CDCR STAR - Corrections Clips

Court says lukewarm food hot enough for prison
By Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle -- State prison rules say inmates are entitled to two hot meals a day - but it's up to prison officials to decide how hot is hot enough, a state appeals court ruled Tuesday.

Court: Prisoners not entitled to hot meals
By John Byrne, Raw Story -- Death row inmates can get a last meal, but prisoners aren't entitled to hot food, a California appeals court ruled Tuesday.The ruling came despite a California Corrections Department regulation which says all prisoners are entitled to three meals a day, "two of which shall be served hot."

California Court Rules Prison Officials Have Right To Determine Inmate Food Temperature
All Headline News -- The First District of Appeal in San Francisco ruled that it is the prerogative of prison officials to determine the food temperature of inmates. The decision overturned a ruling by the Pelican Bay State Prison in Del Norte County mandating jail officials to ensure inmates receive hot meals.

Doctors accused of overbilling Calif. Charged
Associated Press -- Six doctors suspected of overbilling the state for medical and psychiatric services provided to inmates at Salinas Valley State Prison are facing charges of grand theft and presenting false claims.

Soledad prison doctors indicted
By Sunita Vijayan, Salinas Californian -- The chief medical officer at Salinas Valley State Prison and five other physicians are accused defrauding state taxpayers of more than $150,000 by lying about their work hours and doctoring their timesheets, the Monterey County District Attorney's Office said Tuesday.

Complaint filed over Madison prison site
Woodland Daily Democrat -- A grassroots organization formed to oppose the construction of a state prison in Madison filed an administrative complaint against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Save Rural Yolo County filed the complaint with the Office of the Inspector General, claiming that the corrections department violated certain contracting standards in its allocation of jail construction funding under Assembly Bill 900.

California executions remain on hold while lethal injection protocol reviewed
By Denny Walsh, Boston Herald -- There will be no executions by California in the near future.An appellate court has ruled the state failed to follow required procedures in fashioning a revised protocol for administering lethal injections. The revised protocol was not vetted through a period of public notice and comment, as required by the state’s Administrative Procedures Act, a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco ruled Friday.

Lessons for life after lockup
By Scott Smith, Stockton Record -- Larry Baker, the coordinator of the Beyond Incarceration program, and a former prisoner, designed the program to give parolees the tips they need to succeed in life after being locked up. Baker brought together the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's Division of Adult Parole Operations and judges of the San Joaquin County Superior Court. Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate was keynote speaker.

REVOLVING DOORS: The crisis in California's parole system
By Mark Walker and Teri Figueroa, North County Times -- Each year, nearly 2,000 men and women walk out of California's overcrowded prisons and back into the North County communities where they lived. Most have no job and no place to live. Many are struggling with drug or alcohol addiction. Few will succeed in rebuilding their lives, authorities say. A majority of parolees will return to prison within months of their release, some after committing crimes in their neighborhoods, others for violating parole.

REVOLVING DOORS: Groups ready to help parolees
By Teri Figueroa, North County Times -- All North County parolees must attend a meeting soon after they get out of prison to learn what resources are out there for them. Run by local parole agents, the meetings represent a new focus for the state's corrections department: reducing the number of parolees returned to prison.

REVOLVING DOORS: 'It was up to me'
By Teri Figueroa, North County Times -- On a cool September day, Scott Moore left the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in Otay Mesa, where he had been a prisoner for four months, and headed home to Escondido. He had no job, no food, and no place to sleep. Only $200, and a warning to report to a parole agent within 24 hours.

REVOLVING DOORS: Donovan an example of California's broken prisons
By Teri Figueroa and Mark Walker, North County Times -- Swing open a gymnasium door at the R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility and the stale odor of steamy sweat hits you square in the face. This is no longer a recreational facility. It's home to hundreds of prisoners who spend most of their time on double-stacked rows of bunk beds. It's a picture symbolic of everyday life in California's besieged prison system, one crushed by overcrowding born in part of a parole system that returns seven of every 10 prisoners within months of their release and does little to prepare them for re-entry into society.

REVOLVING DOORS: Ray Gates: 'We ain't angels. We aren't innocent.'
By Teri Figueroa, North County Times -- Ray Gates, 28, Escondido: (R.J. Donovan Inmate) “We have to live together, so we all get along. You get a lot more respect in here than by people on the outside. It's policy here (among prison inmates, whose behaviors are unofficially regulated by prison gangs). Everything here is respect; you find a lot of respect given here. Otherwise, it would be real chaotic.”

REVOLVING DOORS: Parolee George Loving: 'I didn't think I was ever gonna change'
North County Times -- George Loving, 48, Vista: "I done pretty much spent my entire life in prison."When they say prison is a revolving door, it's a revolving door. You know, you get out and think you ready and all the sudden you end up back in there for this and that. It just went on and went on.”

Man to be freed amid questions about crime lab analysis
By Tracey Kaplan, San Jose Mercury News -- In 1997, Dung The Pham was sentenced to 29 years to life in prison, after a jury convicted him of first-degree murder for a fatal shooting outside a Vietnamese cafe in southeast San Jose. Because he is a Vietnamese national, Pham will be placed on an immigration hold for a month or so after his release from San Quentin Prison, and then freed, Swanson said. Pham will not be deported under laws pertaining to felonious aliens because he is a political refugee from Vietnam, Swanson said.

Man loses appeal of sentence for gang attack
By Elizabeth Larson, Lake County News -- A Lakeport man has lost his appeal of a conviction handed down earlier this year for attacking and stabbing a man during a March 2007 gang attack. On Monday, First Appellate Court justices agreed unanimously in a three-page decision to uphold the 15-years-to-life sentence that Ricardo Tapia Muniz, now 20, received from visiting Judge Galen Hathaway on May 2. Muniz, according to court documents, is serving his sentence at San Quentin State Prison.

Special Report: Peering Into Minds of Sex Offenders
WPTZ.com -- In the summer of 2008, sex crimes against children were thrust into the forefront of North Country residents' minds when a 12-year-old Braintree, Vt., girl went missing, only to be found days later in a shallow grave -- the apparent victim of a violent sexually motivated murder committed by a family member, according to federal prosecutors.