The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has, essentially, been the “eyes and ears” of the public for nearly two decades while overseeing the state’s correctional system through audits, special reviews, inspections and investigations of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Through these processes, the office has provided impartial analysis and policy recommendations to the governor, the Legislature, correctional administrators and the public. The OIG’s mission changed in 2011, with many of its investigative and auditing responsibilities shifting to the State Auditor. Its employees are also transitioning away from peace officer status and will not carry weapons. According to its June 2011 quarterly report: “The OIG’s new mission is conducting reviews of policies, practices and procedures of the California Department of Corrections (CDCR) when requested by the Governor, the Senate Committee on Rules or the Speaker of the Assembly.”

A Message From Inspector General Robert A. Barton (OIG website) (pdf)

Quarterly Report April – June 2011 (OIG website) (pdf)

Senate Bill 78 (California Legislative Information)

Senate Bill 87 (California Legislative Information)

Senate Bill 92 (California Legislative Information)

The Office of Inspector General was created in 1994 during the administration of Republican Governor Pete Wilson in response to allegations of abuse within California’s state correctional system, which had seen its prison population quadruple during the ‘80s and ‘90s. Its primary focus was to review policies and procedures of the audits and investigations conducted by the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, but it was four years before it received its first full-time investigator.

The office was beefed up in 1998 following widespread reports of brutality and cover-up at Corcoran State Prison. Internal investigations had failed to look at the most serious allegations, including the shooting of 50 inmates by guards between 1989 and 1995. Seven of the shootings were fatal.

OIG was given the responsibilities of an independent agency that reported directly to the governor, who appointed its top official, the inspector general. In signing the enabling legislation, Governor Wilson said, “Considering the size, scope and nature of California's correctional system, this added protection will further ensure integrity and professionalism.”

It almost immediately became an irritant to state prison officials. Inspector General Steve Wilson, appointed in 1999, generated dozens of reviews, audits and investigative reports about inmate discipline, financial irregularities and mismanagement. But the reports mostly remained private, handed out to corrections officials, until a new law in January 2004 allowed for the public disclosure of the office’s audits.

White’s reports found overtime abuse in the Office of Investigative Services in 2001-2002, uncovered wasted millions in the corrections system for vocational and academic classes with just 25% attendance, identified runaway prescription drug costs that skyrocketed 111% from 1999-2002, spotlighted medical services contracts that increased 82% in three years, and alleged a general “lack of sound contract management.”

By 2002, the office’s budget and staff had grown to $11 million and 116, respectively, while California prisons came under increased scrutiny for myriad problems centered around overcrowded facilities. That year, a federal court declared California’s prisons dangerously overcrowded and gave the state two years to rectify the situation. The state began a long court fight to overturn the decision while Governor Gray Davis and the Legislature began downsizing the Inspector General’s office.

By the time Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger took office in 2003, the budget had been cut to $2.8 million. He proposed reducing it to $630,000 and putting it directly under control of the object of its watchdog activities, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The office was called ineffectual and a waste of taxpayer money by its critics.

At the start of 2004, a federal monitor said the Corrections department had lost control of its prison guards, lawmakers held hearings on inspector general allegations of a 2002 Folsom Prison riot cover-up and court-appointed experts were telling tales of over-medicated juveniles locked in cages and denied psychiatric treatment. On the eve of his scheduled appearance before the Legislature, acting Inspector General John Chen was fired by Schwarzenegger. Chen, a prison investigator with 25 years experience, had written the Folsom Prison report that alleged, among other things, that prison staff had released rival gangs into the exercise yard at the same time, sparking a riot.

Schwarzenegger replaced Chen with former prison guard Regis G. Lane, who stayed in the post just 45 days. The Legislature rejected the governor’s request to downsize the office and moved in the opposite direction. The inspector general was given a 6-year term, the office’s reports were mandated to be made public, its staff was restored, its budget was increased and its role was expanded.

The OIG was instructed in 2005 to begin top-down audits of all 41 youth and adult correctional institutions and evaluate the qualifications of every candidate for a state warden position. At the insistence of a federal court, a new Bureau of Independent Review was created within the office to monitor internal affairs investigations with the correctional system. And a new state law established an ombudsman inside the office to oversee sexual abuse complaints by inmates and wards.

Legislation in 2007 established the California Rehabilitation Oversight Board (C-ROB) within the OIG. The 11-member board is chaired by the inspector general and reports to the governor and Legislature on the rehabilitative programs provided to adult inmates and parolees under the supervision of the Corrections department.

The OIG budget continued to grown until fiscal year 2011-12, when it suffered a 15.6% reduction from the previous year (to $20.6 million). Legislation in 2011 removed the peace officer status of OIG employees; replaced the mandate that the office audit and investigate the Corrections department with a requirement that it conduct policy and performance reviews; codified the office’s medical inspection program; removed the requirement that it conduct quadrennial reviews of facility operations; and ended its one-year warden follow-up audits. The State Auditor took over many of the offices investigative functions.

Prison Oversight Agency Given More Authority (by Mark Gladstone and Mark Arax, Los Angeles Times)

State Prisons Overseer Is Fired (by Mark Martin, San Francisco Chronicle)

Governor Aims to Cut Prison Watchdog (by Mark Gladstone, San Jose Mercury News)

2005 Inspector General’s Annual Report (pdf)

2011 Inspector General’s Annual Report (pdf)

The Office of Inspector General reviews policies and procedures of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) audits and internal investigations at the request of the governor or the Legislature.

Although a 2011 reorganization has not been fully implemented, the office has provided oversight of internal affairs investigations into possible misconduct by CDCR employees, conducted policy and performance reviews of the CDCR, investigated reports of retaliation against those alleging misconduct by Corrections department employees, maintained a toll-free hotline to facilitate reporting and investigation of alleged CDCR abuses, assessed the qualifications of candidates that the governor recommends for warden and superintendent positions, and acted through the Office of the Sexual Abuse in Detention Elimination Ombudsperson to investigate alleged sexual misconduct.

The office also administered inspections of adult and juvenile institutions on a semi-annual basis to determine any systemic issues or complaints; performed audits of the California Prison Health Care Receivership Corporation’s budget; responded to dangerous incidents at adult and juvenile correctional institutions; oversaw medical care operations at adult correctional institutions; audited the compliance of the CDCR regarding the federal court’s injunction and remedial plan in Armstrong v. Schwarzenegger; and oversaw monthly use-of-force committee meetings conducted at each adult and juvenile correctional institution.

California Rehabilitation Oversight Board

OIG reviews the educational, employment, substance abuse and mental health programs for inmates and parolees run by the Corrections department through the California Rehabilitation Oversight Board (C-ROB).

The 11-member board, established by the Public Safety and Offender Rehabilitation Services Act of 2007, reports its findings to the governor and Legislature semi-annually. C-ROB is chaired by the inspector general and includes the CDCR secretary, state and local law enforcement officials, and education, treatment and rehabilitation specialists.

Investigations and Complaints

The OIG received an average of 243 complaints a month in 2010 concerning allegations of staff misconduct, lack of medical care and the appeals and grievance process within the corrections system. It completed a number of investigations: nine criminal, 10 administrative, one retaliatory and 74 preliminary.

Reorganization

The inspector general’s 2010 annual report indicates that scheduled budget and staffing cuts will necessitate a reorganization of its office. Four main bureaus will disappear from the top of the organizational chart and their responsibilities will be redistributed. They are the Bureau of Audits, the Bureau of Investigations, the Bureau of Independent Review and the Bureau of Administration.

Responsibilities of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG website)

The Office of Inspector General was slated for a 15% budget reduction before legislation was passed in mid-2011 that shifted many of its responsibilities to the State Auditor and removed the peace officer status of most of its employees.

The result, according to the office’s 2010 annual report, is a workforce reduction from 151 to 87 and a 45% budget cut. Many of its employees were attorneys. Its internal structure is being reworked and will no longer include four bureaus.

The office’s budget for 2011-12 was schedule to be $20.6 million.

2011-12 Budget (Ebudget)

3-Year Budget (pdf)

Early Prison Release

The inspector general released a report in May 2011 that said California prison officials had mistakenly freed 1,500 inmates, 450 of them “a high risk for violence,” because of a computer error. The released prisoners were placed on “non-revocable parole” and no attempt was made to return them to lockup.

The release was part of a program begun at the beginning of the year to relieve prison overcrowding, but was only meant to apply to inmates with a very low risk of reoffending. Inmates are excluded from non-revocable parole if they are gang members, have committed violent felonies or sex crimes, or have established a high risk profile while behind bars.

The inspector general said the computer program used by prison officials did not include an assessment of the inmates’ histories while incarcerated.

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, while admitting that some inmates had been improperly released because of a computer problem, disputed the inspector general’s assessment. Lee Seale, a deputy chief of staff for the California prisons, said the report inflated the error rate, relied on obsolete data and that the problem had now been fixed.

“Our concern with this report goes beyond its relevancy; in fact we must also take issue with its facts and central conclusion,” Seale wrote in a letter. He called the report “unfortunate.” Seale also defended the use of computers to determine who should be released, rather than humans, as a cost-savings measure.

Acting Inspector General Bruce Monfross responded that he appreciated the department’s desire to save money, but it “should not compromise public safety in doing so.”

The Corrections department is under a federal court order to reduce the adult prison population by more than 33,000 inmates within two years.

Computer Errors Allow Violent California Prisoners to be Released Unsupervised (by Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times)

Violent Convicts Got Unsupervised Parole, Audit Says (by Michael Montgomery, California Watch)

John Gardner and GPS

Fourteen-year-old Amber Dubois and 17-year-old Chelsea King would both be alive if the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had properly monitored convicted felon and sex offender John Albert Gardner III after his release from prison on parole in 2005, according to Inspector General David Shaw.

Gardner was finally arrested, pleaded guilty to rape and murder and was sentenced to life in prison in May 2010, but not before the Corrections department came under intense scrutiny for its policy of tracking parolees using electronic monitoring devices. Dubois was killed in February 2009 and King was murdered a year later.

The department placed a GPS tracking device on Gardner in September 2007 and analysis of data from it by OIG would later show that Gardner had visited the remote mountains near Escondito, near where he later buried Dubois, 13 times. He broke curfew 158 times, hung out around schools and playgrounds and twice visited a parking lot at the R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility—an area known for contraband smuggling.

But Gardner was never confronted by parole officers.

Inspector General Shaw said it took his office about 15 minutes to evaluate the data using Google Earth. “In this case, the data was available,” he said. “There was just no policy for the agents to go about looking at it.”

The Corrections department disagreed and said the OIG criticism was unfair. Parolees are divided into two categories depending on the severity of their original crimes. Gardner, who was deemed low-risk, received “passive” monitoring for 48-hour periods twice a month. “Active” monitoring is conducted daily. Gardner had been released on a 3-year parole after serving time for raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000. The department no longer designates parolees as “passive.”

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Parole Supervision of John Gardner (OIG special report) (pdf)

John Gardner’s Criminal Behavior and Parole Violations Went Undetected by Corrections (OIG press release) (pdf)

Gardner Had Long List of Parole Violations (by Michael Gardner and Jeff McDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune)

Authorities Missed Many Chances to Re-Imprison Sex Offender and Save Chelsea King and Amber Dubois (by Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times)

Not Tough Enough

The Office of the Inspector General has had its ups and downs during its two-decade history, and in 2011 underwent a reorganization that moved much of its investigative and auditing functions elsewhere while stripping its employees of their peace officer status.

Some of the changes are driven by finances, some by a more realistic assessment of what the office actually does. But some critics also think the office simply isn’t functioning well.

“You had some pretty bad things going on in CDCR and the inspector general just missed them,” said Democratic state Senator Ted Lieu. “Maybe the inspector general's office is just overwhelmed.” Lieu introduced legislation in 2011 to transfer prison audits to the State Auditor, a move that was later incorporated into other legislation.

The office periodically comes under fire and in 2004 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to shut it down. “The biggest problem we are seeing is that the inspector general, they haven't done the job they were supposed to do,” Schwarzenegger told the Sacramento Press Club. “What concerns me is . . . we're spending all this money.” At that point, the inspector general’s budget had been cut 77% and was scraping by with just 19 employees.

“I think that if there is a way of doing it and really letting the inspector general do the work that he is really needs to do, then I would consider that,” the governor said. “But I have not seen that. Right now it has been a waste. There are big, big problems that we've inherited. We have corruption, investigations, all kinds of things, hearings in the Capitol. We have to fix those things. I take very seriously the problems we have.”

Schwarzenegger had just fired the Inspector General, John Chen, who had written a report highly critical of the Corrections department involvement in a Folsom Prison riot.

Bills Target California Prisons’ Inspector General (by Don Thompson, Associated Press)

Prison Watchdog Agency a Waste, Schwarzenegger Says (by Robert Salladay, Mark Martin, San Francisco Chronicle)

Folsom Prison Riots

On April 8, 2002, a riot broke out in the Folsom Prison exercise yard between members of warring Latino gangs. It only last 90 seconds and no one was killed, but fallout from the incident rocked the prison system when the inspector general’s report, kept secret (as was the custom then), leaked out a year later.

In a 17-page report triggered by a whistleblower, the inspector general revealed a series of management blunders, punitive personnel changes, and a cover-up that went all the way to the warden. The riot erupted when two supervisors released about 80 members of the two rival gangs into the main prison yard at the same time. The warden, Diana Butler, wasn’t present at the time and the report faulted her for not ordering an investigation upon her return. But more damning was the accusation that she had ordered videotapes of the incident be altered. The edited tapes were used in disciplinary hearings against the inmates.

As word of the incident spread, Butler’s damage control included personnel changes. One of those changes was the demotion of Custody Captain Douglas Pieper, the highest ranking uniformed officer at the prison. Pieper had been recorded on the altered tapes as asking just before the riot if they should move to block the confrontation. An associate warden said no. The inspector general found that the conversation had been erased.

Pieper committed suicide nine months later. Warden Butler was removed in December 2003. She said she found the inspector general’s report “astonishing.” “I don't believe they found the right answers—I disagree with it completely,” she said. “But I understand that their opinion stands.”

The next year, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fired John Chen, the acting inspector general and the report’s author, shortly before he was scheduled to testify before a legislative committee and replaced him with a former prison guard. Schwarzenegger’s attempt to gut the office and have it placed under the control of the Corrections department failed.

Folsom Prison Warden Ousted (by Dorothy Korber, Sacramento Bee)

Anguished Prison Guard: “My Job Has Killed Me” (by Mark Martin, San Francisco Chronicle)

Guards Tell of Retaliation for Informing (by Jenifer Warren, Los Angeles Times)

Hard-Hitting Reports

Since the Office of the Inspector General was reshaped in 1998, it has turned out a steady stream of hard-hitting reports that uncovered significant problems, sparked reforms and antagonized its subjects. Often, the critiques were beyond refutation.

A special report in March 2009 found that former employees of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation were receiving $1.3 million in unemployment insurance although they had been dismissed under “adverse” circumstances. The report blamed the department’s lack of internal procedures.

In May 2009, the office released a report on the proliferation of cell phones in California prisons and concluded that “current methods used by the Department to interdict the introduction of cell phones are ineffective.” In three years between 2006 and 2008, cell phone seizures had increased 1,000%. It found complicity among employees in the smuggling of phones into institutions, few penalties for being caught, phone use in escape attempts and gang retributions, and photo sharing that jeopardized the safety of employees and their families.

Later that year, a scathing report ripped the department for its failure to properly supervise the parole of Phillip Garrido, who then kidnapped 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard in 1991 and over the course of 18 years held her captive and fathered her two children. Department employees made numerous trips to Garrido’s property and had an abundance of opportunities to detect the crime but failed to do so. Garrido was arrested by suspicious police after he tried to obtain a permit for a campus event at UC Berkeley while accompanied by two young disheveled girls.

In April 2010, an inspector general report on prison pharmacies found that nine years after a class-action suit by inmates that resulted in federal directives to improve medical care, millions of dollars were still being wasted on a dysfunctional system.

Audit Reports (Office of the Inspector General)

Inmate Cell Phone Use Endangers Prison Security and Public Safety (Office of the Inspector General) (pdf)

Lost Opportunities for Savings Within California Prison Pharmacies (Office of the Inspector General) (pdf)

Reorganization

Legislation in mid-2011 portends big changes for the Office of the Inspector General. Many of the office’s investigative and auditing functions are in the process of moving the State Auditor’s Bureau of Audits. And the OIG employees have lost their peace officer status and will no longer carry guns.

Proposed restructuring that would have further reduced the power and scope of the office were not included in the final law, including renaming OIG as the Office of Independent Correctional Oversight and rename the inspector general as a director.

Report Questions Why State Auditors Pack Heat (by Chase Davis, California Watch)

Report Blasts Peace Officer Status for Office of Inspector General Staff (by Jon Ortiz, Sacramento Bee)

Gun-Toting Auditors and Attorneys (State Senate Rules Committee report) (pdf)

SB 490 Bill Analysis (California Legislative Information)

Senate Bill 92 (California Legislative Information)

Prison Medical Conditions

Medical care in California prisons is a mess. The prisons are designed to hold about 80,000 prisoners, but hold twice that number. A class action suit filed in 1990 (Coleman v. Brown) established that prisoners with serious mental illnesses did not receive minimal care. Twelve years later the courts determined that care had further deteriorated. A second class-action suit filed in 2001 (Plata v. Brown) established that overall prison medical conditions violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” and in 2005 the federal courts appointed a receiver to supervise medical care.

The two cases were eventually consolidated into a single case and heard by a special three-judge District Court panel, which ordered the state to dramatically reduce its prison population within two years. The decision was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in May 2011.

As part of the federal decision to appoint a receiver to oversee prison health care, the Office of the Inspector General was directed to inspect all 33 prisons and issue reports on their condition.

Is this a worthwhile endeavor?

Medical Inspections (OIG website)

Brown v. Plata (U.S. Supreme Court decision) (pdf)

Prison Overcrowding – California (Americans for Effective Law Enforcement)

Pro

The U.S. Supreme Court did not mince words in finding that California prisons violated the constitutional rights of its inmates. It cited court findings of acute overcrowding, huge backlogs of prisoners waiting to see doctors, unsanitary conditions, increased reliance on lockdowns that impeded medical care and a high incidence of preventable medical deaths, serious understaffing.

The high court cited an earlier finding that “the California prison medical care system is broken beyond repair,” resulting in an “unconscionable degree of suffering and death.” It quantified that suffering with a stark statistic. “[I]t is an uncontested fact that, on average, an inmate in one of California’s prisons needlessly dies every six to seven days due to constitutional deficiencies in the [California prisons’] medical delivery system.”

OIG doesn’t issue a pass/fail report card as part of its inspection process because determining what constitutes constitutional compliance is beyond its scope. But it does have a comprehensive program for measuring compliance with established Corrections department policies and procedures and it found a lot of room for improvement after completing a survey in 2011 of the system’s 33 prisons.

The study found that only nine prisons met minimum health care standards, 30 failed to ensure that inmates received their medications, only six adequately provided inmates with quick medical care and there was an overall failure to treat tuberculosis. This is a medical problem for the state that won’t go away.

In addition to helping upgrade health care in prisons, the process of inspections and reports by OIG also serves to highlight another problem: the prisoner shuffle. As part of the court-ordered solution to improving prison health care, more than 33,000 prisoners, many of them with chronic conditions and infectious diseases, will be transferred within two years to local jails ill-equipped to deal with them. Eventually, they will be on the street where, as a Rand Corp. study found, released prisoners tend to end up in communities that have the least amount of health care.

Summary and Analysis of the First 17 Medical Inspections of California Prisons (OIG Special Report) (pdf)

Medical Inspection Results: Summary and Analysis of the First Cycle of Medical Inspections of California’s 33 Adult Prisons (OIG Special Report) (pdf)

Medical Care Remains Inadequate at California Prisons, Report Finds (California Healthline)

California's Prisoner Shuffle (Los Angeles Times op-ed by Rand Corp. senior policy researcher Lois Davis)

Con

No one contests the fact that health care in prisons is substandard. But the entire country is suffering from a crisis in health care and groping for solutions that are efficient and affordable. Some California legislators are skeptical of federal court-ordered solutions for the state’s prisons.

“I'm not happy about the fact that our incarcerated inmates are getting better healthcare than people who aren't incarcerated,” said Democratic Assemblywoman Alyson Huber in January 2011 after it was revealed that the court-appointed receiver had spent $82 million of state money on blueprints for medical facilities that weren’t going to be built. Huber said the state spent $14,000 a year per inmate on health care while many nonincarcerated Californians have no health care at all.

Democratic Assemblyman Roger Dickinson said that the state earmarked $1.5 billion for the receiver in 2011 but complained, “As we watch the numbers go up, we can't tell if we're any closer to hitting the mark.” Dickinson decried the “galactic” staffing levels cited in a report commissioned by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010 that said California employed one doctor for each 435 inmates, while Texas, which had emerged from its own receivership, only had one doctor for every 2,000 inmates.

The federally-appointed receiver, J. Clark Kelso, doesn’t agree with the Inspector General’s glum assessment of the health care situation, calling its study conducted at the end of 2010 outdated and overly harsh. “The information that we're now getting on the second round of inspections provides, I think, a much more accurate picture of where we currently are,” Kelso said in May 2011. “Suffice to say, things are changing and improving pretty quickly.”

Despite the “improvements,” Kelso maintained that the only real solution to prison medical woes was a reduction in prison population. He would start with the sickest patients. “You let me unload 1,500 inmates, and I'll give you a 30% drop in costs,” Kelso said.

Separate Prison Health Care From Corrections Dept. (by J. Clark Kelso)

Lawmakers Express Frustration over Excessive Outlays for Prison Health (by Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times)

Calif. Prison Medical Receiver Defends System (by Don Thompson, Associated Press)  

Bruce A. Monfross, 2011

David R. Shaw, 2008-2010. Shaw served as inspector general only two years of his six-year term, announcing his retirement after the OIG came under scrutiny for perks given to its lawyers and auditors. A state Senate report questioned whether department auditors and attorneys needed to be sworn peace officers. The designation also came with perks such as training, weapons, a take-home state vehicle and the opportunity for early retirement.

Matthew L. Cate, 2004-2008. Cate left the post to become secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Regis G. Lane, 2004. Lane is a former prison guard who worked his way up through the system. He served only 45 days.

John Chen, 2004. Chen, who was acting inspector general, was fired days before he was scheduled to testify at state Senate hearings on the necessity to reform the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The office had written a scathing report on a 2002 Foulsom Prison riot that led to the warden’s firing.

Steve White, 1999-2003