Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 5 on Public Safety

Good afternoon. Today we will be discussing budget issues from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. I want to thank Secretary Macomber for joining us in person in this hearing today. In addition, we will be hearing from the Inspector General's Office on their recent prison contraband audit. I also want to welcome Inspector General Amarik Singh to the hearing as well. Two of our panelists for Issue 3, from the law firm Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld will be joining our hearing remotely today.

The panelists are listed in speaking order and we will have questions from the Subcommitee after the presentation of each item. We will not be taking any votes today and public comment will be available after all issues have been presented and discussed at the end of the hearing. Before we begin, we will start with a roll call.

[Roll Call].

We ask all panelists to introduce themselves prior to speaking. We will begin with the Issue 1: Prison Population Projections and Prison Closures, starting with Secretary Macomber. Welcome.

Hello, Jeff Macomber, Secretary. CDCR is committed to challenging correctional norms, creating a healthier and safer environment, and preparing individuals for successful community reintegration through what we call the California Model. The foundation of the California Model is based on two pillars. The first is focused on the wellness of our staff, and the second is based on supporting the unique needs of each incarcerated person in our care to successfully prepare individuals for reentry to their communities.

We are committed to maximizing reentry opportunities and giving the population the skills they need to succeed. This leads into one of my next priorities, the expansion of reentry programs. Successful reintegration into the community requires a robust and supportive network of reentry programs and resources. CDCR is committed to expanding one of our most impactful programs, Community Reentry Centers, which will allow more incarcerated individuals to serve the last couple of years of their sentence back in the community.

We thank you for your support of this critical program through the additional funding provided in last year's budget. Finally, CDCR aims to leverage technology to improve the lives of the incarcerated population and staff as well. The Department has prioritized the implementation of technological solutions where they can make the most impact to the challenges of both staff and the incarcerated population that they face daily so we can improve family reunification.

The implementation of free calling for the incarcerated population, along with the deployment of tablets statewide, are just a few of the ways we have strengthened bonds with family and friends. Technology will be key and should be focused on achievable IT solutions and a comprehensive digital strategy, improving accountability, transparency and compliance to reduce litigation grievances, increase staff morale and reduce our heavy paperwork process.

The Governor's Budget includes several pivotal proposals that allow the Department to continue deployment of the statewide Audio-Video Surveillance System, refine and enhance the staff misconduct process, and ensure the appropriate level of care and accommodations to the developmentally disabled incarcerated population. We look forward to working collaboratively with you and your staff on the budget and our proposals in the coming months. Thank you for the opportunity to share my priorities with you today, and I look forward to continued open communication and cooperation with the Committee.

Are you speaking as well?

Caitlin O'Neil with the Legislative Analyst's Office. Regarding the budget adjustments associated with changes in the prison and parolee populations, which are included in the discussion in your agenda, we withhold recommendation at this time, given that they will be updated at the May Revision. And then regarding the prisons that were announced in December for deactivation, CDCR indicates that it has considered the factors that it's required to consider by statute in selecting prisons for closure.

However, the Department hasn't provided information about how it prioritized those different criteria to produce those selections, and this makes it difficult for the Legislature to evaluate whether it agrees with the department's selections, essentially, because different weighting or prioritization of these factors could yield different choices. And so we recommend directing CDCR to report on how the Department weighted criteria for the prisons that were selected recently for deactivation.

To the extent the Legislature disagrees with that priority choice, it could direct the Department to close different prisons, or it could direct the Department to modify its priority or its approach to weighting the criteria or prioritizing criteria going forward. Regarding the specific BCPs before you today to reduce CDCR's baseline budget in line with the announced closures, we recommend that you withhold action, given that they will be updated at May based on more recent information and timelines for closure at that time.

And the rest of our comments pertain not to these closures that have been announced, but to the broader picture of prison capacity and the need for prison beds going forward. More specifically, after accounting for the planned closures, the state will have about 15,000 empty beds in the budget year, growing to about 20,000 by 2027.

And to give you a sense of the magnitude of that, 20,000 beds by 2027 means that about 20% of the prison beds in operation will be unoccupied. And also just to again give you a sense, that means that the state could deactivate, given that number of empty beds could deactivate about five prisons of average size, while still retaining roughly 2500 empty beds, which is the number of empty beds that the state maintained prior to the pandemic.

And in proposing to maintain these empty beds, the Department has cited a need for operational flexibility, such as for maintaining quarantine space for COVID, for the ongoing response to COVID, as well as uncertainty in just generally that projections are uncertain. And we don't disagree that these are reasonable considerations and that the state should maintain some amount of empty beds. However, the Department hasn't provided any data or analysis to support this specific number of empty beds for which it is effectively asking for funding.

And so the lack of justification for that full, quite high magnitude of empty beds, as well as the lack of a plan at this time to bring down capacity, exposes the state to potentially unnecessary costs. So first, it exposes the state to unnecessary prison operational costs.

And again, just to give you a sense of kind of what's on the table, if the state did close five prisons by 2025, in addition to the ones that have been announced, that could mean equate to around $1.0 billion in annual operational savings. In addition, the state is exposed to unnecessary prison infrastructure spending in two ways.

One is just to the extent the state maintains a larger prison portfolio, or sort of like footprint, essentially of the prison system, larger than it needs, it could end up maintaining more prison infrastructure and spending to do so in the long run.

And then second, to the extent the state does end up reducing the footprint of the prison system and makes more capacity reductions without a clear plan on how it's going to go forward with that, it risks spending on infrastructure at prisons that are closed shortly or thereafter, which would, of course, be potentially unnecessary or not cost effective. And third, the state is exposed to unnecessary spending on staff training.

To get to the extent that the state were to close, say, five prisons, or even fewer prisons over a period of a few to several years, that would mean that the staff at those prisons that are closed would have the opportunity to fill vacancies elsewhere in the prison system, which would mean that the state would have a lower need to produce and to pay to produce new correctional officers to fill those vacancies, at least for a period of time.

So in light of these concerns and these sort of risks that the state is currently exposed to, in our view, we have a series of recommendations for the Legislature. The first set is geared toward what can the Legislature do in the near term as it is deliberating the coming budget year. And then the next set, which I'll get to, are intended to help guide future decisions, kind of with an eye toward the longer term.

So in the near term, we recommend directing CDCR to provide data and analysis justifying the number of empty beds that the Department needs in the budget year. And then we recommend, based on that information, to the extent the Legislature agrees with that analysis, determining a capacity reduction target, again, for the budget year, and that could be as simple as reducing capacity down to whatever level the Department is able to provide justification for.

And then we recommend achieving that capacity reduction target by directing CDCR to close additional yards in the budget year to meet the target. And then in the long term, we have a series of recommendations intended to help the Legislature gather key information now or start that process to help set itself up to either make capacity reductions decisions in the future itself or to provide oversight of the administration's decisions going forward.

So we recommend that the Legislature direct the Department to report by January 10, 2024 on its long-term empty bed needs. So similarly, providing data and analysis to support, to essentially create the connection between the factors it thinks need to be considered, which are numerous and complex, of course, but to provide that connection between those factors using data and analysis with the actual number of beds that it believes are needed by, say, 2027 and ongoing.

And in addition to looking at the number of empty beds as a strategy to mitigate risk and uncertainties, it should also consider other options, such as reactivating the possibility of quickly reactivating facilities as a management tool, in addition to just maintaining empty beds. Based on that analysis, we recommend determining that the Legislature determine a long-term capacity reduction target and achieve that target through prison closures.

Because, all else equal, the state would be able to eliminate more fixed costs by closing prisons as opposed to closing single yards. And that could eventually mean actually reversing some yard closures that have already been or will be done in order to facilitate more prison closures.

Again, given other operational considerations, to essentially sort of consolidate the prison system and eliminate as many overhead costs essentially as can be done. And finally, to set the Legislature up to make those decisions or provide oversight of those decisions around future capacity reductions, we recommend directing CDCR to report by January 10, 2024 on the major implications of deactivating each prison and the costs and options to address those implications.

So, not selecting any particular list of prisons at this time, but really just for every prison kind of what is the major feature?

Are there key functions that this prison provides a system that would need to be addressed before it can be closed in order to avert some kind of significant negative consequence? And that would help the Legislature better understand the trade-offs of selecting certain prison foreclosures as well as make any necessary planning decisions, such as relocating key infrastructure to allow for certain prisons that otherwise couldn't be closed on a dime to be closed in the long run. Thank you very much. I'm available for questions.

Thank you. We'll hear next from DOF.

Hi, Lenny Shimoto, Department of Finance. Thank you. The Administration remains committed to promoting.

Can you move that a little closer to you? Thank you. Okay.

The administration remains committed to reducing California's prison system while promoting public safety. As this Committee is aware, the Administration has achieved hundreds of millions in savings over the years associated with reducing and eliminating its use of in state and out of state contract beds and more recently, the closure of dual vocational institution.

In addition, it's committed to closing the California Correctional city, I'm sorry, California Correctional Center and six individual facilities this year, as well as the California City Correctional Facility next year, and the Chuckawalla Valley State Prison the following year. The requirements for determining prison closures are laid out in Penal Code 2067, and using the penal code as guidance, the Department evaluates those and other factors to identify the appropriate prison's foreclosure.

These factors are dynamic and can change as the population changes, and the Department will continue to review and reevaluate the needs of its population, including its ability to provide effective and transformative rehabilitation, as well as ensuring it meets its healthcare needs and safety requirements as well. Using a combination of strategies to achieve savings and reduce positions, the Department remains committed to decreasing its capacity in a way that's durable and promotes public safety. Thank you.

Thank you. Are we done? Thank you. I have a few questions, and then we'll turn it over to my colleagues for any additional questions. I also want to acknowledge our Budget Chair, Phil Ting is with us today. Thank you for joining the hearing. First, I think we can agree that prison closures, if not done in a thoughtful manner, can be disruptive to the incarcerated people, staff, and the surrounding community. For sure.

And I know this Subcommitee, even prior to my arrival, has been asking for more information, more clarity, for a number of years now. Since CDCR does project the prison populations each year, you are best suited to know your long-term capacity needs. So I'm wondering why these closure decisions feel reactive rather than proactive to minimize the disruption.

I understand we have a list of capital improvements that need to be made for the next 10 years, but is that just a list of things that need to get done? For example, last year, you requested resources for a prison that you announced foreclosure just a few months later. That makes me think we don't have a strategic plan in place and rather just a to do list.

Can you share any information for us about the long-term planning that you are doing and being transparent in that process?

Madam Chair, Dave Lewis, Director of Facility Planning, Construction and Management, CDCR. We do do long-term plan for capital expenditures, and that planning does have a long horizon. Unfortunately, as mentioned, prison closures are dynamic and depend on the factors related to the population at any given time, and some of those factors change based on circumstances.

For example, the COVID-19 pandemic certainly changed our consideration for some factors for prison closures and what our ongoing capacity needs to be related to ongoing health issues and other things that we have to examine. In addition, we always have to consider the ability to staff a prison, which can be a dynamic factor and can change based on what particular positions we're looking at for staffing, for healthcare. It may be a different consideration than it is for custody, for example.

So those are all things that have to be accounted for. Unfortunately, if we make long-term decisions related to closures, that also has an impact on our ability to run those institutions as staff will make decisions that make it difficult to run in the long-term.

We saw that, for example, with California City, I'm not California City, with California Correctional Center, even though there was a lawsuit that prevented us from performing any closure-related activities at CCC, when that lawsuit, that injunction was lifted, there was no longer enough staff left at that prison to run both that prison and High Desert State Prison. And as a result, we needed to transfer staff relatively quickly over to High Desert State Prison.

And we see that impact in other places where there's closure announcements, people start to find ways to find other jobs in the Department. And so that makes it difficult on an operational basis.

We do have to consider, obviously, the infrastructure needs of the institutions and some of those, if we're talking a long-term plan, say for example, five years, you would still need to make some of those infrastructure improvements just to make those five years for some of our institutions, which are getting older and have pretty significant infrastructure issues that we have to address.

So even if we provided a long-term plan, we would probably still need to make some infrastructure investments in those institutions related to the ongoing nature until we close them. Obviously, that may differ if we don't have a long-term horizon, but you do have some infrastructure issues that need to be addressed in the short term to maintain capacity in the short term that drive some of that decision.

So there's a lot of factors that go into a prison closure discussion, and some of them are laid out in the penal code, but some of them also, you need to consider the impact on the population, the surrounding community, and other things that come into play that go beyond some of those factors, all of which have to be put together.

You also need to consider the ability to provide long-term care, because we still are under court order for several class action lawsuits that require us to provide inpatient care, and we have to be careful of those beds and not impacting those.

So there's a lot of decisions, a lot of factors that have to go into it, all of which don't necessarily lend themselves to a scoring system per se, because when you start looking at that, for example, our most expensive prisons probably are the prisons that you would most want to keep because they contain programs that are valuable to the population, either health care programs or they contain rehabilitation programs that cost money, that drive some of that cost.

So cost becomes less of a factor when you start to consider those things. And so it's difficult to put like a formula on a closure discussion because it has to become kind of, and then your closure decisions in and of themselves will change some of the factors that you have to consider for the next closure because of the things that you removed from capacity and the previous closures. So all of those things make presenting a formula per se or something like that very difficult to do.

So you have to look at those things more on a basis of more holistic manner altogether and then consider them as their system impacts as well.

Just going to move on to my next question, and likely my colleagues will be able to loop back on that, as will I. Can you speak a little bit to the length of time it takes to close a yard in prison once an announcement is made, for instance, at dual vocational Institute, can you give a status update on that as well as what has been done with that prison?

Well, institution was closed in 2021. It took about a little less than a year to close that institution. At this point, DVI is fully closed. It's in warm shutdown mode. There are staff that provide services to keep the infrastructure running, and we're looking at options of disposing of that property, removing it from our books. But that does take time as well. That process to surplus property is not something that's done relatively quickly.

It takes some period of time, and that's not under the control of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Who is it under the control of?

Well, that I would have to defer. Disposing of state property is not a function that we provide in CDCR. I can provide you that. Yeah, I believe it's General services, but.

And Madam Chair, the other piece is if there is a staffing layoff, we typically need a minimum of 12 months to go through the CALHR process for a layoff period, where if you're talking closing an entire institution, that's at least a year process. If you're closing an individual facility, that could be done generally on a quicker basis, assuming it's not one with more staff that we can absorb within that county.

Thank you. I'll ask LAO to respond.

Drew Soderborg, Legislative Analyst Office. I was just going to confirm that the Department of General Services is responsible for the state surplus property process.

Thank you. I also just want to share some concern about what we hear regularly from the administration, that there is General Fund cost pressures. Some of the prisons that have been named for closure are located close to another prison and they share some infrastructure, for example, a water treatment facility or something that the other neighboring prisons need. Doesn't that mean that the state would have to indefinitely pay for warm shutdown for those closed prisons?

Likely, yes. For the foreseeable future, both CCC and Chukwala share some infrastructure that will require ongoing expenditures related to that water treatment. Wastewater treatment especially, yes.

And why aren't we selecting prisons that could be sold or utilized for other purposes?

Once again, you run into a lot of factors when you're considering the closure. I think in that case we're trying not to overly impact communities. So if you have two prisons together, it lessens the community impact. It's also in both those cases, they served populations that we have an excess of capacity for lower level, lower security inmates.

And so that drives some of those decisions, as well as the custody level of the inmates that we're talking about and the ability to staff in some of those locations. It's historically been difficult to staff to institutions, for example, in Susanville. And so that becomes part of the equation when you're looking at closure as well.

I think one concern that I have is that we've been told that there is a 15 to 20,000 reduction of beds by 2027, and we just don't have any information or insight into how you all approach those closures.

So I think it is quite possible, frankly, to provide a formula and awaiting based on the different factors that you need in order to be able to determine which prison should be closed and articulate that in a way that will allow there to be some visibility and oversight for the legislature to be able to act fully in regards to oversight. So I'm really just not clear, and I know that it's been asked for years of members of this committee, why we can't have a plan.

So, Madam Chair, I agree with your earlier comments that it needs to be a thoughtful approach. I think LAO had similar comments, and that as we downsize the facilities that we are committed to, that Department of Finance shared earlier, we want to make sure that as we close facilities, we're not significantly, for example, reducing rehab capacity, because if you start closing facilities, you're spreading that population to other prisons where I may not have the ability to provide the same level of rehabilitation we're providing now.

We need to look closely at things like our Ada population to ensure we have sufficient capacity for wheelchair beds, for low vision, et cetera, for those type of things. And as a matter of fact, we're still in litigation tied to our three judge panel population cap. And we got into our plot of medical lawsuit primarily because the level of overcrowding the department was in.

So we really want to be thoughtful as we downsize and close the facilities that are currently in the budget, that we do this thoughtfully and have a good plan going forward. And we're committed to work with you folks transparently on how we do that. I know there's been frustration in the past that there's a feeling we haven't given all the information and we're willing to be transparent there.

I'll open up to my other colleagues, Mr. Lackey?

Yeah. My comments, I don't really have any questions. I just have a comment that it's probably pretty apparent, but I believe it deserves to be stated that I do realize the complexity and the challenge associated with these reductions. However, 15,000 to 20,000 vacant beds is huge. And the fact that we're still not realizing a cost savings is ridiculous, quite honestly. And so that's what I'm really focused on without getting into a whole lot of depth.

If we're reducing the capacity to that degree, we have to show some kind of cost savings. And I don't see that right now. In fact, as I see the increase in the budget right now with reductions, and I think that's unacceptable.

Mr. Hart?

Yeah, I agree with the chair and Mr. Lackey too, about the complexity and the challenge of doing the job. And Mr. Lewis spoke to know very eloquently about all the factors. Secretary Macomber, you also did too. I think we all agree that this is a complex, difficult thing. You have to maintain and modernize infrastructure that's rapidly aging and at the same time plan for a decreasing population. So it's a compound, complex problem. But the real problem is not that work.

It's how can we be an effective partner with you and how can we understand that process? I think the ledge analyst office really articulated that well. We need to see a transparent plan. It doesn't need to be a scoring criteria. It doesn't need to be a formula, but it does need to be transparent, and we need to understand that.

And our staff and everybody, frankly, all the partners involved in this conversation need to be part of that and have the transparency that you spoke to Secretary Macomber so that we know what we're doing and are being effective with taxpayers dollars and providing high level secure facilities for the incarcerated folks that you're in charge of taking care of. So what can you tell us that you're going to do to provide that transparency? And is there a resource constraint?

Is there something that's keeping you from doing that? Because it doesn't sound to me, I'm the new person on the committee. It doesn't sound to me like this is new. This conversation feels old. And I just don't understand why we wouldn't be closer together on that basic premise.

Well, thank you for that question. And like I said earlier, we are committed to work collaboratively towards getting there. We have shared quite a bit of information on the sections of penal code 2067, which lays out our guidance for framing the prison closure issue. And so we have followed that process in making our decisions. We are committed, as I previously said, to close the prisons currently scheduled.

And we don't have a problem sitting down with the folks and the staff and going through that information and transparently sharing it. I committed to that earlier today with folks in the room, and we're willing to do that.

So do you have a plan that is an internal document that shows how you see the population declining? Addressing the question that Mr. Lackey asked about the 15,000 empty beds and where the cost savings would be if that, I mean, it sounds like this is a very big, complex organization that has internal decision making process. What is there that the public can look at to understand that process?

So we're going through that process now as we're scoring the savings, both staff and we're obviously taking down several facilities and closing three juvenile justice facilities this year. What we would like to do is present something after we've accounted for that, how many rehabilitative slots we have left, for example, and if we close 123 however many additional prisons, what does that look like in terms of the impact to our ability to provide education to the population?

Because if you start closing facilities, which it's guaranteed to happen, you're going to further compact the population into a fewer number of prisons, which we don't have an unlimited number of classrooms and space. And the same thing applies for things like ADA accommodated housing. I want to make sure we're not, as we close these facilities, that we don't have insufficient beds to accommodate that population.

I'd also love to have an opportunity to work on getting out of some of the litigation that CCR has been stuck in for way too long. It's much more difficult for us to get out of things like three judge panel, some of our other litigation when we have folks crammed tighter together. So we're committed to coming up with a methodology to look at, and we're also willing to share, again, the process we utilize to select the facilities that we did.

So we're more than willing to do that.

Is there a deliverable product from the things you're talking about, you're committed to providing that transparency, to engaging in a collaborative decision making process? Is there a specific thing that we can look at in a particular time frame that you could offer to us today?

So we're certainly willing to share the information that we previously shared. The methodology that we utilize for things like the DVI closure, we have the dual vocational institution. We have shared the information utilized for that, and we're willing to share similar info for the other facilities that are scheduled for closure.

Yes, but that sounds like what the ledge analyst office is telling us is insufficient to make the judgment about a partnership in the decision making process. Is that accurate? The information you've received to date hasn't provided the transparency you need to evaluate what the department is doing?

Yes. The information we've received on how the department selected the facilities that were announced in December, foreclosure, we did not receive information about how the criteria that it's required to consider were prioritized or weighted against each other, so. Correct. Yeah.

That's the road. We need that.

Yeah. And I think, as Mr. Lewis stated earlier, we don't have a mathematical formula for that. It just doesn't work. You look at our most costly prison. It's our California healthcare facility in Stockton, which houses our seriously mentally ill and our aged and elderly population and those with serious medical issues. That is our most expensive prison. So if I did some sort of scoring criteria that weighted costly prison beds, that's the last prison of the state I would close.

But if you were doing a weighted capacity, that might show up as number one as an example, that's where it's so. But we're willing to sit down and verbalize how we came to these decisions. And I've worked collaboratively with LAO and other folks in the past. I'm willing to continue to do so.

All right. Well, I think that's the issue, is when those conversations can actually integrate and produce the transparent information that everybody here agrees. It's a complex decision making process. It doesn't lend itself to formulas and simplicity. But we have to advance this conversation beyond just agreeing that it's tough.

Great.

Do you want to respond?

If I may. And just to be clear, we're not recommending or advocating for a formula based approach. We're just speaking about weighting in the more general term as it relates to prioritizing different criteria, and just wanted to respond briefly to the comments on rehabilitation programs and space and Ada considerations and how that factors into the possibility or whether the state should pursue further prison closures. And we don't disagree that those are certainly important considerations, as are many other factors.

But overall, closing up to five prisons by 2027, just to be clear, would put the state in terms of the density of the prisons or the number of people per prison back to where it was prior to COVID, and we would still be in compliance with the three judge panel court order related to prison overcrowding.

So it's to the extent that the state wanted to essentially go further in reducing overcrowding by going beyond essentially what the court has decided isn't adequate or constitutionally adequate level, it could do that. It's just that that will come at a cost. So the state should understand what it is that it's buying with that cost.

And then on the rehab and sort of related to that, the rehab and Ada pieces of it, again, we're not talking about putting more people in a prison than were previously there. The population has already declined quite significantly, so the overall need for rehab slots and ADA spaces or facilities should have also declined as the people have gone away. Again, kind of going back to our recommendation and why, I think that our recommendation would be helpful in this issue.

We recommend having the department provide a list of the major implications of prison closures for each prison. So to the extent that the state would lose a key rehab program if it were to close a prison or would lose some capacity that is suitable for people who need to use wheelchairs, for example, those could be things that are on this list that the state could then choose to rebuild that capacity elsewhere.

And generally speaking, maintaining a prison in operation purely for the sake of keeping a rehab program in operation, or is probably a lot more expensive than just relocating, paying the one time cost to relocate that function. Thank you.

Mr. Jones-Sawyer.

Hi, Secretary McComber. I'm going to do a little history lesson. 10 years ago, I was chair of this committee. 10 years ago, this came up at a time where we had 160,000 people incarcerated. We're under receivership because people were dying in the medical facilities. We built up the largest private prison outside the State of California to deal with the overcrowding. The department had no problem in figuring out how to deal with that, albeit, I think, was wrong.

But they figured something out and they moved toward that, and they moved toward it pretty quickly when it came to the medical. We had to have a judge intercede to make the department act accordingly. Honestly believe right now, if we were to say, we'll let you build two new prisons, you'd be Johnny on the spot with schematics, renderings, a whole budget. You'll probably already picked a contractor and the architect to build it right now, today. It's been 10 years. 10 years I've been seeing.

You've just stalled. Not you, department has stalled. I've been to two secretaries who each have promised that they would get the information to these people, to us in the committee. 10 years. 10 years, and then all I hear is stall stall. Stall. COVID. Infrastructure. The dog ate my homework. All sorts of excuses. I get it. I was a bureaucrat. I'm a recovering bureaucrat. And that's a thing. When you look at us, you probably say in this too shall pass.

But we do get 12 years now and I still am asking for the same things I asked before. And yes, I only have two years, but I have a feeling eventually people here will get tired of hearing this, who I leave behind you. You can do it. And as I warned you 10 years ago, you do not want us to do it because we're not going to get it, right. I can almost guarantee that.

And what you're doing is you're forcing the administration, finance ledge analysts and this body to come up with our own plan to reduce. And so I urge you to do it. Just get everybody information. It's not that difficult. Why do I know? As director of real estate for the City of LA, I used to decommission police stations, fire stations, libraries. It does not take that to realize when a facility has come to the end of its useful life. My colleague said 20,000.

If we were in real estate, if we were a real estate developer and we had buildings with a vacancy rate that high and we didn't fill it or we didn't reduce our inventory, we would go bankrupt.

This is not a good business model right now and I don't know what you're hoping for, because I'm hoping that as these savings come out, I have a bill in full disclosure, AB 912 safe act, which want to take that $200 million worth of surplus from these savings and then plow it back into community so you never have to worry about people coming in.

So that we do things like 50 million for youth reinvestment, grants for diversion programs, 35 million supporter programs, ceasefire in Oakland, that reduce gang violence and involvement. 50 million for school based health centers, 50 million to expand cognitive behavioral intervention for trauma in schools, 50 million to support recreation and health based opportunities during times of peak violence. That's where we're at. And so I had a question about the administration, but we need something. I would like something before I go.

I know you're saying yourself and he too shall pass, but before I go, I'm going to make every effort to get that information because we absolutely do want to do this in the most safe and effective way that not only protects the public, but I also don't believe we need to lay off anyone with attrition and other things. No one should be fearing that they're going to lose their job. That should not be a concern.

So that we can use those monies, so that we can ultimately continue to reduce the amount of people who are going into the school to prison pipeline, and that we ultimately have a business model that actually works for corrections and not against it. And so if you don't do anything, I don't know if I can get you to promise. Right. My only question is, can I get you to promise like your two other predecessors and your predecessor before that one, Mr. Lackey may have been here.

I know Mr. Ting was, when can we get this information? Can you give me a date of when you can get all the information so we can make an informed decision? In a month, two months? Because for me, it's been 10 years. So when can we get that information?

Well, I think the question will be is we provided information in the past, and I've already committed a couple times here today to work transparently and provide some additional information on how we've come to the conclusion on the prisons we chose and the factors that we utilized. And I know we've provided that for both DVI and CCC, and we're more than willing to provide it for the other prisons, more than willing to walk through the methodology we utilized in choosing those prisons.

And we also, like I stated earlier, are going to be working on a plan to see what we think is a reasonable capacity level for the department going forward, noting the reasons I brought up earlier, so I can't commit to that. And if we want to sit down the next couple of weeks, more than willing to do that.

Sounds like you're saying, I don't want to give you this information. That's what it sounds like. That's what's coming clear on this side of the table.

Well, I will also share. Thank you, Mr. Jones-Sawyer. That the LAO is recommended that we actually set a date of January 10, 2024 at least to be able to get a report about the long term empty bed need. And we are not taking action today, but I would strongly urge you to hold that date in mind.

We would have no trouble meeting that date, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Ting. And then Mr. Patterson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple of questions for LAO. What's the General Fund proposal for corrections this year? And the population is 93,000, right.

14.5 billion to operate CDCR in 2023-24.

10 years ago, what was the budget proposal?

I don't have that, but in front of me, but substantially lower. My recollection that sounds about right. It might be in the agenda.

And do you have a sense of what the population was back then?

So probably around, it might be in the.

I don't know if it's that or 190.

In 2018-19 it was about 130,000.

Mr. Lewis.

I don't have the numbers in front of me.

No, Mr. Lewis, please. You probably know, you know better.

At that point. We were starting the transition into other things. So our population had already started to decline about a decade ago. And I don't know the exact number, but it was somewhere in the that point. Yes.

Okay. But as you can see, you can see in the General Fund it's about a 50% increase and it's about not quite a 50% decrease, but let's say 35% or so. What's the typical? Either one. Typical prison holds about how many people?

I mean, we have obviously a wide variety of capacity, but somewhere around 2500 to 3000.

Sorry, go ahead.

I would just say that when the state closes a prison it needs to think about the amount of capacity lost is the capacity of the prison times 137.5% of design capacity. And that roughly comes out on average to around 3400. Sort of the average size of prison.

2,500, 2,400. So when you have, even after you've announced the yards and the six prisons and the two prisons with 15,000 empty beds just doing back of the envelope map, that's five prisons. Is that a fair statement?

We estimate 20,000 empty beds could yield five prisons with and retain 2,500 empty. Yeah, but roughly very, yes.

Not trying to be argument, just trying to be conservative.

How does it feel?

Feels pretty good. Well, you know, Mr. Lackey, I'm pretty conservative in this committee. We agree on most things in this committee, as you know. But roughly. So we got five to seven prisons that are empty. The equivalent. So is there an explanation as to why? Just to do percentages. Right. So before the buffer was 2,500, which would have been a 1 or 2% buffer. Now you're asking for a 15-20% buffer. So what's the logic behind leaving five prisons empty?

Well, I want to be clear. We haven't proposed further closures, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're proposing to keep that entire capacity for that long term. As secretary Macomber said, we're undergoing a lot of closures right now. We're closing six yards, three DJJ facilities and one prison. And in the next fiscal year we'll close another. So there's a lot of work being done to close capacity right now.

I think over the long term, everybody recognizes we'll have to look at our capacity issues and adjust our capacity, but we want to do it in a thoughtful manner.

But no, could you answer the question? So why leave five empty prisons open, fully staffed, the equivalent of five empty prisons open? That's, again, the conservative estimate, could be seven, fully staffed and operating. And just to give math, right? I mean, for each of these prison closures that we talked about, 150 million, 140 million, 130 million, let's just call it 150 million because it's easy to do math, right. 150 million times five. That's getting close to $1.0 billion. Why is it you need help?

Because I think we could help with that. I think Madam Chair could probably recommend five prison closures. Is there a reason as to why we're having 15,000 to 20,000 empty beds?

I think, once again, it's important to consider the LAO's 20,000 beds is in 2027. So that's several budget cycles. Beyond this budget, we're talking about 15,000 beds. And we are in the process of closing a lot of beds this year. And we'll have to continue to consider our capacity. We make those decisions regularly. As far as the population, what would.

Be the reason for keeping 15,000 beds open unoccupied?

Well, right now we also have to consider that while the COVID emergency has ended for the state, we still have to carry some beds for COVID. Our court orders related to that, for Plata, that we have to keep going until that order has been vacated. So there's a lot of considerations right now that we have to keep in mind.

I haven't heard anything. I've just heard a lot mean, I think you're, I don't think you're giving us frank. Does anyone want to give us a frank answer? Because I feel like you're dancing and you're not really dancing very well.

Let me jump in here. I think the other reality is we did not expect to have this level of what's been referred to as vacancies. Obviously, with the COVID pandemic, we dropped 20-25 thousand in our population over the last couple of years that I don't think anyone expected. And I think a lot of us expected once COVID ended and some of those court deferrals folks came back to court for sentencing, that they come into the prison. We have not seen that to date.

Understood. Right. But again, this is the only agency and we say this every single year. If we were, I just left sub one. Sub one has the opposite right. They have a huge amount of need. And even as their need goes up, their budget goes down. Right. You have the opposite graph. The need goes down and your budget goes up. So given that we're billions of dollars in the hole this year, what is the fiscal reason? What's any reason?

Actually, I've not heard any reason why we're having all these vacant beds. And I heard COVID.

Well, the COVID reason is we've had to hold through the pandemic space open for both quarantine and isolation space. Yeah, but not that we're currently looking at redoing it. Well, it's not necessarily over in terms of the requirements, but we're looking at whether we can continue those relatives. CDCR's budget is increasing, but a lot of that is some of the investments that we've worked with the legislature on.

And when we've rolled out substance use disorder treatment, map therapy, the legislature was kind enough to give us, I think it was up to $300 million. For that. We've rolled out hepatitis C treatment. We have nationwide leading program. We've virtually cured hepatitis within the prison system. No other state has done those type of things. We've had a lot of investments.

Understand we stand by those investments and we'd like to invest more, but right now the investment is going to keep being 15,000 beds empty. We'd rather it go into substance abuse, rather go into mental health, rather it go into other things. So I'm just trying to understand what the answer is, and we're not getting that answer.

And again, Assembly Member, I've discussed before that when we do close prisons, that population is spread among the remaining institutions. And when that population goes to those remaining institutions, we do not necessarily have capacity for things like education, cognitive behavioral therapy, vocational training. So when you compact the prisons and put more people in them, our ability to provide that rehabilitation, which is very important to me, goes down. So we want the opportunity to do that thoughtful analysis.

You got five empty prisons. They can go somewhere.

Sure they can.

You have space.

We have the space with the downsides I mentioned.

But it sounds like not only do you have space to do what you just said, you have also space to do more closing. The other part I think I mentioned in the overall budget hearing, and we spoke about this earlier today, was the concern around the six yards that are closing rather than actually picking and choosing surf facilities, because the six yards closing, it's roughly about 150,000,000 in savings. And that was the same as the savings in DVI.

So again, it seems like at a time when we're looking at doing some belt tightening the department is not really doing that. And again, I think if there's a good reason, if we're downstairs, we're talking about healthcare, there's a good reason why we got to spend more. I think this committee has been very receptive to it. If it's because we have to do reentry housing or it's because we need cameras or we need to provide better safety for our staff, I think everybody's.

But that's not what we're hearing. We're hearing like, we'll get back to you. We're not sure we're hearing know just cause.

If I could respond to something. LLynne Ishimoto, Department of Finance. So from the spring projections to the fall projections the June 3023 number decreased by over 9,500. So as we've said in previous hearings, the population projections can vary fairly significantly. Looking at the out years, the June 3026 number decreased by about 6,000. So I don't think this was the excess beds that we were anticipating. So there's been a lot of fluctuation.

It's 6,000, it's not 15,000. I understand. So it's like, hey, we got news, we got projections. What I'm hearing is we don't know what to do without it. We're working on it. Versus, hey, we got news. And here's our plan. And I think going back to, we're not looking for a formula. If it is, we could go to Sac state and we can get a bunch of computer programs. We could do that overnight. What we're looking for is a plan.

We're looking for a list of facilities off the table because if you look at the other chart, how much money was spent in all the prisons before they were closed, it's almost equivalent to over 100 million close to. That's what we're looking for. So we don't sink more money because last I checked, we're going through belt tightening and we need that money to spend on other things. Like we said, mental health, health care, education.

I apologize because I have to call into a live radio show even though this is entertaining. So again, I'll come back and do more questions. But again, there has to be a reason why we're keeping this many facilities empty. Spending this much money on this when everybody else is asked to do more with less.

Thank you, Mr. Ting, Mr. Patterson, thank.

You very much for that. There's been too much agreement on some things in this. So the last couple of times. But I'm going to ask some questions just to help me understand some things going on because I'm new here, but just to put a little bit of context on it, I worked in the capitol as a staff person, well, from 03 to 2011.

And my last job, well, I guess my second to last job was working for at that time the only, I think, Republican chairman of a select committee, prison construction and operations. And I staffed that committee and actually we intervened in the three judge panels, a Republican caucus that tried to stop the early release of inmates. And I was intimately involved with discussions on everything from time credits, how much you get from staying in county jails to going to state prison and things like that.

So this is an issue I've been worked on for a while and have been following ever since. So just with that, obviously some things have changed. I understand when the 137 and a half percent capacity was put on, that put a lot of pressure on the state to figure out how to release people and what that would look like. And then I think you've had, in my view, a lot of negative policies come as a result of that.

I think we wouldn't agree on this here, but Prop 47, Prop 57, AB 109, I mean, the list sort of goes on, but those are a reaction of obviously that you know that way better than I do. But this is an issue that's really important to me. And so I'm curious what it's going to be different per site, but generally speaking, what's the current prison capacity as 137 and a half percent. It's capped at per facility though. But generally speaking, what would that be?

It's around 112. I'm pulling that up. Sorry

112, 698 currently.

Okay, 112%.

And then on June 30 around then when the plan closures that are going to take effect in the budget year are accounted for, it should drop to around 105 is kind of our estimate.

Okay. So with planned closures, so we're decreasing capacity, but we're also decreasing the population so much that it'll continue to drop right to 105%.

So actually the 15,000 number is for the budget year, which is also after CCC will officially be closed as well as when many of the yard closures, if not all, will take place. So the 15,000 already includes some reduction relative to where we are today. And then there'll be an additional reduction when Chuckawala Valley is closed in 2024-25. But yes, you are correct.

There's sort of this decline in reduction to capacity, but on net growth in empty beds over the period because the population is declining so much, is already so low, and is declining more.

Okay, thank you. Honestly, I'm kind of confused at the aggressive nature in the reduction in prison population. Just recently, PPIC came out with their report that obviously, our crime in California is we've decreased from 50 years ago, but in the last several years, it's basically been stagnant since actually, this ruling. It's kind of gone up and down, but basically, it's essentially been the same. And so a couple of questions on the release of inmates from COVID. How are those determined who's getting released and why?

Because right now we have 15,000 empty beds, if you will. Vacant beds. But we released 20 to 25,000 people during COVID. So how were those prioritized?

So early in the pandemic? We did release some folks, for example, lower level folks that were within 60 days of release to clear out some quickly, clear out some space, because obviously, COVID spreads very well in prison environments, nursing homes, and the like. Most of the population drop, we didn't do early releases per se, but we stopped intake from the counties during COVID because we did not have the capacity and did not want to increase our population.

And so what you saw was us having to reimburse the counties for the cost of holding those inmates, which we are required to do via penal code. And once the pandemic was over, what we expected initially was we thought there'd be a bunch of folks that were waiting to be sentenced and were going to come into the system that really did not materialize. And you see that in that we're below projections right now. So there wasn't a mass early release scheme.

We do provide credits for credit earning opportunities, for completing rehabilitation programs, college programs, earning diplomas, those type of things, though. That is correct.

Okay. Does LAO know what the capacity of generally, again, it's going to be different everywhere, but of county jails?

Around 80,000 is the rated total rated capacity. Roughly around or not the population? The capacity.

Okay, 80,000%. I'm just kidding.

Sorry. 80,000 rated beds by BSEC, if I'm not mistaken, roughly around there. And then the current population, as most recently reported by BSCC, is around 60,000.

And what, just to help the new guy over here. Obviously, I've talked with county sheriffs and things like that and issues booking people. Can you confirm for me that whether or not people receiving this just goes off the question that you weren't intaking people from the county jails? Do inmates receive more time when they're in the county jail versus going to state prison, three days served for one instead of two?

Off the top of my head, it may be different based on case factors, but individuals do get pre sentenced credits for the time that they're in county jail. But I'd have to get back to you on that answer, unless anyone knows for sure.

It for then what's. Okay, the LAO, here we go question for you. And I think this is going to be my last question unless it sparks more. So what exactly is happening? Or actually this is going to be a CDCR question. What exactly is happening over the next couple of years that we see a decline in prison population?

Well, I think it's a function of some of the propositions that you mentioned before. Obviously, we do not get the level of intake into CDCR that we once did because I think your point being that some folks now serve their time at the county jail versus the state prison level, we're also seeing fewer folks coming in to the system. I think you have our office of research here later today that actually does our formal projections.

Who can probably much better answer this than me or articulate it than me, but we're seeing fewer projected coming into the system long term.

Okay. Yeah, it's interesting because you would think that most of the releases or adjustments, the realignment from the various laws have occurred already. So that's why maybe I'm incorrect at saying that, but that's why I'm kind of thinking we still see a decline in population. But I would think the AB 100 and 947 and 57 have. I see you guys giving me the look here, yes.

Carry on. But happy to offer some background here.

So you are correct that the early releases and the temporary sort of the COVID responses, releasing people generally six months or so before they would have otherwise been released, as well as having people stay in county jail longer or potentially serving their entire term and being released from county jail if they had a relatively short prison term and weren't ultimately intaken into CDCR after the halt on intake was lifted, essentially those factors have kind of run their course.

It's possible that there's some maybe backlogs in court cases or maybe sort of crime decline during the pandemic that caused this temporary decline because there was decline in crime early on in the pandemic, in certain types of crime. So there could be some things around the margin where we're still seeing effects from the pandemic on the prison population. But by and large, it appears that as far as we understand, those have kind of worked through the system and are back to steady state.

What's really driving the decline right now that was already always going to occur, as far as we can tell, essentially was Proposition 57 and specifically the credit earning component. And that gave CDCR the authority to adjust or to set credits through regulations. So there's been various different adjustments to those regulations. But the credit package that was introduced or first announced in spring 2020.

So kind of right around the same time that the COVID responses were starting to pick up was projecting a very significant decline in the population. And CDCR Office of Research does attempt to account for policy changes in their projections. But there's been also a lot of other sentencing changes in recent years. Know, it's difficult to account for all of those little, not little, but they all add up, essentially.

And so what we're left with is we kind of were going to probably end up at this place where we are, regardless of COVID but COVID perhaps got us there faster, if that makes sense.

Well, thank you. I'm concerned you, like, cued me right up, so thank you for that. I'm concerned that in addition to my colleagues not really knowing of a clear plan to get to closures, which I'm not sure I fully support anyways, although not really knowing what we're doing, I'm concerned about that. But I'm also concerned about, may have heard lack of understanding I think we have on how these things, how the reduction is working.

Maybe that'll be a time for me to hang out a little longer here today. But I think we got to have much more clarity on who's being released. Why is being released. I'm familiar with the regulations, the new ones, but I don't fully understand how that's happening and I think it's really important because we have to go back to constituents and say, hey, look, inmates are being released because of these policies.

And by the way, a lot of them are set up by regulation through statutory authority, allegedly. So I think we need some more clarity on how releases are occurring and why. But I'm going to end it on a good note with an agreement with my colleague over here that Mr. Jones-Sawyer, that we definitely don't want the Legislature deciding which prisons are going to be closed. Because I'm in full agreement, we would mess it up.

But we have our responsibility to provide oversight over that and make sure it's done fiscally responsibly. But I definitely don't want to be in a position to where we're having to fight about that, all 120 of us, because we'll have 120,000 different opinions on how that should happen. So thank you.

Mr. Ting.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would just throw the caveat there, which is I totally agree with both of you, Mr. Jones-Sawyer and Mr. Patterson. But the challenge is, if we have to make fiscally responsible decisions, and if they don't get presented to us, then we have a responsibility to do our job, which, as imperfect and as challenging as it may be. That's all I would say. Just going back to the secretary, I know the secretary mentioned, actually, I'll step back for a second.

I was in a rush earlier, but I do want to first just applaud the Governor, applaud the Administration for closing the first two facilities, and then, of course, the next two facilities. I mean, he's the first Governor to do that, first Administration to do that. I personally think that was the absolute right decision, the right move, and even the discussion about closing further facilities is a very monumental step away from previous Administration. So let me just start off the bat.

I apologize by not saying that sooner. I know the secretary had mentioned concerns around the three judge panel, litigation, if you could, because it seemed that I've heard that the litigants in the past were interested in having some sort of settlement. Would that be something that would be of interest to you or encouraging to you, if you could move in that direction to get out from under that particular litigation?

I want to answer carefully because I don't have my attorney here, but, I think it's safe to say that we would be interested in bringing our litigation to a conclusion. I think that would be safe.

Perfect.

About as safe as I could do it.

That sounds great. And we would want to encourage both parties to sit down to find resolutions. I would just state that for me personally, from the know, without saying too much, know, not getting into state, and the trouble, I think we would really encourage that as well. Going back to Mr. Lewis, I think Mr. Lewis talked about how there's a long range capital plan. Was that correct?

And I assume within that long range capital plan is you have almost 30 facilities, or maybe 30 facilities where you're looking at, okay, this year we're going to do this, this year, we're going to do that. Right? Is that a fair summation of...

Yes. The state's required to come up with a capital outlay five year infrastructure plan. And we do yes.

I guess our challenge is seeing that plan is fairly thick. I mean, it'd be like this. Right? What I didn't see there was the plan part of it. I think what I saw was each facility with their capital needs, but I didn't see a time frame.

Yeah. I've only been on the job for seven days, in fairness to me. So I'm learning. Drinking a little bit through the fire hose.

This is the toughest hearing from the

Yes. I mean, you have to plan out what your infrastructure needs are, and then you have to propose capital outlay proposals to address those which go through the normal capital outlay process. So the planning process doesn't always match up with the capital outlay process. So you do try and determine what your long term infrastructure needs are, but the rest of that needs to go through the normal capital outlay process to get proposed.

No, totally agree. If every year, if every June, we pass a budget because it's constitutionally required. The only thing I know is the budget that we pass on June 15 isn't going to be entirely accurate. Right. That's guaranteed. Doesn't stop us from doing it.

We don't say, hey, we're not going to do it because there's a lot of people, a lot of jobs, a lot of teachers, a lot of nurses, a lot of folks, most people in the room need that budget to pass, so we still do it. Right.

So I guess you have this long term capital plan, but I think where I was getting tripped up is you kept saying, but yet you can't have a long term prison closure plan. Because for us, and this is what we're trying to avoid, and we've been saying this in Committee for a number of years, is, you have this capital that gets invested.

And again, I'm not talking about something de minimis or you have to do some sort of upkeep because you don't want this to be overrun by whoever, but you have this long term capital plan, and it kind of needs to dovetail somewhat with this prison closure plan.

And I think all we've always wanted for a prison closure plan is just knowing who's not on the list, because every year we get a list of capital proposals and we fight over them and we go back and forth with finance on them and we can't approve them because, well, you won't tell us if any of these, whatever five or 10 facilities is actually on the prison closure plan. So then we know.

Well, if we don't know if it's on the prison closure plan, why would we approve a single one? Right. So, I guess, how do you have a long range capital planning plan but not have something that dovetails around prison closure?

I understand your question.

I understand it, too. Yeah. But you don't have an answer.

But I don't have an answer. I don't have an answer for you right now. But we definitely do see the need to plan our capacity. We're committed to looking at that. I think we've committed to kind of addressing some of the questions of the Committee and of the LAO, but I certainly can't commit to a prison closure plan. I don't think that's within my scope of duties.

But again, I think, to some extent, I'm even asking for one step removed. I'm asking for. Okay, how many facilities do we have that aren't closed? What is it, 30 or is it 29 or.

32

32. Sorry, 32. Right. I think we're just saying, hey, what, 20 aren't on the list? Tell us what's not on the list. Or it could be. Tell us what 25 are on the list. I mean, I don't know. I think we're looking to be able to do our job so that when it comes here, we don't have to ask the same questions and not get the same answers. Right. Because we'd rather be in a situation where we're supporting.

I'll just tell you how it works in all the other committees, because I go to all the other committees. You got a capital plan. We talk about, oh, UC wants to build a dorm. They need a new science hall. We sit there, and these are things that we've been discussing. We're like, yes, we don't sit. Yeah.

I think what you're getting at is if the language the LAO proposed, and it was discussions about implications of closing specific yards and things like that, and certainly if that's in the budget, we will meet that deadline and provide the information.

Okay. But I think also helping us understand long term and then going back to the 15,000 beds. Right. I mean, if you need some buffer or some empty rooms or whatever you need, you have to be able to communicate what you need. Right. Because at this point, it sounds like we're wasting money on five empty prisons.

I think we are committed to developing a plan that addresses. That addresses the desire to understand what the capacity needs are. I think we agree that that is something.

Because otherwise, then you put us in the situation that Mr. Jones-Sawyer and Mr. Patterson don't want to be put in, or I don't want to be put in, either that, then we're going, hey, with this kind of budget situation, makes no sense to have 15,000 beds open. So then, you know what? We will start to go pick.

Right. And I think one of the important things that Secretary McCumber has brought up several times is that we also need to address our underlying programming needs for the Department. And so we have to look at all of our capacity and what that capacity is used for addressing the various court cases, the Ada compliance issues that we face and everything. Put all that together holistically to kind of determine what the long term capacity needs are.

And I think we're all committed to really looking at that over this as we move forward.

And also, in terms of capacity, I mean, the capacity, let's just talk about what it means in reality. Capacity is people, staff. That is the most important part of all the facilities. It's all the guards, all the medical staff, all the regular staff. To me, those are the folks that make the place run. And obviously, your ability to be able to hire or retain staff in those facilities, we know some of these facilities are in fairly remote places.

So again, that absolutely is part of reason, logic, part of the plan. I think that all makes sense. But again, that's never been communicated. Right? So all we can do is guess about what that is. But again, I think that's fairly important that that be a factor, because that's the one thing, we can move money in different places. We can move people and fix things in different places, but you can't always move that staff. You got five doctors here.

They may not want to go to this place. That's just reality, or psychiatrists or guards or what have you. So I think that is, I think, a very important calculation, because, frankly, and I said this to the secretary earlier today in our meeting, to me, I'm not so fixated on this dollar amount because we still have to do much better for all the staff in terms of the facility, the environment, the investments in programming.

I'd rather have some of the money go not to empty beds, but into more programming, whether it's reentry, housing, whether it's around partnerships with the community colleges, whatever, all the different programs that you have out there. I'd much rather that that is where the money gets repurposed to, rather than someone patrolling a bunch of empty facilities.

So I think that's what we would like to see, perhaps come back between now and may in some of your deliberations, because we think, unfortunately, I think the budget situation is going to get worse. But I think there's more opportunities in this Department than almost any other Department that we're looking at. So with that, we really appreciate ongoing discussions. Mr. Lewis, like I said, it gets easier from here. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ting. Mr. Lackey.

Yeah. Just real quickly, I just wanted to make a remark. I'm not going to grill anybody. I hear a lot of talk about penal code 2067 and compliance with that. And when we look at the prioritization and the fact that California City Correctional Facility is being selected as one of the facilities, I think it's inconsistent with 2067 because it states right in that statute, it says that these decisions should be made in a manner that maximizes long term state facility savings and leverages long term investments.

However, when we look at this particular facility, we would save a significant amount of money on capital maintenance and investments, since it's a lease facility, and the annual savings would also be substantially less by closing that facility. If you look at these numbers, it's starkly in contrast to 2067. So I feel, since this is a fiscal committee and I think that this policy decision was made on something outside and really did not consider penal code 2067. And that's really. I'm not here to get your remarks.

I'm just making a statement that I feel very passionate about, especially since this facility happens to be in my district.

Could I respond? Thank you, please. Lynne Ishimoto, Department of Finance. So we believe that this is within penal code 2067. It specifically states that it includes the evaluation of in state leased facilities to consider foreclosure. And it also notes the durability of the prison solution. And because it's a leased facility and it requires our partners at core civic as well as the Department to consent to it, it's not really what we would consider a durable, ongoing, long term plan.

And I'd also note tied to the ongoing investment situation. So since the lease began, the Department has spent 260,000,000 on that lease, which would. Yes, the Department does not have to incur on long term capital projects or anything like that, but the lease itself factors that in. And that is a sunk cost.

Yeah. Through the chair. Through all due respect, I think that your response is very debatable. That's all I can say.

Thank you, Mr. Lackey. Mr. Ting, again.

Yeah. As usual, I'm agreeing with Mr. Lackey. And I think the way we look at this is, if you look at prioritization in terms of costs, there are other facilities that have much greater costs because there's significant capital. We're not on the hook for capital. It's a private facility. All we're doing is paying a lease. There's no capital. We're not going to be asked to fix this. Fix that. That's part of the lease agreement because we're a tenant, we're not a landlord.

And we think that in terms of cost savings, there are other facilities that would present significantly more cost savings than this one. Now, if you offered this as a package of whatever, eight or six or something, and we could evaluate this, maybe this would fit into something that's a larger package.

But when there's so many other facilities and you're doing these partial yard closures, it doesn't seem like this is where you'd maximize your savings as well as protecting the state from its long term risk in terms of capital exposure, because no one can sue us for anything that happens in that facility because we didn't do capital because of crowding or whatever. Those are things. We have much less exposure than we do for all the other facilities.

Now, I want to thank Mr. Lackey for bringing that up as well. It was an issue that I flagged as well. It's under lease and creates more of an opportunity for us not to have a capital outlay, or it also mitigates the risk for us to be able to lease.

So this is just a window, quite frankly, into the kinds of decision making and thought process that we would go through as a Legislature if left to our own devices without the kind of information I think that we continue to be requesting from you all regarding having a plan to be able to understand the nexus between the capital improvement plans that we need to be able to make, reduction of bed plan to be able to mitigate for the fact that we right now have 15,000 beds that we know are not going to be filled, that we know over time will continue to not be filled and will probably grow, and that we would like to be able to make sure that we're applying the resources that we have, the very limited resources that we have to the kinds of programs that we know will keep those beds empty over time.

Mr. Jones-Sawyer offered one such proposition in his comments earlier. I certainly have many, as well as do I know, several of my colleagues on the Public Safety Committee. So with that, I would like to just move on from this panel. I very much appreciate, but I hope that you've heard us loud and clear that we are very much looking forward to more additional, concrete information to be able to help us make the decisions in our oversight.

We'll move on now to issue number two, which is the audit of CDCR's controlled substances contraband interdiction efforts.

The Inspector General has provided a handout for the Subcommitee that summarizes their findings. This handout is also available to the public on our website. We will start with the Inspector General.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Committee Members. I am Amarik Singh, the Inspector General. Thank you for the opportunity to provide an overview of our recent audit of CDCR's controlled substances interdiction efforts. We have prepared a three page fact sheet that presents a high level overview for you to follow along as I walk through the highlights of our audit findings.

The audit objectives were to determine whether the department's processes in place are effective to prevent drugs from entering prison grounds through pedestrian and vehicle entry points and incoming mail, to detect and discover drugs within the incarcerated population in prisons, and to investigate the source of drugs discovered. To accomplish our objectives, we observed routine entrance searches both at the pedestrian and vehicle entry points, enhanced entrance searches of employees, routine cell searches, searches at interior prison work checkpoints, and searches of prison mailrooms.

We reviewed the department's use of available resources and tools to detect drugs, including the use of canines and electronic drug detection devices. We also reviewed the department's process for investigating the sources of drugs discovered in prisons and the department's data related to drug discoveries in its prisons. Finally, we analyzed the impact of visiting and operational restrictions implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on the introduction of drugs in prisons.

In our audit, we first looked at the canines and electronic drug detection devices as resources that are available to CDCR to prevent and detect controlled substances. Chapter one of our audit report provides the full details of our findings regarding canines, but in summary, I'd like to introduce some information. The US National Institute of Justice reported that the use of canines is the most widely used and time proven method for detecting the presence of illicit drugs.

Canines can be trained to detect any type of drug and are very versatile. Specifically, canines'mobility and ability to follow sense directly to the source make canine detection the method of choice for a variety of searches, particularly searches covering large areas. CDCR also acknowledges that canine searches are a particularly effective method of stopping drugs from entering the prisons, to detect contraband within the secure perimeter, and to reduce the overall level of drugs, contraband, and criminal activity within the incarcerated population.

However, we found at the prisons we reviewed, no prisons used canines to search staff or visitors, and not all prisons included in our review used canines to search the incarcerated population. Canine teams were not always available to conduct frequent searches at their assigned prisons, and the Department did not regularly use canines to search prison property, including mailrooms. Despite recognizing that canines are among the most effective resources to both deter and detect drugs, CDCR does not effectively use its canine teams at the prisons.

In Chapter two of our audit report, we provide the full details of our findings regarding electronic drug detection devices, but in summary, like canines, CDCR acknowledges the usefulness of electronic drug detection devices but similarly only uses them in limited circumstances. As part of our audit, we reviewed two pilot programs that have ended at CDCR, which evaluated the use of electronic contraband detection devices, including ion scanners. The results of the pilot program showed these devices were found to be effective in discovering, thus reducing, drugs in prisons.

Following the deactivation of the pilot program, CDCR ceased use of the electronic contraband detection devices. We asked a headquarters manager whether there were any reasons the Department did not or could not use these electronic drug detection devices on staff and visitors. The manager acknowledged that state regulations authorize the Department to use ion scanners on all staff and visitors entering a prison.

The manager further recognized that the use of ion scanners had proven to be effective to both detect illegal drugs and deter individuals from bringing drugs into the prisons. The manager, however, did not provide a reason for prisons not using these devices. We found that despite evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of electronic drug detection devices, CDCR did not use these devices to screen for drugs at most state prisons.

In Chapter three of our audit, we looked into the screening process for the main pedestrian entrance checkpoints, minimum support facility entrance checkpoints, vehicle entrance checkpoints, and visitor entrances. CDCR's routine screening process requires staff to check the identification and belongings of every person who enters a prison. In practice, this process is a visual search, generally so brief that it is not effective. But even if screeners opened every bag and thoroughly inspected its contents, this visual search would be unlikely to find drugs.

Drugs are often packaged in small bindles that are easily hidden inside a container, such as a thermos or a cosmetics bag. They can also be concealed on a person in long sleeves, understab vests, or in undergarments or even secreted within the body. The Department does not use canines or any baggage parcel scanners or any other electronic detecting device that targets drugs. When conducting routine staff searches at entrances.

During our observations, entrance officers generally checked for identification and performed a search consisting of a cursory glance lasting one to 2 seconds into bags that end belongings of staff and visitors. The search process did not include any search of the person or any items worn on the person. Entrance officers allowed staff to carry in some bags that exceeded the size and quantity limits allowed by departmental policy and in some instances, staffed walked into the secure perimeter without showing identification or having their bags checked at all.

In most cases, the entire search process took only seconds to complete. The prison search process at Visitor Pedestrian Entrances where people are processed before they can enter the secure perimeters to visit an incarcerated person was also unlikely to find drugs. Officers conducted more rigorous searches of visitors than they did of staff at the main pedestrian entrance, and they conducted a thorough inspection of a visitor's personal belongings, but the officers did not have any devices available to them that could actively detect drugs.

The searches we observed at the vehicle entrance checkpoint into the secured perimeter were also inadequate to detect drugs, either those carried on the person or hidden inside of the vehicle. Staff, contractors, visitors, and incarcerated people can enter and exit a prison through a secure vehicle checkpoint. In delivery utility and transport vehicles, officers assigned to vehicle checkpoints confirm the identities of the driver and passengers in vehicles, including incarcerated people.

The officers then searched the vehicle, including passenger areas, cargo areas, and the undercarriage, but the search focused in General on ensuring that the vehicle did not have unaccounted for people, such as an incarcerated person attempting to skate, and focused on identifying large contraband items. The search process at vehicle checkpoints, in our observations, was not likely to identify smaller contraband items, such as drugs that could have been concealed in the vehicle or on the person.

Next, we also looked at the adequacy of CDCR's process to detect and discover drugs within the secure perimeter and conducting investigations to determine the source of the drugs. In Chapter four, we specifically looked at cell and bunk area searches.

Policy requires housing unit officers to search a minimum of three cells, rooms, dormitories, or living areas in each housing unit daily during each of two shifts scheduled from 06:00 a.m. To 10:00 p.m. Depending on the type of housing unit, officers conducting a daily search generally choose a cell, a bunk, or a locker to search at random. Upon completing the search, the officer should document the cell or bunk area that they've searched in a log for the housing unit.

Based on the documentation we reviewed, we found that the Department has not established procedures for conducting or recording daily cell searches, that officers did not always complete required cell searches and their supervisors did not always review the cell search logs to confirm officers conducted these required searches.

Based on our observations, we saw officers searches of the incarcerated people's cells were often unlikely to discover drugs, and based on the training records we reviewed, cell search training is not sufficient to adequately train these officers on how to complete a full and thorough cell and bunk search. In Chapter five, we assess CDCR's process for determining the source of drugs upon discovering drugs inside a prison. Drug discoveries are generally investigated by prison investigators who are responsible for collecting, receiving, logging, and processing evidence.

Although CDCR has policies in place when drugs are discovered on an employee, we found no policies or procedures for investigating drug discoveries in prisons unless the case involved drug overdoses for overdoses. The Department issued a memorandum in August of 2019 outlining steps that prison investigators must take and pertinent information they must collect when investigating suspected drug overdoses and overdoses resulting in death. Even with this memorandum in place for the investigation into drug overdoses, not all overdoses we reviewed were investigated.

Our audit also found that drug discoveries in uncontrolled areas of the prison, such as in housing units or closets, and those that were discovered in the mail, were least likely to be investigated to discover the source. Prison investigators at each prison reviewed acknowledged having multiple techniques at their disposal to investigate the source of drug discoveries, but we found that they did not consistently use these techniques.

In Chapter six of our audit report, we assessed search practices for the incarcerated workers reporting to and returning from work assignments. We observed the incarcerated workers were also not always thoroughly searched. Nearly all prisons employ some incarcerated people in job categories such as janitorial services or food processing. These jobs often require incarcerated people to work in different areas of the prison during a shift and at times to work outside the prison's secure perimeter.

These incarcerated workers increased movements provides them with opportunities to retrieve contraband, including drugs, and collude with other people to smuggle it back into their housing facilities. However, despite the potential increased access to contraband and drugs associated with incarcerated workers movement within prisons, the department's search of incarcerated workers is inconsistent. The Department does not clearly define when or how staff should conduct such searches.

As a result, the prisons we've reviewed lacked uniform work change search procedures from one prison to the next, and at times even lacked uniform procedures from one facility to another within a single prison. In addition to the inconsistencies among prisons and prison facilities, we found that staff did not consistently follow their own prison security procedures when processing incarcerated people to and from their work assignments. Finally, in Chapter seven, we assessed the department's data validation process regarding the drugs CDCR discovers statewide.

Our review of the department's drug discovery data showed that the department's data was generally inaccurate. We found that CDCR lacks sufficient controls to ensure the accuracy of its data. It did not require staff to log several drugs that have a high potential for abuse and dependency, and it lacks procedures on directing on how to report drug discoveries. In conclusion, our audit identified several operational weaknesses within the department's drug interdiction program that allows drugs to continue to enter California's prison system.

We identified deficiencies in entrance screening, routine searches of incarcerated people's living areas and within prison property, searches of incarcerated workers, and investigations into the source of drugs discovered. We found the Department does not take full advantage of and underuses its canine program and the use of electronic drug detection devices. In our report, which is a lengthy report that can be found on our website, we've made 19 separate recommendations to CDCR for improvement.

We have requested CDCR provide its status on implementing our recommendations, and we will continue to monitor that progress. Thank you again for giving me this opportunity, and I am happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you, Inspector General. We'll move on.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Ron Davis. I'm the acting Deputy Director for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. CDCR would like to thank the officer of the Inspector General for this report and strongly believes a multi layer approach is the most effective way to reduce contraband activity. This approach includes providing substance use disorder treatment, heightened physical security, dismantling drug distribution systems, disrupting gang activity, and closing avenues of entry for contraband.

This enables CDCR to reduce the amount of contraband entering institutions, minimizing its availability to incarcerated individuals. The Department continues to evaluate ways to improve consistent statewide applications of these detection and intervention systems. CDCR acknowledges the importance of maximizing limited available staffing and other resources and an effective method of interdicting drugs in the institution. Will consider process improvements outlined in this report, contraband interdiction and focus on curbing overdose deaths as a result of illegal contraband is and will continue to be a top priority to the Department.

That's all I have and I'm available for any questions.

Thank you. I have a few questions and I just will start off with a comment of just being utterly shocked at the findings of this audit, and I'm sure my colleagues will share their concerns as well after reading this report, and I know that the Department is not able to likely fully respond to all the items of the audit.

But frankly, we have had drugs in our carceral system for decades now, and I think one of the most telling opportunities that we have to stop our finger pointing at the visiting families is the incidence of COVID where we know our prisons were closed and we actually had near. If you look at the chart, kind of near distribution of contraband during that time. So if it wasn't coming from the families, where was it coming from? We know where.

I want to just make sure that we are looking specifically at the fact that during March of 2020 and April 2021, over a year during that time, there could have been specific measures taken that would have made it clear that staff and contractors had a significant role in bringing drugs into our prisons. So my first question for you all is what, given the findings of the.

Given the findings of the audit, are going to cause you to actually follow the multiple layers of reduction that the Inspector General has offered us?

So we've got seven work groups that have been established, and the 19 corrective action plan items have been divided up among those seven work groups to thoroughly evaluate all of the recommendations by the Inspector General and make recommendations to the Department as far as what direction to go to correct any deficiencies that have been noted.

The Inspector General is pretty clear in laying out that there have been some tried and true methodologies, including the use of canines, the use of making sure that we're using our clothed body searches, visual inspections, all of it. Those are tools that you've had available to use for quite a while now. What are you going to do differently than you have already been doing?

Well, we haven't finalized our response to the audit itself, so, like I said, the seven work groups are putting together their recommendations that will go up through our review process to make the finalized decisions on what's going to be done.

And what will you be able to share with us in terms of the additional prevention effort, in terms of concrete data for us?

Right. As soon as we get the corrective action plan put together, that'll be submitted to the Inspector General's office with our response to the audit itself, I think.

Again, in such an incredibly tight budget year for us, recognizing that we've provided hundreds of millions of dollars to implement integrated substance use disorder treatment programs and intervention programs to prevent drugs coming into our system gives me great cause about the effectiveness of those programs.

I think you are in a very, very short time span and time window in order to be able to demonstrate that investment of dollars, particularly as it relates to staff being the primary deliverers of drugs into our carcino system, is something that I know that we will all be looking at very carefully in the coming months. Mr. Lackey.

Yeah. Thank you. Along that line, clearly, I support the fact that we need to confiscate those drugs, but the fact that there's no policy as to recording what's confiscated is alarming. And the fact that we don't have any record of what was confiscated causes the mind to wander. I'll just say that. And it actually causes maybe even a temptation to redistribute for profit.

I'm not accusing anybody of that, but certainly when you don't have a policy in place to prevent such nefarious thoughts, I think we're asking for trouble. So that does concern me. The other point I'll just make real quickly. The investigation has indicated that canines are among the most effective resources for deterring and detecting this kind of drug activity or even using some kind of electronic device, they're very effective. And I just wonder why they're underutilized.

Well, those are two of the issues that the work groups themselves are going to be looking into is the use of our resources, both the canines as well as the electronic devices.

Okay, so I guess my question was unanswered. I just wondered, why are they underutilized? Is it cost? Is it availability? Do you have any idea why they're underutilized?

I couldn't put my finger on exactly why they're underutilized. That's why we've got the work groups put together. They're going to be drilling down on each one of these issues to try and make those determinations and make recommendations based on that

Because we would like to help. Thank you. That's the sole reason is we know that drugs in the penitentiary are a bad thing. I think everybody would agree on that. And so we want to make sure that we're minimizing the distribution and the possession and the utilization of that kind of because it's toxic to everybody. And so I'm hoping that we can draft some. And if you need our help, we'd love to help on that front, of course.

But yeah, that was my primary. My bigger concern is really the fact that when you confiscate something that's nefarious like that and you have no way of recording it, wow, that's alarming to me. So I hope we can fix that. Thank you.

Mr. Ting and Mr. Hart.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So then, just following up on Madam Chair's I think points, I guess. How does the Department think the contraband is getting into facility?

There are many different ways of late we've had throughout the state drones, you mentioned drones. That's a big thing right now. And we're working on ideas to try and curb that depending on location. There are some of our more urban locations where actually, people throw things just directly over the wall. I mean, they're looking for, every time we look to stop a method of introduction, they're trying to create a new method of introduction. So it's a continuous process to try and prevent the introduction.

I guess my concern is, and your response to what I thought the Inspector General did, which is a very thorough report, was substance abuse treatment and then gangs cracking down. And I guess I didn't understand exactly how. While I totally support, again, cracking down on gangs and substance abuse treatment, it seemed to be sort of disconnected from how the different contraband was getting into the facility. And you didn't seem to address any of the items the Inspector General listed of concern.

The substance use disorder treatment is going to be attached to the demand.

No, no one's disagreeing with that.

Right.

But if you look at the recommendations, the IG didn't say, zero, the big thing is we need more treatment, which I think we should get more treatment. I'm not arguing with you on that, but it didn't address any of the items that the office raised.

Well, the Department is still working on the response to the audit itself, so we don't have a full response to the audit, and we've got the team still working on that, putting that response together.

When will it be done?

I believe it's due. I think it's due in a couple of weeks. I don't have that in front of me right here.

The OIG requests corrective action plans in each report we issue on the 60 day mark, on the six month mark, and then at the one year mark.

So 60 days would be what, March.

March 11.

Five days from now. So you can't give us any.

I don't have feedback from the. From the work groups.

Then why are you here? Why isn't somebody here who can.

Well, it's still a work in progress.

Can't be that much. It's due in five days. I just don't understand why the Department was sent. I appreciate your comments. Don't get me wrong. Excuse my concern, but this is a Committee. The Inspector General herself is here to present the report of her office. Your role was to present. What is the Department going to do about it?

Well, I don't expect the solutions to be formulated on the 11th. I believe the 60 day report is an update on where we are with making the corrections.

Shouldn't some of these solutions already have been in progress? Because, again, is contraband a new issue in the Department?

No.

So is there no plan on this issue in the Department? I'm sure there is. Where is it? I guess. Can anyone speak to it? I know we have other people from the Department. Anybody want to come up and speak to it?

Related specifically to the audit itself? The work groups are going to make their recommendations. So the first step in taking corrective action on the audit itself is putting together the work groups, getting those subject matter experts together.

That's great. Right. So no one has ever worked on this issue of canines.

As far as the use of canines in general, yes.

And what's the policy around canine searches in the Department? When are they used? When are they not used?

Currently they're used for doing area searches and air scans of inmates.

Okay. And is there a reason why that hasn't been expanded?

I couldn't answer a reason why all.

My prison visits, I've never been searched by canine.

Right.

That was one of the main sub chair alluded to this, our chair alluded to this, that one of the main accusations was, oh, family members bringing in contraband. So if family Members are bringing in contraband, wouldn't every family member coming in be sniffed by a canine?

Well, those audit findings, like I said, that's part of what the work group is going to make a recommendation.

But this has been an accusation as long as I've been around this Committee.

Yes, you've mentioned these work groups. What's the timing for the completion of the workgroups efforts and what work product is going to be coming from these work groups?

I don't have a timeline for when they'll be completed with their recommendations. The 60 day is we're doing an update on where we are on the status for doing corrective action. And then each step along the way, we're providing updates. Some updates may be things that we can adopt immediately. Some may be longer out. It may require changes to policy, putting together training curriculums, that kind of thing. So some may be a little bit further out.

Everything's not going to be on the same timeline, but those responses are giving updates of where we are. And right now we've got the groups together. They're taking a look at the issues that were identified in the audit, and they're going to make recommendations based on that. I couldn't give you a timeline of when specific recommendations are going to come out.

Okay. I come out of the nonprofit sector, where we have to account for every single dollar that we spend. And when we pull together work groups, we typically have a timeline where the work group starts. It's clear about what the objectives are of that work group, what work product is going to be coming out of that work group, and when that work group is going to end.

So that I have a sense and have the ability to report to the people who hold me accountable around when I'm going to get the information around corrective action or whatever action I'm going to be taken from that. So I would encourage you to be able to go back and perhaps get a clear answer about the timeline associated with these work groups.

And we clearly have, statutorily, some findings that need to be delivered within the time frame that the Inspector General has laid out. But again, it's millions of dollars. Clearly, we've had a very unusual flashpoint and opportunity to be able to really understand what the nature of contraband distribution is, and it's a gift to us.

And I don't really hear from you the response that you've actually taken up that opportunity to provide some clarity for us as we, again, continue to invest millions and millions of dollars just on the prevention side alone. You have canines, you're not using them. You have electronic devices to be able to understand, you're not using them.

This is the information that we've gotten from the Inspector General, and that's, for me, when literally people are dying of fentanyl overdoses and other things in our prison system, and we know that over 60% of people in the prison population are addicted or suffer from substance abuse. It's an unacceptable position. It's inhumane.

I'll just add, if the Department could please send someone who could answer these questions, because again, this is not a new issue. It's an ongoing issue. I understand that you don't have that ability, but we really need to have someone who has that ability to be at these hearings. Otherwise, this becomes a waste of time for this Subcommitee. And we have to hear this issue again, because we haven't got any answers. And again, these are all ongoing issues.

The fact that there's no policy on a daily comprehensive search process for entrances, lack of documentation around cell searches, these are all, to me, fairly common administrative policies that you would assume would be in place and doesn't seem like you're able to address any of them. So I think it'd be good to have somebody who can. Thank you.

Mr. Hart. And then Mr. John Sawyer.

Well, I appreciate the Inspector General being here personally to deliver these audit findings, and they are just jaw dropping. I don't even know how to characterize this. And I appreciate the Department has a work plan, an action plan, a corrective action plan underway. But can you tell us about anything that the Department has done to address these 19 findings before the results of the corrective action plan are produced?

I don't have the work product from the work groups yet. They're still working.

I'm not talking about the work groups. I'm talking about getting this report, reading it, and saying, we need to do something today, different. Has there been anything done?

The work process is going through the corrective action plan, and the work groups are doing that.

Right. And that would be the long term plan. So you want to be thoughtful and you want to look ahead, but there's got to be something that you would say, we got to do this today.

To this point, what we've done is put the work groups together and working that corrective action plan process.

Thank you.

Mr. Jones-Sawyer.

So I want to thank CDCR again for finding an issue that kind of unites Republicans and Democrats. So acting Director, Deputy Director of facilities operations, division of adult institutions. That's incorrect. So that's not you?

That's acting Director of CDCR is the title.

What is your title, then?

Acting Deputy Director.

Acting Deputy Director of facility operations. And how long have you had that position?

About a month.

Okay. So as the resident historian, I'll give you some background, and I've been in your position where my employers, my superiors, my supervisors sent me to the table in front of elected officials with not enough information and told me, this is the way you say it, and have elected officials not really happy with the. So I'm just telling you, I've been there. I feel for you. So this problem came up really in earnest during COVID and the previous CDHCR secretary.

When we talked about the fact that drug use went up or drug use was consistent, even though we stopped families and friends from coming to the prison because of COVID we reduced it. And I said, so do you think this happened? The reason there's an increase is because of staff, which he emphatically said no. He said it was drones. He said it was people throwing things over the wall. He said it was bread trucks, even though I found out later the inmates make their own bread.

But I don't know where these mysterious bread trucks were sneaking into the prison. He blamed it on friends and family, even though friends and family plan wasn't happening at that time. And when I mentioned staff, he was emphatically kept saying no. So I asked about the canines, and at that time, there was a problem with the canines. Either they could smell the drugs or they missed whatever. It didn't work out.

And I think that was part of why they were going to improve the program or discontinue the program. Looks like they discontinued the program instead of improving it, because, as the Inspector General says, canines have been shown to be very good at that. So I don't know.

It sounds like you may not know this, but one of the things, if you could find out for us and find out quickly, is really the justification for the failure to continue the program, because I think it was highly effective, especially in the face of the information that we just received, that it was a success. And so that would be part of it, that back in 2020 we were looking at doing in earnest.

The only other thing I would caveat, there was a concern about using the canines when families came in. Could it be extremely controversial in that it would maybe inhibit family members from coming because they would have these big German shepherds and mastiffs, they have to go through that? And so we were trying to figure through that. Two, I kind of want to know, how often are staff and their belongings search when they enter into the facility?

Reason I ask that is because at that same time, I tried to get funding with this Committee to put in devices at the terminal to check staff so that we can make sure contraband didn't come in through staff, through metal detectors and other instruments. We were told it was too costly. We were told it was too cumbersome to put it in all the. And basically it was pushed back and eventually died for lack of a second, and mainly from the Department fighting real hard not to do it.

And so I know what that's like. When the Department doesn't want to do anything, they drag their feet and stall, stall, stall. So maybe I can go to a different way if I can find out if staff is even searched at all and how often they are searched to make sure they're not bringing in contraband into the prisons.

And I don't know if you know that answer now or if you get that answer for this Committee, because that will help us also as we move forward about what we need to do to stop the flow of drugs going into the prisons.

Based on current policy, everyone entering the secure perimeter is supposed to be, their belongings are supposed to be searched.

So you're absolutely positive everyone is searched, or everyone's supposed to be searched.

Based on policy, everyone entering is supposed to be searched.

Inspector General, you alluded to this a bit in your report. Do you have a response from Mr. Jones-Sawyer about this?

Although the policy states that every person entering the prison into the secured perimeter must be searched, their belongings. In practice, that does not happen. In our observations., for the three prisons that we went to do our field work, we documented searches, and we included different shifts, different times of day. We went out there to observe what the officer who was letting people into the prison, how they were conducting these searches. We found that these searches were very cursory.

In some instances, they didn't even look in the bags or parcels of the people entering the prison, staff and contractors. And we also noted that when they did look inside of a bag or a parcel, it was one to 2 seconds. It was very short.

So, acting Deputy Director, I think that might be something you want to look into. There's a thing of policy and implementation. It sound like there may be some problems with implementation, and I would seriously tell you to really look into that because that may be a serious lapse in security that you may be having at your facilities.

I don't know that we have any additional questions that we would yield an acceptable response at this time. So I'm just going to ask that the Department make sure to list out these specific measures it will implement after the 90 day period, and to make sure to please send those to the Subcommitee in written response at this time, because I think you can clearly hear from us all that we are hoping for better answers than we've been able to receive at this point. Thank you, Inspector General. Thank you, Deputy Director.

Thank you.

We'll move on now to issue number three, staff misconduct expansion.

Thank you. Go ahead and please start with your comments.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Amy Miller, and I'm the director, sorry, director, for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's Division of Correctional Policy Research and Internal Oversight. My division is responsible for many facets of internal oversight within CDCR, including investigations into allegations of staff misconduct. In 2020, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation began implementing changes impacting how allegations of staff misconduct toward incarcerated persons and parolees were addressed.

It was in January of 2020 that the department activated the allegation inquiry management section, often referred to as AIMS. This unit's role was to review allegations of staff misconduct submitted by incarcerated persons when the warden believed the misconduct could result in adverse action. AIMS was required to conduct preliminary inquiry tasks to determine if there was evidence to support the allegation. If evidence was discovered to support the allegation, the case was closed by AIMS and referred to the Office of Internal Affairs for a full investigation.

Although the AIMS process was an improvement, there remained concern that not all allegations of staff misconduct were being identified or addressed appropriately. As a result of these concerns, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has implemented additional changes that I would like to highlight for you now. In January 2022, the department activated a unit dedicated to the screening of grievances and complaints.

Since January 2022, the centralized screening team has reviewed all grievances submitted by incarcerated persons and parolees and has routed all claims included in these grievances to the appropriate area for response. When the centralized screening team identifies an allegation of staff misconduct included in the grievance, they are responsible for determining if that complaint will be routed to the Office of Internal Affairs or if that complaint will be returned to the warden or the parole administrator for an inquiry at the local level.

To improve consistency in the screening process and ensure the most serious and complex allegations of staff misconduct are routed to the Office of Internal Affairs, the department created the allegation decision index, which is used by the centralized screening team. The allegation decision index specifies what types of allegations are required to go to the Office of Internal Affairs and includes allegations such as unnecessary and excessive use of force by staff, staff on inmate sexual misconduct, and staff involvement in a code of silence.

Also implemented in January of 2022, all allegations of unnecessary or excessive use of force by staff and all allegations of staff sexual misconduct towards inmates or parolees is always routed to the Office of Internal Affairs. In May of 2022, the Office of Internal Affairs began to transition cases from the allegation inquiry management section to the allegation investigation unit.

This change ended the need for a preliminary inquiry and ensured that any allegation of staff misconduct referred to the Office of Internal Affairs via this process would receive an investigation. This transition from inquiries to investigations was completed in March of this year. In September 2022, the staff misconduct process was further expanded at six prisons to include allegations of staff misconduct received outside of the grievance process. This includes allegations received via healthcare grievances and allegations reported by persons other than incarcerated persons.

This expansion is being implemented in phases for the remaining prisons and parole regions, with statewide implementation expected to be completed by November 30 of this year and finally in January of 2023. All allegation inquiry reports completed by institution and parole staff are required to be submitted to the Office of Internal Affairs for review and approval.

This review process has been put into place to ensure that the inquiries conducted by local staff are complete, thorough, and unbiased and that they include the information needed by a warden or a parole administrator to make a decision about the allegations of staff misconduct. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is committed to a proactive approach to addressing allegations of staff misconduct.

We believe the changes made so far align with our department values to provide for a rehabilitative environment for the men and women in our care to serve and be responsible to the public and to maintain a professional workforce. We continue to refine our internal affairs process to improve accountability, efficiency, and transparency and to ensure appropriate corrective or disciplinary action is taken when warranted.

To that end, CDCR is requesting funding and a mix of limited term and ongoing positions that reflects adjustments to the staff misconduct process, including allegations, screening, referral, and tracking, as well as the associated investigative and disciplinary processes. I am here today, along with Deputy Director Jared Lozano from the Division of Adult Institutions to answer any questions you may have regarding the process or our budget change proposal. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Thank you. Good afternoon again, Madam Chair, committee members. Amarik Singh, Inspector General, thank you for the opportunity today to provide an update on OIG's monitoring of CDCR's process of reviewing and investigating staff misconduct allegations. Although we are still actively recruiting to fill our positions to meet our monitoring goals, in the past year we have begun monitoring the department's initial screening of grievances

it receives the local inquiries performed into grievances that are returned to prisons and the investigations into grievances that are referred to the allegations Investigation unit of the Office of Internal Affairs. In the cases we monitored, we have provided real time recommendations as we deem appropriate. For example, we have recommended that relevant witnesses be interviewed and that investigators ask additional questions during interviews to explore issues in greater detail.

We have recommended particular evidence be secured as necessary for a complete investigation, and we have also recommended adding allegations that were discovered during the investigation. We have also made recommendations for CDCR to improve its statewide processes. For example, we recommended that CDCR set up a process to check for conflicts of interest in local inquiry cases performed by prison staff.

The department has a conflict check process for investigations performed by the Office of Internal Affairs staff in where the special agent fills out a conflict of interest form prior to beginning an investigation, which is signed by their supervisor and identifies any potential conflicts of interest issues. However, there is no such procedure in place for the department to determine or confirm whether a locally designated investigator has a conflict of interest in conducting a local inquiry.

Creation of a conflict check process for local inquiries is critical because, as we pointed out in our 2019 report on Salinas Valley State Prison, the local inquiry process tasked prison staff with investigating allegations against other staff working at that same prison. While we have begun monitoring the staff complaint process, our monitoring is still in its infancy.

I can provide some anec.al information that we have gathered in the cases we have monitored to date, but our sample size is not yet large enough to determine whether these are isolated instances or indications of systemwide deficiencies. Regardless, these examples serve as an important lesson learned that provide the department with valuable training opportunities. We have seen a mix of investigations and inquiries that we believe are satisfactory and others we have deemed to be poor in cases that CDCR are handled poorly.

We have seen failures to address all of the allegations, failures to interview complainants, witnesses, and even subjects, and we have seen poor interviewing techniques. We have seen reports that are poorly drafted and not completed timely. We have noted instances of delays in notifying the OIG of interviews being conducted and cases being completed and sent to the hiring authority, and delays in timely completing these inquiries.

Particular to local inquiries, we noted instances that the investigator was either of the same rank or a lower rank than the subject. Particular to investigations, we have noted instances that investigators fail to adequately prepare for remote interviews, compromising the confidentiality of the interview and the quality of the interview. We also noted in few instances, CDCR did not retain video in cases that was relevant to an inquiry or an investigation, and we will be commenting on these areas in our upcoming staff misconduct complaint report.

While we have identified several areas for improvement from our monitoring of these cases, we are encouraged by the department's overall willingness to address these concerns when we raise them to its attention. We have begun producing case summaries to be published monthly on our website, which began this month.

We plan on publishing our annual staff complaints monitoring report in late spring, which will provide our assessments of the department's process and transparency into whether the department is conducting thorough, complete, and unbiased screening decisions, inquiries, investigations, and hiring authority disciplinary assessment. Once again, thank you for this opportunity to provide this update, and I'll be happy to answer any questions that this committee has.

Thank you. And now remotely, we'd like to hear from Penny Godbold.

Thank you. My name is Penny Godbold and I'm here today with my colleague, Gabe Runfeld. We represent people with disabilities under the Armstrong class action case, and we are representing these folks along with Prison Law Office and Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. Thank you for including us today in your hearing. There are many important aspects of the Armstrong case, but today I've been asked to discuss accountability for staff misconduct specifically.

We first asked the Armstrong court to order CDCR to develop a better system for holding staff accountable for violations of the ADA in 2007. In 2012, we demonstrated that CDCR was still not taking action to hold staff accountable. For the last three years, we've been filing motions showing that ongoing discrimination, abuse, and retaliation against incarcerated people with disabilities persists because CDCR continues to hold staff accountable. It's taken increasingly specific orders over 15 plus years to arrive at the underwhelming place we are here today.

The conduct that we documented in our court filings is horrific. Our correctional experts and more than 150 sworn statements from incarcerated people showed a pattern of prison staff targeting people with disabilities for abuse and retaliating against those who reported the abuse. In one incident, an officer refused an Armstrong class member with a mobility disability request for help carrying a heavy package.

When the class member threatened to file a staff complaint, the officer pepper sprayed the person in the face, hit him in the face with the pepper spray canister, and then kicked him. In another incident, an officer punched a deaf incarcerated person in the face when that person requested that the officer communicate with him in writing in order to accommodate the fact that he was deaf. As California's own internal auditor acknowledged, they have never heard accusations like these in all their years.

It's a very serious situation and it needs immediate attention. As a result, the district court in the Armstrong case issued several orders focused on six prisons in particular that were aimed at ensuring that defendants, the governor, and CDCR change their ways. Those ways that they were court ordered to change are listed in the agenda before you. I am happy to report that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed the vast majority of the common sense and necessary remedies that were ordered in our case.

As the 9th Circuit unanimous opinion explained, if prison staff are not held accountable when they unlawfully fail to accommodate disabled inmates, or when they retaliate against inmates who report such misconduct, disabled inmates will stop speaking up. And if prisoners do not speak up, there's less opportunity to hold officers accountable. Failing to hold officers accountable, in turn, can embolden staff by suggesting that they can violate inmates'rights with impunity, further discouraging disabled inmates from speaking up as the threat of retaliation grows.

CDCR has not undertaken these reforms voluntarily. They were court ordered to do so. I would like to briefly discuss some of the preliminary obstacles to reform that we're seeing today, including ongoing problems with the handling of staff complaints and also the failure to implement the court ordered reforms. As you may be aware, plaintiffs counsel and the court's expert are charged with monitoring these orders.

At the six prisons, we review investigation files to determine if the investigations are in fact complete and unbiased, if appropriate and consistent discipline is being imposed, and if staff are complying with body worn camera policies. Thus far, we've reviewed hundreds of cases from all six prisons. Unfortunately, our reports have found that CDCR has made little progress in changing behavior to investigate and hold staff accountable. As far as ongoing failures with investigations go, the investigations conducted by CDCR, especially into serious allegations of misconduct, remain deficient.

Investigators regularly fail to retain and review available video footage. This is significant because the footage is only retained for 90 days if investigators fail to pull the correct footage or they do not pull enough footage to be able to confirm whether or not the staff misconduct has occurred. Footage is then lost by the time Plains counsel or the court expert are able to review the case. We don't review the cases until after they're closed.

For example, in one case that we reviewed, the allegation didn't specify the exact time of day that the misconduct occurred. The investigator pulled a random hour instead of the entire day of footage because that 1 hour didn't show the misconduct that had been alleged. The investigator then closed the case as unfounded. We have also seen other evidence of poor decision making in investigations, such as failing to interview or even identify the subject of the allegation.

We see these failings from both local prison investigators who are responsible for the less serious allegations, and also from OIA investigators. There have also been ongoing failures with the discipline. Even in the few cases where investigators do uncover evidence of serious misconduct, we see egregious examples of wardens who fail to sustain findings of misconduct or to impose appropriate discipline as a result. In a recent case we reviewed, for example, officers rushed into a cell because the person in the cell was non responsive.

Once inside the cell, the first reaction of the officers was to throw the person from the top buck onto the concrete ground. Officers were not disciplined for that unnecessary and excessive use of force. More often than not, officers are issued some type of corrective action, such as training or a letter of instruction, rather than discipline. We see this even in cases involving some of the most serious allegations of misconduct, including violent and unnecessary uses of force.

It is discouraging that more than two and a half years after this court's initial order regarding this portion of the litigation, the decision making and outcome of the investigations has not significantly changed. Because we now have access to video footage when it is preserved and produced to us, we can confirm that CDCR is failing to hold staff accountable for misconduct when it is captured on video. I also want to highlight an important problem that's emerged with CDCR's staff misconduct investigation process.

The system is supposed to ensure that allegations of serious misconduct are routed outside of the prison to the Office of Internal Affairs for investigation. We understood that CDCR would apply the same standard statewide to routing allegations of staff misconduct. However, after plans were solidified and regulations were implemented, CDCR informed us that they changed their mind. They were receiving too many allegations of serious staff misconduct to process them properly.

Instead of ensuring that staff at OIA could handle the influx of complaints, CDCR chose to stop the influx from going to OIA. Now, at the six prisons covered by court order, serious allegations of staff misconduct go to OIA. At other prisons, defendants are using a different standard, a standard that makes it harder for staff misconduct allegations to go to OIA. This decision defies logic and will only result in additional litigation and expense for the state. Staff misconduct is a statewide problem.

It makes no sense for a staff complaint to be handled differently depending on which prison you're housed in. Through our work monitoring CDCR, one thing has become abundantly clear. CDCR should have fixed surveillance cameras and body worn cameras at all of its prisons as soon as possible. Accountability is all but impossible without video evidence. The rare instances we see in which CDCR does hold staff accountable invariably involve video showing officers violating their duties.

Body worn camera footage, in particular, has been revelatory as it captures audio of the staff's interactions with incarcerated people, showing, for example, officers who unnecessarily escalate situations that then require dangerous uses of forces. Without video footage, the vast majority of investigations turn into a he said. He said that is nearly always resolved in staff's favor. Despite the utility of body worn cameras, the Governor's Budget does not include any additional funding for body worn cameras to be expanded to additional prisons. This is a mistake.

We urge the legislature to fund body worn cameras at all prisons. Over and over, CDCR repeats the tired refrain that it takes staff misconduct very seriously. Yet CDCR fails to hold its own officers and wardens accountable for misconduct. Violations of policy are ignored or at most, met with slaps on the wrist. The result is the staff complaint.

Investigations show no marked difference in outcomes, despite reforms and years of oversight, we recently learned that a single officer who was employed for over a decade at CCWF has been accused of sexual misconduct by over 20 different women. It's hard to believe that nobody knew this was happening, especially because it is alleged the officer was caught on camera taking his victims into the one room without any camera coverage. Yet the code of asylums prevailed.

We have repeatedly asked for information about how many staff complaints were filed against this officer and why it took so long for action to be taken. In this case, CDCR will never come into compliance with multiple class actions and end federal court oversight unless it radically reforms its culture and holds officers, wardens and top administrators accountable for staff misconduct against incarcerated people.

Allison Hewitt, Department of Finance. No specific comments available for any questions as it pertains to the BCP.

Okay, we will move to comments from the Committee at this point, and I have a few to start off with and some questions. I'll start with this general comment moment. It sounds like this issue has been brewing for more than a decade and we are now only trying to remedy the problem.

And I'm seeing a pattern with CDCR only engaging in systemic reforms when it is forced to, and I cannot understand why this continues to be the case.

The lack of urgency from the department to act over all of these years is incredibly troubling because it sends the wrong message to the perpetrators inside our carcel system. With that said, maybe we can get this right this time and not have to wait another 15 years. I am certainly going to be putting folks on notice. I'm at the start of my legislative career in this Assembly.

The other comment I have to make is to express my personal horror at the kind of incidents that are being described. These aren't just issues where an employee is clocking out early or taking a longer lunch. These sound like crimes to me.

The agenda includes an incident which I will read out loud, and forgive me for the profanity that I am about to use. An incarcerated person with a mobility disability protested that an officer was searching him in a way that was incompatible with his disability.

In response, the officer told him, I don't give a shit, slammed him to the ground and then punched and kicked him in the face and ribs, and he was restrained in handcuffs. The officer stepped on his head and high fived nearby staff members. There are so many more that were categorized and outlined and described in this report that we received, and if I read them, I will sit here and cry.

So my question is, this is the incident I just described treated as a crime or just a complaint with administrative remedies? Because I'm trying to understand what threshold needs to be crossed for a staff complaint to be turned into a crime, into a criminal matter.

And on that point, because this is a Fiscal Committee, I just asked if there were a specific line item that outlined the cost of litigation and settlements associated with these kind of staff misconduct issues.

And I was told that it's all over the budget and can't be provided, we can't be provided any specific information about this. It's a cost to our humanity, for sure, but it is certainly a cost to the fiscal outcomes of this department. Any response to that?

Madam Chair, if I may, and we would agree with you as a department that the allegations that you read, appalling, appalling, and absolutely not representative of the great work that happens in our agency every single day. And yet we recognize that we have an obligation to look into those allegations and to do it in a way that gives us the ability to also seek criminal prosecution when we have evidence that criminal activity has occurred.

One big change in this process that we made in our past process, we always determined if we were going to investigate criminal allegations or administrative allegations, and sometimes both. And we made that distinction all the way from the very beginning.

In this new process, we have taken a stand that we will proceed as if every allegation that includes possible criminal misconduct would absolutely be investigated that way, that we would complete those investigations as if there was the potential for criminal misconduct.

Because we have to remember that our staff have certain rights in a criminal investigation that they don't have in administrative investigations. And so we have to sometimes parse that out and make sure that we don't cross that line so as not to contaminate the actual investigation and the potential for seeking criminal charges.

So in this particular process that we've stood up, we have stopped identifying on the front end if we believe it's going to be criminal or administrative.

And instead, we proceed with all caution, recognizing that something that may not even look like it's criminal in the beginning could absolutely turn that way later. And then we evaluate before we get to the point where we're interviewing subjects and other persons that might actually be implicated in misconduct, to make sure that we don't contaminate that investigation and don't prevent the ability for a very clean investigation going to prosecuting authorities on the outside.

The other thing that's really important to note is that our threshold for administrative remedies is absolutely very different from the threshold of a criminal indictment or criminal charges being pursued. And although we can take these investigations and we can put them in the hands of local authorities who determine if they're going to seek prosecution, we don't make that final decision in CDCR. Instead, that's something that local authorities make.

Is that the process for every prison? And why isn't it the policy if it's not?

I'm not sure that I understand your question, Madam Chair, but let me say this, that for the Office of Internal Affairs, that absolutely is our process for the allegation investigation unit and our investigations on allegations against incarcerated persons and parolees, that we now pursue those as if they might be criminal from the very beginning.

I think we heard from Ms. Godbold that there was a variance in the kind of process that was applied across the prisons. So I don't know if perhaps Ms. Godbold wants to respond to that or Ms. Grunfeld.

Sorry. I'm happy to respond to that. Before I respond to the specific question about the variance, I do want to acknowledge that there is in the new staff misconduct complaint process that is in the process of rolling out statewide, there has been a change made to the process as was just described by Director Miller.

However, in practice, we haven't seen any evidence of the cases that we are receiving for our review of them being actually handled any differently.

And in fact, we have seen evidence of what we believe is criminal misconduct, including a recent case where an officer admitted that he simply just got frustrated with an incarcerated person and slammed his head against a cage, and there was no evidence of any criminal referral or prosecution or handling of that as a criminal matter in that case.

So there has been a change in process, but no recognizable change in behavior in terms of these investigations and how these cases are handled.

To your specific question about how cases will be treated differently at the six prisons versus the non six prisons, what I'm referring to there is the addition of a standard where CDCR is requiring allegations to plead a causal connection between the alleged discrimination or retaliation, whatever misconduct is being alleged, and a protected class.

And that's a heightened pleading standard that is already, my understanding, been implemented at the non six prisons. So it's this additional hurdle that people must be able to overcome before they can get their case investigated by OIA.

Thank you. I'll open for questions. Mr. Lackey.

Yeah, first, all, let me just say real quickly, my history, if you don't know, I am retired at law enforcement, and I'm strongly hurt and frustrated by any kind of misconduct while wearing a uniform because it results in extreme betrayal of trust. I believe strongly in accountability by the behavior of non uniform people. But I do believe that people that wear a uniform should be held to even a higher standard.

And I find that when we do not that these kinds of behaviors results not only in a betrayal of trust, but over stereotyping, because it's just believed it's a natural consequence. And so I'm highly interested in holding people accountable, especially for the kind of mistreatment that we've been talking about.

And my biggest question comes to, and let me just make real quickly, a strong plea for any facility that is not utilizing cameras is a disappointment.

And I believe that it also works in protecting the uniformed personnel from false accusations. I believe very, very heartily that it's a solution to building trust back. And if we're not utilizing that and funding is the problem, I'm all for supporting whatever it takes to actually implement the use of personal cameras and area cameras.

So my understanding is that it's not fully adopted by all prisons. And so that's a disappointment. My question comes along the line of when are investigations ever turned over to prosecutors?

Is it only when employees are dismissed? Because we're talking about there is definitely criminal conduct that has taken place. And the one example that was a very extreme and disheartening situation we know was turned over to district attorney, but the employee had already resigned.

But that's not the case in every instance. And I just wonder what is the policy within the department of when a case is turned over to a city or district attorney?

Thank you for that question. And so, as I mentioned with the office of Internal affairs, as we conduct investigations when there's evidence of criminal misconduct, it's the Office of Internal Affairs who works with those local district attorneys and others, shares the information in the case. And ultimately that district attorney will make that decision. Now they have those conversations in advance.

Also recognizing that we are very careful not to cross that threshold and want to make sure that we can give and turn over the best case possible. But absolutely, that's a function of the Office of Internal Affairs. Likewise, if an institution, if a warden or even if a parole administrator believes that they have information of employee misconduct, they will immediately bring that to the Office of Internal affairs.

We have a process called exigent cases, and in many cases, we will immediately get the local authorities involved as well as the office of internal affairs in those cases.

Yeah, I'm acutely aware of Lybarger conflicts. And so I understand the difference between administrative and criminal. But my biggest frustration, I just hope that there's a cooperative effort between Office of Internal affairs and the attorneys when there is criminal misconduct and there are costs, since we're a Fiscal Committee, the civil lawsuit costs are enormous. And more importantly, though, is the cost. That's hard to measure, and that's the mistrust. And so I just want your agency to know that.

And I believe that this entire legislative body believes in this very, very vigorously, that we need to hold people accountable that have these positions of authority, because when this authority is betrayed, in my opinion, it is criminal.

And I don't think that they have, if they're engaging in criminal conduct wearing a uniform, they should no longer be allowed to wear that uniform ever. And that's just my personal opinion, and I just am very discouraged. And I hope that the use of cameras will become more widespread. And if money is an issue, we need to address that in this Fiscal Committee. Thank you.

Mr. Jones-Sawyer.

And hopefully, this is a quick question, because it's probably more for the OIG than anyone else. I had asked to provide additional resources for the office of Inspector General so that they could then help with oversight. I'm reading here that out of 25% of the complaints, that you're currently only able to provide oversight to only 8% of complaints.

Well, I had asked for additional money and resources, and I was told by the office of Inspector General that they could handle it.

They didn't need any more money and resources. But now I'm reading you can't fulfill oversight, which I think would be very helpful for Ames and everybody else if we had, and even dealing with the wardens, if they're making decisions, somebody needs to be sitting there looking to make sure that everyone's doing what they need to do. That's independent from the system, because I think that in some ways, the system is problematic. But now I also see the governors want $9.6 million.

It doesn't sound like it's for the OIG, but for others. And so I'm confused, because I think we need everybody all hands on deck to get this right. And because, as my colleagues have said, the things that are done that are inappropriate, that are criminal, are just outrageous.

And we probably need to step up our efforts to have oversight, not reduce or just give the minimum required on everybody's level. So where are we on that? I got a note that you have the money. They haven't hired anyone. I asked for additional, like, $14 million, and it was no dips. They did get it. Okay.

I was giving Mr. Jones-Sawyer an opportunity to read his note, but thank you for that concern and raising that concern. I just want to address that. The OIG is a small agency, and when we were given the resources that we requested, we actually didn't get those resources until July 1.

So we've pretty much been borrowing from our other teams to get the staff complaint monitoring unit up and running before we actually got the funding. So we didn't have positions and we didn't have the money.

So I borrowed from my, at the time, small agency of less than 130 people. I borrowed from other teams to start building the staff complaints monitoring unit. We got into July 1. We started hiring for our positions. We have actively hired, we have filled a number of positions. We have a number of people still in the background hiring process.

We are actively recruiting to fill that team. So yes, our numbers are low, but that's only because we've had staffing for certain positions for about six months.

And so as we are hiring and actively recruiting and building, our numbers will go up and we will be able to monitor and meet our thresholds. That is our goal. But as you know, hiring can take some time between recruiting for positions, interviews, backgrounds.

Going through the CALHR process, it takes several weeks to actually get people on board and then to get them trained. Our centralized screening team, that team has, we have filled the positions that we were allotted.

And so we are now looking forward to putting other people in place, seeing if I can still borrow from other teams to continue that monitoring. We are actively recruiting and hiring. We have many people in place now for our monitors for the internal affairs cases and our monitors for the local inquiry cases.

We've also built up a team that is starting to look at our data, do our data collection, get our report together. So we have been filling positions as necessary.

And then we also have a small HR shop and I have multiple other units that are still seeking filling their vacancies. So I'm really trying to balance out the workload. So at this time, we did not make that request for additional funding. I want to get our vacancies filled. I want to see what we can do, and then if it is not enough, I will come back and I will ask for more.

But I want to be fiscally responsible, fill the vacancies that we have, see what work we can produce, and go from there.

Okay, thank you.

Just in light of the fact that the Governor's Budget proposes $9.6 million in General Fund for an additional 16 positions in 23-24 and another 9.3 million and 16 positions in 24-25 and 2.9 million General Fund and 16 positions in 25-26 and ongoing.

To continue refining the CDCR's updated staff misconduct allegation and complaint screening, referral and tracking process and mechanisms. I would very much like to have transparency and visibility into the cost of litigation and the cost of settlements associated with this staff misconduct.

So if you can take that as some direction moving forward, I would very much appreciate it. And at this point, I think I will be cautious. I can't even say cautiously hopeful that we can get this process right, because clearly lives are on the line. And as Mr. Lackey indicated, trust and accountability is on the line, but we will be relying on oversight from the Inspector General's office.

Know that we are thankful that you are building up your staff with the resources that have already been provided, and certainly thank you to the plaintiff's attorneys for informing us along the way on this.

I want to thank Ms. Godbold and Ms. Grunfeld for all of their efforts in shining a light on these egregious issues and for your continued efforts in helping to improve the dysfunctions in our correction system, because they are vast and they should not be that way. We'll move on to the next item. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Next is issue number four, statewide correctional video surveillance program continuation. Thank you. You can proceed with the first presentation.

Good afternoon. I'm Ron Davis, acting deputy director, Department of Corrections Rehabilitation. CDCR is requesting funding and positions to deploy fixed cameras at the remaining 10 institutions and for licensing software and refresh costs.

Fixed camera technology promotes the safety of incarcerated individuals and staff and assists to conduct and conclude investigations. Cameras provide the ability for real time monitoring and recording in order to conduct investigations and after the fact reviews by utilizing audio or video recording technology or both.

This request continues on previously approved projects that have completed installation of fixed cameras at institution the department has completed installation of fixed cameras at 10 institution as in process of deploying fixed cameras at 11 institutions during this fiscal year. That's all I have, and I'm available for any questions on this matter.

Thank you. Go with the LAO.

Caitlin O'Neill with the LAO. As I noted earlier in the hearing, the state could be in a position to deactivate five prisons by 2027. However, it's unclear what specific prisons those might be at this time.

This means that under the governor's proposal, there's a risk that any of the prisons proposed to receive video surveillance, which would be the remainder of prisons that are not announced for closure at this time, would be deactivated shortly after the installation, meaning that the state would barely realize the benefits of the AVSS installation at those prisons. In addition, given the budget problem that the state is facing, this expansion would come at the expense of previously identified budget priorities across the state.

So we find that while it can have benefits, given the risk of installing it at prisons that are closed shortly thereafter, and the budget problem facing the state, we find that it's not prudent at this time to expand AVS.

So we recommend rejecting the portion of the proposal, the vast majority of it 87.7 million and 19 positions in 23-24 as well as the ongoing resources related to maintaining the proposed expansion. And then there's a small portion of resources related to previously approved cameras that we would recommend approving. I'm available for questions.

Sarah Tomlinson with the Department of Finance. First, we'd like to note that this proposal is consistent with the current CDCR closure plan and accounts for closures that have been announced through 2025.

Additionally, while we recognize the current budgetary circumstances, the Administration is proposing to complete the statewide installation of fixed cameras because of the significant benefits that the new cameras provide with regard to increasing accountability and promoting the safety of incarcerated individuals and staff.

Fixed cameras serve as an effective tool by enhancing CDCR's ability to monitor activities within prisons and providing evidence to support investigative activities. As CDCR could explain in more detail, the presence of the new cameras can also serve as a deterrent for illicit activities.

Lastly, if the state were to delay or halt the installation of fixed cameras at certain institutions based on the hypothetic potential for future closures, among other things, this could create a parity issue by providing safer conditions for some staff and incarcerated individuals at institutions that have the benefit of the new technology versus those that do not.

Accordingly, the Administration is proposing to continue with the statewide rollout of fixed cameras at all institutions statewide. And with that, I appreciate your time and I'm here to answer any questions the Committee may have.

Thank you. I want to first make clear that we know that video surveillance systems can serve as a deterrent for undesirable or criminal acts, and they can provide evidence in the tens of thousands of complaints that get filed. I think we've just also sat through a hearing where we know that the tools that have been available to us have not actually been adequately implemented.

And we also know that we are dealing with a circumstance where because of the lack of a plan around closure, we could be making investments into a fixed camera technology in places and prisons that ultimately will close.

For example, at Chuckwalla State Prison was authorized for new cameras last year and then just a few months later closed. So that was money incredibly ill spent in terms of capital outlay for us.

The Department says the equipment can be used at another prison, but this may not always be the case. From what I've learned so far about this Department, there are no accountability mechanisms in place when this kind of taxpayer waste happens. I'm not aware of any other state agency that gets this kind of leeway.

So one is question around fixed camera technology versus body worn technology. In theory, body worn technology would actually move with have the ability to have more fungibility across institutions. And I also want to get a sense around whether CDCR has thought any more about taking a phased approach into account regarding, given the potential prison closures.

Thank you, Madam Chair Members. Madelynn McClain, Deputy Director for fiscal services. In relation to the phase in approach, do you mean additional phase in for body warrants or just in general? We're committed to completing the fixed camera installation, and that is our goal at this time. And we'll consider in the future potentially expanding body worns. But right now we're completing the fixed camera installation.

Why, if we know that we're having challenges with being able to be thoughtful about prison closures, would we not also consider body worn cameras in a phased approach?

Because we wanted to get through the fixed camera installation first? And I think it's important to note that, yes, potentially down the road there may be an institution that is closed, but the short term benefits of having the cameras installed outweigh the long term benefits. And so we find the cameras to be incredibly helpful in terms of investigations and deterrence.

And so it's our commitment to even in the short term, we need to maintain the facilities that we have, and having those installed are beneficial to the Department overall.

Let's talk a little bit about the level of utility of the fixed camera technology, particularly around the retention of video footage and the policy of only retaining that video footage for 90 days.

We heard in the prior panel the impact of not actually being able to have the short amount of that retention lead to inability to actually be able to follow any staff misconduct issues or other issues over time. Has there been any consideration around the length of retention associated with footage?

Certainly. So right now, the 90 day video retention is our policy. It's consistent with local law enforcement agencies throughout the state and the country. And I do want to make a point to the Committee that in certain cases, that footage is automatically pulled from the system and sent to long term storage. So any use of force if there's a riot, if there is a triggering event that's in our Department of Operations Manual.

I do have some, like an injury, suspicious felonious activity, those things that are automatically pulled from the camera system and put in long term storage. We don't dispute that the video is incredibly helpful in an investigation. However, it is not the only tool in our toolkit.

So we will still, as part, Director Miller indicated, our new process, that we're still in the phased implementation of rolling out these cases will still be investigated to the full extent.

Video is helpful, however, in the very small instances where we don't have video. I believe our current statistics show that only 3% of allegations of staff misconduct video was not available. So in 97% of the cases, we are pulling the video and it is getting used in this investigations.

I just want to go back to the body cameras for an instance. Has the CDCR considered deploying additional body cameras?

Again after we complete the rollout of all the fixed cameras, we will then look to consider submitting and discussing a request for future body worn. But right now, per the court order, we deployed the body worn cameras at the fixed facilities and are in the process of completing the fixed ones.

Is there any other reason besides a fiscal reason why there's not a possibility to consider rolling out different phasing in the body cameras at a different phase? You have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Understood. And right now, we found that the fixed cameras, in terms of their layout and deployment throughout the institutions to be incredibly beneficial. And that's what we would like to complete before we moved on to future body worn. So there's components to each. They each have their issues in terms of facility, layout, and getting all of the appropriate equipment in the right place.

And so we want to be probably a little bit thoughtful in how we do this, and we don't want to bite off more than we can chew. And this implementation is what makes sense for the Department.

Mr. Jones-Sawyer, do you have any questions?

I just want to just maybe I can couch what the chair is trying to say, maybe in a different way. From a thing of efficiency and effectiveness, if you put a body camera on me, and I have my body camera, no matter what other facility I go to my body and the camera goes. If you have a fixed camera in a facility that is closed, then that cost of that goes away. I lose it, but I don't lose it if the camera follows me.

Hopefully they all are somewhat the same. You're not buying different brands. I think that's where we're kind of getting to that. Maybe you should have flipped it the other way so that the impact and the effectiveness over a long period of time would have been much more beneficial with a body worn camera. I just think that through.

And if it is a cost thing, let's talk about the radius that you get there versus the longevity of using that same dollars and buying cameras on a person and how much further that could take you over a 10 year period. And I'll even put in the usefulness of something over 10 years or five years.

I don't have any other questions at this time. Thank you. For the discussion. Before we do turn to public comments, I want to note one comment and ask the CDCR for a written response to one of the items on the nondiscusion section of this agenda, specifically item number two related to bis migration to S4 Hannah under state law, CDCR is required to join the state's centralized financial IT system called fiscal, by 2032 and a transition plan is expected at the end of the year.

The BCP and the available information we have currently is insufficient to evaluate whether this proposal is needed at this time, and it raises concerns whether the necessary effort is being put towards moving CDCR into fiscal.

As such, I'd like the Department to provide the LAO and our Subcommittee with the key information requested so we can properly evaluate this proposal. We look forward to getting that information by the end of this month. I want to thank my colleagues and the panelists for the discussion today.

We will be revisiting many aspects of this conversation and I'm sure these same issues in the coming months. And now we will move to public comment. We will start with any public comment in the hearing room. Each person will have up to one minute for public comment. Next, we will turn to the phones. The phone number to connect is on the Committee website and should be also written on the screen.

If you are streaming this hearing, the number is for the public toll free number 877-692-8957, public access code is 131-5437. We will take public comment in the room first. Thank you.

Hello, I'm Danica Rodarmel on behalf of Initiate Justice. Providing comment on issue one, we echo the comments of the Chair and the Members of the Committee along with the LAO, encouraging CDCR to have a clear plan for prison closures and to include the Legislature and other impacted stakeholders in those conversations.

We also urge the state to ensure that CDCR's budget decreases as the population shrinks and prisons close so that we can invest the state's money in programs that support true public safety and well being. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Ken Hartman. I'm talking on behalf of the Transformative InPrison Workgroup, which represents over 85 community based organizations providing rehabilitative programming to people incarcerated in the CDCR. Providing comment on issues 14 and five as someone who served more than 38 years while sentenced to a life sentence, I really do appreciate the comments of Secretary McCumber on the importance of considering the well being of the lives of the human beings held in the prisons.

Similarly, as someone who benefited from many community based rehabilitative programs, I feel compelled to point out that these vital programs currently receive less than one half of 1% of CDCR's more than $14 billion budget. We urge the state to invest at least 1% of CDCR's budget on these programs. We also want to note that community based organizations are the only source of restorative justice and healing programs within the prison system.

We urge the Legislature to reject proposals for nonessential infrastructure projects until CDCR provides a clear prison closure plan to invest the state to ensure that the state does not invest money into prisons that may be closed in the next few years.

Specifically, we encourage the Legislature to reject a proposal to install audiovisual surveillance systems at all remaining prisons and instead shift some of those funds to support crucial community based organizations.

Finally, as regards funding issues for the California Rehabilitation Oversight Board, I'd like to suggest that community based organizations and formerly incarcerated people have a seat at the table in these decision making processes. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll move to the phone lines now.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to make a public comment, you may press 1 and 0 at this time. We go to our first line. Line 13, please go ahead.

Hi, my name is Bryan Ziadie. I'm a resident of Los Angeles and also a member of the LA chapter of Critical Resistance. First, thank you to all the Committee Members for all the important questions raised regarding issues 1 and 4.

I want to add my voice to those who will be urging the Committee to require CDCR to provide a concrete prison closure plan and to withhold any infrastructure related allocations, including the ABSS system, in the budget.

Until that plan is subjected to public scrutiny and approved, any viable closure plan needs to incorporate a plan to repurpose prisons for uses that benefit the communities they're located in.

For this reason, I find it a real source of concern that among the prisons selected for closure are prisons that hold functions like water treatment or sewage, as in the case of CCC or Chuckawalla, functions that other prisons rely upon.

Complicating the closure process given the CDCR's lack of transparency regarding its selection process, which Assemblymember Jones-Sawyer pointed out it has maintained for at least 10 years, it's difficult not to suspect that there's an unspoken strategy of stalling full closure.

Warm shutdowns use up public resources and impose an obstacle to local development. Again, the LAO reports that the cost of operating DVI, for example, warm shutdown is 2.2 million per year, indefinitely.

So across the country, communities have repurposed prisons to become everything from farm incubators to movie production studios to community centers providing infrastructure for real community development. Thank you.

Next we'll go to line 19. Please go ahead.

Hi, my name is Isa Borgeson and I'm a campaign manager at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. I'm also a member of Critical Resistance Oakland. I'm here to speak about issue one, prison population projections and prison closures.

I want to thank this Committee for your attempts year after year to have CDCR produce a long term plan for prison infrastructure and consolidation.

As the Chair Assemblymember Bonta pointed out, CDCR's failure to produce this plan has resulted in our state wasting billions of dollars on unnecessary repairs at prisons that were ultimately named foreclosure. Between 2017 and 2020, CBCR spent approximately $90 million at DVI and CCC on repairs and upgrades before the Governor ultimately named these prisons foreclosure.

Chair Bonta also pointed out that the contradiction of CDCR's warm shutdown. CDCR is currently operating several closed facilities in this warm shutdown mode, costing the state and taxpayers millions each year.

To keep the lights on, water running, and staff employed, all at Mc facilities, we need full prison closures. We need CDCR to adopt a comprehensive, community informed roadmap that ensures prison closures and reflects the reality of significant population reductions. Thank you so much.

Next, we'll go to line 15. Please go ahead.

Chair Members Melissa Kirsty of California, speaking in regards to issue number one related to prison closures, I'd like to express our Trump support for the Elliott analysis that shows that the state can close an additional five prisons by 2027, saving the state around $1 billion in 2017 was released to report that detailed how the state could close five prisons and save hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, here we are six years later.

We have effectively closed two prisons and are looking forward to closing seven more by 2027. It is imperative that the state commit to closing more prisons, and we immediately begin planning for these closures.

But most importantly, be prepared to invest in the much needed giving resources that allow communities to feel supported, thrive, and feel safe. Thank you.

Next we go to line 17. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. This is Brian Kaneda, the Deputy Director of California United for a Responsible Budget. I'm a resident of Los Angeles, and I'm calling to speak on agenda item one. I'd like to thank the Committee for their vital questions on the issue of prison closure as CDCR continues to Stonewall.

In all of the presentations today, did anything this Committee here inspire confidence that CDCR doesn't require greater oversight and direction on this issue and many others.

Prison populations go down and prison spending goes up. The LAO report is clear. CDCR doesn't have a clear plan to close additional prisons, which could cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars as we face a potential $24 billion deficit.

As Assemblymember Hart shared, these conversations are not new. They happen every year. Nothing is ever done. I am imploring this Committee. We have to have an advancement of this conversation.

Without a roadmap to close California prisons, the state risks investing untold resources in prisons that may be soon shuttered. Thank you.

Next, we'll go to line 16. Please go ahead.

CDCR has failed to justify the 15,000 beds it intends to keep operating for the 23 to 24 budget cycle, and it does not have a plan for additional capacity reductions despite the projected number of empty beds estimated to reach 20,000 by 2027.

Hi, chair and Assembly Members of the Committee. My name is Tannah Oppliger. I'm a resident of Los Angeles and I'm a policy assistant at Californians United for a Responsible Budget. I'll be speaking to issue number one on prison population projections and prison closures.

CDCR itself has projected a decline in the prison population, and they have affirmed there have been positive outcomes from recent prison and yard deactivations, like millions in annual cost savings, as well as avoidance of infrastructure repair costs.

Make no mistake, we can close full prisons, not just more prison yards. Our community members and yards being foreclosure have described the activations of short term solutions that move people from prison to prison, benefit CEO employment, and harm people inside.

Based on CDCR's own numbers, there is no justification for CDCR to a increase its budget or b not close more prisons. Adopting a comprehensive, community informed roadmap that ensures safe and intentional closures and then includes releases and labor and economic solutions for all people impacted by incarceration would heighten the positive impact of prison closures for all Californians. CDCR's budget must be reduced. Thank you.

Next, we'll go to line 21. Please go ahead.

Hi, my name is Olivia Gleason. I'm a resident of Long Beach, California, and I'm calling in with Californians United for a responsible budget curb. I'm a communications assistant, and I'm calling in support of issue item one. I agree that we must ensure prison closures are done safely and thoughtfully.

While there may be unique factors apparent in specific prison closures, a long term, community informed plan for prison closure would mitigate the issues currently going on. As a result of CDCR's disorganized prison closure process.

Community members currently incarcerated have reported a culture of carelessness, harm, and irresponsibility when it comes to the prison closure and transfer processes CDCR currently undergoes.

The idea that CDCR is centering sick, disabled, and elderly folks in their prison closure selection is not supported by the evidence people are not getting well in cells.

A roadmap for prison closure would ensure that prison closures are done safely, that releases are prioritized when possible, but that if people are transferred, they are done so safely and in a way where they're moved closer to their loved ones.

And it would ensure funds from prisons are reinvested in communities and economies impacted by incarceration, and that prisons are repurposed in noncarceral ways that benefit local communities. Prison closure is not inherently unsafe. It only will be so if CDCR continues to operate without a plan. Thank you so much for your time.

At this time, there's no others in queue.

Thank you. With that, we will adjourn the Assembly budget Subcommittee number five on public safety.