Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 5 on Corrections, Public Safety, Judiciary, Labor and Transportation

All right, the Senate Budget Subcommitee Number Five on Corrections, Public Safety, Judiciary, Labor, and Transportation will begin now. The Senate Budget Subcommitee Number Five on Corrections, Public Safety, Judiciary, Labor, and Transportation will come to order. Good morning. We are holding our Committee hearings here in the Capitol. I ask all Members of the Subcommitee to be present in Room 112 so we can establish our quorum and begin our hearing.

Today's hearing will include updates on previous budget actions, starting with the Office of Emergency Services and then hearing from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Office of the Inspector General. Public comment on all issues will be heard after all discussion issues, and then we will move to the vote only calendar to ensure we have time for everything on today's agenda. We are asking panelists to keep their testimony under five minutes.

I would also ask my fellow Committee Members to keep their comments and questions concise. Would any Members like to add anything before we begin? Seeing none. Let's establish a quorum. Consultant, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

All right, quorum has been established. Let's begin with our first discussion item, issue number 30, an overview of the emergency preparedness and response planning report prepared by Cal OES. So we're going to be hearing from Eric Swanson, the Deputy Director of Finance and Administration from the Office of Emergency Services. You will be timed.

Thank you. I'm Eric Swanson, Deputy Director of Finance and Administration at Cal OES, and with me today is Tina Curry, our Chief Deputy Director. The first issue on your agenda is a requirement articulated in the last few budget cycles for Cal OES to issue a report that is focused on emergency preparedness and response planning.

The intent of this report is to identify the types of risks Cal OES considers during planning and preparedness efforts, the framework utilized to identify the appropriate resource capabilities, existing programs that support that framework, the goals and objectives for emergency response, how recently approved resources support the emergency response goals and objectives, and gaps that may exist with the current resources. That's a mouthful, but that was all in the requirements. We have utilized internal interviews and outsider stakeholder input to develop this report.

Over the last several years, the state has experienced an unprecedented number of emergencies and disasters, severe drought, catastrophic wildfires, power grid outage challenges, earthquakes, COVID-19, and intensive storms with severe flooding the last few years. 15 of the most destructive fires in the state's history have occurred since 2015, with seven of those occurring in the last four years. The disaster landscape in California and across the nation has been changing, increasing in scale and severity.

A foundation of emergency management in the state is the concept of neighbor helping neighbor. Understanding that no area will necessarily have the ability to manage large scale disasters on their own. Within California, scalability and surge capacity for emergencies is rooted with the California Master Mutual Aid Agreement. This agreement allows cities and counties across the state to share resources as needed during disaster response. All cities, counties, and what we call operational areas have a built in escalation process if the response efforts exceed their capabilities.

In its role of statewide coordination, Cal OES supports local jurisdictions and communities through planning and preparedness activities, training, and the full cycle of emergencies from immediate response through long term recovery. During this process, Cal OES coordinates the response actions of state government and serves as the state's overall coordinator to secure federal government resources through FEMA and resources from other states.

This report outlines how our programs fit into the state disaster framework, including some of the most recent investments the Governor and Legislature has made, which includes a permanent incident support team, increased capabilities of our 24 hours warning center, strong state regional support for disaster response and recovery, expanded fire fleet and search and rescue resources, and others. California's emergency management systems are designed to be flexible and scalable to provide the appropriate level of response for each disaster we experience.

Born of our past experience and our durable mutual aid system, we are more prepared than many other states to respond to future events, and through our state mutual aid system, we aid in the response and recovery of disasters that incurred other states, such as we did in Maui after the fires last year. That said, the disaster landscape is dynamic and the ability to adjust quickly to address needs is crucial to the ability to recover from these incidents.

A trained local disaster workforce is critical, and we have a strong training structure, but the cost of training can be a barrier for locals. Likewise, the match costs for local mitigation projects which are preparing for future disasters can also be prohibitive, and the federal system for approving such projects can be lengthy and cumbersome. We are only touching on a few points in this report, but I am mindful of our time constraints, as you reminded me earlier. Ms. Curry and I are available for any questions you may have.

Thank you. I do appreciate it. I'm going to move on to ask if LAO has any questions.

Thank you, Chair Wahab, Members of the Subcommitee. My name is Jared Sippel. I'm with the LAO. Based on our review of the report, we find that the contents generally address the statute's requirements, and we acknowledge that OES identifies its strategic goals as well as goals and objectives for responding to individual emergencies and for specific programs. I think where we had hoped to see more is that the development of specific goals, objectives, and metrics for enhancing the state's overarching emergency response capacity.

We think that would enable the Legislature to better evaluate OES's budget proposals in the future. Such goals and objective metrics could have included the number and types of emergencies the state needs to be prepared for, the types and levels of resources that would be needed to address those emergencies, goals for response times, or goals and targets for key response activities.

And then we believe that with this information, the Legislature would be better positioned to determine the extent of to which OES's existing capacity is insufficient and whether OES's goals and objectives are aligned with that of the Legislature. Moreover, we think, again, that this would allow the Legislature to better assess OES's budget proposals in the future.

So we continue to think that this is important, and we hope OES will include this type of information in its future budget proposals so that the Legislature is well positioned to assess their merits. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Department of Finance.

Tess Scherkenback with the Department of Finance. Available for any questions, but no comments. Thank you.

All right, I'm going to move this on to our Committee panelists. I do have some comments. I do just want to highlight California's emergency response capacity relies on mutual aid between local entities. Specifically, I served on the City of Hayward Council. I think it's incredibly dangerous the way that mutual aid potentially works, especially knowing organized crime is very informed in some of our processes. So, for example, in our city, we have nine patrol units of a city of 160,000. Right.

And when organized crime hits along a freeway in multiple cities asking for mutual aid, and again, additional police response here or there or anywhere, it's a little bit problematic because it can be organized and targeted in a different way as well. So I'm very concerned about that. I'm also very concerned about how many ambulances we have per county.

I believe, if I remember correctly, and you can't quote me exactly on the number, but I believe it was roughly about six ambulances in my county, largely focused in, I'm going to say largely Oakland and Berkeley area versus the southern county. And there has to be more effort and more of a push, even at the local levels if we're really talking about this right. We have seen significant failures in COVID.

I think it clearly showed that we are not at that level to actually address some of these concerns. I think no real nation is, and there's money on the table at the federal level, and I'm hoping that you guys apply to every single grant, every single program that is available, and continue to advocate for the State of California because we have 40 million people that rely on it. As well as any administrative streamlining that you guys can do.

Oftentimes, you know, working government, most people do it in the sense of this is the way we've always done it. So now we're, again, in the 21st century making sure that everything is done pretty quickly. When people are requesting services or accountability measures and much more needs to be streamlined. And I still don't see that yet, to be completely frank. And so I do just want to highlight that. And then our state level fire and rescue fleets was needed to supplement local resources. Right. And so how did OES decide that?

So let me... I'm sorry. I want to make sure I understand your question. So you were talking about the actual proposal that we had.

Yeah.

Yeah. So if I can talk just briefly. Well, first of all, thank you for your comments. Tina Curry, Chief Deputy Director of Operations for Cal OES. I agree. I mean, the, the report, I hope, highlights the importance of the system that we have that's in place, including mutual aid, but also how conditions have changed and evolve. And we have to be mindful of that, exactly as you pointed out. As, you know, whether it's safety or the types of incidents that we're calling mutual aid for.

So we have to be flexible to continue to evolve and build and learn from lessons. In terms of the resource request, Cal OES, as part of the mutual aid system on the fireside, goes a little bit farther in that we have an agreement where the state provides, you know, over 270 pieces of equipment, actual fire engines of different types that are purchased by the state, that are maintained by the state, but they're operated by local government. So it's truly a partnership.

So the proposal, I believe, unless I'm wrong, and Eric will correct me if I am, was that we needed to do more to ensure that the maintenance of that equipment was keeping up with what the demands are. So with all of the increase in disasters and fires lasting longer, more frequent, larger, that obviously increases the wear and tear on that mutual aid equipment that we share responsibility with local government. So that was really kind of very, very briefly, in a nutshell, what that proposal addressed.

But it's also to support the longstanding partnership on the fire and rescue that's been very effective because it truly is the state and local government leaning in together to address the important surge capacity that we've called on time and time again to address not just wildfires but other natural hazards including floods and other events that affect your communities.

So during major public safety events, what is the role of Cal OES law enforcement versus law enforcement agencies such as the DOJ and so forth?

Well, we have, like, in all of our areas, we have a broad partnership to the federal government across to other state agencies that have law enforcement, and, of course, with local government. We are talking with them all the time. We're planning with them, make sure we understand each other's roles, you know, whether it's on the investigative side versus the pure mutual aid law enforcement side.

So we are expecting and to maintain those partnerships and to leverage them to their maximum effect, because, again, it only works when all of the things work together and support the surge capacity that our communities need. So that's something with our embedded law enforcement group that is within our agency, maintains those relationships across the board and at all levels of government.

Okay, so, for example, does Cal OES, you know, know how many ambulances or fire trucks are available in a given region of the state?

We work closely with... The answer's yes. We are... One of our key partners is the Emergency Medical Services Authority, as well as, to the extent that EMS is embedded within fire departments, to always be mindful of that system and what might be needed from it. There's a mutual aid system that exists that is just for medical health, that includes the EMS authority.

So when something happens or we're planning for something, we're expected to and do have the EMS programs in lockstep side by side with us to understand. Because it all has to work together. It's never one thing. It's never just EMS or just fire. And so we, again, we're maintaining and leveraging partnerships with those state agencies that have the connectivity to those local resources. So we are managing surge not just for fire and law and the things that are under OES's umbrella, but all of the lines of effort that come together in a disaster.

So I do just want to highlight this again. You know, I stated my home county has roughly about six ambulances or so. You know, we have, obviously, in our local city, we have significant concerns with the population, the density, and much more. With the amount of technology that we are investing in statewide, across the board, it doesn't matter which agency.

We have been investing significantly in technology and being able to pinpoint potentially where and when a disaster can occur, how far it's going to go, how quickly it's going to spread. There are significant concerns in the response still, and we're seeing California deal with more natural disasters regularly, year over year. We're seeing it, and luckily we've had a lot of rain and a lot of water come into the state.

But with these reports and with the data and with the, you know, infusion of cash and so forth in some of these efforts, I think that it's fair to say that the majority of the residents are expecting faster turnarounds, faster response times, faster improvements. So I do just want to stress that. I want to see if my Senator Seyarto has any comments or questions.

I think I can probably comment on some of the disaster response, but a lot of what you do is coordinate on a larger state level. When a local agency is overwhelmed, they go to the county level. The county is overwhelmed, they go to the state level. So there's several layers that go between when there's a local emergency in that. EMS, LEMSA is who we report to every day, not we anymore, but they report to every day how many, what kind of equipment is available.

And so all of that's done by the area coordinators. So this is like Area G is different from Area E, and so those are the ones that coordinate. But when it goes larger and we need to start calling in state resources for a larger state response, in other words, if it's a wide area down in Southern California, they are miles and miles ahead of where we used to be. The engines that they're talking about are embedded into all of our different fire stations, and they are actually maintained by the fire, the local agencies that house those engines.

So there's two things that I'd like to say. One is that also when other states help us with mutual aid as well, I do just want to highlight the three week rotation. You know, maybe we can address some of that as well because the moment that we train up the other states to help us, they dip out and another state comes in. So that's a little bit of a problem that, you know, I think that we need to address and figure out potentially a better system, a longer term system. Number one.

Number two is also the federal dollars that come in, the $1.50 to every dollar we spend on our equipment to ensure that whether it's the local cities or whether it's any other agency, that it's protected for the actual equipment, reimbursements, and the proper things that it's utilized for. So I do just want to highlight that this is a personal pet issue of mine that I deeply care about. So just highlighting that as much as possible.

But you also need to keep in mind what national resources versus state versus local versus...

100%. Yeah, but they all will get reimbursed.

They all have a role, and they all work together, together to fulfill that role. And they cannot dictate what the national emergency services.

But how the funds are utilized.

How our funds are utilized for our state purposes. Yes, because if we're going to... If you're talking about rotations of crews and things like that, you have to remember we still have local agencies to staff. And so that's why a lot of this, a lot of it's done the way it's done, and it's been years and years of trying to put it together so it actually works now.

And so, you know, if you're looking for improvements, then you're talking about spending massive amounts of money over staffing for emergencies. Because when those guys go out for three weeks on a crew, a bunch of people stay in town and work for three weeks in a row in a station. So, you know, there's no easy, there's no great way when we're having a big emergency. And that's why they rely on people to kind of take care of themselves a little bit.

100%.

I'm not seeing as much of a drastic shortage in what they're doing as you might be. I don't know what's going on in your region with that stuff, but having actually worked in the system, I can tell you the system is a whole lot better than it used to be. And the parts that would improve it are pretty darn costly. And you're talking about equipment just sitting around doing nothing for years and years, and then all of a sudden, one day you get to use it.

Yeah.

We have to find that happy medium, otherwise we're going to increase cost for that, which increased costs for everything in the state.

Yeah. So these are lives at stake. So again, we are investing heavily in our natural disasters and making sure that we, one, mitigate them, and then two, a response and the outcome is beneficial to people to ensure that lives, cats, dogs, humans, everyone is intact, as well as property. So I think that that's one of the fair things that we can say is that we do want to invest in this area, regardless of what type of disaster.

I also want to highlight that even in my region, we're going to have, I believe, a couple of international sports events that are taking place. And it has to have heightened security. It has to have a lot of the local folks in surrounding cities potentially support those efforts. So I do just want to flag it as much as possible that, in the years to come, we need to take a look at that.

My area is also a, it's close to the hills, but it's considered a suburban metro area. And the fires are coming closer and closer. And the fact that we have as much density as we do, it is becoming more problematic. So as much as we can do to mitigate and ensure that we avoid any of these issues, especially with the amount of technology that we have invested to kind of hopefully foresee certain things, I do just want to highlight that.

Do we have any other questions or comments? None. We can move on to the next item. Thank you. So issue number 31 will be staff misconduct process implementation update. We're going to first hear from Caitlin O'Neil from the LAO's office. And I'm going to turn it over to my Vice Chair for a brief minute to chair. Does he need the script?

Thank you. Caitlin O'Neil with the Legislative Analyst's office. I was asked to provide a brief overview by way of providing some background and introduction to this item. So I'm gonna start by first introducing two key functions within CDCR and any prison system in general. The first is the grievance system, which allows people in prison or on parole to contest departmental policies, actions, or conditions that they believe have an adverse effect on their welfare.

For example, someone might file a grievance saying that their cell is excessively hot. So this is primarily a prison management function, prison and parole management function, and it's operated by staff at the Prisons and the Parole Division. The second key function is internal affairs, which is primarily a human resources function because it's ultimately about determining whether staff engaged in misconduct that warrants some kind of disciplinary action.

And unlike the grievance system, which is primarily a localized--staffed by local folks at the institutions, it is intentionally staffed by a centralized entity that is not within the command structure of the prisons and parole to provide some level of independence. And it also has staff with investigatory and legal training. It's also monitored by the Office of the Inspector General. So a key challenge at the heart of this issue is what happens when allegations of staff misconduct arise through the grievance system.

So in the example I gave earlier about a cell being too hot, suppose that grievance says that staff alleges that Officer X placed me intentionally in that cell as a form of retaliation, knowing that the cell gets excessively hot. So this would be an allegation of staff misconduct. Historically, these allegations that arise through the grievance system were handled primarily by staff, again, at the Prisons and in the Parole Division, and in 2019, the Office of the Inspector General raised concerns that these cases were being--were not being handled properly.

There was poor investigatory techniques being used. The people who were handling them showed signs of bias in favor of their fellow staff members. So since that time, CDCR has been in the process of revising how allegations of staff misconduct that arise through the grievance process are handled, and there's been various iterations.

But under the current policies, all grievances are first forwarded to the Office of Internal Affairs to a new team called the Centralized Screening Team that assesses whether or not they contain allegations of staff misconduct. If that team does identify allegations of staff misconduct, then--well, first of all, if they don't identify allegations, they're sent back to the Prisons and Parole Division for handling as a routine matter. If they do, then the question becomes, how serious are those allegations?

And if those allegations are on a list called the Allegation Decision Index of more serious types of misconducts, then they're forwarded to a team called the Allegation Investigation Unit within the Office of Internal Affairs for an investigation. If not, they're returned to the Prisons and the Parole Division to be handled by a locally designated investigator who conducts an inquiry into the matter. And so in 2023, there were about 180,000 such grievances sent to this Centralized Screening Team.

About 160,000 were routed back as not containing allegations of staff misconduct, and the remaining roughly 20,000, about half, stayed with Office of Internal Affairs for a investigation and the other half roughly went back to the Prisons and Parole Division for a local inquiry. To date, CDCR has received various augmentations to support these new processes.

The current ongoing funding is at about 64 million, and Office of Inspector General has also received resources to provide external monitoring of these new processes and currently has about 15 million for this function. Thank you.

Yes. Yes. Ms. Singh?

Yes. Good morning, Madam Vice Chair and Committee Members. I'm Amarik Singh, the Inspector General. I'm here to provide a short summary of our findings from both our 2023 annual report detailing our monitoring of CDCR staff misconduct complaint screening inquiry investigation and disciplinary process, which was just described, and about a report we published in January reviewing CDCR's handling of a backlog of grievances incarcerated people filed that contained allegations of staff misconduct. Our 2023 annual report covered the time period from January 1st through through December 31st, 2023.

During that time, we monitored CDCR's performance in conducting staff misconduct complaint screening decisions made by its Centralized Screening Team, allegation inquiry cases completed by the prison's local investigators, and investigations conducted by the Office of Internal Affairs Allegation Investigation Unit and the employee discipline process for those cases. For each of the cases we monitored, we assessed the performance of CDCR staff and provided an overall rating.

We used an assessment tool that consisted of five overarching questions, each with a series of sub-questions, and provided a rating of superior, satisfactory, or poor. Starting with the Centralized Screening Team, CDCR received and screened nearly 177,000 complaints. Of those complaints, the OIG reviewed and monitored approximately 7,000 to determine whether or not the Centralized Screening Team routed allegations of staff misconduct to the appropriate entity within the Department. Overall, the Centralized Screening Team performed in a satisfactory manner in 90 percent of the cases we reviewed.

In the ten percent of the cases, they performed poorly, rerated those cases poorly because the team either failed to identify an allegation of staff misconduct entirely, referred the allegation of staff misconduct on the Allegation Decision Index for a local inquiry rather than to the Office of Internal Affairs, failed to identify the need for clarification interviews prior to making that screening decision, or identified a single allegation when multiple page--when multiple allegations were in a multiple page complaint.

Next, our assessment of the local inquiry process found that CDCR also performed poorly. Over 12,500 allegations were routed to the prisons for local inquiries. We monitored and closed 113 cases. Because we are not yet fully staffed, we monitored 89 cases contemporaneously and 24 cases retrospectively. We found that overall, CDCR's performance was poor in 68 percent of the cases we monitored. Some issues we identified were that CDCR failed to implement a cohesive and sustainable local inquiry process, which resulted in systemwide failures, confusion, and frustration among staff.

We also identified significant deficiencies and gaps in policy which led to insufficient and incomplete inquiries. Some decisions about alleged misconduct were inconsistent with the evidence. There was untimely case processing and failure by CDCR to communicate with our office, thereby denying the OIG the ability to effectively conduct its statutory required monitoring. We also completed the retrospective review of 24 randomly selected local inquiry cases that were completed and closed within the past year.

The purpose of this monitoring component was to assess CDCR's performance when the OIG had not provided contemporaneous monitoring. Of the 24 cases, OIG rated the overall performance of the Department poor in 21 of those cases: 88 percent. OIG's retrospective reviews reveal that locally designated investigators failed to complete thorough inquiries and allegation inquiry reports were at a significantly higher rate than when we were actually monitoring those cases. Moving on to the staff misconduct investigations, CDCR completed 7,124, a little over 7,100 investigations in 2023.

We monitored and closed 121 staff misconduct investigations and the employee disciplinary process for those cases. We found that 121 cases monitored and closed in 2023. The investigations--the investigators performed poorly in nearly 64 percent of those cases. CDCR received poor ratings primarily because its investigators conducted biased investigations, conducted incomplete investigations, used poor investigative techniques, and failed to ensure the confidentiality of investigations.

Out of the same 121 cases, we also assessed the performance of wardens who made disciplinary determinations in those cases and found that wardens performed poorly about 50 percent of the time. Wardens received poor ratings because they made poor findings as to whether misconduct occurred, delayed in making findings, or engaged in poor record keeping in the department staff misconduct database. We also assessed 68 cases that had CDCR attorneys assigned to them.

Those attorneys were responsible for handling a case beginning with the investigation all the way through to the conclusion of any resulting employee disciplinary process. We assessed how well department attorneys provided legal advice to investigators and to wardens. We also evaluated the performance of the department attorney in litigating employee disciplinary actions. We found that department attorneys perform poorly in 32 cases, approximately 47 percent. Some issues we identified were attorneys providing poor advice to investigators during the investigation and to wardens regarding those investigations, disciplinary findings, or both.

They failed to advise investigators to collect relevant evidence, such as medical documents or video recordings, or interview key persons with the knowledge of the allegation. Overall, in our 2023 annual report, we determined the Department performed satisfactorily when making screening decisions, poorly in completing inquiries, and poorly in conducting investigations and in the employee discipline process.

Turning briefly to the January special report, in July of last year, during the course of our monitoring, we received a CDCR memorandum outlining a directive to convert backlog grievances containing allegations of staff misconduct that should have been investigated by the Office of Internal Affairs into routine grievances that would be addressed by local prison staff instead. The directive appeared to violate CDCR's new regulations, so we immediately began looking into it.

We learned that beginning in February of 2022, CDCR began developing a backlog of over 900 grievances that the Centralized Screening Team identified as containing allegations of staff misconduct. The grievances that had been referred to the Office of Internal Affairs for an allegation, inquiry, or investigation had not yet been processed. As a result of the directive, CDCR wound up closing 595 cases containing allegations of staff misconduct, reclassifying them as routine grievances, and redirecting them to the prison grievance offices to be opened as new routine grievances.

Being mindful of time, I will quickly highlight some of our findings. First was that CDCR allowed the statute of limitations to take disciplinary action to expire in many of the grievances before they were redirected. State law generally requires that discipline against peace officers occur within one year of discovery of the alleged misconduct and three years for all other staff. We found that the statute of limitations expired in 127 of those cases before CDCR even began redirecting them back to the prisons.

As a result, CDCR was powerless to discipline staff if allegations of staff misconduct were found to have occurred. 129 of the grievances were sent back within 60 days of the statute expiring, which gives the Department a very short time to review, investigate, and hold staff accountable.

We also found that a second finding was in 71 of the 595 grievances, CDCR closed and reclassified them as routine, and we found that in each of those at least one, there was one allegation of staff misconduct and staff misconduct, which would require a complex issue requiring specialized investigative skills to be investigated, such as retaliation, discrimination and dishonesty. These are the types of allegations that are required to be referred to the Office of Internal Affairs Allegations Investigation Unit.

We found that at least 16 of those 71 cases were not even investigated by locally designated investigators, who most likely did not receive that specialized skill in conducting those investigations. A third finding was that we found that these cases were not being timely investigated. Regulations generally require that these allegations be completed within 60 days. Of the 71 that we had specifically reviewed, we determined CDCR took an average of 346 days from the date it first received the claim to close the grievances.

The Department's total processing time in 71 of the case files we reviewed ranged between 214 to 548 days, and it took more than a year to close 28 of the 71 cases we reviewed. Thank you.

Would you like to close? I'll let you close.

Yes. Yes. So finally, we want to just point out that this special review looked at one decision that we found was problematic when determining how to address a backlog of grievances and that was amassed under this process. Once again, thank you for this opportunity to provide this information. I'll be happy to answer questions.

Thank you. I'm going to move over to colleagues. No, sorry. Let me do this. Chris Chambers, Director of Division of Internal Oversight and Research of CDCR, if you would like to respond.

Thank you and good morning, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Chris Chambers, and I'm the Director of CDCR's Division of Correctional Policy Research and Internal Oversight. My division is responsible for many aspects of internal oversight within the Department, including investigations of staff misconduct. As noted in the agenda and in the testimony of the Legislative Analyst's Office, CDCR has received significant investments from recent budget acts to address allegations of staff misconduct.

We want to thank the Subcommittee and the Legislature for recognizing the graveness of this issue and working with both CDCR and the Office of Inspector General on establishing and improving processes, and we look forward to continuing these efforts. With respect to the OIG's recent report published on April 25th, the report outlines a number of findings and recommendations that CDCR is currently reviewing in assessing for potential improvements to the process. We recognize there's a number of things that need to be addressed within this report.

While CDCR understands that there's more work to be done, the Department remains committed to be proactive and refining these processes. CDCR appreciates the Office of Inspector General's monitoring and feedback. We look forward to continued partnership and open communication on these very important issues and bringing on meaningful change. As part of these ongoing conversations, we note CDCR continues to regularly assess our needs and ensure that we have sufficient and efficiently allocated resources so that all complaints are handled appropriately.

I would like to point out that there have been a number of improvements already made with respect to training of staff, both on the investigator side to improve our performance, as well as on the local resources or local designated investigators. Late last year, we started to increase the frequency of training provided to these local designated investigators as well as we started a biweekly meeting call that these LDIs could join and answer any questions that they may have with our subject matter experts.

Still, there's more to be done. I would like to go in and address now the January OIG report. Although CDCR has some differences in opinion concerning the January OIG report and subsequent conversion of the remaining 595 allegation investigation management section inquiries, CDCR did make the difficult decision to redirect some inquiries that alleged staff misconduct submitted under CDCR's old process back to institutions' offices of grievance.

To better understand the circumstances that led to this decision, I'd like to provide some context. When the Allegation Inquiry Management Section, or AIMS as it's known, or was known, was initiated in March of 2020 and conducted inquiry sufficient to either definitively refute the allegation, at which point the cases were submitted to the institution's Office of Grievance or response, or determine if there was reasonable belief misconduct occurred.

If that reasonable belief was found, the inquiry stopped and the matter was returned to the hiring authority, generally the institution's warden, who then determined whether to submit a matter to Internal Affairs for formal review and, if appropriate, for investigation. In early 2022, CDCR implemented an improved staff misconduct process to ensure the proper identification and handling of staff misconduct allegations. This was done under court order and in part with a stipulated agreement with Armstrong plaintiffs.

CDCR had a phased implementation of the new process, and in January of 2022, the Centralized Screening Team, the centralized OIA unit that screens all allegations, was first to activate. Because the Allegation Investigation Unit was yet to be stood up, the Centralized Screening Team continued to route matters to the Allegation Inquiry Management Section on top of already existing existing workload which overwhelmed that system.

Starting on May 31st of 2022, cases identified by Centralized Screening Team as containing certain specified allegations of staff misconduct included on the Allegation Decision Index were four, six prisons covered under court orders and the Armstrong Class Action were referred to the Allegation Investigation Unit for thorough investigation. The results of these investigations were provided to the hiring authority who determines whether, based upon the investigation, there is staff misconduct and if so, what level of discipline to impose.

Allegations screened by the Centralized Screening Team in which for staff misconduct was identified for all other institutions and parole regions, continue to route to the Allegation Inquiry Management Section for inquiry.

Thank you. Do you want to close?

I will do so very quickly. In plain terms, folks, what this means is we were running a bifurcated process while we're incrementally standing up our AIU unit in winding down inquiries. At the time, we had, I believe it's 2,500 cases that were open in AIMS. We had 35 cases that were open in AIU and the staff was bouncing between them. We were projected to have a 7,000 case backlog by the June of this year.

We were already losing cases, as mentioned by Inspector General Singh, to statute of limitations. To put simply, the system was breaking under its own weight. We had to make a critical decision to put efforts towards those serious investigations in the Allegation Investigation Unit, the thought being, it's better to have someone look at each matter than to have matters that would be lost to statute of limitations, which we were already losing.

I'm happy to say at this point that although that was a difficult decision, we have lost no further cases to SOL since then. We have been able to concentrate our teams to concentrate on those most serious allegations, and instead of having over 3,500, we're now down to under 2,500 cases. We, despite regulatory changes in numerous business process adjustments, the process still results in volumes and complaints being investigated that do not warrant investigation.

Thank you. We're going to move on to--do we have any of our colleagues have any questions or comments? Senator Seyarto.

Sounds like you just started to answer the question that I was going to ask here. Of these allegations, what's the problem? Do we not have enough people to process or are we being inundated with trivial processes, trivial complaints? And, in other words, how much is trivial and how much is serious allegations?

That's an excellent question, and thank you for that, Senator. As was pointed out, we received 183,000 allegations, of which 20,000 were thought to contain staff misconduct. When we look at them, we have cases, for example, sir, that have come in where a cook was not wearing gloves and that matter has to be submitted to OIA for investigation.

To put simply, I think the intended process and the intended scope of the Allegation Decision Index is not being met because the definition is just too broad, and what happens is we inundate our processes, and we end up having this backlog.

Cause it sounds like what the directive was is to get a handle on all of these complaints, but they all got batched together, and that the directive should be narrowed down to very serious complaints and a process for that and then a different one for the minor complaints, you know, where they rolled their eyes at me or whatever it is. Those kind of complaints would go in a different--would that be helpful if we have those kind of directives?

Yes, sir, and I will add that we are working right now with Armstrong and Court Expert to look at some serious changes to the staff misconduct process. Right now, we are identifying items that could potentially modify this system to make it more sustainable and make us be able to, again, concentrate on those cases that we know. I think they're so within your agenda. These are cases that we must look at. We must give them adequate attention.

I think that's where we want our money spent is on the serious cases, and as far as going forward, having the resources that you need to be able to do those. If we were able to separate those two out, would you be able to do the other part a lot efficiently? Okay. Thank you.

Can I ask, aren't those already separated out?

Yes.

Those cases are already separated out. So you have 120,000 complaints, correct?

Yes.

20,000 being staff misconduct. The lower end, it's already tiered out. I do want to highlight that.

To a degree, ma'am. So some of those, some of those cases are still finding their way to investigators for full investigation that we feel should not be. And that's based upon the Allegation Decision Index that we did agree to with the court.

Okay. And I'm going to move on to Senator Durazo.

Thank you. The part that's most disturbing, and I know you went really fast, Ms. Singh, but poorly, poorly, poorly, poorly. That's all I heard coming out in terms of the, you know, the time that you put into it. And you said case after case, not case after case, but issue after issue after issue was poor. 68 percent handled poorly. 88 percent handled poorly. 64 percent handled poorly. Confidentiality issues handled poorly. The department attorneys did not adequately advise investigators.

I mean, that's--to think that area after area after area is so highly--such a high percentage of handled poorly, I don't understand. You know, I've been on this Committee for several years, and I'm hearing very similar to what we've heard several years ago. You got resources. What is going on here? And we can't keep coming back and hearing the same thing. There was the issue of the independence, sufficient independence when a complaint or a grievance was filed. They needed to know that they had the confidentiality.

They had a real independent investigation or consideration. I mean, there's just issue after issue. I'm just so shocked by hearing this. What's going on? What are we going to do about this? What are we seriously going to do about this?

We believe meaningful discussions with our stakeholders, OIG, Court Expert, as well as Armstrong, are absolutely necessary. Again, the volume, the sheer volume that's coming in, our investigators are carrying well over 25 cases at any time. That's far too many to actively work and pay the proper attention to. We agree that there is a need for more in-depth, more time, better training for these individuals. We're just trying to keep up. That's not an excuse.

It is something that we absolutely have to make changes on, again, meaningful changes to make this system work. The intent of the system was to look at, again, these allegations and really make sure that they're being handled properly and that there's a level of accountability. We need to be able to get to that.

Just quickly, yes, I do agree. A number of issues that we saw there were poor performances. We make reasonable recommendations to the Department. Every section of the report that we published does have recommendations to help the Department improve, to help CDCR improve in the areas where we see they're not meeting the mark.

All right, thank you. Senator Newman?

I just want to add my voice. Senator Durazo asked my question for me, and as I recall, we had a hearing on this last year or year before, and at that time, I remember one of the issues that was discussed was the question about whether or not complaints that were serious in nature, specifically about staff misconduct, were apparently being either misdirected or willfully ignored. And it does sound like we haven't made the progress that we had hoped coming out of those discussions.

Again, it might have been two years ago when Senator Durazo was chair. So I'd ask you to consider if either we haven't given you the resources or the original approach is not working, maybe we should fundamentally rethink that approach to get at the real goal, which is to separate the trivial from the important and make sure that staff misconduct complaints, when validated, are properly pursued. You don't have to respond, but I think that's important to consider.

Thank you. I do want to highlight a couple things. I have a question for you. The Office of Internal Affairs. The officers that work in the office of Internal Affairs is the way that the operation is, is that officers rotate.

No, ma'am. These are officers, or these are investigators that are hired in. They are in one of three regions, either our southern, our central, or our northern region. And they come in and we train them and they stay until they either get another job or retire.

Okay. And these are former officers as well?

That is correct.

Okay. And is there. So, for example, and I'm going to continue to relate it back to local government and police departments have an office of internal affairs or Department of Internal Affairs, and they keep rotating officers that were on duty, on, you know, in the streets kind of rotating and learning that. I do think that's problematic because, you know, every single officer will then know, you know, how an investigation is taken into account.

And, you know, when there's more people involved and there's culture of, you know, it's us versus them. And in the prison system in particular, it's inmates versus cops. Let's be honest about that, tight?

There is a power dynamics at play, and I understand, and I want to take this very seriously because this is of concern to me. The larger community and society often forget about the individuals that are in prison and serving time and often view them in a negative way because they're in prison for a reason, and yet at the same time, they're human beings, right.

And, you know, personally, I don't even like putting my dog in a crate all day, I really don't like that. And there's significant issues that take place. And when there is a power dynamic and we're seeing complaints, 120,000 complaints in a single year, that's concerning. And if it's as simple as not wearing a glove in the kitchen, there should be high standards, especially considering that we have a shrinking prison population and a growing budget. It does not make sense.

And we continue, in one year, 120,000 complaints, whether small complaints or big complaints, that's a problem. 20,000 verified misconduct complaints, right?

Staff misconduct. You know, each of these employees are paid by the state. They have a duty and a responsibility, and they are responsible for the inmates that they oversee. My concern is that we're talking about the OIG recommends this and that, and yet they made recommendations in 2022 that have not been implemented and consistently. I hear that we're going to have more conversations. Conversations about what? It's very clear the data has been analyzed. Now it's actions to implement, and we're not seeing implementation, right.

It does not justify more input. And from what I understand, we have several hundred individuals that investigate these particular complaints full time with a caseload of about 25 complaints at a time, right?

That's your words, right. And I compare that to social workers who have to deal with investigating children, you know, abuses and much more. And I want to say that the fact that the statute of limitations runs out as some loophole of, like, how we can get away with certain things and how we can protect things. And I understand you want to push back, right.

But I want to say that the larger public, as much as we want to, obviously, hold bad actors accountable in society, we also want to ensure that the structure that we have developed and we have invested in is also held to a higher standard. Because at the end of the day, human lives are still at stake here, too, right.

And not every single person that's serving a prison time is a serial killer or something like that, right?

So when we compare ourselves as a nation and as a state to other countries of human rights violations and much more, and we can talk about all of that, fundamentally, we also have to have higher standards for the individuals we trust with the care of these inmates, right.

And I'm gonna be honest, and you don't even have to respond. There is a number of OIG recommendations in every single category, right.

Whether it's how we monitor this, you know, the local inquiries, the allegations, the disciplinary actions, which I haven't heard anything of, right. As to this is how we have disciplined this many people. This is how many cases we've closed. This is what's happened to bad actors. And this harms the reputation of law enforcement as a whole. That is my concern. I fully support law enforcement, but at the same time, it's, how are we going to change the image and the concern that the public has?

That is really what we're talking about. Pushing back or stalling or anything like that is not worth it. We have to implement some of these changes, especially on the ones that are more egregious. People cannot die in prisons under our watch. We cannot keep saying, okay, we're gonna have more surveillance, we're gonna have more this, more this, more that. When people continue to be violated and harmed and so forth, including rapes in the women's prisons, let alone the men's prisons, right.

So I really just want to say that I'm hoping that a lot of the recommendations and the good faith actions we understand as laymen that are not officers, that there are some circumstances that, you know, things happen and, you know, it's split second decisions. I completely understand that, and I. I think most of us have some empathy and compassion for those situations, but the things that we can do, we need to implement.

So it's more of a direction right now that we would like to see significant implementation of these recommendations. No more talk. Just actually do it.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you. We'll move on to the next item. Issue number 32, sexual assault response and prevention working group and report update. All right, we're going to first hear from Angela Kent, associate director of female offender programs and services at CDCR.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Members. I'm Angela Kent, associate director for the Women's Mission in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today about the sexual assault response and prevention and the report the CDCR provided to the legislator.

The 2023 Budget Act provided the Department with a one time allocation of $250,000 to form a working group consisting of leadership and staff from the Department, community based organizations led by formerly incarcerated people, individuals who have survived sexual assault in custody, and representatives from the Sister Warriors Coalition. This group was tasked to develop recommendations and produce a report provided to the Legislature. I'm very grateful for this opportunity and the continued partnership.

Our current leadership team is fully committed, excuse me, to protecting victims of sexual assault and ensuring avenues are available for both the incarcerated population and staff to safely report misconduct. We have zero tolerance for sexual abuse and harassment. For those under our care, it's simply unacceptable. We recognize that women incarcerated in California institutions are often victims of past trauma, including sexual assault.

Our approach as a trauma informed organization in addressing sexual abuse and trauma, as well as the resources that we offer, are critical to being responsive to their trauma. The Department is undertaking a number of efforts to respond to the allegations of misconduct. Investigations of allegations of staff sexual misconduct are investigated by staff outside of the institutions and can be reviewed by the Office of the Inspector General.

These efforts include collaboration with local rape crisis centers to ensure victim advocates are available not just during the investigative process, but from the reporting on, as well as dedicated phone lines to connect individuals to emotional support. Resources we are expanding our partnership with stakeholders to enhance education and resources available to the incarcerated women to include prea reporting and investigative processes. We, the leadership in the women's mission, conduct regular meetings with incarcerated women as well as internal and external stakeholders. Excuse me.

We are also working to develop and expand our mentorship peer mentorship peer education. In collaboration with the Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition, we actively work to establish the Sister Warriors Ambassador program and the Women's Institution, and we look forward to our continued work with them. We are actively working to establish full time PREA coordinators in our women's institutions. Additionally, the Department is continuing to implement and refine accountability, investigative measures, utilization of body cameras at both women's institutions.

Gaining compliance with departmental policies. The Department takes seriously efforts to provide whistleblower protections. For example, we monitor cases for retaliation for a minimum of 90 days where allegations of sexual misconduct or sexual violence have occurred. Incarcerated persons who report sexual misconduct or abuse are provided a victim advocate resource through the rape crisis centers locally to provide support. We can't undo the trauma experienced by our incarcerated women who are victims of sexual assault and our institutions.

However, I, my leadership team, are committed to building a system of transparency and accountability to prevent victimization. I believe that our commitment to building this and strengthening collaborative partnerships and building partnerships with stakeholders, incorporating national and international best practices and empowering our incarcerated women to have a voice will build trust and create safety in our institutions.

Thank you. We're going to move on to Amarik Singh, the Inspector General.

Good morning, Amarik Singh, Inspector General. As the sexual abuse in Detention and Elimination Act ombudsperson, we perform several functions in this space. When we receive communication from an incarcerated person, a family member, or an advocate that includes information alleging a PREA violation has occurred, we notify the warden at the prison with as much information as we can share, keeping in mind confidentiality requests. Although we cannot investigate these allegations ourselves, we are required to forward these allegations to CDCR.

In accordance with federal prea regulations, we have taken efforts to place posters throughout each prison, throughout each facility informing incarcerated people how they can notify us of PREA allegations. We've also established a quick dial number so that the incarcerated population can report information to us as quickly as possible. With regards to the incarcerated person allegations that have been reported if they have been subjected to sexual abuse or sexual harassment by a CDCR employee.

We monitor most investigations that the wardens refer to, CDCR's Office of Internal Affairs, and a small portion of the investigations that are performed from allegations that come through the grievance process. In these cases, we do evaluate how well CDCR investigates those cases and whether or not discipline was implemented appropriately. And finally, we also have begun a special review this past March to assess CDCR's process for handling allegations that an incarcerated person was subjected to sexual abuse or sexual harassment by another incarcerated person.

The special review will cover a one year period and will review the department's compliance with policies and procedures for pre investigations and determine if each prison's institutional PREA review committee properly reviewed and made appropriate determinations in those cases. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to explain our role as the ombuds person, and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

We're going to move on to Amika Mota and Emily Wonder from the Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition. I do want to say between the two of you guys, you guys have five minutes.

Thank you to the Committee chair and Members for having us here today. My name is Amiko Mota. I am the executive director of Sister Warriors. We are honored to have been entrusted by the Legislature to lead the convening of the sexual assault response and prevention workgroup and craft the policy recommendations my colleague Emily will present next.

The funding provided to Sister Warriors allowed us to dedicate significant staff time to the workgroup and increase our presence in both women's designated prisons, adding a layer of accountability and support. The funding also resourced our community partners, survivor-led organizations that engage in and lead the work to end sexual violence in carceral settings. Our aim with this workgroup was to foster dialogue and cooperation between CDCR policymakers and those most impacted by the prison system.

The main deliverable has been a nearly 80 page report, which we created collaboratively with incarcerated people and organizations such as the California Coalition for Women's Prisoners survived and punished, California just detention, international, justice first and valor us. The foundation of this report is the firsthand experiences and perspectives of incarcerated people at Central California women's facility and CIW.

Our insights draw from written correspondence, small group discussions, and town halls that we hosted at the prisons last fall, where incarcerated people could confidentially share their thoughts and experiences with credible messengers. We have made some progress since we started this collaboration. At the town halls that we hosted, 27 brave survivors testified to the abuse that they had suffered at the hands of a gynecologist at CIW for over a decade. Shortly after those town halls, this doctor was finally removed from the yard.

We launched an ambassador fellowship program which aims to develop and implement improved methods of reporting sexual assault and access to trauma support informed support networks for incarcerated survivors. We are pleased to see that newly confirmed CDCR leadership supports efforts to improve conditions and increase resources for survivors. This is a crisis that will not fix itself. Despite the efforts of many, no carceral system has been able to eliminate staff abuse. We simply cannot report when the abusers hold the keys to our cells.

Meanwhile, the state's carceral budget continues to increase without addressing the root causes of violence inside these institutions. The focus of transformation within California prisons is on men's prisons like San Quentin, where we see significant investment by the state. On the other hand, women's prisons are still dealing with an active crisis. We have observed that those women's prisons mostly rely on donations from small grassroots organizations like our own to fund rehabilitative and healing events like the ones mentioned in CDCR's report.

This discrepancy is significant and cannot be overlooked. We urge CDCR, our legislators, and the Governor to take concrete steps to end the violence in our prisons. Sister Warriors and our partner organizations are committed to continuing this work.

Thank you, Committee, for this opportunity today. My name is Emily Wonder. I'm the advocacy director at Sister Warriors and the primary facilitator of the working group. Our group's recommendations fell into five broad categories. The first category addresses the safety of survivors of this abuse. We received overwhelming feedback that the release of survivors to their families and communities is the only true path to safety and healing after experiencing sexual violence by CDCR staff.

Next, we address shifting the culture of CDCR facilities away from the violence and oppression that enables rampant sexual abuse. We recommend better staff training and more opportunities for community building inside prisons. We also recommend changes to standard practices that are retraumatizing to incarcerated people, a vast majority of whom have previously experienced serious abuse and trauma. These practices include denial of adequate access to basic needs, sexualizing attitudes, and a disturbing tolerance for physical violence and psychological abuse.

Third, we want to ensure that incarcerated people have universal access to support services, including rape crisis centers, mental health services, and community supports. We recommend increased funding and collaboration for these types of programs. Incarcerated people should also be empowered to provide peer support. Sister warriors is already implementing these types of support through our ambassador program. Next, we address the failed reporting and investigation process, which has resulted in incredibly low confidence in the system and consequently in low rates of reporting.

We call for more rigorous and survivor centered practices, as well as external investigations and oversight, including greater input from the OIG. Finally, we call for accountability. Inadequate and poorly enforced policies around body worn cameras mean that abuse often goes unreported. To protect whistleblowers, we recommend overhauling strip search and transfer practices, which are often used both as a means of retaliation as well as a primary form of abuse. And finally, we recommend mechanisms to hold CDCR accountable for failing to adequately respond to that crisis. Thank you, Committee, for your time and consideration.

Thank you, colleagues. Do you have any questions? Senator Durazo.

Thank you very much to all of you and especially to our Sister Warriors for your work. Just a couple of questions. I was on one of the trips to the Chowchilla facility, and we had the privilege of listening to the testimony of several people on the panel. I don't remember if it was this one or another different visit, but I have heard about incarcerated whistleblowers being housed in solitary confinement during investigations of staff misconduct. Have you heard that?

Or where does it fall in in terms of a recommendation on how to handle that? And I think it was, the woman was put into solitary confinement, and I think one response was, well, it was for her own protection, which seems really warped.

That has been standard practice previously. CDCR, during this time frame of collaborating with us on ending sexual violence in the prisons, has begun to share some of the data with us about the restrictive housing unit whose house there and why. So we do feel encouraged by some of the data that we have seen, although we are also hearing from people that are currently there just few days ago that are still housed in restrictive housing unit when their claim is under investigation.

So it has been a practice of CDCRs. It typically is stated that that is to protect the victim, but we see it to be further traumatizing. And some people fear reporting terribly, even more so because they know they'll be removed from their only support systems on the yard property, taken away, not allowed to have visits, phone calls, things like that.

Yeah, thank you. We've been in discussions with FOPS around this, and it's our understanding that facilities are trying to move away from this. But it's complicated in some instances. One of the ways that we were seeing kind of this psychological abuse is that officers will turn other incarcerated people against someone who is a survivor. So if that person reports, the officer might put out a hit on them.

So sometimes we see survivors who are placed in restricted housing because reports came in on them after they made their report. So it's a little complicated and there can be things that are disguised as standard practice that are actually veiled retaliation.

Thank you. I appreciate all the work that you do, and my hope, obviously, is that your courageous work together with CDCR, we really just put an end. I appreciate also one of your recommendations being that for the safety of survivors, that release should be a serious consideration for any of the, for any of the victims. And then in terms of the funding, do you intend, I guess this is for CDCR. Is the funding allocated for the working group going to be part of implementing the recommendations?

For the $250,000?

I don't know if that's the exact amount, but, yeah, I think my question more than anything is funding to implement the recommendations. How do you see that? Anything more that we can do to be helpful?

Right. We do have BNB here, and I think they were going to comment on that. I will have to get back to you with that response. I don't have that at this time.

Good morning, Madam Chair. Justin Adelman, associate director of Budget Management Branch. The one-time funding was one time again for the workgroup, so we don't have any ongoing resources dedicated to kind of implementing recommendations.

Yeah, that would be a great consideration for you.

Again, I just want to highlight, and I said it in our last item, and I really want to stress this, with the inmates being locked up 24 hours a day. And I'm not talking about solitary confinement, I'm talking about just the fact that they're in prison. And we can see consistently see, again, an increase in the budget for CDCR across the board with a decrease in population, right.

Regardless of Prop 47 or not. We have been seeing this trend, we've talked about it in previous meetings, ensuring that inmates have an activity, ensuring that we are making sure that they spend 8 hours a day, either in education programs, potentially getting a GED, a degree, something valuable, work skill. And I'm not talking about sewing, which is offered in some of the prisons.

I'm talking about real life skills that once they are released, when we're talking about rehabilitation, that they have something that they can utilize in the rest of society, right.

And as much as possible, even in the last item, that we talked about the reforms and the recommendations that are on the table. They are positive, they are to improve the program.

And I often feel, whether at the local level or the state level, that when we're talking about a piece of law enforcement, whether it is our prison systems or jails, law enforcement and police as a whole, there is a significant amount of pushback and always a request for more funds for tools and technology and so forth, but not necessarily on strategy.

And it's a little frustrating because we're talking about the California model in California and we have other models across the world, whether we're talking about Norway or anything else. The reality is that if we are able to ensure that people are doing something productive and working on themselves, it reduces a lot of risk for officers, it ensures that there is a better mental health component for the inmates, it is safer, it is better for all of society.

So I really want to say these recommendations and reforms are incredibly important, as well as investing in programs that support the inmates as a whole. So one-time funds, great, we do need long term funding. And as much as we're talking about budget cuts this year, and again, I'm going to highlight this the next couple of years, right? That's the honest outlook of our budget. We need to ensure that we're prioritizing strategic improvements, even with a downfall. And I don't see enough of that.

And it is beneficial that when we're talking about law enforcement is that we also very much focus on rehabilitation. A lot of the inmates, they were not talking about just the sexual assaults that happen in prisons, many of them are victims prior to entering the system, men and women. And there's a lot of trauma with that. There's a lot of.

And when you have enough time on your hands where you're just focusing on your life and how you got to where you're at, it is very taxing. So as much as we can invest in mental health support and therapy and much more, as well as just counseling and programming and much more, that is where our dollars should be used because it keeps it safer for law enforcement, for CDCR, and it does change and improve the image again, across the board, CDCR has a significant concern here.

We have, and I'm telling you this as chair of public safety as well as chair of budget sub five, I get reports regularly and mail regularly from inmates talking about their situation, right.

So I do just want to highlight that. I really do thank the work that you guys are all doing. I appreciate the collaboration and the effort and this space, it is something that obviously the average individual also cares about because sexual assault in our prisons should not exist, inmate versus inmate or, you know, law enforcement agent versus inmate, right.

Should not exist. This should be the safest space. And the fact that, and I'm going to highlight this, the reason why we have the body cams is because in one of the state prisons, law enforcement was basically having a ring of like a gladiator type of effort where they were putting bets on which inmate can beat up which inmate. That is disgusting.

So again, we need to increase the standard of what we consider in regards to appropriateness and dignity amongst our law enforcement, but also the dignity of the inmates because at the end of the day, we were talking about human beings. So I really do appreciate it. I'm going to move on to the next issue area. And let's talk about issue item number 33. San Quentin Rehabilitation center update. We're going to hear from Dave Lewis, Director of facility planning, construction and management at CDCR.

Hi, there.

Hello. Good morning. I'm Dave Lewis. I'm the Director of Facility, Plan and Construction Management for CDCR, and I thank you for the opportunity to come and present on San Quentin. San Quentin, when I was appointed to this position in February of last year, I was told that San Quentin was probably going to be a priority.

And so we started looking at what plans might be, and the Governor sat down, obviously, and he presented a plan to create an education center at San Quentin by December of 2025. Our plans at that point represented similar scope, but the timeframe was more like December of 2029. And so we, at that point, had approximately 33 months to complete this project. So, we've been moving at the speed of light in order to meet the governor's mandate of completing a project by December of 2025.

At this point, we're approximately a month behind schedule just due to changes that were necessary related to the advisory council recommendations to reduce the cost of the project by approximately a third, to about $240 million. And so we're now looking at completion in January of 2026. As part of this process, we contracted with McCarthy Building Company, DLR Group, and Hammer Lawson to do the design and construction of the facility.

That contract was let in September at this point, and I provided a handout of some renderings of the project. And we're about done with design drawings and about to begin the construction drawing phase of the design process. As far as the construction itself, the demolition phase has begun, and this week we've actually tore out part of the north wall, which will be the access to the construction site to allow us to expedite and not have to access the site through the institution.

We'll be accessing through the exterior wall instead. This will allow us to speed up the process of construction throughout. So we've begun the demolition. We anticipate beginning the demolition of building 38 itself sometime at the end of this month or beginning of next month, and beginning construction site work over the summer and beginning construction of the actual buildings in late summer, early fall of this year. Like I said, we provided a handout that has some design drawings in them. These are a conceptual design.

I do have to tell you, they reflect the schematic phase of design. There will be changes as we go along to reflect, working with the fire marshal, working with, continuing, working with user groups to gather input. For example, they won't be white buildings. They will be some other color. We're working on that right now. This palette of that we will use. We worked very closely with the advisory council during their deliberations.

So we were well aware of what the advisory council's recommendations would be, though the third cut in the budget was something that we had to make a pause and so we could meet those expectations. Driving design philosophies here are really about creating a transformative environment that doesn't reflect current educational settings in a correctional environment. You can see that in those pictures. We were going for a campus approach that created a more normal environment that you would see in any college campus or anywhere else.

We continue to meet our conditions of satisfaction at the beginning of the project, which were really focused on creating something that didn't reflect our current standards, our current buildings, and finding different ways and innovative ways of doing both construction and also providing the programs that we expect to be served here. Throughout this process, we've met with hundreds of people, both at San Quentin, community advocates.

The architects on this project are primarily focused on educational projects and library projects, not correctional projects, though obviously we have to keep those things in mind as well. So with that being said, I'm open to any questions you may have.

Thank you. Do we have any comments from our colleagues? Senator Seyarto?

So we have some of our incarcerated individuals being transferred around to do jobs so that they can work off their restitution. Are they using any incarcerated individuals to be part of the labor force to build this?

We are examining a lot of opportunities to do that in the future. With the speed of this project, it really wasn't something we had the time to look at. One thing, though, that we are doing is trying to, in a normal situation in construction and CDCR, if you have, for example, a prior felony, then you're excluded access to CDCR institutions. So that generally limits the people that can participate. We're trying very hard to limit any exclusions from the workforce that have those kinds of exclusions.

But at this point, we have not included the incarcerated, currently incarcerated in the workforce, just largely due to the time. And we did have some discussions about it, but the amount of time and working with the local labor unions that provide staff, there just wasn't the time that we needed to complete that review.

It just seems to me that what an ideal project to have people who were trying to keep busy and give restitution to their victims to be actually working on something that is something that they can take into the real world when they're done.

And I'm really perplexed that they would send people from an institution that is a higher security to an institution that has much lower security to do a job that they're going to get paid for when we have this kind of project in their backyard. So, anyway, that's not your area, but I just wanted to know who we're using to help build and why we're not using more prisoners.

Senator Newman,

Very briefly, Mister Lewis, thank you for your presentation. This is encouraging. My concern is more general. I think it's wonderful what we're doing at San Quentin. I appreciate your work, but I think it's really important, especially given the budget constraints that have been eliminated today, that we make a deliberate effort to extend these kinds of programs into other facilities. I know that's not your jurisdiction, but I think it's important to put that on the record here today. So thank you.

Thank you, Senator Durazzo.

Thank you. As I understand, you have the working group, the recommendations, right? Like 150 recommendations? Yes, there's 150 pages of recommendations, a.

Lot of recommendations from the advisory council yes.

but it sounds like the only recommendation you're implementing is to reduce the amount of money for the infrastructure. So what happens to all of the work of the advisory council or group and 150 pages of recommendations?

So most of the recommendations from the advisory council are really operational or program related recommendations. There's relatively few facility related recommendations outside of some discussion of the future of east block and the housing, for example. Really, the only recommendations related to this campus were things related to creating an open environment and creating what we are doing. And so those recommendations, we worked closely with the advisory council.

The remainder of the recommendations, the Department has created various tracking and are looking at each one of those recommendations because they really are operational and they're not within my purview. But the Department is examining all of those and how those can be implemented if appropriate, or how something similar can be implemented if it doesn't really match with the department's operations. And I think a lot of those extends beyond San Quentin, for example, and really are important beyond San Quentin itself.

But the Department is examining all those recommendations and seeing how they can be implemented at this time.

The reason I ask is because the individuals on that council who came to visit, many of us, really, their emphasis was on the programmatic, and the questions we raised were about the programs, because having a new building, well, it makes a lot of sense, and it's very positive. The real issues are programs. The real issues are training of staff. The real issues are how do you change the culture?

And so my concern is we're doing really great on the construction side of it right by January of 2026. But I don't hear anything back about the program, and I can appreciate that's not what you're in charge of, but somebody's got to be in charge of it, and we've got to hear what is going on to prepare for that. It's not like you open your doors and then the program is done and set there. Program also takes a lot of time.

So how do we make sure that, though 95% of the recommendations are duly implemented.

Understood. And the Department is working on how to implement those recommendations.

Can you give me an idea of what, we can give you an idea of when we can expect results on the recommendations?

Again, my piece is a little piece of the overall report. I haven't been fully involved in all of those efforts, but I certainly think you will start to see some of those as we begin to. Right now, we're transferring out the condemned inmate population throughout the state. That creates opportunities around housing and some other things.

And certainly DRP, the division of rehabilitative programs, is in a lot of discussions about the future programs that will be housed at San Quentin, and we've met with many, many stakeholders, including the stakeholders that are impacted by this construction, on how to implement programs related to that. In addition, the Department is looking at a number of other opportunities that impact all areas of San Quentin and other institutions on how to implement programs that meet the intention of the advisory council report.

And I think you will start to see some of those in the very near future.

The $20 million was unused.

At this point? Yes. We haven't developed a complete plan for the $20 million outside of the construction of this facility, and we were really waiting for the advisory council report to be released before we developed plans related to the $20 million. And obviously, it's also kind of tied up in some budget issues related to the cost.

I'd like to suggest I have a really good idea for the $20 million that have to do with the kind of program inside the rest of the institutions for what we were just talking about that badly needs it. So those kind of reentry training programs is a great place. So I would highly suggest that. Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no other questions, we're going to move on. This is an informational item, so no action is needed. We'll move on to issue number 34, free voice calling SB 1008. We're going to first hear from CDCR.

Is this on?

Good morning, Madam Chair. My name is Edmund Blagdon. I'm the Deputy Director of Enterprise Information Services with CDCR. I'm here to discuss SB 1008, which provides free calling to the incarcerated population and their family and friends. History in response to Chapter 827, statutes of 2022, SB 1008, which guaranteed free voice calling for the incarcerated population and their family and friends, the budget of 2023 act provided 28.5 million in 23-24 and ongoing to provide free voice calling at the time.

Calling structure utilized tiered calling plan domestic and international calls being the same price per minute. Monthly call volumes are charged at the tier 1, 0 to 45 million calls per month at 2.9 cents per minute. Tier two is 45 million to 75 million calls at 2.5 cents per minute in tier three, over 75 million calls per month at 22.2 cents per minute.

The estimate was based off of January, February and March 2023 call volumes and trends, which were about 93 million minutes per month or 1.1 billion annual minutes. Currently, the Governor's Budget included a current year request for 7.4 million and an 8.2 million request in 2024-25 and ongoing to reflect an increase in call volume projecting about 1.5 billion annual minutes in fiscal years 23-24 and 24-25.

One reason for this increase is the completion of the tablet rollouts throughout the institutions, which began with Valley State Prison in August of 21st and was completed in September of 23 at California Men's Colony. We will refine these estimates as part of the May revision as we incorporate additional months of actual call volume data. These contracted services are provided by ViaPath technologies.

In June 23, we vacated the contract with ViaPath Technologies as the Sacramento County Superior Court ordered requiring it be set aside took effect as also prevented by the court's order. CDCR has entered into emergency interim contract with ViaPath to keep all existing communication services fully operational until we're able to complete the bid process for a permanent contract for these services. Existing tablet and phone services will be maintained during this interim period, but no additional services will be implemented until the permanent contract is in place.

There will be no gap in service during this transition as we enter into a one year contract with three optional six month extensions to continue existing services until we transition to this new contract. We are currently working with the California Department of Technology on the new solicitation. We have conducted outreach and received feedback from many stakeholders, including the population, family and friends, doing ensure we able to make the improvements in the future contract. Because it's active solution, we cannot provide many details today.

However, the current rollout, the current routing of the solicitation schedule for approval and would be more than happy to share that once it is finalized and approved. I'm happy to field any questions. And I have my Sylvia Dumale and Tristan Lemon with me to field questions. Thank you.

Thank you, LAO?

Caitlin O'Neil with the Legislative Analyst Office. Our recommendation on this item is really just related to a technical budgeting issue, which is that the amount of funding in the governor's proposed budget assumes or is based on actual calling usage and costs from August of 2023 and assumes that that level will remain flat throughout the budget year. So through June 2024. And however, the population is projected to decline over that period.

So assuming that each person uses roughly the same amount of minutes per month, we would expect the total cost to go down as well. So we recommend the Legislature withhold action on the proposal at this time and direct the Administration to submit a revised methodology at the May revision that reflects not only additional months of actual calling cost data, which they already intend to do, but also adjusts the projection going forward for changes in the population.

And this, we think, would promote more accurate budgeting in General, but also could free up some money in the budget year to help with the fiscal condition.

Thank you. Department of Finance.

Joshua Wittmershaus, Department of Finance. The Department would note that SB 1008 was only recently enacted, and we're working within a relatively limited data set to project costs associated with free calling. The administration's priority is to make sure the appropriate level of resources is available to Fund free voice calling as required by the legislation. The Administration looks forward to providing updates at May revision.

Thank you. Any colleagues? Senator Durazo

Yes, I have a question. About the contract with ViaPath. I know that there had been many problems, right, calls getting disconnected, crosstalk service going down over major holidays. They run the visitation and the booking software would get overwhelmed by volume. So what are you doing to make sure that that doesn't happen again? And another contract with bypass.

So we actively work with our stakeholders and with the contract provider. So any of these issues that do arise, we jump on them as quickly as possible. We have a dedicated team working with Viapath on a regular basis. We would continue to work with either via path or whoever wins the new contract to make sure those are resolved as quickly as possible.

You and me, and our connection gets lost. This is like a family traveling to visit a loved one and, you know, their reservation or their appointment gets screwed up or cancelled or they didn't know that. So there's a lot of very impactful results and outcomes from this not working right. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Newman.

Thanks. So, you know, just associate myself with Senator Durazo's comments I do have a question with respect to the additional services, the premium services offered by Vipath, on top of free calling, are there other vendor options, or are they the sole provider of these premium services?

This is Sylvia Dumalig. The way that the solicitation went out, it was an all inclusive contract, so that all those services are bundled together currently. And so that's why they provide all of those services together. So, like Edwin said, we're working on a new solicitation, and so we can't go into the details of everything that will be included in the new solicitation. But that's the reason why it is that way today.

Is there any reason why a new solicitation wouldn't include an option for second or third vendors to provide some competition for these premium services?

Like I said, it'll be up to the bidders on how they want to provide whatever requirements are within that, the requirements of the new contract.

Okay, let me ask you, I mean, we've been given a table here. There's a reference to emessages, which I assume are text messages.

It's electronic messaging. So it can. Some people call it email, some people call it messaging, but, yeah,.

five cents a message?

Correct.

That's way more than we pay. Right. So, you know, I'd urge you to consider how to construct that solicitation so that the premium tier, it doesn't wind up being extremely onerous for inmates.

Right. And we hope, again, with the competitive solicitation, with multiple bidders coming to the table, that that's one of the points that will, you know, enable competition.

And will we hear about this as it's ongoing or. Okay, thank you.

So I have a couple questions, and do you guys time the inmates and how much usage they have?

No, it's right now unlimited calling. So if there is. I'm Tristan Lemon, Associate Director for GP Mail's mission with .... It's about hours of operation when they have access to the tablets. And so those phone calls would just be, they would have access openly during maybe day room hours or whatever the local schedule is at the institution.

The only phones that do have a General 15 minutes time limit are the actual phones that are in a housing unit that are not a part of the tablet, or maybe on a yard.

So why are the policies different?

Because the tablet access is over that network and then the phones on the walls are just. It's just been the practice with those, so they weren't looked at as the same process. Because the tablet is just access to their own personal device. And the phones that are open to the rest of the population aren't theirs personally, so they're shared amongst the population.

Okay. So every single inmate has access to a tablet. Okay. And considering that, you know, I think many of us, as Senator Newman stated, we could have a subscription plan that's $25 a month, unlimited, everything. So why are we paying $0.05 here? 20 cents per minute there? $5, $6 somewhere else, $2 a month. Why?

I believe that's something we could resolve with a new contract.

So it's the rate structure in which that solicitation went out. Right. Put together, can that be changed? It could be changed.

So it should be changed, number one. And number two, is the fact that, is there any reason why we are paying this premium? Is it a security feature? Is it extra anything?

There is a significant amount of technology on the backside. There is some security that goes into it. It is a bit different than the way that we utilize our telephones.

There are, you know, everything is screened, everything is recorded. They provide the infrastructure for these devices to work throughout our institutions of which we know is not easy nor inexpensive. So all of that is kind of bundled together in the service, providing that they provide.

So an individual can spend 8 hours on this?

Potentially, if they keep it charged and they have the right permissions. It's based off privilege group as far as what they have access to. But if they have it charged, yeah.

There's other items that are also within it for free. So there's, you know, there's books on there. There's. We put some resources on there, like title 15 and parole handbooks.

You guys record the payphone versions? The old 15 minutes versions? Correct. Do you guys record communication here? Okay, and how often do you guys review?

That's so. That's periodically reviewed by our investigator, our investigative services unit also. Same with messages. And. But there isn't a constant listening in. It's possible, but it isn't something that we do.

How do you ensure this? You know, the messaging, the videos, you know, all of the things, the telephone calls and so forth is not. Not used for harassment of potential victims or things like that.

And so our messages are monitored a lot more, I would say, than the audio calls. But we also have the ability and use that as an investigative tool. Or if there is a complaint which we have received and we take action and we're able to actually listen to the conversations or see the messages.

Also on the public side, we have the ability to block any communication. So if I was getting a phone call and that I didn't want to, I would decline it. And I have the ability to block the ability for them to call me.

And what about video calls? What's that? Video calls is what Senator Newman's asking.

Do you monitor video calls?

That is correct.

Okay. And what is the cost associated to that? Because that would have to be stored in a server somewhere.

Right. So again, that's all bundled together in the, in the rates that they provide. So that's part of that whole inclusive package.

Okay. So as, as much as I want to provide a lot of services and so forth, having an unlimited amount of access to these services with additional cost to recording and storage and, you know, ensuring data is not compromised and much more. Why are there not any policies around this to control this and curb this? The cost would be exponential. Potentially.

You mean policies as far as limitations on that?

Potentially, yes. Because if it's 20 cents per minute with how many inmates for how many hours per, how many days.

For each specific site, each facility, they will have a local procedure on when they have access to the tablet. So it isn't not always around the clock. There will be times when maybe there's recreation time. That would be the time that people have access to the.

Okay, so the reason

Is an operational schedule, but it's different at each Institute.

So I asked earlier if they could potentially be on it for 8 hours. And you said potentially. Yes. Right now my concern is that if we're allowing this with no safeguards in place, and if we're allowing this cost to be so extra, if you will, you know, I don't want this program and this effort to be a failed program to say, look how much it costs. It costs so much money.

The fact that we don't have any of the safeguards, any safeguards in regards to limitations or anything like that is concerning from a fiscal standpoint.

Can I add to that? Is it prepaid? Could an inmate get into debt if they ran up a really big bill at, for a video call? Is there any limitation on their credit as part of this?

So the video calls, I want to separate the video calls a little bit because it is different. So they do have the ability to make telephone calls via the tablet from wherever they have connectivity, video calls. There are specific locations in the open areas where they have a mounting bracket where they can put the tablet on there to use it or there's kiosks.

So I think operationally there are safeguards around that as far as timing on when they can access that and that's a little bit different.

What about their finances, though, right? If they have an hour and they speak for an hour, and that's $0.20 times 60 minutes.

So they all charges are. Are either paid for from their trust account, of which they transfer money essentially into this media account, or if the family members are paying for it, then the family members have those funds within their media account. So it's like.

So this is problematic in the sense that financial literacy is not widely taught. Many individuals, you know, depending on how you're going to do, like, they're set up for failure if there's no safeguards.

I don't know how these inmates are being trained and educated on, like, these are the costs. This is how it happens, whether they care or not about the cost. If you guys have limitations of, like, if you hit this number and you didn't pay, do they pay monthly? Do they pay, you know, yearly, the charges, if it's reliant on the family, that's not fair to the family member either. The fact that there's no safeguards to this program is problematic. Yes.

I just want to clarify kind of the thrust of your questioning. So I want to clarify that SB 1008, which is the enacted legislation that there's a budget proposal before you on, requires CDCR to provide free voice calling. There are no limitations included in the legislation. So if the Legislature was seeking for CDCR to change its policies, I think they would have to amend the legislation in terms of what's required. I think perhaps you're getting at the other services like video calls. So I just want to be. I wanted to be clear, because if your point is about voice calling, the telephone calling, the legislation had no limitations.

And the voice calls, and I want to be very clear as well, both telephone calls, nationwide and internationally, are free. That is not the concern. Okay. The concern is the video calls, and I want to highlight why there is no limitation in regards to this. So again, it says the prices charged to the incarcerated population for various services is listed in the table below.

Let me clarify. So the understanding here is that the premium services are an integral component of the larger bid from ViaPath for the provision of free calling. Right. And is that correct? Right. So Vipath has agreed in the initial solicitation we're gonna provide free calling, but we will also contract with CDCR to do the following. Is that about right, so those, they're bound together. And our concern here is not about the free voice calling.

It's about that secondary component that may, in fact, be the basis for via pass profitable provision of these services.

And I want to say that the legislation at hand that you referenced is specifically about telephone calls being unlimited, which we support, and clearly it's free. It's the others that are not part of that legislation that requires, again, are we setting people up for failure? Are we setting up the state for failure? Who is going to incur that cost if it's so, so high? The families, the inmate? What is happening?

And those are internal policy decisions that can be made because I'm assuming the 15 minutes phone calls are internal policies. So I would like to know on.

The video calls, and forgive me, I was really focusing on those voice calls, but as was mentioned with the video calls, there is a kiosk and there's a station that they have to go to actually have those videos calls. They can't do those anywhere. And it's set up for security reasons. Those are, those are limited by the day room schedule because those are all indoors in a housing unit in a day room.

So those are limited and those have to be shared with the rest of the folks living in that housing unit. So there is some limitation on those voice calls. Just operationally. They have to be signed up and put in their turn. It's much like the 15 minutes phone call of the old wall phones that you sign up for.

So I'm just going to leave it at that. Obviously, there is clear room for improvement on ensuring there are safeguards both for the families, the inmates, the State of California. Our budget or vision of this program, clearly that is not clearly established within the institution. And I just want to highlight that this is a need for improvement area. This item is being held open and we're going to move on to our final issue for discussion. Thank you. Issue number 35, rehabilitative programming and educational panel.

Boyle.

We'll turn you on. All right, I'm sure your mic is on.

Okay, thank you. Madam Chair, my name is Nigel Boyle. I'm the Director of the Pitzer College BA pathway program at the California Rehabilitation Centre in Norco. Last Friday, my colleague Romarilyn Ralston and I met with the 10 students that have committed to be Members of our fourth cohort of matriculated transfer students at CRC. That photograph is in your packet there. Pitzer admits a cohort of approximately 10 students a year who will complete a degree in an 18 month period.

We have 100% success record with students graduating on schedule, and all of our graduates who've paroled have been successful in finding work in professional fields, progressing into graduate schools, and winning fellowships, including two capital fellowships and one Fulbright fellowship. Now, there are lots of terrific BA programs getting off the ground across the state, but there are three unique features of what we're doing at CRC Norco that we want you to be aware of. Curriculum, consortium, and location. Curriculum our curriculum is Inside Out.

These are regular colleges at the Claremont colleges in which we bus our outside students into CRC to be taught alongside equal numbers of incarcerated students. Both sets of students do the same work and on the same credit. This is, for us, the new frontier in integration in higher education, literally normalizing higher education in prison. And this is the only BA program in the world that's based on this sort of curriculum. Second, our program is multi institutional.

The inside out curriculum that our students use to complete their degree comes from seven different colleges, the five Claremont colleges, University of Redlands and Cal State University San Bernardino. We have built a consortium of collaborating four year institutions that builds on the two year associate's degree that Norco College from Riverside Community College District does at CRC. Third location, CRC Norco, and this is in Senator Seyarto's district, is uniquely well placed to be the hub for higher education in Southern California.

Located at the intersection of the four counties to which most people within CDCR parole. We have a highly effective school in the prison, a highly effective community college, Norco College, which are pipelining large numbers of BA eligible students. CRC Norco has an array of Cal State, UC and private institutions, all in close proximity, who are all willing to engage at CRC and also to collaborate with one another.

CDCR's March rehabilitative program report reported that CRC led the state in degrees awarded at prisons last year by some distance in fact. The multi-institutional collaboration already exists and expansion of BA opportunities is underway. Last Friday, when we admitted our fourth BA cohort, UC Riverside admitted its first BA cohort with full support from CRC Warden Pratt.

We are now forming a planning group which will spend the next year working on a proposal to convert an entire section of the prison that Senator Newman and Senator Durazo have already visited, and I understand Seyarto is visiting shortly to convert this section of the prison to a college Center for multiple institutions admitting multiple cohorts of BA students in 2025 and beyond.

This planning group will bring together stakeholders from Pitzer College, Norco College, Cal State San Bernardino, UC Riverside, Redlands and CRC, and we hope to bring that plan to you soon. Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and honorable Committee. Nelson Mandela once said, "Education is the most powerful weapon one can use to change the world". My name is Romarilyn Ralston and I'm a former Executive Director of Project Rebound at Cal State University Fullerton and the current Senior Director for the Justice Education Center for the Claremont Colleges. The Justice Education Center is the expansion of the Justice Education initiative that was launched in 2020 through the support of a Mellon grant under the Imagining Freedoms Fund.

Our inside-out curriculum and BA program is building upon groundbreaking work across the six Claremont colleges within the Southern California region. I come to this work as a black feminist abolitionist scholar with an incarceration experience. At age 24, I was sentenced to life in prison and served 23 years at the California Institution for Women in Corona. While in prison, my peers introduced me to higher education and encouraged me to enroll in college classes, and I have been a lifelong learner ever since.

Attending face to face college classes in prison, unpacking theory, and having spirited, enriched discussions with my peers about race, class and ethics allowed me to see myself, others, and the social conditions that we were suffering differently. But more importantly, higher education gave me hope and purpose.

Even after the enactment of the 94 crime Bill, which disavowed access to Pell Grant funds for incarcerated students, causing many college programs to pull their degree bearing programs from prisons across the country, I never lost my thirst for knowledge. During those dark years without the college programs at CIW, a number of Claremont College professors began teaching writing workshops and participating in our programming because they understood the transformative power of higher education. In 2011, I was released and paroled to Claremont in LA County.

I remembered how engaging and committed those professors were when I was inside and decided to email a few to ask for advice and mentoring. It was no surprise that they welcomed me home and offered me a seat in their classes to observe and build community. Then one day, a Scripps Professor whose class I was observing suggested I apply to the Pitzer College new resources program for non traditional students.

I didn't think it would be possible that I could be admitted, but I was, and at age 50, I earned my bachelor's degree with honors in gender and feminist studies, and I was nominated by the college for a Napier Fellowship in Peace and Justice and awarded a Choral fellowship in public affairs, then went on to graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis, earning a master's degree in letters and science.

What I'm trying to say is that it's never too late to learn, and it's never too late to be the change you want to see. In closing, although my educational journey began as a lifer in prison, my life was changed because of my education at Pitzer College and the community of support they offered.

With their standing reputation in the world as a prominent private liberal arts school, I have not only reinvented my life, but I have also assisted hundreds of students with an incarceration experience reimagine theirs through post secondary education. Pitzer College taught me the value of social responsibility, intercultural learning, environmental sustainability, student engagement, and interdisciplinary learning.

Thank you.

As the Director of the Justice Education Center, I thank you for your time.

Thank you. We're going to hear from Project Rebound.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair and distinguished Members of the Committee. I thank you for allowing me to be here today and represent Project Rebound. My name is Aaron Greene. I'm a formerly incarcerated individual who served 10 years between the Department of Corrections in Nevada and the California State Department of Corrections here with CDCR.

I was released from prison in 2015 and I went on through Project Rebound to achieve a bachelor's degree in psychology, summa cum laude, with a 3.96 GPA and a master's degree in psychology at Fresno State with the project rebound with a 4.0 GPA, and I am now the Director of Project Rebound's Sacramento project rebound at SAC State and also a doctoral candidate with the educational leadership program. I'm also a single father of two children.

One is a D1 sports hopeful in 12th grade here in Elk Grove, and my daughter is a CSUMB with a 4.0 GPA studying art and will be transferring to Sacramento State. Project rebound, if you don't know, has been around since 1967 assisting formerly incarcerated individuals and doing correspondence with these individuals to make sure that they're ready to come out and receive an education. Of course, we are right now working with a few different processes.

We do this program called California State University Project Rebound within the CDCR, where we bring in information about project rebound to individuals who are incarcerated and perform eight weeks of workshops over a two and a half to three month period of time with a culminating event that allows students to be recognized for their participation in the program and understanding of all the pieces of becoming a student, including financial resources, financial aid, financial literacy, budgeting processes, application retention, and admissions into the University system.

We have pulled out probably about 175 students in the past six months from those programs and got them into our project rebounds at different campuses. On top of that, we also have transforming outcomes program at Sacramento State, which is a four year bachelor's program. With the four year bachelor's program, we are at Mule Creek in Folsom right now, and that is a communications degree in a fully matriculated process. The students can leave there and come directly to campus at any given time and continue their education.

We will be at CMF and at Solano within the next year and a half with another bachelor's program that will be for the honors in law and society. We also work with juvenile justice involve students at different area locations from Sacramento, San Joaquin, Solano and Sonoma county. We do have students right now that are in the juvenile Justice center in San Joaquin taking a full four year bachelor's program online.

We have students that are in CMF or not CMF, but Solano that are actually now being transported to Sacramento State starting in August. We also offer a step down program through the juvenile courts, which allows individuals that are in the juvenile facilities to be released to our custody and stay in the two houses that we have at Sacramento State and provide the students with an education. So we are attempting to create a space where all of our students have equal opportunity and access to education.

We're trying to make sure that everything goes right. We need more housing, of course, because both of the houses that we have right now are completely full and hopefully we'll be able to maintain. When I started at Sacramento State, we had 38 students. We now have 178 with 17 graduating with masters and bachelor's, plus 30 more that are registered to come on. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. We're going to hear from Place 4 Grace.

Good afternoon. Thank you Chair and Members of the Budget Committee. I am Christina Brown Mendoza, acting Executive Director of The Place 4 Grace. Having personally endured the anguish of separation due to incarceration, I understand firsthand the profound toll it takes on families, especially children. Programs like The Place 4 Grace, Camp Grace, play an indispensable role in facilitating family reunification and healing trauma caused by incarceration.

By offering a nurturing, restorative environment where children and their parents can unite, share experiences, and participate in art healing activities, these programs effectively mend fractured relationships and foster stronger bonds. Additionally, initiatives within correctional facilities that prioritize rehabilitation, education, and skill building are pivotal in reducing recidivism rates. By empowering individuals with the tools they need to successfully reintegrate into society, these programs not only inspire hope for a better future, but also enhance public safety.

Investing in such initiatives isn't merely about aiding to those that are incarcerated it's about cultivating a safer, more cohesive community for all. It's imperative that organizations like The Place 4 Grace receive sufficient funding to sustain their impactful work. TPW, known as Transformative Programming Works, is a coalition of 99 community-based organizations offering rehabilitative, trauma-informed healing programs in all 34 CDCR facilities. TPW has championed adequate state funding and is currently proposing a $20 million allocation into the Wright Grant 3.0.

Supported by compelling evidence, recent data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation underscores the effectiveness of such programs in reducing recidivism rates. These findings affirm the positive impact of Prop 57 and CBO rehabilitative programs. The Place 4 Grace Camp Grace program, which serves incarcerated parents and their children, stands out due to its distinctive focus on addressing adverse childhood experiences, known as aces. Such abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction before the age of 18 can have enduring effects on adolescents psychological, physiological, and emotional health.

Statistics show that children of incarcerated and parents are six times more likely to become incarcerated at some point of their lives. Camp Grace aims to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma often observed in families affected by incarceration, mitigating the adverse impact and fostering resilience in children with incarcerated parents. Camp Grace is the sole program of its kind in the State of California.

Unlike conventional programs offered within CDCR, Camp Grace provides a rare opportunity for incarcerated parents and their children to spend extended time to bond and heal without the other caretaker present outside of the strict guidelines of regular visitation. This approach emphasizes the importance of family connection and rehabilitation process and offers a hand on approach to addressing the challenges faced by incarcerated individuals and their families. Camp Grace has a profound impact on children.

The experience provides them with a supportive community while engaging in fun, art, music, and meaningful activities alongside their parent and other children of incarcerated parents. Camp Grace becomes a sanctuary where unlimited moments of togetherness are cherished, where playing catch with a real ball becomes a symbol of joy and normalcy, which is such a stark contrast to the makeshift games in a prison visiting room. The children build confidence and a sense of belonging, fostering healing, connection and growth.

For incarcerated parents, Camp Grace offers a chance to reconnect with their children in a meaningful way, allowing them the opportunity to heal and begin mending the process of rebuilding trust with their children. This opportunity can give the incarcerated persons hope purpose, which is pivotal towards positive change. Additionally, the supportive environment of Camp Grace provides incarcerated parents with a space to reflect on their actions, set positive examples for their children, and envision a brighter future for their family.

Today, it is imperative for programs like ours and those under the umbrella of TPW to receive adequate funding for the life changing work that we are all doing.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you. Colleagues. Do you have any questions, Senator Newman?

I do. So, you know, first, thank you all for being here. Secondly, thank you to the Committee for providing time for these programs. I have personally visited with each of these programs. I can personally attest to the powerful work that they're doing. To put this in context, I think it's important that they're here today. We talked to Mister Lewis from San Quentin. We've got $240 million going into the San Quentin experiment. That's wonderful. I'd like to hear from each of you.

How much by way of funds are you receiving from the state right now for the work that you're doing?

Zero.

Miss Brown Mendoza.

I'll have to get back to you with an exact number. A lot of our funding is already coming to an end because we're no longer considered innovative.

So there's two different pieces to that. The state Legislator in the Senate Bill or in the budget from last year did give Project Rebound $11.3 million to sustain 20 of our campuses. That is what we're up to right now is 20 campuses that have a Project Rebound.

As far as CDCR goes, we have applied for innovative grants through our CSU Prop, and they have given us maybe 350 or $400,000 over the past couple of years to be able to bring in CSU Prop into the prisons because it's an expensive process to print papers and bring in information, hiring staff and stuff like that.

Thank you.

One good thing about it is, of course, a lot of our program participants, the ones that are working Prop, do have California State IDs.

So I actually have a CDCR badge that allows me in.

Thank you.

And so if you also might talk about recidivism rates. So, you know, so Project Rebound. First, your recidivisms rate, you track it.

Our recidivism rate is less than 1% throughout the state.

Zero. And yours is a little bit different. Miss Brown Mendoza. But let me say, you know, having visited all these programs and having talked to the wardens at each facility, these are immensely positive, right. On multiple levels. One, providing incentives for inmates to find a pathway while incarcerated. Second, to your point, for pathways after incarceration that provide for effectively no recidivism at all.

Less than 1%. Inside out.

Zero.

And the third, which I think is really stunning, is the degree to which it changes the dynamic within the walls. And I've heard from every single warden who participates in these programs that it has a fundamental change on how inmates and correctional officers deal with each other. And that that's an immensely positive thing, especially given the stresses that COs face. And so I would submit to this first, every college should go visit these programs. They are amazing.

But within that larger budget for CDCR, we have to find money for programs like this. And so thank you for being here.

Thank you, Senator. Senator Durazo.

I just want to ditto. Having visited Norco and spoken to a lot of the individuals there. It's pretty extraordinary. So thank you for all the work that you're doing. You kind of put me to shame with all those degrees.

Thank you. I do just want to highlight that this Committee is deeply committed to the re-entry and the programming, and I want to make this very clear, that this is hopefully a goal. We constantly talk about public safety and incarceration, but we do not talk about the other arm of public safety, and it's to make a good neighbor, as the Norwegians say. So I really appreciate it.

And as an advocate of education at all incomes and levels, I do just want to say education, cradle to grave, is important for all human beings. So thank you. Just an informational item. So no action is needed. We are going to move on to public comments. Are there any additional questions or comments from Members about any of the issues? Senator Durazo?

Thank you, Madam Chair, I have a question or comment with issue two, the Administration program support of Caltrans. If there's anybody still here from Caltrans.

If you can come up and state your name and your organization, please.

Certainly. Good afternoon. Stephen Keck with Caltrans.

Thank you. Thank you very much. So in 2022, we extended the DGS and Caltrans pilot program for best value procurement, and we required a report on suppliers' commitments to providing jobs. That report was due this past March 1. So I'd like to get your focus on that. I don't think there's a disagreement over best value procurement as an opportunity. I think we all agree with that. But it's to make this fleet replacement in California the greenest state fleet in the country.

So I would like for you to please provide my office with a list of your vehicle needs, your specialized vehicle purchases, and your versatile customizations. And where is best value being used to meet those needs? So you don't have to answer it all today. You can do a quickie, but if you could give more detail to my office. I appreciate that.

Certainly, Senator. So first, I'd like to say it's my understanding that since that Bill was enacted, there have not been any purchases through DGS using best value practices. And that's first of all, it's only been about a year and a few months since that Bill went into effect. And our first phase of fleet replacement was light duty fleet, which was required to be purchased through DGS statewide contracts.

In this second phase, we'll be focusing on medium and heavy duty fleets, and we've plan to use best value procurement for at least 50% of those vehicles that are not subject to that statewide fleet requirement. So you're absolutely correct. We're very much looking forward to using it, but we need to be able to use it on those types of vehicles that are more specialty in nature. So you'll see a lot more of that in this second phase beginning next fiscal year.

Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. We're going to move on to public comments again. I say this in every meeting, so to ensure that everyone has had a chance to be heard, please limit your comments to 30 seconds. And if someone else has already made a similar comment, please just add a me too. We're going to begin at that mic again. 30 seconds. You guys are all going to be timed. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Danica Rodarmel. On behalf of Transformative Programming Works and Initiate Justice in strong support of increased state funding for programs, education and reentry, particularly by finding area in CDCR's budget where there may be funding that can be transferred over to that and echo the comments of the Committee today around the state, ensuring that we're getting the best possible rates for both the state and for impacted people in terms of paying for tablets and communication services. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair and Members. Capri Walker on behalf of Insight Garden Program, our current Executive Director has been instrumental in support basic needs fundings for previously incarcerated students at Project Rebound across multiple CSU campuses. Today, I'm here to express our strong support for reissuing the unused funding back to Project Rebound and the CSU. We strongly urge the Committee to reissue the remaining $3 million back to the CSU chancellor's office to serve our most housing insecure students effectively. Thank you.

Thank you. Having heard from all Members of the public, Members, if there are any questions or comments, seeing none, thank you to all the individuals who participated in public testimony today. If you were not able to testify, please submit your comments or suggestions in writing to the budget and fiscal review Committee or visit our website. Your comments and suggestions are important to us, and we want to include your testimony in the official hearing records.

I do want to highlight that we are going to move on to a vote only calendar. And so first, we will vote on issues. And again, it's in the agenda, so I'm just going to play issues number issues 3, 5, 7 through 10, 13, 14, and 17 through 27. Do we have a motion to adopt the staff recommendations for these issues moved by Senator Durazo? Could we call for a roll?

[Roll Call]

Thank you. That motion is to adopt the staff recommendations, and it has passed. We're now going to move on to vote on issues 1, 2, 4, 6, 11, 12, 15, 16, and 29. Do I have a motion? Moved by Senator Newman. The motion is to adopt the staff recommendations. Can I have a roll call?

[Roll Call]

Thank you. The motion has been adopted, and we'll move out of this Committee. Now we're going to vote on issue number 28. Do I have a motion? Moved by Senator Durazo? Can we get a roll call vote, please?

[Roll Call]

Thank you. That motion has been adopted and moving out of Committee. Again, I do appreciate everybody for your participation. We have concluded the agenda for today's hearing. The Senate Budget Subcommitee number five on corrections, public safety, safety and judiciary, labor and transportation is adjourned.