In the next year or two, the state may see a reduction of 1,500 inmates who work on firefighting crews.

In effort to satisfy a state mandate requiring counties to take on more state prisoners to reduce prison overcrowding could have a drastic impact on the California’s inmate firefighting program. Report by NBC LA.

In the next year or two, the state may see a reduction of 1,500 inmates who work on firefighting crews, as less serious offenders serve time in county lockups instead of state prisons.

It’s the first time officials have said how many inmate firefighters might be lost to the realignment.

California’s inmate firefighting program is the largest in the nation. Fire crews perform 2.5 million hours of emergency response work per year, according to Cal Fire Spokesperson Daniel Berlant.

Currently, there are between 4,300 and 4,500 inmates who participate in the program, Berlant said.
In Los Angeles County alone, there are five camps.

The Sheriff’s Department has opted to take over the five LA County camps.

“It is our goal to maintain this valuable public safety program for the citizens of the County and we do not want to see it disappear,” said Nicole Nishida, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s media relations representative.

But most sheriffs say their counties can’t afford the $46.19 a day the state plans to charge for each prisoner sent to the camps, said Curtis Hill, a lobbyist for the California State Sheriffs’ Association.

Counties also are concerned about the cost of inmates’ transportation and medical care, said Rosemary McCool, a lobbyist with the California State Association of Counties.

“Fire camps certainly could be, will be, a good opportunity for us, but we simply can’t do it at those rates,” said Butte County Sheriff Jerry Smith, who heads the sheriffs association’s effort on fire camps.

Additionally, the pool of non-violent prisoners will decrease if the system remains as is, said Berlant.

The Public Safety Realignment (AB 109) signed by Governor Jerry Brown addresses the issue of overcrowding in California’s prisons.

Under the state bill, formerly sentenced inmates in state prisons may now be housed at the county level. The law took effect on October 1, 2011.

The Cal Fire Conservation Camp Program has been in existence since the 1940’s and operates in conjunction with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and the Division of Juvenile Justice.

The program consists of non-violent prisoners, housed at conservation camps in 39 statewide locations. Typically, inmates spend a three-year duration at the camp, participating in community service projects.

Tammy California, Inmate Programs, Prison Realignment, Work Programs

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Two months into California’s most far-reaching public safety realignment in decades, some counties are seeing a higher-than-expected influx of inmates who could crowd jails to the breaking point much earlier than expected.State corrections officials say it is too soon to panic and expect the numbers to even out after an initial surge.

But reality is settling in as local law enforcement agencies struggle to contain criminals with a history of violence, substance abuse and mental illness who previously would have been tucked away in state prisons. Report by Mercury News.

Los Angeles County had said its more than 22,000 jail beds could be full by Christmas, although officials now have pushed the projection back by several months. Officials in the state’s most populous county are eying early release of less serious offenders and considering alternatives to jail, such as tracking criminals with GPS-linked ankle bracelets.

In Orange County, more than 60 detainees recently had to sleep on the jail floor until beds could be made available. That evokes recent images from state prisons, which were so overcrowded that inmates were housed in three-tier bunk beds in gymnasiums and day rooms.

Fresno County no longer will incarcerate parole violators to keep from crowding its 2,427-bed jail. Parolees could still go to jail if they commit new crimes, but not for violating parole conditions.

The changes are the result of a law that took effect Oct. 1 that shifts responsibility for thousands of lower-level criminals from the state to local jurisdictions. Only defendants convicted after that date are affected.Judges no longer can send offenders to state prison for crimes such as auto theft, burglary, grand theft and drug possession for sale. Conrad Murray, convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of singer Michael Jackson, will serve his four-year sentence in Los Angeles County jail, where his sentence will automatically be cut in half due to state law.

Inmates currently in state prison will complete their full sentences there, but parole violators who previously would have been returned to state prison now can only be incarcerated in county jails.

The law was driven by the state’s budget deficit and a federal court order, recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, requiring California to reduce its prison population by 33,000 inmates as a way to improve medical care.

“We anticipated some bumps in the road, and there have been,” said Merced County Sheriff Mark Pazin, president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association.

He said the unexpected increase in the number of convicts coming to county jails has been the biggest problem to date.

The surge in some counties appears to be “a bubble” created because defense attorneys delayed sentencings until after the new law took effect so their clients would do their time in county jails instead of state prisons, said Dana Toyama, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The department projects the rate will level off in the coming months, she said.

If the trend continues, however, local law enforcement officials may have to lobby state legislators not only for more money but to shift some crimes back under state jurisdiction so offenders would again go to state prison, Fresno County Chief Probation Officer Linda Penner said.

“It was a massive overhaul of a very large system,” said Penner, who is president of the Chief Probation Officers Association of California. “I think we have to watch it for a while before we can go in and ask for legislative change.”

The early trends and responses are as varied as California’s 58 counties, each of which is taking a different approach under a law designed to give local jurisdictions more flexibility and responsibility for their own wrongdoers.

Counties have been given a total of $400 million to help pay their increased costs, and the state has set aside $603 million to help them build more jails. It also is giving cities and counties $490 million in other assorted law enforcement grants.

In Los Angeles County, Assistant Sheriff Cecil Rhambo Jr. said in late October that the county’s more than 22,000 jail beds might be full by Christmas. But department spokesman Steve Whitmore said the jails now are expected to reach capacity next spring or summer. The county is using some of the money it received from the state to hire more deputies, which will let the county accommodate more inmates, Whitmore said.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, a Republican, has been one of the most outspoken critics of the law, which was sought by Gov. Jerry Brown and approved by the Democrats who control the Legislature. He predicts an increase in crime as a result.

Cooley said his attorneys have been trained to comb offenders’ criminal histories, searching for factors that would enhance the charges against them and thus, if convicted, send them to state prison instead of county jail.

“We will look for every way around this that is ethical, honest, legitimate and lawful,” Cooley said. “We are going to give the courts the option to send them to ‘the joint’ if it’s appropriate.”

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon is taking a far different approach in a county that has seen no great influx of inmates. He has proposed that the county Board of Supervisors create a local sentencing commission that would help determine punishment based on criminals’ risk to public safety.

About 70 percent of the jail population in San Francisco and Los Angeles County is awaiting trial, and many of the detainees could be safety released using alternatives such as GPS tracking, he said. That would free jail space for those who have been convicted of more serious offenses.
“We are going to be doing business differently, but I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing,” Gascon said. “The reality is that if you look at the way we have incarcerated people and the recidivism rate, we haven’t been doing a very good job.”

Currently, about seven of every 10 inmates paroled statewide quickly commit a new crime, a recidivism rate far above the national average.

The shift is creating other challenges for local authorities.

“The common denominator to all these folks is an addiction to methamphetamine,” Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson said of the inmates in his county who previously would have gone to state prisons. “That creates the challenges in getting them the services they need.”

Local officials also are dealing with dangerous criminals despite promises from state lawmakers that they would only face those convicted of non-serious, nonviolent and non-sex offenders.

“They are a large number, maybe even a majority, that have serious and violent offenses in their rap sheets,” even if their current offense is relatively minor, said Sacramento County Chief Probation Officer Don Meyer.

Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims announced last week that her jail will no longer accept parole violators because of the surge in inmates there, forcing state parole agents to find other punishments for those who don’t follow the rules.

So far, her jail is less crowded than it was before the state’s realignment because Mims used state funding to open 432 minimum security jail beds. Her office also is working with county probation officers and local police departments to create teams that will do frequent checks on criminals placed on community supervision.

Orange County Assistant Sheriff Mike James said the jail still has 900 empty beds but doesn’t have the staff to manage the unexpected influx. Nearly 70 detainees were forced to sleep on the floor until beds could be made available.

“Long-term, if the numbers hold out to be true, you’ll be full and then difficult decisions will have to be made about who stays in and who gets released,” James said.

Tammy California, Overcrowding, Uncategorized

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Lisa Gesik hesitates to log into her Facebook account nowadays because of unwanted “friend” requests, not from long-ago classmates but from the ex-husband now in prison for kidnapping her and her daughter.

Neither Gesik nor prison officials can prove her ex-husband is sending her the messages, which feature photos of him wearing his prison blues and dark sunglasses, arms crossed as he poses in front of a prison gate. It doesn’t matter if he’s sending them or someone else is – the Newport, Ore., woman is afraid and, as the days tick down to his January release, is considering going into hiding with her 12-year-old daughter. Report by Huffington Post.

“It’s just being victimized all over again,” she said.

Across the U.S. and beyond, inmates are using social networks and the growing numbers of smartphones smuggled into prisons and jails to harass their victims or accusers and intimidate witnesses. California corrections officials who monitor social networking sites said they have found many instances in which inmates taunted victims or made unwanted sexual advances.

Like Gesik’s case, it’s often difficult for authorities to determine for sure who’s sending the threatening material and the few people caught rarely face serious consequences.

“The ability to have these kinds of contacts is increasing exponentially. In many ways, the law has not caught up with these changing technologies,” said Rob Bovett, an Oregon district attorney whose office prosecuted Gesik’s ex-husband, Michael Gladney.

Timothy Heaphy, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said criminals’ use of social networks to reach witnesses has made his job harder.

“We deal every day with witnesses who are afraid of being identified,” he said. “If there are increased instances where folks who are incarcerated can reach outside the walls of the jail, that’s going to make it more difficult for us to get cooperation.”

In a rare victory, Heaphy’s office successfully prosecuted John Conner and Whitney Roberts after they set up a Facebook account that Conner used to intimidate witnesses preparing to testify against him on charges of burning two houses to punish a girlfriend and collect the insurance.

“How the hell can u b a gangsta when u snitchin and lien…,” said a post from the pair that publicly exposed one witness who cooperated with law enforcement, according to federal court records.

The issue has emerged as cell phones have proliferated behind bars. In California, home to the nation’s largest inmate population, the corrections department confiscated 12,625 phones in just 10 months this year. Six years ago, they found just 261. The number of phones confiscated by the federal Bureau of Prisons has doubled since 2008, to 3,684 last year.

Noting the increase, California legislators approved a law bringing up to six months in jail for corrections employees or visitors who smuggle mobile devices into state prisons, while inmates caught with the phones can now lose up to 180 days of early-release credit. But no additional time is added to their sentence, minimizing the deterrence factor.

In the old days, those behind bars would have to enlist a relative or friend to harass or intimidate to get around no-contact orders. Social networks now cut out the middle man.

In Gesik’s case, Gladney used to harass her the old-fashioned way, sending letters and making phone calls through third parties. The Facebook harassment began in June.

Gesik, 44, got prison officials to contact Facebook to remove that account, only to have another message appearing to be from him in September. This time, there was a different spelling of his last name.

“I figure, if he’s done all this from in prison, what’s he’s going to do when he gets out?” Gesik said.

A gap in state law meant that “no contact” orders like the one Gesik obtained against Gladney were deemed not to apply to anyone in custody, said Bovett, the prosecutor. “So they could do these very creative ways of reaching victims through third parties,” he said.

Last June, Oregon legislators approved a law prohibiting inmates from contacting their domestic violence victims from behind bars.

In California, prison officials are working with Facebook to identify inmate accounts and take them down. But that only generally happens only after the damage is done.

Karen Carrisosa, who lives in a Sacramento suburb, was aghast when officials found Facebook postings from Corcoran State Prison inmate Fredrick Garner. Garner is serving a 22-year, involuntary manslaughter sentence for killing her husband, 50-year-old Larry Carrisosa, outside a church 11 years ago.

“My kids, they go on Facebook, I go on Facebook, and what if they decide to look us up?” Carrisosa said.

She was alerted by a Sacramento television station that Garner was posting messages to his mother and others. Garner was punished with a 30-day reduction in his early release credits for possessing a forbidden cell phone and has since been transferred to Salinas Valley State Prison.

Hector Garcia Jr. used a smuggled smart phone hidden in his cell at Kern Valley State Prison to rally support on Facebook for an inmate hunger strike this summer that sought improved living conditions for gang leaders housed in special secure cellblocks.

“Starving for my better future,” he posted, according a July 1 screen grab from the corrections department. “Let’s do this … statewide…”

The discovery rattled Isabel Gutierrez. Garcia murdered one of her sons and wounded another in January 2005. Now Gutierrez fears her own social-networking left her vulnerable.

“I panicked,” she said. “My photos are up of my family and my grandkids. I felt like they can see into my world.”

Guards found Garcia’s phone, punishing him with a 30-day cut in early-release credits and 30 days’ loss of yard, TV and radio privileges.

Attorneys who represented Garcia and Gladney in their previous criminal trials did not return phone calls seeking comment on behalf of their former clients.

Tammy Computer use, Sacramento

The Sacramento County Probation Department announced that it has been awarded a grant to step-up supervision of individuals repeatedly convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Tammy Grants, Probation and Parole, Sacramento

SACRAMENTO, CA – The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is churning out 26,000 layoff warning notices by the end of the week.

It’s the result of Gov. Brown’s plan that began sentencing some low-level inmates this month to county jails instead of state prison. The move aims to relieve overcrowding as the courts ordered and save the state money. Report by News 10.

“Ultimately, will we be able to save every single person from being impacted by the layoff? I doubt it,” said Robert Downs, spokesman for the corrections department’s Office of Personnel.

Due to labor laws and union contracts, warning notices have to be given at least 120 days in advance of an actual layoff. It gives workers an opportunity to transfer or be demoted.

While the layoffs affect almost every job category, prison guards are likely to be affected the most since they are half of the agency’s 65,000 workforce.

It’s unclear how many of the 26,000 corrections workers will ultimately lose their jobs since the inmate shift has never been tried before.

Many workers are reluctant to speak because they thought it could hurt their chances in finding another position, but the prison guards union thinks the move is unreasonable.

“It is very difficult for a lot of folks to relocate,” said Ryan Sherman with the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. “Most people are underwater with their homes. To sell a house you can’t even get out from under and go drag your kids out of schools and move across the state, it’s a big deal.”

The prison guards union typically has unusual clout under a Democratic governor but tough budget times and a court mandate call for unusual measures.

Groups pushing to lower prison spending think it’s time to spend the $10 billion corrections budget on something else.

“We are in a budget crisis,” said Emily Harris with Californians for a Responsible Budget. “Now is the moment in California that we need to really shift our thinking and move the resources into what people really need.”

Tammy California, Prison Realignment

More non-violent offenders, non-serious offenders, non-registerable sex offenders and state parolees are being sent to Tulare County to help California gain control of its bulging state-prison population.

Signed into law in April by Gov. Jerry Brown, Assembly Bill 109, which ordered a sharp reduction in the state-prison population to reduce overcrowding and address medical inadequacies, went into effect Oct. 1. Report by Recorder Online.

Since then, 20 non-violent, non-serious and/or non-registerable sex offenders, all of whom would have gone to state prisons under traditional sentencing standards, have instead been sent to Tulare County facilities, Sheriff’s Department Capt. Robin Skiles said Wednesday.

Their sentences range from 16 months to four years but can be reduced if enough good time-work time is logged, he said.

Skiles said no challenges have been encountered thus far but noted the realignment effort is still in its infancy.

“It’s still really early to gauge what kind of impact it will be,” he said.

By the end of fiscal year 2012-13, Skiles said he expects the adult pretrial facility, which currently has 234 beds available, to be fully functional. The county is home to four jails, a day-reporting center and about 1,600 inmates, he said.

The California Department of Corrections estimates Tulare County facilities will have an average daily population of 520 non-violent, non-serious and/or non-registerable sex offenders at full implementation.

The Sheriff’s Department received $2.86 million, which will add 52 full-time positions, from the state to assist with the shift.

Skiles said he believes the governor’s plan can work as long as the county continues to receive sufficient funding.

“As long as there’s adequate funding, we’re very optimistic that this is going to work,” he said.

Meanwhile, since Oct. 1, 27 inmates from state prisons who have been released on parole have been sent to the county to report to county probation officers instead of state parole agents, Christie Myer, the county Probation Department’s assistant chief probation officer, said Wednesday.

This fiscal year, she said she expects a minimum of 408 Post-Release Community Supervision (PRCS) offenders to be released to the county. For fiscal year 2012-13, Myer said she anticipates another 500-plus PRCS offenders to be sent to the county.

“We are very hopeful for positive outcomes and are committed to providing supervision services that address public safety and offender needs,” Myer said.

According to Myer, since January 2010, an average of 200 PRCS offenders per month have been in the county without any supervision services after being released from state prison on non-revocable parole.

“Local supervision is a far better alternative to none,” she said.

The Probation Department received $2.79 million, which will add 27 positions and the AB 109 Adult Supervision Unit, from the state to help with the realignment effort.

Myer was pleased to say the county’s impacted agencies have worked very well together to help carry out the governor’s plan.

“It is early in the process,” she said. “We will be carefully monitoring this population over the next nine months and analyze the impact they have on our communities, our local law enforcement, our jail facilities and our judicial system.”

Tammy California, Prison Realignment

Construction of solar power plants has begun at four state prisons, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Thursday.

Workers with SunEdison have started installing solar panels at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi; Chuckawalla Valley and Ironwood prisons in Blythe; and North Kern State Prison in Delano. Report by the Los Angeles Times.

The projects call for a total of more than 83,000 solar panels, providing 25 megawatts of solar power a year, the CDCR said. The environmental impact of the projects will be the equivalent of taking 90,000 cars off the road for a year.

The agency expects the projects to save taxpayers $57 million in energy costs over the 20-year life of the panels.

All four projects are expected to be completed by December.

Solar panels are scheduled to be installed at the state prison in Lancaster next summer.

Tammy California, Energy Efficiency Solutions, Environment and Energy

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, right, initially decried the federal jail probe but has softened his tone and admitted that he has done a poor job of overseeing the system. He did not attend Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times / August 19, 2011)

Contending that allegations of prisoner mistreatment have “shattered” public faith in the Los Angeles County jail system, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved on Tuesday an outside oversight committee and measures that could potentially overhaul the sheriff’s use-of-force policy.

The moves followed weeks of reports in The Times and other organizations detailing allegations of abuse of inmates and a code of silence within the Sheriff’s Department, which oversees the nation’s largest jail system. The FBI is also investigating potential misconduct. Report by the Los Angeles Times.

One motion, written by Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Mark Ridley-Thomas, creates a seven-person committee selected by the board to review the jails and make recommendations to fix any problems. The committee would partly rely on a support staff of volunteer lawyers from private firms and would be funded by money normally used to pay legal judgments and damages.

Full coverage: Jails under scrutiny

Yaroslavsky said he did not think the committee would cost a “significant amount of money” and could help offset millions of dollars in future legal costs.

Ridley-Thomas said he believed outsiders with “fresh eyes” could do a more thorough investigation.

“To leave it exclusively under the domain of the sheriff is problematic,” he said.

Some supervisors wondered how much authority the group would have, especially given that Sheriff Lee Baca is an elected official.

“For the most part, the sheriff can do whatever he wants to,” said Gloria Molina, who noted that the board still controlled the department’s budget and could therefore influence the sheriff’s jail management.

For the committee to be effective, supervisors would have to appoint members willing to make tough choices, said Peter Eliasberg, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, a persistent critic of Baca’s jailers.

“They have to be able to say: ‘I don’t care what the board wants me to tell them. I’m going to tell them what they need to know,’ ” Eliasberg said.

The supervisors’ second action calls for rotating deputies from jail to jail, which Baca has said he is open to considering, as well as making jail supervisors spend more time walking cell rows and reporting suspicious inmate injuries.

Molina, the plan’s author, also recommended banning the use of heavy flashlights to subdue inmates, forbidding head strikes and installing more cameras in jails.

Representatives with the deputies union objected to the flashlight restriction, saying that they are less cumbersome than batons in close quarters and that deputies are trained not to strike inmates in the head unless the situation is exceptional.

They also said batons are potentially more dangerous than flashlights because they are larger and can generate more force.

“It’s like taking a 14-inch stick and … replacing it with a baseball bat,” said Mark Divis, vice president of the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs.

The group also objected to potentially putting cameras on deputies on grounds that they could be awkward and intrusive.

Molina asked for an additional report within two weeks about the union’s concerns.

All of Tuesday’s actions could undercut Baca, who has resisted outside investigation of his agency, but supervisors said the moves were necessary.

“I think [Baca] needs help and he recognizes he needs help,” Yaroslavsky said.

Baca initially decried the federal probe for legal reasons but has softened his tone and admitted that he has done a poor job of overseeing the jails. He did not attend Tuesday’s meeting, but Molina said that she heard from him earlier this week and that he generally supported the moves.

Baca is “very open to listening to comments and suggestions” and does not object to the committee, said Nicole Nishida, a sheriff’s spokeswoman.

Molina expressed some impatience with Baca and the pace of reform, pointing to earlier recommendations that were not implemented.

“I’ve heard it before,” she said. “We need to be ever more vigilant…. This is a very troubling issue.”

Tammy California, Inmate Assaults

The manned guard tower over looks the entry to Calipatria State Prison.

As the state’s massive prison and parole department begins a historic downsizing to cut costs and comply with court orders, it’s getting a hand from organized labor.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association and five other unions have signed contract amendments for Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation employees that set aside some job protections, drastically cut employees’ state-paid moving allowances and aim to reduce prison officer overtime costs. Report by The Sacramento Bee.

The state estimates the deals will save about $13 million in this fiscal year, compared with the traditional layoff process.

In exchange, unions hope fewer workers will lose their jobs as the department shifts some of its responsibilities to local government. That process started Oct. 1, aiming to cut the state’s prison and parole costs over several years.

By September, the state’s 63,000-employee prison and parole agency had issued more than 2,100 warning notices, the first wave of several to come.

Although the state and the unions say the agreements are a plus for both sides, some employees are unhappy that they may have to uproot.

CCPOA spokesman JeVaughn Baker said Tuesday that the concessions aren’t “ideal” and acknowledged that some union members are upset at the prospect of moving to remote facilities around the state.

“However, we also understand that CDCR is downsizing,” Baker said, “and it is better for our members to relocate than to be jobless in this struggling economy.”

Ron Yank, who heads Gov. Jerry Brown’s Department of Personnel Administration, said the agreements are a “win-win” for the government and its employees.

“We – the state – will save millions of dollars by moving people from places we don’t need them to places where we’re understaffed,” Yank said Tuesday. “The employees get certainty in uncertain economic times.”

Of the 21 bargaining units that negotiate contracts for state employees, 18 represent workers in prisons and parole offices, from correctional officers and parole officers to cooks and custodians. Bargaining units representing state attorneys, engineers and scientists haven’t yet signed new agreements.

Yank said he expects they will ink deals “soon.”

Benefits vs. jobs

Potentially thousands of jobs are in play. Lawmakers, in response to court orders to reduce the prison population and California’s budget woes, signed off this year on a realignment plan that shifts some state penal and parole responsibilities to local governments.

California houses 144,000 inmates in its 33 adult institutions, but the corrections department estimates it will shed 20,000 of those individuals by next summer and another 14,000 by July 2013.

The department also is shifting its adult parole responsibilities to local governments, making obsolete approximately 900 state parole agent and parole support staff jobs.

“The unions had no choice but to play ball,” said Joshua Page, a University of Minnesota sociology professor who has studied the history of California’s penal system. “It came down to keeping benefits and protections or keeping jobs.”

The new union arrangements vary somewhat by union and job classification, but they share broad contours.

Correctional officers who worked at an overstaffed facility, for example, had until this week to volunteer to move to one of five understaffed prisons, including California State Prison, Sacramento, in Folsom, Pelican Bay State Prison near Crescent City and High Desert State Prison near Susanville.

About 200 CCPOA members had volunteered as of Tuesday, Yank said. They’ll get $3,750 to $7,500 to defray moving costs. The state also will give them one day to three days of time off. Employees who want more time can draw up to 10 days from their own accumulated leave credits.

That’s a huge savings for the state, which can wind up paying an average of $30,000 per employee to assist with moving costs, Yank said. Much of that money usually goes to help with employee housing expenses.

Officers in danger of losing their jobs but who don’t want to move voluntarily can bid to join an “overtime avoidance” pool or become “permanent-intermittent” employees. Those groups will be tapped to fill open shifts that would otherwise be covered by overtime.

Cuts to play out in waves

Once those two groups are in place, the corrections department will post which facilities remain overstaffed and understaffed, and which jobs are open. Officers and other department employees can bid for jobs statewide based on seniority.

It’s a significant change, since CDCR layoffs usually happen on a county-by-county basis. That meant that an employee in, say, Riverside County with seven years of service couldn’t displace an employee with less time on the job doing the same work in another county.

The new arrangement “honors the principle of seniority on a statewide basis,” Yank said, by allowing the longest-serving employees under threat of layoff to bump less-senior colleagues anywhere in California.

Employees who don’t go for any of the first three options could be forced to transfer anyway with a reduced moving allowance while they let the standard layoff process play out, which will take four months.

All the new union agreements allow transferring regular employees to fill positions currently occupied by retirees who have returned to the workforce. The deals also quicken the pace of grievance procedures and arbitration when an employee alleges the state violated the new agreements.

“Our members will have many more opportunities and protections than they would have under any previous layoff process,” said SEIU Local 1000 vice president for bargaining Margarita Maldonado in a message to union members.

The layoffs won’t all happen at once. Corrections officials will monitor the prison population, and as it shrinks, the department will issue more notices that employees need to transfer or risk layoff.

“This will be done in waves,” said Ken Murch, chief negotiator and lobbyist for the California Association of Psychiatric Technicians, which represents 7,000 state workers. “In the end, there may be no alternative but to lay people off.”

Murch said his group agreed to a deal much like CCPOA’s, even though relatively few of the association’s members work for the corrections department.

“The state isn’t really sure what the impact will be right now to our members,” Murch said. “We just wanted to get the documents in place in case they start needing to relocate.”

Tammy California, Economic Issues, Prison Union Issues

With the continued popularity of social media and networking sites like Facebook, many people use these sites as one of their main forms of communication. That includes prison inmates.

According to Dana Toyama, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, over the last month and a half, the CDCR in partnership with Facebook has shut down the profile pages of 45 inmates they found were actively using the networking site. Report by Daily Press.

“We’re finding that inmates who have (smuggled) cell phones — especially smart phones — can access the Internet and can get onto their profiles,” she said.

According to CDCR rules and regulations, inmates are not allowed access to the World Wide Web, she said, but they are finding ways around it. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s department has similar regulations, though they were unaware of any such issues in the local jails.

The harm isn’t just in the inmates communicating with friends or potential gang members on the outside, but in at least one case, the social media site has been used to stalk a victim.

One inmate had been sentenced to a state facility for lewd and lascivious acts with a child. Four years after being in prison, the victim’s family receives a package from the inmate with drawings of the victim as she currently looked.

“They were wondering how he knew what she looked like,” Toyama said. “Through intelligence we learned he had been stalking the victim’s Facebook page.”

In another more comical case, an inmate with a smuggled cell phone, was updating his status with pictures taken from his cell.

“It was actually funny that you could see him bunk in the background,” she stated.

In the past, authorities have had problems taking down the profile pages of inmates who violated prison regulations, she said. But with the recent agreement between the CDCR and Facebook, they have been able to shut down an average of one page a day for the last month and a half.

Corrections departments in other states have come to similar agreements with Facebook as authorities discovered inmates’ postings on the site.

In one case, Justin Walker, a gang member convicted of murdering a law enforcement officer in Oklahoma, posted pictures of himself in his cell.

If an inmate had a profile prior to being sentenced to prison and there’s no evidence the prisoner has been on his or her page, then the account can remain active.

“It’s only if they’re actively using it while they’re in custody that it’s taken down,” Toyama stated.

While state prison officials are always monitoring inmates for the use of contraband, Toyama said anyone who has information about a prisoner using social media to harass or stalk can call the Office of Victim and Survivor Rights Services at (877) 265-6877.

Tammy CA San Bernardino County, Social media and networking