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With California slipping into a financial sinkhole, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing to save more than $180 million by cutting short the sentences of thousands of immigrants in the state's prisons and turning them over to federal authorities for deportation. The idea faces certain hurdles — for one thing, commuting some sentences will require court approval — and immigration authorities warn that a mass release of inmates from California and other states could swamp the federal system, which is already at capacity. But Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Lisa Page said: "Every dollar not spent to house an undocumented immigrant inmate is a...

Juan Pedro Panuco said he and other immigrant inmates at Folsom State Prison have heard that California is so cash-strapped, some of them could get sprung early and then deported. "Some of them are excited," said Panuco. He's not. At 36, he's been in California since he was 18, is married to a legal U.S. resident and has three small children. He is nine months into a 13-month sentence he got for selling drugs. Panuco may not want it, but the Mexican inmate is likely a prime candidate for early release under a cost-cutting plan on the table now from...

Sacramento, CA (AP) -- The Schwarzenegger administration and a federal court appointee have agreed to the framework of a legal settlement to overhaul the way medical care is delivered to prison inmates. The outline of the proposal was given Thursday to The Associated Press and would be the first step toward ending a long-running legal drama that appeared headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The proposed agreement, if accepted by the federal courts and the Legislature, would call for a sharply scaled-down and far less expensive plan to improve poor inmate medical care than the one the federal receiver previously...

California's prison and parole system will lose about 5 percent of its sworn officers as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's layoff order takes hold over the next four months, according to administration figures released on Friday. Another 10 agencies, including one that serves veterans and another that collects taxes are also cutting staff, but none as many as the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

A male prisoner can be strip-searched by a female guard even if male officers are available, a federal appeals court has ruled. In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco dismissed an Arizona inmate's claims that jail officials had violated his rights by having a female guard trainee search inside his shorts and pat down his genitals. The inmate, Charles Byrd, was in Maricopa County's minimum-security Durango Jail awaiting trial in October 2004 when officials ordered searches of everyone in his unit after a series of fights. Byrd was ordered to strip down to...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) states that California prisons were “eminently capable” of housing detainees. She accuses conservatives for “fear-baiting”: FEINSTEIN: Yes, we have maximum security prisons in California eminently capable of holding these people as well, and from which people — trust me — do not escape. So I believe that this has really been an exercise in fear-baiting. I hope it’s not going to be successful. Video at link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lAjiNkn75I

The California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, wants to sell state property, including the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and San Quentin State Prison, to raise $600 million to $1 billion over the next two to five years. He said that thousands of state employees must be laid off and billions of dollars must be slashed from the budget to deal with a deficit that tops $15 billion and could widen again within days. The state approved billions in budget cuts and revenue increases earlier this year but they were not enough to keep up with a sharp drop in tax revenue as...

On Jan. 10, 2008, it was 22,000. This past New Year's Eve, it was 15,000. Two weeks ago Friday, it was 8,000. Now, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration – looking down the barrel again at a massive budget crisis – is talking about letting 38,000 inmates out of prison before their time is up. Proposals 1 and 2 never got off the ground when the governor's budget writers eventually found the money to keep the prisons full. More recently, the administration never followed up with legislation to enact the early releases corrections Secretary Matt Cate announced on April 24. The latest...

SACRAMENTO (CBS 5) ― Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that thousands of inmates could be forced out of state prisons if his proposed ballot measures fail in the upcoming special election. Schwarzenegger said he will open prison doors if voters don't approve the measures to close a projected $6 billion budget hole during the May 19th vote. ... The governor's plan would release 38,000 inmates, 19,000 of those are what the state considers low risk. The other 19,000 inmates are illegal immigrants whose offenses are said to be non-serious. The governor would commute their sentences and release all of them...

Fifteen years after Congress promised that Washington would help states pick up the tab for imprisoning illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, California is receiving but a fraction -- less than 12 cents on the dollar -- of its nearly $1-billion annual cost. The unfulfilled promise is perhaps the most glaring example of the federal government shortchanging California. Officials from states greatly affected by illegal immigration long have argued that their taxpayers should not have to bear the burden for Washington's failure to control the border.

Appeals court OKs Schwarzenegger contempt hearing By DON THOMPSON Wednesday, Mar. 25, 2009 SACRAMENTO -- A federal judge will be allowed to proceed with a contempt hearing against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for refusing to pay for improvements to inmate health care, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal from the administration that attempted to block the contempt hearing before U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson. The contempt motion stems from a legal tussle between Schwarzenegger and the federal receiver who was appointed by the courts to oversee reform of the medical system...

SACRAMENTO (AP) ― A federal judge is threatening to hold Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration in contempt if they don't quickly come up with a plan to take care of thousands of mentally ill inmates. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento says he is appalled by evidence the state is not capable of doing its duty. He called it "mind-boggling" that the state still doesn't have a mental health treatment plan 14 years after a class-action lawsuit was first filed on behalf of inmates. On Tuesday he ordered the state to consider moving hundreds of inmates to vacant beds at...

Even amid the real-estate bust, waterfront property in the San Francisco Bay area is a luxury few can afford. That's why some California lawmakers want to sell San Quentin State Prison -- which houses more than 5,300 inmates on prime land with stunning views of the bay -- to developers who might pay as much as $2 billion. State Sen. Jeff Denham, who has sponsored a bill to sell the complex of historic buildings for private development, thinks the proceeds could help replenish California's recession-depleted coffers. "I believe maximum-security inmates shouldn't have waterfront property," said Mr. Denham, a Republican from...

California corrections officials say the state will no longer spend the estimated $10 million a year it costs to lock up undocumented immigrants with prior convictions who reenter the country illegally after being deported. In the past, the state kept them on parole after deportation and incarcerated them for parole violations when they reentered the country illegally. But a federal court has ordered California to reduce the population of overcrowded prisons.

California corrections officials announced today that they will seek to have more paroled and deported undocumented immigrants who return to the state illegally transferred into federal custody. The result would be potentially longer prison terms for the offenders and a reduction in the state's average daily prison population by 1,000 - a cost savings to the state of $10 million a year, according to California corrections chief Matthew Cate. "When they return across the border, we are finding that far too often, rather than being prosecuted for the federal crime of returning as a felon, they are being instead revoked...

Inmates executed by lethal injection may in some cases die by "chemical asphyxiation" while conscious but unable to move, according to a new analysis of California and North Carolina executions released Monday. The study appearing in the online edition of PLoS Medicine -- a San Francisco-based medical journal -- was authored by the same team of doctors and death penalty opponents who raised similar concerns about the procedure in the British medical journal The Lancet in 2005. That earlier study, which said sub-potent amounts of the anesthetic sodium pentothal were found in the corpses of executed inmates, helped to propel...

It's been three years since the night a federal judge blocked an execution at San Quentin State Prison because of concerns that the state's haphazard lethal injection methods could inflict prolonged and excruciating pain on a condemned inmate, violating the U.S. Constitution. Today, the state is no closer to executing the Stockton murderer-rapist who was to have died that night, Michael Morales, or any of the other 679 prisoners on the nation's largest death row. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration says it's trying to break the logjam by agreeing to let the public comment on proposed new procedures for executing convicts,...

Accused rapist escapes while receiving medical treatment By Bill Lindelof Saturday, Feb. 14, 2009 A prisoner being treated at an Oroville hospital escaped this morning and has not been found. Michael Dean Nunley II, 52, was being guarded by a private security company at 3:30 a.m. today when he slipped his restraints, ran past the security officer and out of Oroville Hospital.

By DON THOMPSON SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A special panel of federal judges has tentatively ruled that California must release tens of thousands of inmates to relieve overcrowding.

ORANGE, Calif. — A Southern California county will allow jailed Muslim women to wear headscarves after settling a lawsuit with a woman who claims that deputies violated her religious freedom by making her remove her hijab. The settlement agreement signed by the county last week and released Monday specifies that Muslim women must be provided a private area to remove their headscarves after arrest and must be provided with county-issued headscarves to cover themselves when they are in the presence of men. The county, which did not admit wrongdoing, will also pay $45,000 in damages. Plaintiff Jameelah Medina will get...