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

The Senate Budget Subcommittee Number five on Corrections, Public Safety, Judiciary, labor and Transportation will now come to order. Good morning, everyone. We are holding our committee hearings here in the Capitol. I ask that all members of the subcommittee be present in room 112 so that we can establish a quorum and begin our hearing.

This is our last hearing before the Governor's May revision, which comes out next week. This committee faces some tough decisions ahead, and the conversations in this and previous hearings will now shape how we move forward in developing a final budget.

Today we are following up on key topics from previous hearings and continuing our oversight and hearing remaining proposals from the administration. Colleagues, before we begin, does anyone have anything they'd like to add? Seeing none, are we able to establish a quorum? All right. Consultant, would you please call the roll?

[Roll Call].

The consultant notes that we do have a quorum. It's been established. So, let's get started on our first issue. The first issue for today is Community Corrections Performance Incentive grants: SB678. For this issue, we have the following panels, panel members panelists: Justin Adelman, Francine Byrne. We've had Francine before. Orlando Zavala and Drew Soderborg.

With that, who would like to start first?

Good morning, Madam Chair. Justin Adelman, Department of Finance. Good morning.

Good morning. Yes, we've seen you two.

So just as a repeat, we were reproposing, and this is a rehearing on SB 678, methodology updates. SB 678, known as the Community Corrections Performance Incentive Act of 2009, is a statute that provides a methodology to fund probation departments to avert individuals from prison sentences.

It was established as part of community corrections realignment in 2009 and diverts savings from individuals not housed at state prisons to county probation departments. Right now, it currently exists under three kinds of major components. The first component is a baseline methodology that compares against a 7.9% revocation rate from when the methodology was originally established.

That was the rate that individuals were returned to prison from probation. So, it compares against that and provides a kind of a level of funding based on that and five different buckets between 100% of prior funding and 60%.

The second component is a purely incentive based component and that provides counties with payments based on contract rate savings, which is kind of the number that was used back at the day when we had individuals in contract facilities in state and out of state. We no longer have any individuals in state or out of state facilities.

They're all in Department of Correction facilities now. But the funding based on that is for the incentive based on the prior year's performance. So, it basically is kind of a look back of how well they did last year. If they do better, they receive a higher incentive payment.

If they do worse, they receive less of an incentive payment. And then finally, the third component is a $200,000 minimum that's provided to counties who don't meet any payments on the first or second, but still provide data to the Judicial Council, which is a requirement to receiving any funding for this corrections grant.

The administration is proposing a few updates to this formula. Again, it's been kind of several years since it's been updated. One of the major instances for updating that I mentioned is that we no longer use contract beds in state or out of state. So, we want to update the funding level on that.

Another issue is that some of the issue with the first component is there's some volatility between kind of a county's performance and what they're paid. Again, if they have a slight change in their performance on the number of individuals who are revoked to prison, they can, you know, lose 30% or perhaps higher of their prior payments.

So, it's a pretty big swing year to year.

And then lastly, the incentive piece on component two, that looks back to the prior year, it makes it difficult because if they have a really good year the subsequent year, it's very hard for them to meet that standard because, you know, if they technically - if they revoke nobody to prison, they would not receive any incentive because they performed so well that prior year.

So, we've proposed some updates, the first of which is to establish kind of a maintenance payment. And the first component provides a steady flat level, makes it easier for budgeting for probation departments because they'll know kind of consistently what they're going to get year to year on that component.

We're also proposing amendments to component two to update the number. So, it's not based on contract beds. It's based on the average per capita cost to incarcerate or have somebody on parole. And then it would be a look back based on a set number of years, not just the prior year.

So, it would be based on their baseline from 2001, 2002, and 2003. That's kind of a more stable one. Again, that means they can kind of have constantly good performance and be rewarded for it. And then for component three, we're not proposing any changes. We're planning to maintain that $200,000 minimum.

So that's kind of a very high level. Just kind of ran through it really quickly. But happy to answer any questions, obviously.

Thank you. Ms. Byrne, do you have anything else to add to that?

Yes, thank you, Chair. Madam Chair and members of the committee, I just wanted to add a little bit of information about the role that the Judicial Council plays. We think that this is a really excellent example of good government, this legislation that provides the incentive-based funding and ensures that outcomes are carefully tracked.

I wanted to just take a minute to talk about some of the examples of the evidence-based practices that are the cornerstone of 678 and tell you about how we track them. These practices have been proven over time through rigorous research to be effective in reducing criminal activity.

One of the most important components of community important components of community supervision, evidence-based practice is the use of risk and needs assessment. So, if you assess somebody for the risk of reoffending and then you put them in the higher risk people get put into sort of lower caseloads.

More intensive supervision is a really important component of this. And with the lower risk people, they don't need as much supervision. Right. They actually, it's contraindicated. If they have too much supervision, they actually end up doing worse. So, this program really started probation departments implementing that.

In particular, all 58 counties have risk assessment components to their caseload decision making. We also track things like motivational interviewing, cognitive behavioral therapy, the use of day reporting centers, et cetera. So, we receive funding each year, about $1.0 million annually, that was originally allocated just to support this project.

The Budget Act of 2015 expanded the scope of the funding. So, we now also use it to support a number of activities related to criminal justice realignment.

But in addition to for this project, we do data collection quarterly that we give to the Department of Finance and we do an annual assessment to ensure that probation departments are using these evidence-based practices and do a report each time year for the Legislature.

So, if you have any questions about the evidence-based practices or other components, I'd be happy to answer. Thank you.

Let's see. Mr. Zavala -

Thank you.

- with the Legislative Analyst Office.

Thank you. Madam Chair. Orlando Sanchez with the LAO. As a reminder, under current law, the proposed or the existing formula would has been on hold and this hold is set to expire in the 25-26 and the existing formula will resume starting 25-26. As mentioned, the governor's proposal has three payment components.

A performance payment, a maintenance component and a minimum guaranteed component. We recommend modifying the first two and rejecting the third. In regards to the performance payment, we recommend the Legislature consider a number of modifications and I'll go through those for the performance payment.

To begin, we recommend changing the baseline against which county performance will be measured by excluding the year 2021. We find that 2021 failure to prison rates were impacted by the COVID 19 pandemic and should not be used.

And also, the Legislature could consider updating the baseline when Proposition 36 is fully implemented or whether future significant policy changes occur. Also, the Legislature could consider providing additional funding through the rather than the proposed 25% or a lower percentage. A higher percentage provides counties with more resources and a stronger incentive but generates lower state savings.

Or the Legislature could also do the opposite which would have the opposite effect. Determining this ultimately depends on the Legislature and how it weighs these two goals. We also recommend various changes to the way the formula estimates savings.

First, we recommend using a marginal cost instead of an average cost to incarcerate and supervise people on parole, as this better captures how much the state actually generates in savings from one fewer person. In contrast, the average cost reflects some fixed costs that the state doesn't necessarily generate when one fewer person enters the prison system.

Then second, we recommend adjusting the formula to account for the fact that not everyone is released to parole. Historically, only about half of the people released from prison end up on parole.

And then third, we recommend adjusting the formula for the fact - accounting for the fact that people spend the amount of time people spend in prison or on parole and including that in the formula would make sense. Also in regards to the maintenance payment, this is the second portion we heard about.

We recommend an alternative one that instead fund specific evidence-based practices that will improve public safety and does so in ways that generate state savings as this better aligns with the goals of the program than what the governor's proposal has.

But this will require some time and some steps that the legislature have to take, and I'll go through those. So, the first is convening experts to identify specific evidence-based practices and estimating how much each of those practices will generate for the state.

And we recommend the Board of State and Community Corrections to do that which is currently responsible for promoting effective state and local corrections efforts, also determining the total amount the Legislature is willing to spend on those specific identified practices and establishing a way that that funding could be allocated to counties based on the numbers that they adopt.

As mentioned, because this will take some time to implement, we recommend for at least two years adopting the Governor's proposal with two simple modifications. The first is that the Governor's proposal Includes a growth amount that's currently not built into the existing formula and would have less oversight. And also, we find that this doesn't align with county costs.

So, to the extent that these awards aren't keeping up with those costs, the Administration in the future could request increases from the Legislature. Also, we recommend directing the BSCC to exercise an oversight role by auditing counties on the practices that they're using; ensure that outcomes at the local level are regularly evaluated.

This oversight would occur both in this transition period and when our recommended formula is fully implemented. Then counties found to be out of compliance would be provided with technical assistance to get back into compliance or risk losing some of those awards.

BSCC budget would have to increase to account for these new duties, but this could be provided through correspondingly reducing the amount of available grants at the total. And then finally, because we find that this minimum guarantee payment disconnects performance from the awards, we recommend rejecting that portion. And thank you. Happy to take questions on any specific parts.

Well, you certainly took the time to review it and give us some good suggestions. Thank you. All right, Mr. Drew Soderborg.

Drew Soderborg, Legislative Analyst's Office. I'm just here to help answer questions, so nothing for me now.

Thank you very much. All right, any members from the committee with questions or comments? Yes, Mr. Seyarto.

Thank you very much. And thank you all for your information this morning. You know, one of my concerns is that we are very caught up in all these formula-based things.

And, and at the end of the day, the big question is, are probation departments getting funded in the manner that they need to be able to do the job right. Because it's not about numbers and performance indices and all that stuff. It's about the people that they're trying to help.

And if they're not able to help them because of a shortage of resources or because they're overwhelmed or whatever it is, it's important for us to do that.

You know, yes, probation is largely funded by counties, but a lot of the counties have shortfalls because of what we have done in the last 10 years here in the Legislature. And those are a form of unfunded mandates.

A lot of people don't realize, you know, when we're funding unfunded mandates at the county, that means everybody in the county money shifts from other projects and other priorities into that.

And so it's important for the state to fund what we need the rest of it to be able to allow our probation departments to not just be functional, barely functional, but to be, you know, to be able to achieve what we want, which is to help people that have gone off the rails and now have an opportunity to be helped.

How are we, you know, does the funding formula, as it sits, is that adequate to enable our probation departments to be as effective as we need it to be? I think we know where that would be.

We just need to know what we have to invest to make sure that part of our judicial system, you know, the justice system is working because we have a lot of broken parts in it.

And I was able to get some information on another part of it finally, after two years, how much it would cost to fix it.

That's what I want to know for the probation is how much does it cost to fix it so that we know what we should be investing versus what we think we're going to invest or what, you know, that type of thing.

So, do you have any thoughts on how much more we really need to do to make the probation department work the way it does and allow the counties to do their share? But you know what? We have to do our share. And that's what I want to know, aside from all these formulas.

Justin Adelman, Department of Finance: I think I can speak to that and then also kind of respond to some of LAO's recommendations. So right now, the existing formula, as they mentioned it, would go back to the statutory formula that would provide about, based on the Governor's Budget data, about $140 million annually for probation.

This formula is actually slightly less than that, proposing 126.5, and we did that in conjunction with the Chief Probation Officers of California. But majorly what we wanted to do is provide that stability piece. Again, it's not necessarily the dollar amount.

And again, probation was willing to kind of accept a lesser amount than current in statute if they have more stable funding because it makes it easier to kind of contract and work with providers year to year if you're not, you know what you're going to get.

So, the chief probation officers of California are in support of this proposal with the administration. We believe it's the right amount of funding and also why we built in that growth factor just to account for kind of inflationary issues. It's associated with the 2011 Realignment Community Corrections Growth Account.

So, it's kind of associated with other realignment numbers. And again, we think that would be helpful for probation and maintaining their current performance.

One final note is that in the last few years, when we've had a statutory freeze and we've kind of provided a set baseline level of funding for the last three years, probation has done very well. The revocation rate over those freeze years is about 3.17%. Prior to Covid, it was about 3.37.

So, we believe that provision providing a stable amount of funding is very helpful for probation and maintaining their low revocation rates and doing their job.

Because that sounds great at the administrative level and the theoretical level. But when you get down to the people that are being served the probation, the people on probation and the people trying to do the job of supervision on probation, it doesn't look the same and it doesn't sound the same.

And it feels like they're not getting what they need to be able to do that end product that we want: to achieve that end product, which is a rehabilitated person that's ready to be unsupervised and go out into the world.

So, I think we have to look at that a little bit more and make sure that we are providing the funding that we need for them to do the job. And it's not always based on these formulas because there's the other factor which is the behavior of people that are on probation.

That's a big factor in how this is going to work. And the better the probation officers have it, the more they can help those folks, and we can weed out the ones that just simply aren't going to respond to help.

Any other questions?

I apologize for being late. You may have already covered this, but about the metrics for how well the evidence-based practices work or are going to work, if someone could respond to that.

I can speak to that a little bit. I just want to make sure I understand the question though.

What are the outcome methods?

So, some of the things we look at a number of different evidence-based practices that have been proven through research to reduce recidivism. We consulted originally with our assessment with two of the national experts in the field, Dr. Faye Taxman and Dr. Ed Latessa. And there's a number of domains that we look at.

Again, the risk needs assessment is one of the best and most important components that you don't over supervise people who don't need it. You identify what their needs are and the highest risk, highest need people get sort of supervised most heavily.

So, in our annual report we do go through a number of different evidence-based practices with indices of different domains, so administration, sanctions and incentives and a number of things like that day reporting centers. We ask them those questions. And we have seen as a result of this program we believe, a market uptick.

So, all of the counties, for example, are using risk meetings, needs assessments now and they're appropriately putting doing caseload sizes based on that. There's a number of other things we'll never get to 100% complete, you know, across the board, evidence-based practice utilization.

But we do try to take a pretty scientific approach in the way that we assess this, and we ask the probation departments how they're doing different things and that's what's in our annual report. Does that answer the question?

Then I'll just add a little bit of context. Some key metrics for this program include reducing the failure to prison rate, that's people who are on supervision currently in the community don't return to prison. And also generating state savings.

And while probation might have different programs throughout the state and each one has some flexibility on how they can use these fundings, a key component would be that that generates state savings so that people aren't returning to prison and the state seeing those costs later down the road if a person doesn't complete their supervision and recidivates.

Ms. Byrne, you mentioned the risk assessments. However, the report indicates the counties only spend approximately 4% on risk assessments as opposed to 57% on staffing. Can you clarify for us?

So, the risk assessment is sort of a one time, you do it pretty quickly. But what's really the outcome that we're looking for is how caseload sizes are then modified to reflect what the person's risk is. So, it would be sort of staffing.

It's very challenging to pull out some of these evidence-based practices because a lot of it is dependent on your staffing levels. So, for example, if we see a high-risk caseload, I think it's 50 people should be or less should be on the high-risk caseloads. We do measure that as well.

So staffing is a component of evidence-based practices.

So, following up on that of you speaking of how much staffing is done, your report notes that most of the funding is actually spent on staffing. How do we know that this grant is not supplementing the county spending on what they would spend anyway?

That's a valid question. We do not audit the funding related to this. It's not really in our role. We don't feel like that's our jurisdiction. So, we do site visits, and we did in the past pretty rigorous site visits. We slowed them down quite a bit over the last few years.

But we are setting them up again to the extent that we can absolutely know that there's no supplantation. We don't actually, we don't look through their files or look at their contracts. We ask about it, and we try to get a good handle when we're on those site visits of how the money's being spent.

But because it's largely due on staffing, we actually do interview probation officers when we are there to make sure that they are using the different tools such as motivational interviewing and risk needs assessment, et cetera.

But again, it shows up as a staff person who's been trained in these evidence-based practices and won't show up in the same way as an evidence-based practice itself.

So it might be helpful for us to have a further discussion about that because in light of the tough times and limited resources that both the county and the state has, we have to be very careful that individuals, workers aren't being asked to do two things for, you know, one person doing two jobs for two pots of money.

So, I would be interested in you exploring maybe how you could identify better the original amount of staff that the county might have and then what you anticipate the additions would be through the grants and see if those numbers jive, maybe, you know, an audit or something like that.

But we certainly, you know, have to be real careful for that because everyone is on tight dollars these days. Yes, ma' am. All right, and then last question would be for Mr. Adelman.

On the allocation of last year, how much has been spent by the probation departments and what happens if a department doesn't spend all of their funding on the grand grant? Meaning does it go into a saving pot for the next year or is it returned? Or are people encouraged to just do a whole lot of spending before the end of the year?

What's your process?

Yeah, these funds are distributed straight to the county. So, we don't have a kind of auditor control aspect of it. The money is directed to the county for their performance, for the savings that they've received for, you know, not sending individuals to prison. And then it's basically up to the counties to track.

It goes from the state controller's office to the individual county probation departments.

Mr. Zavala, did you have something you wanted to add or?

It's our understanding that counties cannot spend it in it or rollover for the next year and use it for the next year for similar consistent with statute is our understanding.

So, we did, in a previous report, we did see an audit from LA County that they had some funds that were unspent for this specific program. And the auditor from that county recommended they kind of use some of those funds. So that's one example we've seen.

Okay. So again, for both of you, this might be an area we want to consider, some additional auditing given in light of the very limited resources that we have.

We just can't afford to, you know, give any county, you know, a large pot of money and then just say, "Well, they have it, and they'll figure it out." You know, because other departments need money, too. So, anyway, thank you for your testimony. Seeing no other questions, we're going to go on to issue number two. Pardon?

You're kidding. Wow, that's interesting. I don't know if all of you are following the Pope's election, but Pope was selected and they're reporting the name, and we will report to you the name when we see it officially.

But it appears years, or you tell us, but it appears we might have an American Pope, which would be such a great, you know, surprise. They weren't expecting that. So that would be - that would be good news for us, I think. And historic. Yes. How exciting. All right.

With that, issue number two, we have additionally historic and exciting: our Corrections Peace Officer's perspective. I want to share with you, sir, that this was really important for me and for this committee to hear. We really do want to hear your perspectives, your experiences of you and your brothers and sisters doing the job.

And so, we're quite really, I'm not kidding. We are excited about having you here, hearing your testimony and ways that we might do better or continue in good areas. So, with that being said, for this first issue, we have Mr. Joseph Cisneros, a Correctional Officer at the California Correctional Institution. Yes.

And a Member of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair and M=members. My name is Joseph Cisneros, and I sit before you today not just as a correctional officer, but as someone who has spent the last 23 years on the front line of our prison system. Behind the walls, where public safety rarely sees and where danger is a constant companion.

In my 23 years, I've worn my badge with pride. I've committed myself to maintaining safety, enforcing order, and upholding the integrity of our correctional system. But I come to you today not with pride, but with urgency and concern, because what is happening in our prison system today is not sustainable. In recent years, I've seen an alarming trend.

Staff cuts are being implemented while the number of inmate programs is on the rise. While programs intended to rehabilitate might sound like a noble cause, they come with an undeniable cost. Correctional officers are being asked to do more with less help and with less authority. Let me be clear. Staff reductions are not just budgetary line items.

They are lives. Every position eliminated is one fewer officer watching my, our backs, one fewer set of eyes monitoring violent offenders, and one more reason for correctional staff to walk into work feeling unsafe. In addition, further reductions of staff disallow us to reach the Legislature's programmatic goals for the incarcerated population.

Violence in our facilities is at an all-time high. Assaults on staff are no longer rare. They're becoming routine almost daily. Officers are being sent to hospitals, and some don't come back to work at all. Yet instead of support, we're given reduced authority to act. Policy changes have tied our hands.

They're limiting disciplinary tools, weakening the safety and security policies, and eroding the structure that once kept our facilities safe and more secure. Meanwhile, inmate accountability is virtually nonexistent. Acts of aggression such as assaults, batteries, aggressive disrespectful behavior go unpunished or receive consequences so minimal they do nothing to deter future violence or behavior.

What message does this send to those who are supposed to be held accountable for their actions? This is not reality consistent with living in the outside world and is inconsistent with the desired outcomes of the California model. Laws in the outside world are just that, laws.

And they will be enforced on the public if they are broken, not minimized to fit some narrative. My partners and I are not asking for luxuries. We are asking for the basic tools to do our job safely and effectively.

Basic considerations such as adequate staffing that not only allows us to meet the department's missions and goals but allows us to accomplish this safely and within departmental policy.

We have officers who put the stab proof vest on, raise their hand and go to work every single day knowing that they're going to fight and be up against the wall every day. And we need as much help as we can inside those walls.

We need meaningful training that allows interaction with an instructor rather than simple online computer training.

Everybody learns in a different way, and we have a very complicated job and the more time that we can take explaining things person to person instead of just on a computer would go a long way on the working line, and meaningful consequences for those who choose disruption and or violence.

In closing, I urge this committee to see correction officers not as line items, but as protectors of public safety. If we continue down this path, we are not just endangering the lives of the people who work and are housed in these facilities. We are also jeopardizing the safety of all Californians.

The walls may conceal the danger, but they do not contain it forever. I thank you for your time and for hearing the voices of those who are all too often unheard.

I'm open to answering any questions that you may have relating to my professional experience of working inside the California State Prison or that of 26,000 partners that I have who are immensely dedicated to the mission of CDCR. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Seyarto. You want to start?

As you know, I sit on public safety, and we have some bills that deal with CDCR and some of the activity that may or may not be going on in the prisons. And of course, during these hearings we are thrown statistics that would be alarming if they were accurate.

And I think you've probably heard those same statistics related to, you know, complaints against officers and misbehaving by officers. You know, everything seems to be correctional officer - they appropriate everything to the correctional officers. That's what's wrong in our prisons.

What's your perspective of what we're being, what the statistics that we hear, and whether those are accurate and what's causing them not to be accurate?

Right. It does seem at times the statistics are one sided. We don't get - I don't think that information is portrayed evenly or at all the correct way.

Like I said, the consequences, the things that are being minimized in prison to fit a narrative, it's just not making it to the people that need to know, you know, because they - it's not being documented as so, you know what I mean? But you do hear about every wrongdoing of any officer out there. And it's unfortunate.

We can sit here for days on end talking about all the things that we do wrong. But what we don't ever talk about is the hundreds of fires that we put out daily, the good jobs that we do on a daily basis.

You only hear about the one bad day that an incarcerated person has, and he's chosen not to listen to an officer or use any of the de-escalation techniques that we're using. You hear about that one bad day that he's having that we did not want to have in the beginning.

So, I think the good work that we're doing is going unnoticed because today's day and age with the inmate population the way it is, they are doing a phenomenal job, officers are. But you're just not hearing that.

And I'm going to tell you as a trainer in my department, seeing the guys that we work with, knowing the situations they deal with on a daily basis. They are doing one heck of a job.

As a follow up, you know, a lot of the complaints, you know, we've had, the legislature has created a broader scope of what constitutes what kind of, you know, different complaints. And sometimes what I struggle with are, you know, is this a real complaint or is it not? Is this just made up to retaliate against an officer?

Do you find that you guys are put in that position where you're getting complaints that you don't have the fair shake of saying, "That's totally made up?" Because that's - I see this, these statistics say, you know, between here and here, we had this big, huge rise.

But what I see is a rise in the opportunity to file complaints and then watch an officer lose their credibility and potentially their career, but certainly their mental health because they're being accused of something that they absolutely did not do. But the system has now decided that "Hey, we're going to believe everything we hear," right?

Do you guys have, do you guys see that out there or is that creating a problem with your officers?

There is a huge rise in complaints due to the new programs that have been implemented inside of the prison system with the AVSS cameras and the body worn cameras that we now wear. An incarcerated person can just simply make a statement that he was rude to me, and he is now under investigation.

And this happens frivolously hundreds of times a day. And it's in a way manipulating the system to get good officers who are doing their job out of their building off the yard. Because sometimes during these investigations, they have to remove the officer from that post for his or her protection or pending an investigation.

So, it inconveniences the officer who's doing a great job and he's creating ripples and speed bumps for whatever the incarcerated person is doing. And they just simply make a complaint and that problem is now gone for an X amount of time and then he might be back depending on. So, it is a game that they play.

We're just going to make complaints frivolously and they get investigated frivolously. They cannot say this is not accurate, this is not a legitimate complaint. They take every single complaint and move forward with it regardless.

And that's not to say there aren't legitimate complaints. Absolutely. And I know from my perspective when I was in the fire service and you know, we don't want people who have through for whatever reason, usually because they've just lost it, going sideways and becoming the bad guys any more than anybody else does.

And that's something for us to, you know, try to ensure that those people are steered into another profession or something and get the mental health they need - mental health help that they need.

Because that's usually what I found - was usually when somebody goes bad, it's because they're being affected by what they have had to deal with in the job over and over and over.

And from your perspective on the mental health part of it, how, you know, is there adequate help for officers or are we really falling short, which is creating more problems?

The department has actually moved forward with a ton of new programs that are available for us. From the things that I'm hearing from the officers who reach out, they are there. I think they're still falling a little short for the officers, but the programs are there.

I think they're being overloaded because they didn't expect that many officers to reach out and go, "I need help" because it is important that I convey to them during the classes that I teach or that I'm out there. I tell them it's okay to not be okay. It's what we deal with. We deal with trauma every day.

And if you're having issues with it, the day of holding it in and just dealing with it, those are long gone. They have programs there for us. But from what I've heard and experienced with the current staff is when I do reach out, they're falling short. I think it's simply overloaded, and it needs to be looked at.

Thank you for your honesty today.

Senator Durazo.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cisneros, for being here and sharing and thank you for your many years of public service. Anybody who can last that long in any public service position deserves our gratitude. I have had the ability, I mean--

I've been able to visit a number of prisons and I also went to Norway, but I went to Norway with a group of guards, prison guards, not only from California, but from Oregon. And it just seemed like overall the attempt to get the proper balance for everybody.

It was the first time I heard so much care for you and your colleagues was on this trip to Norway. And I think we were sort of.

Some people might have expected more of a one-sided, but the fact that the officers were included both over there as well as from here, from California and from Oregon, I think really made it a much more balanced approach.

So, of these tools, basic tools that you referred to, you mentioned adequate staffing, meaningful training and consequences for the inmates for their actions, assume that includes the officers as well, so consequences for their actions. You yourself didn't mention mental health, but I assume that's a big issue.

I don't know if that's part of the training that you're talking about or a whole separate category of what your basic needs are.

So I guess, do you see that there is a way with all of these programs that either have started brand new or have been in place for a while, do you see the makings of the kinds of reforms in all of these categories? Do you see the makings of a real well-balanced incarceration system for everybody?

Or are there certain things that are totally, you know, missing or we're not paying sufficient attention to? And in the end we're legislators, so what can we do as legislators that you think are the most important ideas that you have that you all need?

And I mean you, not just personally and your colleagues, but you representing the justice system? Because that's-- We expect you to be a representative and a leader for the whole justice system means everybody impacted, whether it's the doctors that go in, the nurses that go in, all the professionals that go in.

So what would you say are the things that we should be able to-- we should be doing as legislators? That's the final question. But you could fill it in.

I think I remember the first one.

So as a whole, I think the department, the line officers, we understand the vision of the department, we understand that the incarcerated population are going to be back out on the streets and we understand that reform is necessary if we don't want them to come back to the street streets and be not model citizens.

But some of the things that are taking place, like the no accountability, being able to just do whatever and we just brush it off. That's definitely where we're falling short. I think the programs for incarcerated person rehabilitation that are taking place are important because of that.

Because we need to get them better ready to hit the streets, so to speak. But where we're falling short, I believe as the justice system is providing the adequate staffing to supervise these guys, not because we're trying to hold them accountable, but for their safety as well.

I can't tell you how many times an inmate has come up to me and asked, man, what is going on? We need some officers back here because of what is going on. Tell me what's going on.

And we have a complete program that's running that have over 100 inmates in that area with no custody supervision, just non-custody supervision. And they're running a program and they have an objective to run. So they are very secure minded, but it's not security minded. They don't see the things that we see.

They don't see the things that this incarcerated population are doing behind the scenes in the dark. That's what we're trained for. And we keep that stress because these programs are not going to be successful if only 20% of who are participating have the ability to participate because the other 80% are causing issues in there.

Education programs, rehabilitation programs. A lot of the individuals in those programs are creating havoc in those programs, so that the ones who want to be there and learn, they're not learning anything. They're more worried about their safety in there than they are learning what they're in the program trying to learn.

And it's because there's lack of staff, because we don't have the supervision back there to have a walk.

I know when I walk around into places that there's programs running and non-custody staff is there on a daily basis, I get told, thank you so much for coming in here, walking by, doing your rounds because it really does change the way these guys behave. And I say, you're welcome.

It's my job and I want to make sure you're safe and I want to make sure everybody in here is safe. So I think not taking away from staff and I understand funding's in a rough place, but we-- with the violence on the rise, these programs are changing.

We're reducing staff and I think that's why violence is on the rise. Because for a long period of time we had those staffing in place and we had that security and nothing was happening. They're like, hey, maybe we can reduce it here. And then, because they removed it, now we see what's happening.

It's kind of like that pendulum swinging back and forth. I hope that answers your question.

Just a final-- is to think about the kinds of reforms that would allow us to get to the bad apples amongst everywhere, right? Because the things that happened to the women, the dozens of women who were sexually assaulted, I mean, that went on for years.

So there's something, right, that allowed bad apples to continue to do the bad things that they were doing.

So just, you know, you don't have to answer it all right now, but how do we get into that system in such a way that on all sides, right, we don't allow that kind of behavior to exist because that violence on each other is what I think makes the trauma so much worse.

Yeah. It's unfortunate that that was happening and nobody deserves that on any level of any custody supervision, non-custody. And there are bad apples, and those people need to be-- Our job is already hard enough to, let alone working with staff or doing those types of things.

So 100%, I will urge you that staff will walk around and tell you we don't need those people here and we want them gone because we're already facing huge dividends when we're here, let alone people who are doing those types of acts and that type of violence or any type of, you know, wrongdoings, they need to be dealt with as well.

Thank you. Okay, I got a few questions here. First of all, the next issue panel that we have is handling allegations of staff misconduct. So I'd like to respectfully ask if you would stay to hear that and your representatives, and please provide to the Committee in writing what your thoughts are about what was said.

Because I think one of the things we do sometimes is we hear one side, we hear another side, and we never give both opportunity to, well, what did you think about what they said? Do you agree? Do you not agree?

So I want to give you that opportunity to please stay and listen and share with us your thoughts. A few questions. You mentioned a couple times adequate staffing. What would adequate staff staffing be to you if you were to have your ideal facility? What would it mean? What would you see in terms of staffing?

Right. That is a very broad question. Yeah, it makes me smile because I think of the old days, 23 years ago when I walked into work and there were staff everywhere. Since day one of the academy, you're taught to be with a partner everywhere you go, no matter what.

And I would say that would be a good start because some of us don't have partners. I work alone in my area, and specifically, I mean, I am not alone in this. There are numerous positions across the state that do exactly the same thing that I do where we don't have a partner.

I just recently lost my partner to a realignment. So now I am working in an area by myself and I supervise four running classrooms from an education area and a library. And crossing fingers and by the grace of God, we haven't had any incidents. But I do walk around, I do make myself known.

And starting at a partnership because I know that it's not feasible to think we need cops every 10 square feet or ratios of officers per incarcerated person. I know that's not reality, but reality speaking, where every officer has a partner that they can walk around and rely on one another for, that's where I would start.

Well, and then speaking on that, it's my understanding-- Can you tell me about your radios? Something I was speaking to someone that they said that the radios-- like, let's say you may be working in one unit and let's say you're called to another unit. Does your radio work in that other unit?

Can you tell us a little bit about your radio situation?

If you're speaking units, like facilities are broken down into yards. Some are different. I can kind of only speak to where I work because I'm familiar with that and I know it's the same, but a little bit different everywhere. We have three operating facilities, A, B and C, and we're our own facility.

My radio works only on my facility. Facility B radios only work on their facility. We did upgrade to a new radio system to where we can change the channel and listen in on other facilities. But we try not to tell people to do that because in the event of emergency right now you're on the wrong channel.

So we urge you to leave it there, not to do that. But everywhere within the facility, you're able to speak to one another, depending on where you're at inside of a building, because sometimes they are line of sight.

And if you're stuck into a building in the back half, so to speak, your radio might not transmit as well as somebody who works as a SNE on the yard or who's out in the open because you have barriers and walls. But generally they work okay.

So you're telling me then that your experience in your current facility is that your radio will work in the other units or yards?

On my facility, yes.

Okay. All right. And then for the public that's listening and for us, can you describe a day, how many hours do you work and you know, obviously the concerns, what on a typical day, would you interact? Would someone push you, spit at you, throw feces at you?

You know what, tell us a little bit more about what typically you might or one of your colleagues might be facing on a typical day.

On a typical day, we arrive at work, we grab our equipment and we go down into our housing units or our place of work. And too much throughout the state, we're already dealing with things that are from the previous shift because there's so much going on. Our inmates are not happy about something.

They're boarded up into a housing unit. We have medical emergencies on a daily basis that are frivolous. I think one of the things that we hear most, I have chest pains because they don't like what's for breakfast. And because of our protocols, we have to go through the emergency procedure and have officers respond, have medical respond.

This happens up to 10 to 15 times on a shift which is from 06 in the morning till 2 o' clock in the afternoon. And this continues on through third watch, which is the swing shift from 2 to 10, just depending on what's going on in the facility.

A good day is to only have one or two medical emergencies and we're happy with that. But the inmate population right now, whenever they are not happy about something, they create havoc, utilizing our policies against us. And it's unfortunate. On top of that we have yard out, we have medical, which is, we can't shut down that.

So we're running that and we're trying to do all this to make everybody hit their appointments on time. All between the codes, we call them codes, the emergency calls. It's mayhem sometimes. In an eight hour shift you might not touch your food just because there's not enough time to do it.

And a lot of times we're staying past our shift, which is 8 hours, 12 hours, 16 hours is on a regular day. So we'll show up to work at 6 in the morning and leave at 10 at night. That is a typical officer's day.

I'm a little blessed with seniority, so they don't hit me as much because the younger staff are the ones that. But that is what they deal with on a daily basis. And then they come back to work the next day at 6 and have to do it all over again.

So it's a very long day, all with while doing their security checks, their cell searches, everything that is on the daily activities report that we have to accomplish during the day. And like I said, running medical, mental health, visits, there's a lot, it's a lot of program happening.

It's tough to get done on a good day, let alone a bad day. We sometimes just don't get things done and we hear about that, but there's only so much that we can do.

I know I'm forgetting something, but the medical emergencies for unhappy inmates and our spice epidemic in the prison system is at an all time high right now.

What epidemic?

It's a spice epidemic. It's like drugs, but they're under the influence for 30 minutes and then they're completely fine 30 minutes later. So that creates a ton of issues as well. And that's a statewide issue. This is something that's new. We're trying to combat and we're not doing well with it.

So we do the best that we can.

Last comment and then a question. To me, it would seem by having a partner, one benefit is that you have health and if you need assistance, someone would be less apt to probably use excessive force because you actually have help to properly maintain someone instead of just trying to do it yourself to save your life.

A second benefit I can also see of a partner is that there's someone else there witnessing what's going on. So that leads me to my next question.

Do you find that there's a culture that if something inappropriate is happening, which is what we're going to hear about in the next session, do you find that there's a culture that you're encouraged to speak up or are there venues to anonymously speak up?

Or do you feel there's like a, you know, a thick blue line and you know, hey, we don't talk about it. What's your thoughts on that?

Yeah, with a partner, so many things change from the way that you look at a situation that's unfolding in front of you. And if you are getting too deep into it, say that you're losing your cool, so to speak, your partner will pull you out of that.

Not necessarily using excessive force, but we haven't tried all the de-escalation techniques. A boss-- partner, I'll take over. And I've seen that happen numerous times. But not all of us have that.

And it's really good to see that cops can realize my partner's struggling with communicating with this guy because he doesn't he doesn't want to hear it today, this inmate.

And that partner does come up and say, hey, I'll take over, kind of steps in the way and for whatever reason he's got a better rapport or he's able to get through and de-escalate the situation. So in that sense, absolutely, it will make a huge difference and sometimes they don't fight fair.

So if there is a numerous fight with numerous people, it will give us an advantage to go in there and quell those incidences a little faster. And I'm sorry, what was the last part?

The third question was, if you saw a fellow colleague who, let's say was maybe having a sexual relationship with an inmate, would you feel comfortable to speak up? Do you have a avenue of like anonymous reporting or something like that?

Or would it just be typical, kind of turn your head, hey, so-and-so's, you know, doing his thing as usual.

We do have the whistleblower hotline that we can call and report that. But I would 100% that second remove that officer from my work area and take-- I would make a call right then and there. That is something, like I said, our job is already hard enough, let alone letting any of that happen.

That will never happen around me. And I think high percentage of people are just like me going we can't have that behavior. We have a badge to uphold. We want to-- It's the few bad apples that really put a negative light on all of us. And it's unfortunate, but behavior like that, it's not accepted.

It's absolutely no-no, it's not going to happen.

And actually, I do have one last question. In March and May, we've had a couple of reported riots in the California facilities. One, there were approximately 100 incarcerated persons who were involved in a riot at the California Correctional Institute in Tallahatchie on Friday, May 2, which was pretty recently.

It was reported that no staff were injured, but four incarcerated individuals were transferred to outside medical facilities. And then on Thursday, March 20, a correctional officer at the California Correctional Institute, CCI, was injured in an attack by an incarcerated person on Thursday, March 20.

The officer sustained minor injuries and was taken to an outside medical facility and is released and deemed okay. The person attacked the officer with an improvised weapon as the officer escorted the individual back to their assigned cell. Would you say that that's a potential thing that can happen to anyone on any given day?

And then in terms of the riots, how do you guys respond?

That type of behavior, that type of incident, it happens daily. That's the thing that is on the rise. These incarcerated individuals are just acting out and they're doing whatever they want at any time for whatever reason. It doesn't make quite sense anymore. So that is something that happens daily.

And it's a part of work, it's part of what we sign up for. And we understand that that could happen. We don't want it by any means, but it's the fact of the job. And as far as--

When a riot breaks out, do you guys jump in or you let them fight it out or what do you do?

So if we have a large scale disturbance like that on a yard, we absolutely, we announce an alarm. The officers who are supervising the yard decide whether they need a simple response of the existing staff on the facility or they need assistance, they need a code two response, which is more people to come.

Or in the event that it's so large that we announce a code three, basically which is all staff from the entire institution to come quell. Those are decided upon the responders there at the time. But we get involved, we don't just let them fight.

So calling an emergency, getting medical on standby, utilizing necessary force when we give orders and they don't comply, when we see them attacking each other, we use appropriate force depending on our distances and what we have on us at that time. So we do everything that we can to try to stop them.

But there are times they don't-- whatever their agenda is, they're not going to stop no matter what. So, in my years of working in prison, I've got an opportunity to talk to many, many incarcerated individuals. And they say, you know, this one we just had to do.

We had to fight to the Mini is what they say. So they had to fight until the officer in the tower racks the Mini-14 where deadly force criteria is present. So they were already given the directive by their leader, so to speak, that you fight under-- whatever they do to you, you keep fighting until you hear that and then we'll stop.

So that's the kind of incarcerated population that we're dealing with, their behaviors, their thought process. It's an uphill battle.

Seeing no further questions. Senator Durazo, yes.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Just that I think it's really important to hear from you, one, and thank you. But I think it's also important to hear from you all the pieces of what's working and what's not working.

And I think that gives us a better opportunity to be able to gauge, okay, how do we deal with meaningful training, how do we deal with consequences, how do we deal with adequate staffing at the same time that we're supporting the kinds of programs that help people change their lives so they're better equipped to lead that life that they want when they leave.

So I hope to hear from you or add to your testimony, which programs work the best to help the stress level, to help reduce the violence, to help reduce the abuses by anybody and create the kind of environment where people have the freedom to say, this is what's wrong or that's not what's wrong.

The rights that we all have, there are people always that are going to abuse of them. But we still want to protect our fundamental ability and due process and all of that. So, anyway, I would just love to hear from you at another time, I think we need to move on, is which programs work that help the incarcerated to lead a better life when they're released. Thank you.

Senator Durazo, that was an excellent request. And I would ask that you include that with your comments of the next panel that's coming forward. Officer Cisneros, you did an excellent job. Thank you for providing your perspective and that of your men and women who work with you. And we are appreciative of your work. Thank you and have a good day.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, sir. With that, we're going to move on to issue number three, handling allegations of staff misconduct. We have Mr. David Chriss, Deputy Director, Office of Internal Affairs, and Amarik Singh, Inspector General, and Shaun Spillane, Chief Deputy Inspector General.

Thank you all for being here today. Mr. Chriss, do you want to go first or-- Okay. Thank you, sir.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is David Criss and I'm the Deputy Director of the Office of Internal Affairs for CDCR. We are here today to discuss CDCR's revised staff complaint process.

CDCR staff misconduct processes were designed with the goals of eliminating bias, increasing transparency, and improving staff accountability by addressing allegations of staff misconduct submitted from all sources. As the Deputy Director of the Office of Internal Affairs, I have over 40 years of experience in law enforcement, investigations and agency oversight.

My law enforcement career started in 1981 as a police officer, working for two local agencies and achieving the ranks of field training officer, corporal, sergeant, watch commander, and supervising investigations.

For 14 years, I've managed and conducted serious investigations, including but not limited to homicide and death investigations, sex assault investigations, and investigations related to medical care issues, patient harm and death, workplace violence, EEO, retaliation, and use of force investigations.

I've worked for multiple agencies, including but not limited to the Medical Board of California, the Department of Consumer Affairs, and the Office of the Inspector General. Most recently, in April of 2021, I was appointed by the Governor from outside of CDCR to be the new Deputy Director of the department's Office of Internal Affairs.

I have several degrees, numerous certifications, and extensive investigative training. Specifically, as a Deputy Director of the Office of Internal Affairs, I oversee the Internal Affairs investigative function and the Office of Civil Rights for the department's 66,800 employees. I also have oversight of the Deadly Force Review Board and I am the Chairperson for the Post-Investigation Review Committee.

As the Deputy Director, it is my responsibility to ensure we uphold the best interests and confidence of the public by conducting complete, objective, unbiased, independent, timely and thorough investigations of employee misconduct.

So I want to talk about the process a little bit, is the department took a proactive approach to improve its staff complaint process by establishing an independent, centralized screening team from the institutions to review all complaints, which created a direct, unbiased pathway for referring staff misconduct allegations for investigation.

The department also established the Allegation Investigation Unit, which is an external entity from the institutions within the Office of Internal Affairs to investigate these complaints. The process starts when the centralized screening team receives complaints directly from an incarcerated person or a third party complaint alleging staff misconduct towards an incarcerated person.

The team uses the Allegation Decision Index to send the complaint back to the institution for a routine review of complaints such as missing property or complaints involving access to the library or to the Allegation Investigation Unit for investigations of complaints including but not limited to, unnecessary or excessive use of force, staff sexual misconduct, discrimination, and retaliation.

Due to the department size and the extent of these reforms, a phased approach was used to update regulations and policy to process these complaints. And just a little bit of background, so on June 1st of 2020, CDCR implemented emergency regulations to improve the grievance and appeal processes based in large part on the revised grievance and appeal regulations issued by the California Correctional Healthcare Services under federal oversight.

These emergency regulations were made permanent on January 5, 2022. On January 1 of 2022, CDCR implemented emergency regulations to improve the screening process by establishing the centralized screening team and improving investigations process by establishing the Allegation Investigations Unit that we mentioned.

These emergency regulations were made permanent on October 20 of 22. And to talk a little about the current state of affairs, following the activation of the updated staff complaint process on January 1 of 22, it became immediately evident that the volume of complaints routed for investigations significantly exceeded the department's budget staffing capacity.

Since activation, approximately 650,000 complaints have been processed, of which 591,900 were routed as routine grievances, 23,570 were routed for local inquiry and 34,500 were referred to the Allegation Investigation Unit for investigation. The department has since experienced a 46.2% increase in overall claims received and a 14% increase in those routed specifically to AIU for investigation.

To date, approximately 4.29% of investigated cases have resulted in sustained findings and disciplinary action. The Allegation Investigation Unit is currently budgeted for 109 investigators but is receiving close to three times the volume of investigations that they can complete. All right.

Based on this state of affairs, the department decided to enact new emergency regulations and they were implemented to improve and streamline the process, Employee Discipline Administrative Remedies Process, given the significant volume of the complaints that were received.

CDCR implemented these emergency regulations on January 1, 2025 and CDCR plans to implement permanent regulations on July 1, 2025 after considering internal feedback, external feedback, and public comments as provided for in the Administrative Procedures Act.

Highlights of these changes include a new routine review process. As part of CDCR's emergency regulations, CDCR discontinued the allegation inquiry process, including the use of locally designated investigators who conducted these inquiries. Claims previously handled by the locally designated investigators will instead be handled by local supervisors as a routine review.

However, if facts are gathered during the routine review which causes supervisor to believe the claim could result in adverse action, the routine review shall be suspended and elevated to the Office of Internal Affairs for investigations.

Additionally, the department added special circumstances, permitting the closure of investigations to the staff misconduct regulations where video evidence clearly proves or refutes a claim. In addition to the changes to the regulations I noted, the department is in the process of implementing additional changes to ensure staff misconduct allegations are reviewed and addressed appropriately, thoroughly, timely, and equitably.

CDCR has also established a new centralized Allegation Resolution Unit to review and resolve investigations conducted by the Office of Internal Affairs. In the current process, after the Allegation Investigation Unit completes an investigation, the local hiring authority reviews the investigative files and determines whether to sustain an allegation and what discipline to impose.

This new unit will help alleviate an overwhelming number of investigations for review and determination for wardens. We're providing consistency in decision making across the department. This process started January 1, 2025 providing services to nine institutions, and will continue to expand. The department also revised the Allegation Decision Index that I mentioned earlier.

The Allegation Decision Index is a list of criteria used by the centralized screening team to determine whether an allegation of staff misconduct should be referred to the Office of Internal Affairs for investigation or to a local supervisor for routine review.

The revisions to the Allegation Decision Index were implemented to provide the centralized screening team with more clarity on the types of claims that should be routed to the Office of Internal Affairs versus a local supervisor.

The department has also implemented a multidisciplinary grievance team and the multidisciplinary grievance team provides individuals who frequently file grievances with a meaningful opportunity to immediately resolve complaints with a team of experts or open an investigation if warranted by the facts. This team will conduct face-to-face meetings with claimants monthly.

The team includes local grievance staff and healthcare professionals professionals. CDCR is committed to improving the screening agreements, reviews and investigations through enhanced auditing. These enhanced audits will help ensure corrective and disciplinary actions are taken. The post-investigation review process and several other audits have demonstrated the benefit of monitoring.

This increased internal auditing will be implemented in coordination and collaboration with internal and external stakeholders. Additionally, the Office of Internal Affairs provides extensive training for its staff and requires investigators to recuse themselves if there is a conflict of interest in a case.

CDCR will also be working with a California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training certified vendor to develop a new training course for CDCR investigators. The course content would surround investigation strategies, the statute of limitations, allegation, scoping, evidence-gathering, interview plans, preparation and hiring authority decision-making.

The objectives are to improve and build upon an investigator's skills and knowledge. The department remains committed to getting this right and will continue to work with the legislature, the plaintiffs and the Office of the Inspector General to identify opportunities for improvement, adopt best practices and take meaningful steps to to streamline our processes.

Our priority is to ensure a fair, effective and sustainable system that upholds public trust and supports the department mission. Thank you for your time today and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

No, no, no. There's a lot going on in our process.

In your explanation of the process. With that I believe we have had you Ms. Singh before? Yes. Yes, ma' am.

Good morning Madam Chair and committee members. I'm Amarik Singh, the Inspector General. Today, Chief Deputy Inspector General. He just changed jobs. Sean Spillane is with me today. He'll be here to help assist any with any questions.

So I want to start off by saying that the staff complaint process that was just described by Deputy Director Chris is something that the Office of the Inspector General does monitor. However, today I'm here to describe the OIG intake process which is completely separate and apart from the staff complaint process that was just described.

The OIG maintains a statewide complaint intake process that provides a point of contact regarding allegations of improper activity that takes place within CDCR. Our intake processing unit. Our intake unit is a team of 12 full time employees and two students. They receive complaints from the incarcerated population, supervised people, their families, CDCR employees, advocacy groups and private citizens.

Complaints can be submitted to the OIG via letter, through our toll free telephone number, through our website and in person. The incarcerated population can also contact us via their state issued tablet. We also have posters with our contact information throughout CDCR.

And the intent is not just at the prisons, but also at other locations where incarcerated people or supervised people can be. We also maintain the confidentiality of the complaints.

The complainants, I should say, therefore, if a staff member or an incarcerated person reaches out to us with a complaint, we do maintain their confidentiality and we do not disclose their names unless they sign a waiver and agree to do so.

We strive to screen all complaints within one business day of receipt to identify potential safety concerns, serious medical or mental health concerns or reports of sexual abuse. In 2024, we received 6591 complaints, which was a 26% increase from 2023. A complaint can contain one or more claims submitted for our review.

From the nearly 6,600 complaints we received, we processed 10,428 claims which is an average of nearly 870 claims per month. This also is a 27% increase from the 8,227 claims we processed in 2023.

Of the complaints we received in 2024, 55% the majority were received via our OIG hotline, the toll free number voicemail line that can be used through the phone or through the tablet. 28% were received by mail and 17% were received through email, our website, or in person.

Our office's hotline received an average of 300 complaints monthly in 2024, for a total of 3,597 complaints. Approximately 75% of our complaints do come from the incarcerated population or supervised people, while 25% are submitted by others such as private citizens, CDCR employees, and advocacy groups.

The most common types of claims we received in 2024 did relate to prison conditions, policies or operations, allegations of staff misconduct, and the Prison Rape Elimination Act, the PREA complaints, and other safety concerns. Complaints frequently included multiple claims of improper activity occurring within the department.

In response to these complaints, our staff conduct inquiries by assessing information from various CDCR databases, reviewing CDCR's policies and procedures, and requesting relevant documentation from CDCR. We will also reach out to the complainant to get further information as necessary.

After our review or inquiry into these complaints, we advise the complainants about how they can address their concerns within CDCR. We will provide them a written response outlining this information or what technical assistance they need to resolve the complaint at issue. Depending on the nature of the complaint, we will also communicate with CDCR about the complaint.

We will share our research and request that they review and take appropriate action as necessary. For example, if we receive a complaint about a release date calculation, we will research the issue.

If we discover a discrepancy, we will send the prison the information we gathered and make a recommendation and request that the prison review the issue, adjust the calculation if appropriate. We also will follow up with the prison to ask how they've handled one of the complaints that we've elevated to them. We highlight significant complaints.

We receive those of interest in quarterly case blocks or summaries which we publish on our website. For some complaints, we will request CDCR refer the matter for an investigation and if the case meets our criteria, we will monitor that investigation.

And just to finish up some of our current numbers in 2025, from January to April, we have so far received 2,603 complaints, which is an average of 651 complaints monthly. We will project that we will receive over 7,800 complaints this year.

Thank you again for giving me this opportunity to describe our intake process and I'm happy to answer questions you may have.

Could you clarify from the officer perspective a little bit more how you handle that? I noticed you said provide in writing and so on. Could you go back over that piece? If you get a officer or a CDCR employee who files a complaint?

If a CDCR employee files a complaint with our office, depending on the nature of the complaint, we will review the complaint. We will research the complaint.

For example, if a staff member is alleging that some other staff member is engaged in misconduct, we will review the systems that we have access to which we have full access to CDCR databases to see if the complaint has already been made or CDCR is aware of that allegation.

If they are, we'll see if there's an open investigation. We'll respond back to the CDCR staff member complainant to let them know that as investigation is ongoing, we can't share details of that, but we will let them know and follow up with that.

If there appears to be misconduct, alleged misconduct, we will take that information, we'll anonymize it, so we will not share the complainant's name.

And we will reach out to either the hiring authority at the prison where the misconduct is taking place, or if necessary, to the Office of Internal Affairs to give them a brief synopsis of the information we have learned.

And we will recommend, if appropriate, that they open investigation or at least at a minimum, review the information and get back to us of what they've done. And depending on that communication, if we're unsatisfied with what we've learned, we will continue to elevate that and continue to have the discussion with CDCR executives about the complaint.

Okay, Any questions, members? Senator Durazo.

Thank you. I just have a broad question. In terms of the way the system is functioning now, your work and your staff work, you said there's 12 full time people and yet you processed or to some degree processed 6600 complaints. How does that work?

What does that mean in terms of effectiveness of, you know, behalf of all those who file the complaints.

We have a very busy intake unit with our staff. They, they will look at every single. We have with our student assistant help as well. We look at every single complaint that comes in. Every single one is looked at, every single one is reviewed.

Every single one is put into our system so that we continue to have a tracking mechanism. And it's a high workload. But I have a team of very dedicated staff that take the time to review each and every one of these. We prioritize them.

If there is a serious safety concern, sometimes we do get mental health concerns that come to us, we will immediately respond to those. That's why we have that look at it within one business day. And then we categorize them. If it's some issue that is a property issue, that can be a little bit lower priority.

So we do it that way so that we can respond to each and every complaint within a timely fashion.

One more specific question. Does the report contain any recommendations related to installing thermal sensor cameras in the bathrooms used by incarcerated women?

No, our report does not contain that recommendation.

Do you think something like that would be effective.

In thermal sensor cameras in.

And cameras in the women's bathrooms?

I would have to look into that. That's a. The private area. And I think that I would have to look at the research to see if that is something that would be beneficial. Obviously we want to implement as much as we can for the safety and security of our incarcerated women.

But I am not up to speed with that research.

Okay, thank you.

All right, I got a few questions here. Number one, based upon this report, which I believe is yours, Ms. Singh, it says that there were supervised complaints, 4,944 and CDCR employees were only 91. That's 1.8%. It seems a little odd to me that that number would accurately reflect, you know, a typical supervisor working relationship.

That only 1.8% of the employees would think that they had maybe had an issue or treated inappropriately or so on. So what is the process to make sure. If you notice that was the question I asked of one of the officers.

What process do you have in place to make sure that there is a free and open opportunity for people to employees to issue their concerns? Because it's my understanding it's more than 1.8%.

So if that's a question as to me, absolutely, there is a. Our new process supports that it would be called a third party complaint. It's not by an incarcerated person. Any person can make a complaint to us and we treat them all very seriously. If staff person saying, hey, there's an issue here, we look into it.

Also Amarik mentioned that they refer those. Some of those complaints that they get to us and then we investigate those as well.

So that wasn't my question. My question was I'm sure, and I would hope that that's what you would do. My question is, what do you do to encourage that there's a process that people can report? Because it just seems a little odd that only 1.8% of the total complaint.

You have 4,944 complaints that are issue supervised individuals and yet you only have 91 by the employees. That just seems to be a huge.

Your statistics. Ours are much higher.

So Madam Chair, if I may. The the document that you're looking at is. Is dashboards from the Office of the Inspector General. We are separate and apart from CDCR. Even though we oversee them, we're not in any type of management or supervisory role with the correctional staff.

This is the numbers you're seeing is the avenue that correctional staff have to come to the OIG, come outside of their own employer, employee relationship to come to us to bring light any type of misconduct or concerns or issues that they have.

So 91 of the complaints that you see are people who actually identified themselves as CDCR employees who we have learned that oftentimes they will. They will be anonymous, but then they'll come forward later and let us know. They can come to us as private citizens through our website. You can identify yourself as a private citizen.

You can absolutely remain anonymous and not give us any information or you can say if you are a CDCR employee and then also ask to remain anonymous. So this is a complete. Our numbers are another way that. Oops, sorry. Another way that CDCR staff can come to us to report misconduct.

I understood all that. What I'm saying is, sir, that based upon the Office of the Inspector General, they're seeing a significant, what I would call lower number of potential people who might have a concern.

My question to you is, what are you doing to make sure that people have a free and open process to contact the Office of the Inspector General if in fact they feel the internal process may not be working?

You know, when you're in a work environment, you gotta go to your colleague, someone you work with, and say, hey, such and such happened, a person may not feel as comfortable. They may feel more comfortable going to an objective person. Right, Right. So I'm saying to you, 1.8% seems kind of low to me.

So what is it that you do to communicate to the people within, the folks that you work with that, hey, this is available, you should utilize it.

If you feel you're not, you know, getting maybe a potential affair or you know, as an in depth investigation, as you might have thought, or you're looking for a more anonymous situation. What are you doing to make sure that your employees are aware of the Office of Inspector General, their process and their ability to help.

So that information is provided at employee orientations. There's posters in every office, on every wall. We're actually co located with the Office of the Inspector General. By statute, we're in the same buildings and it's easy for staff to go to either or office.

And then Amarik did mention sometimes our complaints to them cross paths and then they get referred to us. We treat everything and we let our employees know that everything is absolutely anonymous in this process. And people feel comfortable going to both of our sections. I mentioned that I used to work in the Inspector General's Office.

Amarik and I, we actually work very close together on the same floor. So it's. It is. You know, they are our oversight entity and they monitor our investigative work. And, you know, it's my feeling that staff could feel comfortable going to either place and that they'd be treated confidentially and with respect, and we encourage that.

It's the opposite of our job. Their role is to review and to look into something, and so is ours. Staff misconduct is essentially. I mean, that is our world. It's what we investigate.

Yes.

So.

So, sir, tell me again, approximately how many complaints was yours? The number of 650,000. Okay, absolutely. And out of those, how many are employee complaints?

So it's going to be less. So the incarcerated reports are much higher, but of course, I don't have that exact number on how many today are our staff generated complaints. But we can get that information to you.

Yes please. And again, I'd like for you to answer the question, which is, if you're finding that there's a great discrepancy, like there is with the OIG's office, what would you plan on doing besides the posters and when a person first gets the.

The job, to make sure that people feel comfortable in their work environment, to equally explain maybe some of the incidences that they're experiencing as well.

Absolutely.

Okay. Thank you, sir. Mr. Seyarto? Yes.

When you're handling all these complaints, I mean, it's a lot of complaints. Do you find. How many, what percentage do you generally find? Are kind of unsubstantiated.

So it's earlier in the testimony, only 4.29% are sustained findings of disciplinary action. So it means it'd roughly be 95%. 95%. Okay. Thank you.

And I did have a few other questions. You mentioned in here. Complaints by prisons, and there's 15 listed here. What are the top five? Because they're abbreviated. I'm not familiar with them.

The top five is California State Prison Corcoran. Number two is Substance Abuse Treatment Facility, which is also located in Corcoran. They're the neighboring prisons. Number three is Salinas Valley State Prison. Number four is California Medical Facility, and number five is California Healthcare Facility, located in Stockton. And I'm sorry, California Medical Facility Number four is located in Vacaville.

For any of these, would you think the numbers would be skewed? Like, would you say that these all have approximately the same amount of supervised individuals.

Yes, I believe so. However, for number five, the prison located in Stockton, that would be a higher number of medical. It's an older population and be a higher number of medical type complaints.

Okay, and then finally two more questions. When a person, let's say if a complaint is made against an employee corrections officer, you, Office of Inspector General, you talked about your anonymous process, Mr. Chriss.

In your case, is a person innocent until proven guilty or does it kind of leak out, oh, so and so's been investigated and you know, by the time the person may or may not be deemed innocent, you've already been run through the whole thing that the person's career is ruined.

So investigations are confidential, and so we treat them as such and we don't communicate that information out at all. If something very egregious happens and you know that the individual who's potentially responsible, you know, might be removed from that position, I think, you know, an extensive serious use of force or a pre. A pre.

Allegation or something, something like that. We might have to reassign that person to somewhere the institution would. We wouldn't do it, but it would be. Someone might be put on administrative leave if it were something very significant. But no, our process is confidential.

And are either of you prepared today to tell us of the complaints that you've reported, how many are women reporting potentially of supervisor inappropriate behavior?

I don't have that statistic, but we can certainly check on it.

Okay, back to you, if both of you could supply that. And the reason why I say that there's been a long history. I'm. This is my first year of serving as chair of this committee, but it's my understanding there's been a long history of reporting of women who've been mistreated, sexually assaulted, and so on.

And so I'm curious, out of your complaints, how many of those do you track? Are you seeing there's been a reduction since some of that stuff came forward more publicly, or are you seeing the numbers basically the same. So not only the numbers, but maybe in the last three years, have you seen any improvement in those numbers?

And what steps are you taking to eliminate those types of situations being handled? Meaning do you provide special training, you know, what is done to avoid those situations from happening?

Fair enough. All right. Thank you. Seeing no further questions. With that, we're going to move on to issue number four, which is natural disposition disasters and emergency preparedness and mitigation efforts. I believe we have two of these same people who are still here, Ms. Singh and Ms. Mr. Spain.

Yes.

And with that, you can begin your testimony, Ms. Singh. Yes, sir. We also have representatives from the CDCR and Cal OES who are available for questions. And would that be the two of you?

Yes, ma' am. I'm from Cal OES.

Cal OES. Okay. And you're with CDCR, Correct? Perfect. All right. Well, let's get started. Thank you, Ms. Singh.

Thank you. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to provide a brief overview of our recent audit of CDCR's preparedness and mitigation efforts for wildfires, floods, and earthquakes.

In this audit, we reviewed CDCR specific policies and procedures to prepare for and respond to these natural disasters, its coordination with federal, state and local entities, and its efforts to improve emergency response protocols. In addition, we assessed CDCR's ability to evacuate prisons threatened by natural disasters.

We looked at and evaluated 2024 emergency operation plans from 30 prisons to determine their compliance with applicable law, departmental policy and industry standards. We completed an in depth review of the preparedness of three prisons located in three different parts of the state for their methods for assessing their individual risks for natural disasters.

The results of our audit found that California prisons are vulnerable to wildfires, floods and earthquakes, but CDCR would not be able to evacuate the incarcerated population and staff at most prisons within 72 hours.

CDCR headquarters and individual prisons have plans assessing risk from and response to disasters, but those plans are general in nature and inadequate if a large scale external evacuation was necessary.

While most of the site specific emergency plans we reviewed included procedures to move the incarcerated population to and from locations within the prison, none included detailed plans to evacuate outside the prison gates.

Instead, plans included general language about coordinating evacuation routes with CDCR headquarters staff, who would be responsible for determining where the evacuees would be transferred based on availability of temporary housing with appropriate security.

Although CDCR policy does not request or does not require prisons to have fully plans to evacuate within 72 hours, we believe this window is reasonable when responding to a natural disaster. This time frame is supported by the U.S.

Department of Homeland Security and although it did not impact the prisons in 2018, the campfire in Butte County serves as a stark example of rapid escalation of disaster. That fire consumed 90,000 acres by the day after it started and within three days the death toll had reached 23.

Having a plan to evacuate a prison within 72 hours is not only reasonable, but, in our opinion, necessary to ensure safety. Another one of our notable findings is the location of the transportation buses and their availability.

If an evacuation were necessary, the transportation unit of CDCR operates 30 buses, each seating 38 people from three regional hubs located in the cities of Galt in Northern California, Delano in the Central Valley and Chino in the Southern California region.

In addition to the buses, the transportation unit operates sedans, paratransit vehicles and transport vans which can seat approximately 7 to 19 people. In total, the transportation unit has approximately 93 fleet vehicles available across the state to evacuate incarcerated people during emergencies.

While all departmental fleet vehicles throughout the state could be used and deployed to assist with an evacuation, the number of vehicles at each hub and their proximity to the prisons varies.

For example, if a natural disaster necessitated evacuating San Quentin Rehabilitation center, the closest vehicle not permanently located at that prison is in Galt, which is approximately 90 miles away. The closest departmental fleet vehicle that could be used to evacuate a prison such as Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City is approximately 400 miles away.

Finally, we also looked at the reliability of these fleet vehicles. The buses in particular is questionable. While we recognize CDCR does maintain its vehicles, some have notably high miles. For example, one of the fleet buses has been driven almost 533,000 miles.

One fleet bus has approximately 676,000 miles logged and five are between 730,000 miles to 850,000 miles logged. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the expected lifespan of a large heavy duty bus similar to that of which CDCR uses is 500,000 miles.

It is possible that these high mile vehicles, these seven fleet buses could impair CDCR's ability to respond to these large scale evacuations. Some of our other notable findings. First, in regards to overcrowding, as of December 31, 2024 California prisons were operating at 122% of capacity. That would greatly exacerbate the ability to evacuate.

As many prisons are located in close proximity to one another, that would exacerbate the problem. For example, California State Prison in Corcoran, right next door to it is Substance Abuse Treatment Facility. You would have nearly 8,000 incarcerated people that would need to be evacuated from just that area alone.

Another notable finding is the inconsistent methods that are used to assist risk for disaster. Among the 30 prisons, three different assessment tools are used. Five did not identify which tools they used. So there's inconsistency on how the prisons are actually assessing their own risk. We found equally troubling prisons in close proximity to one another.

As mentioned, Corcoran and Substance Abuse Treatment Facility. They're within two miles of one another, almost sharing sharing a fence line. Each rated their flood vulnerability differently. Corcoran rated its flood vulnerability as low, whereas the neighbor prison rated their rating as high for flood.

This also led to our next finding which is CDCR's Emergency Planning Unit does not substantively review the prison site site specific emergency operations plans. The headquarters department only collects the plan and makes sure that the required documents are required and does no substantive review to ensure the plan is accurate for the site.

Although we recognize that no amount of planning will be effective or prevent loss of life or destruction of property in all emergencies. Given the likelihood increasing likelihood of natural disasters in California due to climate change, it increasingly urgent that CDCR develop a comprehensive strategy for planning and implementing large scale prison evacuations to save lives during emergencies.

In our audit report, we have made 18 separate recommendations to CDCR for improvement. We have requested that CDCR provide its status on implementing our recommendations and we will continue to monitor that priority progress. Thank you for letting me provide this brief summary and I'm happy to answer specific questions if you have them. Thank you.

Well, I'll bite my tongue on what I would normally say. Did you want to make some initial comments or you want to wait for our comments or. Okay. Yeah, I don't know how you got assigned this one. Okay, Members, any questions?

Okay, Senator Durazo, you want to start off?

Good morning. During the LA fires jail complex, I was told the jail complex was in a mandatory evacuation zone and yet did not get evacuated. So.

We need, as you all have said, I'm sure you recognize we need to be prepared for an increased number of natural disasters, whether they be floods or whether they be wildfires or now just fires. So when will CDCR have these assessments in place for their prisons?

Thank you. So in the event that we have a large scale emergency such as a wildfire that affects a CDCR institution, I can assure you that if it was something where we needed to evacuate our entire prison versus sheltering in place, CDCR would not work alone.

We work very closely with the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services and things that we've learned over the past few emergencies that we have been a part of and is that California has a vast amount of resources and we would rely heavily on our federal, state and local partners to assist us with the evacuation of an entire prison.

But some of the things that we do have in place currently we have a shelter. We can either shelter in place, we can do internal evacuations like she spoke about and then external evacuations anytime that there is an activation. A Cal OES proclaimed emergency.

CDCR has representatives that report to the state operations center as well as a law enforcement operations center where we coordinate and work directly with our partners to assess needs of not only our Department but other areas of the state where we can assist.

We have a department operations center which is where the decision makers or the heads of the department would come all into one place place so that we could assist with the the decisions that needed to be made from a higher level versus the boots on the ground where they're actually implementing it and making it happen.

We also have emergency operations plans at each institution which does create a baseline for emergency response for all hazards, as well as mutual aid agreements with local entities.

We do have 23 firehouses that cover 29 of our institutions and they have fire personnel that can help with immediate needs as well as every institution has an agreement with local fire and we can provide personal protective equipment for the incarcerated persons and the staff to mitigate the smoke effects from the fire.

We also have emergency services contracts with a vendor to provide us with the needed necessities in the event that there is an emergency, such as shelter, bathrooms, food, medical supplies, et cetera. Further, we again, we leverage our resources with Cal OES and all of our local, federal and state partners.

It sounds like you have a lot of the makings of a plan. You have a lot of the pieces, resources, you've identified these things. But I'm still unclear as to what's the obstacle. What are the problems in actually doing a risk assessment for all of the prisons?

So we do risk assessments for all of the institutions currently. And as she spoke to, we have a set standard of how the institutions would assess that. And it's actually a tool from Cal OES. Some of the institutions have gone above and beyond and that's where that discrepancy comes in, where they're different.

They've done more than requested of them to create an evacuation plan for every type of emergency. While we can lay out the base plan in the what we would hope to occur or how we would move forward. Every emergency is different.

And the resources that we have today might not be available tomorrow during an emergency based on where they're being allocated or if they're affected by the emergency, as well as evacuation routes and things of that nature. They're all affected differently depending on the type of emergency.

But we do have plans that outline a base plan of things that need to be done, a checklist per se. But most of the major decisions that would need to occur are dependent upon the emergency. And we would work very closely with Cal OES and they're the. The experts in that field, and they would also assist us.

You feel confident you have the. You've made the assessment, the risk assessment to be able to have the plan that is needed?

Yes. So for evacuations or sheltering in place, a lot of times, if there were to be a major emergency, it might not affect the entire institution.

And so we have contingencies on how to move the incarcerated persons from one institute or, excuse me, from one facility to another if there was some damage or a threat that was occurring on one facility. We practice that regularly with our fire drills that we do with the incarcerated persons.

And our fire staff at the institutions are very well versed in that. So we do have what you would call a base plan, but we don't have a. Identified exactly how it's going to occur because that's very hard to predict.

Thank you very much. And that's Ms. Prill? Zero, yes, I'm sorry. Yeah. I just want to ask the Inspector General, are there any significant pieces missing from what we just heard as far as what's needed?

The concern that we raised in our audit is the issue with the base plan and the inconsistencies that are being inconsistencies in the type of risk assessment tool that the prisons are using. And that. That is our concern.

Although the prisons have their base plan in place, I think that plan needs to be looked at to determine is it adequate, did the prison do an adequate job of creating that base plan? And the example I provided was the two neighboring prisons.

One says their flood risk is low and the other one says their flood risk is high. And so that inconsistency is in each. It's their base plan could be wrong. The low prison could be subject to flood.

That prison was Corcoran and substance abuse facility, which were potentially going to be impacted by a flood back in 2023 when the Tulare Lake came back, when we had the substantial flood rainfall. And so those.

Yes, they have base plans, but I believe there is room for improvement and looking at those base plans to make sure they are accurate and reflective of what the disaster could be impacting them.

How many evacuations have had to take place in the past 20 years?

Full evacuations? To my knowledge, there have been zero. I've been in the department for 20 years and I have not heard of any time.

I bet you if we extracted that out to like 50 years, it would still be zero. There's a reason for that. I mean, fires. You have a huge yard out there and that's called safe refuge area. It's not necessary.

And as far as, you know, being exposed to some of the drift smoke that comes from a fire, that's not. I breathe fire for 35 years, smoke for 35 years. And yeah, it's uncomfortable a little bit. It kind of irritates you a little bit.

But I think we're getting like a little overboard in terms of thinking that we are going to have to evacuate entire prisons. And we really. It's really prison by prison where they move people on site because it's not from an emergency preparedness person. That's not something I'm like extremely critically concerned.

Not because I'm not concerned with the prisoners. It's because it's just not a practical thing to think that somehow the whole prison's going to catch on fire.

Because the way they're built and where they're built from the planning perspective of where we're going to put a prison, that kind of go, that kind of, that's thinking that goes in when they decide where to put a prison. Like you see San Quentin out there, not much around it, except there's some ocean out there.

And if there's going to be a sea level rise, that's a long term issue. Tulare Lake, that didn't just happen overnight. That started creeping up and they knew it was going to happen. So they have plenty of time to react to that.

So I just think, I would caution everybody to think that we are, you know, if somebody's watching this, they might think there's some impending doom in the prisons. Not one prison has had to ever been evacuated because of a fire or maybe an earthquake.

If there's some damage to one building, like you said, they just move them to another. Or if there's an instability, you just move them to the safe refuge area for a little bit until you figure it out. But yeah, so anyway, that's just my comments.

I appreciate your hard work on this subject, but I don't know if we have to overdo it. Thanks.

Nobody expected the wildfires that we had in LA. Nobody could, nobody, nobody would have identified that as an impending doom. So. I think we're. All I want is make sure that what I'm saying is taken into consideration. Thank you.

I'm not going to respond directly to my colleague because I don't want to go back and forth. And we've worked to establish a real good relationship. So I will just say my comments are my comments of my own. I think his comments are of his own. Ms. Durazo, as well.

Just to point out a couple things, as chair of this committee, ma' am, Ms. Prill, I would give this OIG's report of your organization. I would consider it an F, frankly.

And I kind of smiled with saying, you know, I don't know how you got the assignment to come, because this isn't something I would be proud of as an organization. And let me tell you why. First of all, it's my understanding there have been issues of needing to evacuate prisons in Colorado and in Florida.

And I think also it's my understanding in Tulare Lake, we had an issue that came pretty close. Some people have different perspectives on climate change. It has been said that the fires that took place in Palisades and in Altadena, the winds were over 80, 100 miles per hour.

And so even where we would normally think of placement would be fairly safe. We're now dealing with situations where we normally. Probably 99%, that might be the case. But the reason why we're here today is the 1% can happen. The 1% has now happened in communities.

And I will say not to respond too heavy on you, frankly, we didn't do a great job of evacuating in Altadena, and that's why some people actually died, because some communications were in some communities and others weren't. Ma' am. And sir, Mr.

O' Keefe, I, unlike my colleague who has served as a firefighter honorably, and I think his feedback is very helpful in this discussion. I've had a little different role. I've served in Congress on emergency communications preparedness and response, and I was chair of that committee.

And so what I would say to you, which is why I would give this an F for your organization, repeatedly you said we depend upon our partners and what happens is in a horrible situation which none of us can predict, your partners may be busy and they may be busy assisting other people.

And, and so, as you described, and I don't know if that's how you intended it, but to assume that these other agencies are going to be available to help you or to help us in a prison environment, I think, is not something going forward we really have the freedom to assume.

Again, when you look at what happened in Altadena, you. You look at what happened in Palisades, resources were called from everywhere, and thank God everyone responded and helped. But it took quite some time to actually contain those fires. Tremendous amount of damage occurred, both property and for individuals.

And so I would just say that the response, or maybe the current responses may have been appropriate for years ago, but certainly would be in order to review an update. I think that's a nice way of saying it.

So my request would be of this committee that you would respectfully look at the recommendations, the extensive recommendations provided by the OIG's office, and that both of your offices would come back to this committee and say, in light of these recommendations, these are ones we think, you know, deemed valid consideration and these are the things we'd like to move forward in looking at.

So instead of the stick, I'm going to offer the carrot first to have you really look at this, because frankly, the responses are not in line. To give you an example, in the OIG's report, it says at least two prisons have not entered into mutual aid agreements.

So you repeatedly talked about these mutual aid agreements, and yet there are two prisons that in fact don't have mutual aid agreements. So that's saying that your response didn't apply to two of the 15 prisons that probably have thousands of people who would not receive maybe the help that you're anticipating.

So with that, a few other specific questions. I'd also really, frankly, in all of what we've done here, this is probably one of the worst that I've seen of all the hearings, besides the assignment of appellate judges and having people in prison for years without representation.

So I'm going to ask, as I've said, that you would look at these and respond to them, and that also we will supply you with a list of questions. I have about eight, and in the essence of respect of my colleagues and flights and all of that, we'll submit these for the record.

And I'd ask that you would respond to them to this body, the answers to the questions. Finally, just one question. Well, I just have a couple. Mr.

O' Keefe, if you had to evacuate a prison, and considering the fact that a prison is a place where people are being supervised and may respond differently than the family that's in their home, and oh my gosh, there's a fire, we need you to evacuate. In a prison, you might have some other things that you're dealing with.

In your experience, how long do you think it would take to, to properly evacuate a prison? In light of things that we heard that, you know, buses are 700,000 miles, I don't know how far those buses are going to go. Especially in a fire with heat and confusion and everyone's going.

I mean, I don't see how that's a solution. So with that in mind, if you were to, you know, drop into a situation, what do you think would be required? And don't you think a more specific plan to each location would be needed so you could properly prepare and could appropriately use your plan?

Because as I said, as chair of emergency communications preparedness and Response, it wasn't okay just to say, oh, we have 15 facilities and oh, we can't develop a plan. I mean, that was 50 years ago we talk like that. But in today's world of your department, I'm shocked.

Any city that has any population of a reasonable size, that's like saying in my district it would be okay for SoFi, a stadium that holds 30,000 people, that, oh, it's okay. They don't have to have a plan. We just assume people are going to come and help. No, they have to have a plan.

And I think likewise in these facilities, one is needed. So based upon your experience, sir, would you think that a plan would be needed for facilities holding thousands of people to deal with emergencies?

And when you think it would be appropriate that they would run through several options like fire, floods, et cetera, to prepare to determine what resources they might need from you? Your thoughts?

Yes. And I think each. When you look at the magnitude of what you're facing, you don't know how quickly. Like case with the Altadena fire, that was a quick moving fire, thank God there wasn't a jail or a prison there. One of the things that we do at Cal OES, we help coordinate the evacuation situations.

We identify when we have fires started. One of the things we identify as critical infrastructure and jails are one of them. I have a couple of examples of where jails have been evacuated. It all depends on what your emergency is. I would say the sooner the better.

One thing that I, when I talk with sheriffs usually have, well, they have the responsibility for evacuations. It's a law enforcement thing. I'm actually the law enforcement mutual statewide mutual law enforcement mutual aid coordinator.

So we, we advised them to start their plans, their evacuation sooner rather than later because you cannot control the environment, especially when you're looking at flooding the fires. We were, I had staff at Corcoran with the. During the Tulare Basin, working with CDCR, a great partner.

I usually call on them to help with potential county jail needs, but definitely having a plan that's updated, that's practiced. I mean, you're not saying you're going to move all the inmates out, but I used to be with the San Mateo Sheriff's Office, and I was a jail commander.

And, you know, that was the biggest concern that we had is how were we going to move. My case was only 500 inmates. That was still going to be a huge task. What we would do is leverage the mutual aid system, fill those gaps.

Senator Durazo, I was actually down at Altadena during a tour taking a tour with Sheriff Luna when that fire off I-5 hit. And we actually had staff working with LA Sheriff bring in. We already, the sheriff had already had making plans to evacuate.

We had actually reached out to CDCR as well as the other surrounding counties to being in buses. It just, at that point, it turned out that the behavior of the fire changed and it became more of a shelter in place.

And plus, as the Senator had said, the construction of these prisons and the defensive space that they've been doing some really good proactive work with, you know, made it. They didn't have to evacuate. But I think that was almost 5,000 prisoners, which was going to be huge.

So, Senator, to answer your question, yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, when it happens, you got to evacuate. It's sooner rather than later. And days and days, you know, obviously it's, you know, that's not what you want to do. You want to evacuate as soon as possible.

And I just know from working in jails, I mean, you have, you know, you have separation issues, you have persons with disabilities. I mean, there's a lot that goes into it. And even though we don't, we're not mandated to look at emergency operations plans for, I mean, evacuations for facilities. We certainly.

And like I said, we're great partners with CDCR and we're more than happy to work with them on their plans. But I will have to say it's. We've been, you know, I've had to call on CDCR for other county jails, potentially, that had to be evacuated, and they've always been just great partners and there for us.

Great. So what I would ask is potentially, maybe Ms. Priel, with your office, maybe you can find some similar plans that have been done across the country. And in fairness to you and your department and Mr. O' Keefe, you know, let us know what those kinds of things cost because it doesn't come free. Every facility is different.

And so let us know that if such a plan were to be developed, that is clearly appears to be under not quite sufficient, what would that cost? And then maybe, you know, we do one a year or something like that. But to not be fully ready, you know, I think is putting ourselves in a vulnerable spot.

So with that, I'll hold my other comments and concerns. Ms. Singh, did you want to add anything else?

Oh, no. No, thank you.

Okay. All right. Seeing no further questions then we'll go on to issue number five, which is Victims of Crime. Victims of Crime Act VOCA funding update. Thank you, sir. We have with us Mr. Eric Swanson and Gina Buccieri-Harrington of Cal OES, Mai Nguyen and Tess Sherdkenbach with the Department of Finance.

And then Heather Gonzalez, the Legislative Analyst Office. And Chris Nagrin of the California Partnership End Domestic Violence. With that, we're going to start with OES, which would be Eric Swanson and Gina Buccieri.

Yes, thank you. I am Eric Swanson, as you said, Deputy Director of Finance and Logistics Administration. In this first item, I'm joined by Gina Buccieri-Harrington, our outgoing Assistant Director of Grants Management. Here at Cal OES we've been asked to provide an update on the status of Federal Victims of Crime Act or VOCA funding.

Federal fiscal year 2026 allocations have not been released at this time. The amount allocated to California for the VOCA grant has decreased from 396 million for the 2018 award to 87 million for the 2024 award. Now I'm going to.

We were asked by your staff to give sort of a update or speculate on what if we were to maintain our current service levels. How much will be needed to at the state level if the decision was to move that way.

But what I need to tell you too is that because we haven't been given the federal award level, that this is just a guess that it will be wrong once we actually get the allocation.

To maintain the current service levels without any decrease in services, Cal OES would need a federal grant award of 224 million in 2024/25 Cal OES received a one time general fund allocation of 103 million and reallocated unspent funds from prior years to address the gap caused by decreasing federal funds.

If the 2025 award is consistent with the 2024 award amount, we would estimate approximate need of 130 million to maintain the current service levels. And I'm going to turn it over to Gina, who's going to talk a little bit about the role of our VOCA Advisory Committee.

Hi, good morning. I think it's still morning. We have an Advisory Committee that we use. Sorry, it happens when you're short. We have an Advisory Committee that we utilize during times where we need to make decisions and recommendations to the director on victim services.

This committee is consistent with. Consists of 16 Members, one of them being a legislative member. The rest are associations, all in the victim services area. So they help us formulate and develop, help us make recommendations for programs when we have funding available. And they were also very. Used very consistently with these known reductions.

So we do have a plan for the reductions if that happens to continue. But as Deputy Director Swanson said, we are basing our amount on what we have based on what we got last year and what we would need this current year to keep the programs that stable.

We have 35 programs in the victim services arena that depend on the VOCA funding and just a little on the statistics. In 2022/23 we were able to support over 1300 and 13,700 employees of Advocates throughout the state. And we were able to serve 698,000 victims. 66% of those were first time victims of violent crime.

Wow. Thank you. Next we have Heather Gonzalez of the Legislative Analyst Office. Ma' am, I'm sorry, before you start, did you have something you wanted to add on behalf of.

My name is Tess Scherkenback with Department of Finance. I'm just here to answer any questions, but thank you.

Yes, ma' am. Ms. Gonzalez, thank you.

So we've been asked to provide a little bit more information about the federal side of the VOCA funding and what we know about the status at the federal level. VOCA funds come from a federal special fund called the Crime Victims Fund.

It receives deposits from a number of non tax sources, such as criminal fines and deferred prosecution and non prosecution against agreements, which are a type of settlement. Historically, this source of funds has been described as being both volatile and sensitive to federal prosecutions in both scale and kind.

So more prosecutions can lead to increases and fewer prosecutions can lead to decreases. However, the type of prosecution can also affect the size of the fine, such as a corporate prosecution, for example, and thereby the size of the fund. There's also a time lag in the fund because collections follow prosecutions, but not instantaneously.

And because of this volatility, Congress places an annual cap on expenditures which limits the total amount the fund can release in any given year. These caps are established each year during the annual federal appropriations process and and from there, funds are distributed to the states by formula. For federal fiscal year 2025, the fund condition has improved.

It's better than it was in 21, 22, 23 and 24. And Congress has set the cap at 1.9 billion, which is about 40% higher than last year and the same as it was in federal fiscal year 2023.

However, as OES pointed out, it's our understanding we have not actually received our allocations yet and these do change year over year, so there's not an exact mathematical calculation we can give you.

In addition, while the state did provide a backfill for federal dollars last year when the federal cap was at a 10 year low, we have not always, and that is historically speaking, used state dollars to stabilize fluctuations for federal spending in this program.

Thank you. Next we would have Chris Negri of the California Partnership End Domestic Violence. Yes, sir.

See if I. Oh, lovely. Okay. Well, good afternoon and thank you, Chair Richardson and other Members of the Committee for the opportunity to speak. My name is Chris Negri. I'm with the California Partnership End Domestic Violence, the statewide domestic Violence Coalition representing 104 agencies providing services to survivors of domestic violence across the state.

I'm here speaking on behalf of the VOCA Advocacy Alliance, a coalition of service providers who support hundreds of thousands of Californians in the wake of crime each year. Our organizations focus on human trafficking, sexual violence, child abuse and neglect, elder abuse, domestic violence, and many other types of trauma. Together, they comprise a system.

They are where people go in the wake of the most difficult and trying circumstances they will ever face. Service providers guide a child who has been abused through a trauma informed interview that gathers information that is critical to getting that child justice. They support a survivor of rape undergoing a forensic exam.

They assist a family in securing supportive housing that will allow them to live in safety and security. As Cal OES and the LAO have mentioned, the funding that supports this essential work comes from the Victims of Crime Act.

For 40 years, the revenues generated through VOCA, have supported services that have benefited millions of people and helped them start the road to healing. Unfortunately, though, there remain significant issues with the fund. For those structural reasons at the federal level, California faces a significant shortfall in the amount necessary to sustain VOCA funded organizations.

We are deeply grateful for the legislature's commitment to ensuring that survivors are able to access these life saving services including providing $103 million last year in one time funding and passing AB 2432 to provide a long term solution to the this problem. We are asking that the legislature sustain that commitment and maintain level funding this year.

As we wait for AB 2432 to generate revenue and provide meaningful funding, we recognize that the numbers here are estimates and we are committed to working with the legislature to secure the final dollar amount needed to ensure program funding is sustained at current levels. The human need cannot be overstated.

In 21/22, our program served more than 800,000 individuals. And as the legislature continues to prioritize public safety, it must prioritize the critical services that survivors depend on. These survivors directly.

Services directly contribute to public safety and well being and the significant cuts that would impact them if VOCA was not funded sufficiently would endanger survivors of crime, their families and their communities.

Many survivors would end up on the street, would not be provided with forensic exams or counseling, and would not have access to justice and would remain in their domestic violence, human trafficking and elder abuse situations. And the impacts would fall even more heavily on LGBTQ and immigrant survivors, especially in the current environment.

We cannot let that worst case scenario happen and we are eager to work with the legislature to ensure that it doesn't. I thank you for your time and attention.

Thank you very much. Any Members with any questions? Senator Durazo.

I'm trying to see who should answer this. Ms. Buccieri-Harrington, either you or Mr. Negri, how worried or how concerned should we be about the fund facing even more uncertainty because of priorities at the federal level changing and the loss of hundreds of federal prosecutors?

I can start just so you know, from prior years we normally are funding fund amounts are in March, the last two years. We. And so we're coming to you now in May not knowing what our funding amounts are, which causes a lot more instability.

But I can tell you that if we continue with the current levels from last years that we know of, we would start July 1st with having with the recommendations of the VOCA Stair Committee, we would start cutting those programs 50%, which would pretty much decimate those programs that start July 1st.

We have some of our programs start July 1st. We have some that start in the fall, but we would have to start those cuts immediately.

I have little to add to what Gina said beyond just the environment right now. There's this and then there are all of the other funding uncertainties. So that does make it very, very difficult for victim services programs to plan for the future. I mean.

If the worst case scenario were to happen on July 1st, then programs would really have to very, very quickly make changes to their, their, their service provision, including, you know, significant layoffs, significant reductions in service.

Last year, when we had a much more concrete sense of, of what those cuts would look like, I mean, we knew rather early on a 44.7% cut was what we were talking about. Programs were able to get rather concrete with how they would deal with that. And the picture was very, very concerning.

I mean, we were talking about. Programs were talking about closing multiple locations, laying off their entire teams in certain places, laying off half the staff, which of course would reduce the number of survivors that they could serve. Here it would be even more complicated because programs wouldn't have, that, wouldn't have a concrete number. So.

Thank you.

Just a couple questions. I believe, Mr. Swanson, you answered the question. How much total funding is needed to sustain current funding levels for all California VOCA funded grants for full year 25/26 would be approximately 224 million. You could potentially need more. That's probably not the full answer, but today that's a number you would give, correct, sir?

Yeah. We would need a federal allocation of 224 million. That's right.

A federal allocation only.

Yes. And so if we, if we ended up with what we were allocated last year, the number that would be sort of, the gap number would be 130 million.

So then you're saying that you feel that you need approximately $280 million.

I think it's too soon to tell what we need because we know that the allocation will change from what was provided last year at the federal level. And I will say, too, just a caveat, that I don't envy both the Department of Finance and you folks. There are federal risks in all kinds of programs.

We're dealing with a new territory here. And so this is just one of many issues. But, you know, to address that gap, we would need 130 million in state funds. If we were provided what we were last year from the Federal Government.

Which is a total of 280. If you had, in 2023, California, you received 150 million. You're saying you would need, from a state funding perspective, another 130. That's 280.

We're basing the. We're basing the amount on what we got in 2024, which was $87 million.

I was saying full federal funding.

Yeah. If we could only base it on what we got last year. And the reason for the 130 million versus last year at 103 was we were able to use all our reverted dollars because, of course, as you know, the feds give us a lot longer to spend our money.

So we were able to take whatever was reverted back or unallocated and get it out to those programs. We don't have that this year.

Okay. So 87 and 130 is 217. And I believe earlier in your testimony, sir, you referenced something around 224. So that's where I got that number from.

Yeah, we do have some sort of, we do have adjustments we make for prior funding, which I think is the difference you're looking at there. But we'd be happy to walk through the technical exercise with your staff, if you'd like.

Okay. And then if I understood you correctly, ma' am, you're saying that. Well, does OEs have any reverted funds or reserves that can be tapped into to address any potential gaps in federal funding?

We could have a small amount, but nothing like we did the prior year. And that is when, you know, we don't realize that till our programs close. And then if we're able to reallocate, we have time enough to reallocate those from previous federal awards. But until those programs close. But we will not have the, the same amount we had last year.

Which was?

Last year in reallocated. Let me see here. Have it broken down. We had 2021, we had approximately 5 million. 22, we had approximately 15 million. You know, I can. We can give you these dollars. It's fully transparent.

And so we were able to use those with what we got at the, you know, what we got at the federal level to be able to supplement, but we did have reverted. We had either unallocated or reversion dollars. So we make sure we spend every dime.

Yes, ma' am. In closing, seeing no other questions, I just want to make sure everyone knows I received a special phone call from Senator Reyes and she shared with us her long history of supporting this program, her desire for us to Fund it at its most highest possible level.

So I just wanted to make sure you knew she is still very active and following your program and is pushing for every single dollar that we can possibly find. So I just want you to know she's watching you. All right? Okay. With that. Thank you. That concludes issue number five.