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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 30,2018WASHINGTON – Defying staffing mandates and the need for increased hiring to safeguard prisons, this week the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) made public it is initiating a process of eliminating jobs within the agency. The mandate will slash roughly 14 percent of positions from correctional facilities. The proposed cuts are coming at a time of severe understaffing in most of its prisons.  BOP has left thousands of authorized correctional workers’ positions vacant all year, endangering inmates in its custody, control, and care.  “President Trump came into office preaching about the need for a safer America, but instead he is...

Patients at Coalinga State Hospital remained on lockdown Tuesday as a few details began to emerge about violent protests that have erupted since new rules restricting the use of personal electronic devices were put into place. Since it started this lockdown, the California Department of State Hospitals has released little information on what caused the lockdown, how that cause is being addressed or how long it will be in place and did not respond to The Bee’s questions by deadline Tuesday. On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that Department of State Hospital officials cited lawsuit testimony claiming that a “porn...

The incident occurred Friday afternoon at California State Prison-Sacramento as the guards tried to stop two inmates from attacking another in the yard, said Krissi Khokhobashvili, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The prison is located in Folsom. The guards initially used less-than-lethal force — including 40-millimeter impact rounds, which are similar to rubber bullets — in trying to break up the fight, she said. The rounds are not intended to penetrate the skin. They resorted to pepper-spray grenades, then fired a warning shot, Khokhobashvili said. When a fourth inmate joined in the fight, the guards...

California is on its way to passing a new law that makes it illegal to call transgender senior citizens a pronoun they don't like. For example, if an elderly person who was born male and lives in a long-term care facility wishes to be called "her" or "she," the workers there had better do it or face the consequences. The proposed law would even apply to Christian facilities. SB 219, titled the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Long-Term Care Facility Resident's Bill of Rights," states, "It shall be unlawful for a long-term care facility or facility staff to.... willfully and...

OJ Simpson could be denied parole after he was caught pleasuring himself in his cell - strictly verboten in federal prisons in the U.S. - a prison source has told Dailymail.com. 'OJ is facing a disciplinary hearing after being written up for masturbating in his prison cell,' said the source. 'He was caught by a female corrections officer making her normal rounds in late June.' Dailymail.com confirmed with Lovelock Correctional Center that it does employ female corrections officers. When OJ, now 70, goes in front of the Nevada Department of Corrections Parole Board on Thursday, he still won't have faced...

Fighting erupted between rival gangs inside a state prison before dawn Thursday, and 28 inmates were killed and three wounded, officials in the Pacific resort said. Authorities had initially reported five deaths, but later raised the toll more bodies were found scattered throughout the prison. Robert Alvarez Heredia, the Guerrero state security spokesman, said in a statement that the fighting broke out around 4 a.m. He said security forces later regained control and slowly began discovering bodies in a kitchen, a cellblock and other areas. "The incident began because of the constant dispute between rival groups inside the prison," Alvarez...

Guards at the Kirkland Correctional Institution rushed to Denver Simmons' cell and made a grisly discovery: Four men from the unit for mentally ill prisoners had been beaten and strangled.

The outdoor jail that was Mr. Arpaio’s marquee undertaking was a travesty. Ostensibly established to save money and deter criminals, who presumably would want to avoid sweltering in desert heat, it failed on both counts. In fact, closing the encampment will save taxpayers some $4.5 million annually. And in a recent study, the inmates there said they preferred the facility, the heat notwithstanding, to the cramped cells in conventional jails. In announcing that the encampment would be closed, after 24 years, Mr. Arpaio’s successor, Paul Penzone, a Democrat, said, “Starting today, the circus ends, and the tents come down.” Mr....

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The first U.S. inmate to have taxpayer-funded sex reassignment surgery says she's been mistreated since being transferred to a California women's prison, where she now has a beard and mustache because officials have denied her a razor. In a hand-written federal court filing, convicted killer Shiloh Heavenly Quine called her new housing at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla a "torture unit." She said she's unnecessarily isolated from other inmates and denied basic items. (snip) Quine, 57, had the surgery she had long sought in January and was moved from a men's prison last month. She...

Darren Rainey spent two hours locked in a shower inmates at the Dade Correctional Institute said prison guards left set to scalding hot before dying of the injuries caused by the water. Rainey's skin was peeling off when he was removed from the shower. Inmates say he was screaming to be let out before he died, and that guards regularly used extremely hot and cold showers to punish mentally ill patients. Nearly five years later, in a report released Friday, the state's attorney has ruled that there was no criminal conduct by the guards. In her ruling, Katherine Fernandez Rundle...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions signaled Thursday his strong support for the federal government’s continued use of private prisons, reversing an Obama administration directive to phase out their use. Stock prices of major private prison companies rose at the news. Sessions issued a memo replacing one issued last August by Sally Yates, the deputy attorney general at the time. That memo, which followed a harshly critical government audit of privately run prisons, directed the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin reducing and ultimately end its reliance on contract facilities. Yates, in her announcement, said private facilities have more...

FORT WORTH — Count federal prisons as the latest battleground for the transgender bathroom debate. Three female inmates at Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth have filed a flurry of complaints, upset over the Bureau of Prisons policy that allows transgender inmates who are still biologically male to be placed in female prisons. The women claim that they are living in a degrading and dangerous environment by being forced to share showers and bathrooms with the transgender inmates, according to complaints and motions filed in the U.S. District Court’s Northern District. Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article134353039.html#storylink=cpy

e of Nashville’s most notorious killers, Perry March, is suing the Department of Corrections and a food service provider for not complying with his request to be served kosher meals. In a complaint, March wrote:”It’s a case of gluttonous wolves gorging unchecked on defenseless, captive sheep.” Ten years ago, Perry March was convicted of murdering his wife and was sentenced to more than 50 years behind bars. March practices Judaism and claims that his denial of kosher meals can be blamed on anti-Semitism. Legal analyst Nick Leonardo says inmates recently won a similar lawsuit in Florida. “There’s 10,000 prisoners in...

CAIR Cheers Obama Administration’s Ban on Pork Products at Federal Prisons Jim Hoft Oct 10th, 2015 1:01 pm 234 Comments The Obama administration announced this week it would ban pork products including ham, bacon, pork links, and chops from all federal prisons.The Council on American-Islamic Relations cheered the news this week.The Washington Post reported: The nation’s pork producers are in an uproar after the federal government abruptly removed bacon, pork chops, pork links, ham and all other pig products from the national menu for 206,000 federal inmates.The ban started with the new fiscal year last week.The Bureau of Prisons, which...

Charles Manson has been battling an illness for some time inside a California penitentiary – and was first rushed to a hospital off prison grounds months ago, The Post has learned. “He’s been getting treatment at that hospital for a while. I was told months ago they removed him from the prison for an undisclosed illness,” a Corrections Department official told The Post on Wednesday. “He’s 82, man. He was the guy who said he’s going to live forever, but I never believed it,” the source added. The Los Angeles Times and TMZ reported Tuesday that Manson was suffering from...

(snipped and excerpted)A misunderstanding that barred six state Department of Corrections officers Tuesday from having lunch at the new Cheesecake Factory in Tacoma has been resolved. By Wednesday morning, the Cheesecake Factory’s corporate office reached out to the state Department of Corrections and the six involved officers to apologize and assure them that law enforcement is indeed welcome in the chain’s restaurants. Apparently a shift manager misunderstood or miscommunicated the policy about law enforcement having service weapons on the premises.

The Donald Trump-led Republican sweep is nothing short of a game changer for the beleaguered private prison contractor industry. Prison contractors GEO Group and CoreCivic (formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America) struggled throughout 2016 as federal agencies began showing signs of ending the private management of public correction and detention facilities. CoreCivic shares are up 57 percent since the election, and GEO shares are up almost 35 percent.

California voters on Tuesday defeated a ballot measure to repeal the state’s death penalty, and instead narrowly passed a proposition that aims to amend and expedite it. The outcome concluded a closely watched ballot race to address what people on both sides of the debate have agreed is a broken system. Proposition 62, which would have replaced capital punishment for murder with life in prison without parole, garnered 46.1% of the vote. Proposition 66 intended to speed up executions by designating trial courts to hear petitions challenging death row convictions, limiting successive petitions and expanding the pool of lawyers who...

They were once prisoners, inmates or offenders. Now, the nearly 19,000 residents of Washington’s 12 state prisons will be referred to another way. Those serving time in prison will no longer be referred to as “offenders” or “convicts,” according to a memo from the leader of the Department of Corrections. If they’re in a class behind bars, they’ll be called “students.” If they’re in the prison infirmary, they’ll be called “patients.” And, spokesman Jeremy Barclay said, if no other moniker applies, they’ll be called “incarcerated persons.” “Secretary of Corrections Richard Morgan has put out a memo to staff requesting...

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — John Lennon’s killer will remain behind bars after being denied parole for the ninth time. The New York state Board of Parole on Monday announced that it has again denied parole to Mark David Chapman, who on Dec. 8, 1980, shot and killed the former Beatle outside his luxury Manhattan apartment. The 61-year-old Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is serving a sentence of 20-years to life in Wende Correctional Facility in western New York. In a description of its decision, the parole board noted that Chapman has since described the murder as “selfish and...