key he had concealed in his mouth.

“You’re in handcuffs, you’re chained at the ankles, they give you cloth shoes, and you have to shuffle to keep them on,” Foster said.

As he waddles the 111 steps, he gets acknowledgement from fellow prisoners who tap on the glass of their cells.

Continue Reading @ Star Telegram

Sign Sarge’s Petition click here: http://www.change.org/petitions/governor-of-the-state-of-texas-stop-the-execution-of-cleve-foster

 

 

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Sheriff Arpaio to close Tent City ahead of SB 1070 protest

by Chelsey Davis

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office will shut down all six of its jails Saturday because of a large protest expected in the evening.

Sheriff’s officials expect a protest by 1,000 to 4,000 activists at Tent City Jail near 29th Avenue and Durango Road in Phoenix, officials said. The shutdown means family and friends won’t be allowed to visit inmates at the jails for the entire day.

Puente Arizona and Unitarian Universalist Association officials said they will hold a peaceful vigil to protest Tent City and Senate Bill 1070. The Unitarians are holding a four-day convention at the Phoenix Convention Center with workshops, speakers and planned demonstrations.

Steve Carl, 67, a spokesman for the Unitarians, said the association discussed having an assembly in Arizona two years ago with the introduction of SB 1070 and decided to take action closer to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Arizona’s immigration law. The Supreme Court is expected to release its ruling soon.

“The main point is to show national disapproval of Arizona’s immigration laws,” Carl said. “Arizona is at the forefront of human violations and leading the way for other states in the country.”

Sheriff Joe Arpaio plans to be present at the demonstration to defend Tent City and his jail policies, officials said.

Several members of the convention gathered near Heritage Square on Thursday night for nearly an hour singing songs, praying and wearing shirts and showing banners.

 http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2012/06/21/20120621arizona-immigration-sheriff-arpaio-close-tent-city-jail-abrk.html#ixzz1yZTzAUHK

CA reduces prison population by thousands, almost meets Supreme Court target

Image via Wikipedia

 

California’s prison system has been shedding an average of 933 inmates a week since the governor’s realignment plan took effect this fall, and the state almost hit a court-mandated goal to reduce the population to 133,000 inmates by Dec. 27.

As of today, the state’s prisons held 134,804 inmates — just 1,800 short of the target and far closer to that goal than many expected.

California prison officials announced the numbers Tuesday and said they are in the midst of preparing a report, due by Jan. 10, that details the progress made toward meeting the court-ordered reductions.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in May that California must obey a lower court order to reduce its prison population, agreeing with federal judges who had found that overcrowding was the main cause of “grossly inadequate provision of medical and mental health care.”  In the 5-4 ruling, the high court agreed that the prison system — which has held nearly twice its designed capacity for more than a decade — should cut its population to 110,000 by spring of 2013. The court also and set a series of benchmarks for state officials to reach before then.

While state officials did not meet the first target — 167 percent of designed capacity, or 133,000 inmates — by Dec. 27, they got pretty close. In a short statement announcing the numbers, prison officials appeared to credit Gov. Jerry Brown’s realignment plan for the progress. The plan calls for most lower-level and nonviolent offenders to serve their prison sentences in local jails and report to county probation departments instead of the state parole agency upon release. In the written statement, prison officials said the plan — instituted Oct. 1 — has resulted in state prisons taking in an average of 933 fewer inmates per week.

The progress puts the state exactly where it said it would be in an August court filing.  In that filing, state officials predicted they would miss the 167 percent by two percentage points (the system is now at 169.2 percent of capacity) but would hit the next goal, a reduction to 155 percent, or 124,000 inmates, by June 27.

Via SF Gate

Report: Inmate health care remains poor in Calif.

Those of us who really know what is going on have been saying this for YEARS, despite what Clark Kelso ( the Federal Receiver), and the prison guards say. The TRUTH will always surface…..

By DON THOMPSON Associated Press

Posted: 05/04/2011
SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Medical care remains below acceptable levels in more than two-thirds of California state prisonsdespite the billions of dollars spent by taxpayers, the prison system’s independent inspector said in a report Wednesday.Just nine of the 33 adult prisons met minimum health care standards, according to the review, which is the first to survey all the facilities. Still, that finding is an improvement from an initial review of half the prisons last August, which gave passing grades to just two of 17.

A court-appointed receiver took control of inmate medical care in 2006 after a federal judge found that poor care was causing the death of an average of one inmate each week. The receiver has since increased salaries, hired more staff and improved medical facilities.

Spending has since more than doubled, from $707 million to $1.5 billion last year, according to the state Department of Finance. The cost per inmate has increased from $7,721 to $14,728, including other expenses like transporting and guarding sick inmates and providing them with dental and mental health services.

The report comes as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to rule by June whether California must sharply reduce its prison population as the only way to improve the care of physically and mentally ill inmates.

The receiver’s office did not immediately respond to telephone and emailed messages. In a one-paragraph letter accompanying the report, however, receiver J. Clark Kelso agreed with its findings. “We are committed to reform the California prison medical care system utilizing best practices in the most cost effective manner,” Kelso wrote. He cited the receivership’s “tremendous efforts and ongoing improvements.”

Read More @ The Mercury News