BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY
Senator Loni Hancock, Chair S
2011-2012 Regular Session B
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SB 601 (Hancock)
As Amended March 24, 2011
Hearing date: April 12, 2011
Penal Code
AA:dl
DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS AND REHABILITATION:
WARDEN REPORT CARDS
HISTORY
Source: Author
Prior Legislation: None
Support: Friends Committee on Legislation of California
Opposition:None Known
KEY ISSUE
SHOULD THE SECRETARY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS AND
REHABILITATION ("CDCR") BE REQUIRED TO DEVELOP AND MAKE PUBLIC A
MONTHLY "WARDEN REPORT CARD," AS SPECIFIED?
PURPOSE
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The purpose of this bill is to require the secretary of the CDCR
to develop and make public a monthly "warden report card," as
specified.
Current law creates in state government the CDCR, headed by a
secretary who is appointed by the Governor, subject to Senate
confirmation, and serves at the pleasure of the Governor. CDCR
consists of Adult Operations, Adult Programs, Juvenile Justice,
the Corrections Standards Authority, the Board of Parole
Hearings, the State Commission on Juvenile Justice, the Prison
Industry Authority, and the Prison Industry Board. (Government
Code § 12838 (a).)
Current law provides that the "Governor, upon recommendation of
the secretary, shall
appoint the wardens of the various state prisons. Each warden
shall be subject to removal by the secretary. If the secretary
removes him or her, the secretary's action shall be final. The
wardens shall be exempt from civil service." (Penal Code §
6050.)
Current law authorizes the Inspector General to "conduct a
management review audit of any warden in CDCR or superintendent
in the Division of Juvenile Justice. The management review
audit shall include, but not be limited to, issues relating to
personnel, training, investigations, and financial matters.
Each management review audit shall include an assessment of the
maintenance of the facility managed by the warden or
superintendent. The audit report shall be submitted to the
secretary of the department for evaluation and for any response
deemed necessary. Any Member of the Legislature or the public
may request and shall be provided with a copy of any audit by
the Inspector General, including a management review audit or a
special audit or review. A report that involves potential
criminal investigations or prosecution or security practices and
procedures shall be considered confidential, and its disclosure
shall not be required under this section." (Penal Code § 6051.)
Under current law , the Inspector General is required to audit
each warden of an institution one year after his or her
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appointment, and audit each correctional institution at least
once every four years. "Each audit of a warden shall include,
but not be limited to, issues relating to personnel, training,
investigations, and financial matters. Each four-year audit
shall include an assessment of the maintenance of the facility
managed by the warden. The audit report shall include all
significant findings of the Inspector General's assessment of
facility maintenance. These audit reports shall be provided to
the Legislature and shall be made public." (Penal Code §
6126(a).)
This bill would require the Secretary of CDCR to develop a
"warden report card," as specified below, "for each warden on a
monthly basis and post the warden report card once a month on
the department's Internet Web site."
This bill would require CDCR to "post both current and all
previous monthly warden report cards for each warden on the
Internet Web site."
This bill would require that each "warden report card shall be
created using, when possible, information collected using the
Compstat (computer assisted statistics) reports for each prison
and shall include, but not be limited to, all of the following
information:
(1) A brief biography of the warden, whether he or she is an
acting or permanent warden, and contact information for the
warden.
(2) A brief description of the prison and the total number of
inmates currently residing at the prison.
(3) The number of prisoner incidents at the prison.
(4) The number of inmates disciplined.
(5) The number of inmate appeals of disciplinary actions.
(6) Academic programs, including capacity, enrollment,
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attendance, waiting lists, if any, and number of programs
completed.
(7) Inmate reading levels.
(8) Vocational programs, including capacity, enrollment, waiting
lists, if any, and program outcomes.
(9) Substance abuse and treatment programs, including the number
of beds, the percentage of beds occupied, the number of meetings
held, and the attendance at those meetings.
(10) The number of staff vacancies.
(11) Overtime and sick leave totals.
(12) The number of workers compensation claims, including the
number of staff persons on leave due to accepted or pending
claims.
(13) Work orders for repairs.
(14) The adverse actions regarding staff.
(15) Contraband seized.
(16) The budget for the prison, including whether the operations
are under or over budget."
RECEIVERSHIP/OVERCROWDING CRISIS AGGRAVATION
For the last several years, severe overcrowding in California's
prisons has been the focus of evolving and expensive litigation.
As these cases have progressed, prison conditions have
continued to be assailed, and the scrutiny of the federal courts
over California's prisons has intensified.
On June 30, 2005, in a class action lawsuit filed four years
earlier, the United States District Court for the Northern
District of California established a Receivership to take
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control of the delivery of medical services to all California
state prisoners confined by the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation ("CDCR"). In December of 2006,
plaintiffs in two federal lawsuits against CDCR sought a
court-ordered limit on the prison population pursuant to the
federal Prison Litigation Reform Act. On January 12, 2010, a
three-judge federal panel issued an order requiring California
to reduce its inmate population to 137.5 percent of design
capacity -- a reduction at that time of roughly 40,000 inmates
-- within two years. The court stayed implementation of its
ruling pending the state's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Monday, June 14, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear
the state's appeal of this order and, on Tuesday, November 30,
2010, the Court heard oral arguments. A decision is expected as
early as this spring.
In response to the unresolved prison capacity crisis, in early
2007 the Senate Committee on Public Safety began holding
legislative proposals which could further exacerbate prison
overcrowding through new or expanded felony prosecutions.
This bill does not appear to aggravate the prison overcrowding
crisis described above.
COMMENTS
1. Stated Need for This Bill
The author states:
California's correctional system lacks transparency
and accountability. The public as well as the
Legislature have no clear way of accessing information
on the management and performance of each warden at
California's 33 prisons. SB 601 would require the
Secretary of the CDCR to develop a monthly report card
for each warden and the warden's prison. The warden
report card would include information such as the
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number of inmates disciplined, the number of inmate
appeals of disciplinary actions, inmate reading
levels, and the number of programs available. This
information is already collected by the department
using Compstat, short for computer statistics. This
measure requires the CDCR to post the warden report
cards on the CDCR website once a month.
Compstat is an organizational management tool modeled
after Los Angeles and New York Police Departments to
monitor and reduce crimes and is easily accessible to
the public. In 2006, the CDCR designed and implemented
Compstat to monitor and provide operational review of
prisons, parole, and the department as a whole. As
part of Governor Schwarzenegger's government
transparency efforts in 2009, the Compstat reports
were moved from the CDCR website and made available on
the Reporting Transparency in Government website, but
they have gotten lost among the thicket of reports on
that site and are harder for the public to find and
view. In addition, the Compstat audits and reports
are non-descriptive and difficult to understand.
The warden report card, established by this bill, is
intended to be straightforward and easy to read
because the report card would be a descriptive quick
read presented in a graphically easy to understand
way. By requiring the Secretary of the CDCR to
repackage the data and post the warden report cards
online, the public and the Legislature could hold
wardens accountable for the overall management of the
correctional facility, including administrative
services, expenditures, safety and security, and
program and support services.
2. Background
For the last several years the Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation has been the subject of a great deal of scrutiny
and criticism. In March of 2004 then-Governor Schwarzenegger
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announced the creation of an "Independent Review Panel" ("IRP")
led by former Governor George Deukmejian to examine ways to
improve adult and youth corrections in California. In June of
2004 the IRP released its report, urging in part the
establishment of "a system of accountability that includes
performance measures by which to evaluate employees and monitor
levels of achievement."<1> The IRP, which assessed a state
correctional system prior to the reorganization approved in
2005,<2> stated in part:
To a significant extent, the problems of California's
Correctional system grow out of its structure. The
Secretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency,
for example, has no control over line operations.
Instead, the state's 32 prison wardens and eight
juvenile institution superintendents each operate
independently, with little consistency in procedures
and minimal help from headquarters. Lines of
responsibility are blurred by layers of bureaucracy
between managers and functions. Accountability is
conspicuously absent, as is transparency for the
public into the system's inner workings. Clear,
uniform policies governing the system's most vital
functions - fiscal matters, personnel and training,
internal affairs, information technology, and health
care - are equally lacking. Boards, commissions, and
other entities that have evolved over the decades
perform duplicate and overlapping functions. And the
system's organizational structure has not kept pace
with the massive growth in inmate population or with
the vast geographical spread of the institutions.
The sheer size and complexity of the correctional
system, the critical nature of its mission, and the
severity of the problems dictate the need for
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<1> Report of the Independent Corrections Review Panel (June
2004), p. 26. The report is available online at
http://cpr.ca.gov/Review_Panel/.
<2> The reorganization of the corrections agency was codified
in SB 737 (Romero), Ch. 10 Stats. 2005.
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wholesale reform, and that reform should begin with
the system's organizational structure. The Corrections
Independent Review Panel therefore proposes that the
state's correctional agencies be reorganized according
to the plan described in this chapter. While the
restructuring alone will not produce the necessary
reforms, it will serve as the foundation for cleaning
up the prison system, reining in costs, curbing
misconduct, holding correctional administrators
accountable for the system's performance, and making
communities safer by doing more to ensure that inmates
and youth wards leave custody better prepared to
function in society .<3>
The IRP, which recommended a restructuring that "'flattens' the
organization by removing layers of bureaucracy that have
obscured lines of authority and accountability between top
managers and the functions for which they are responsible,"<4>
identified the following management principles as key to
reforming the state's correctional system, and in particular
recommended:
Transforming the culture of the Department of
Corrections and the California Youth Authority into
one in which personal integrity and loyalty to the
department mission consistently take precedence over
loyalty to co-workers suspected of wrongdoing,
requires a vigorous, multi-pronged approach. The
effort should be guided by quality management
principles incorporating clear objectives and purpose;
key performance measures; consistent monitoring; and a
system of correction and reward. Quality management
principles accomplish the following:
Provide clarity of purpose in each employee's
job;
Link each person's work to the department's
mission;
Foster continual improvement;
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<3> Id, p. 1 (emphasis added).
<4> Id. p. 4.
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Bring accountability to all department
levels .<5>
With respect to management staff, the IRP stated the department
"must provide supervisors, managers, and executive management
every possible opportunity to succeed.
These individuals must be given a clear understanding
of the responsibilities of their positions. They must
also receive performance evaluations to ensure that
they grow in their positions and know how to improve
their performance. To accomplish that purpose, the
Department of Correctional Services should take the
following actions:
Develop specific job objectives in the
job description for all managers, and executives,
and rate job performance by these objectives at
least annually. The specific job objectives and
method of rating job performance must be
standardized to ensure consistency. . . .
These basic management steps must be
incorporated into the performance evaluations of each
manager and evaluated at least annually. Clear
standards lead to better accountability of employee
actions and help identify employees who need further
training or mentorship. . . . <6>
Specifically with respect to wardens, the report states:
To provide a model for exceptional performance by
wardens Secretary Lehman of the Washington State
Department of Corrections noted:
There are five questions to ask top performing
wardens to find out how effectively they deal
with an issue: (1) What alternatives or options
were considered? (2) What were the expected
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<5> Id., p. 20-21 (emphasis added).
<6> Id., p. 75.
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results? (3) What data was tracked? (4) What
barriers were encountered? (5) What actions were
taken to improve the problem?<7>
Following the IRP report, in 2005 Governor Schwarzenegger
proposed to reorganize what then was the "Youth and Adult
Correctional Agency." Accountability was a key goal of the
proposed reorganization:
Restructuring will establish clear lines of reporting,
accountability and responsibility and performance
assessment that will improve services, reduce the
likelihood of repeat offenses and eliminate abuses
within the current system. It will centralize
services and activities to remove duplication and
leverage the scale of the Department's $6 billion
spending authority, thus reducing the cost of
operations. The reorganization will deliver a safer
society at less cost to
the people of California.<8>
In its report assessing the Governor's proposed reorganization,
the Little Hoover Commission stated in part:
The plan clarifies and strengthens the chain of
command from the secretary to the prison wardens and
Youth Authority superintendents, who under the current
system operate with little accountability to the
secretary or loyalty to the organization. Wardens and
superintendents will report to the secretary through a
division director and chief deputy secretary and will
not require Senate confirmation. The proposed
reorganization would give the secretary necessary
authority over all activities in the agency and its
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<7> Id. p. 94.
<8> Governor's Reorganization Plan, Reforming California's
Youth & Adult Correctional Agency (Appendix "A," Reconstructing
Government: A Review of the Governor's Reorganization Plan:
Reforming California's Youth and Adult Correctional Agency,
Little Hoover Commission (Feb. 2005).
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subordinate departments, thereby increasing the
ability of the Governor, lawmakers and the public to
hold the secretary accountable for the performance of
correctional programs.
. . . The lack of a unified structure for prison work
and education programs has diminished their
effectiveness. The longstanding practice of allowing
prisons to operate independently has hindered
accountability and hampered the standardization of
policies, contributing to inmate abuse and expensive
lawsuits .<9>
With respect to wardens prior to the 2005 reorganization, the
Little Hoover Commission noted:
Under the current system, the Secretary reports to the
Governor, but he does not have the actual power to
change the operations of the Department of Corrections
and the California Youth Authority that administer the
correctional institutions. As a result, the Governor
cannot truly hold the Secretary accountable for the
performance of the correctional system or enact major
reforms in the way prisons are administered. Nor can
the Secretary dismiss a warden of an institution.
Currently the system's 32 wardens and eight
superintendents do not report
directly into the Secretary. Each warden employs
different standards and different operating
procedures. This decentralized framework, along with
Senate confirmation of wardens, has helped create a
system of operational silos with little accountability
or sharing of best practices outside the facility
walls .<10>
WOULD THIS BILL IMPROVE ACCOUNTABILITY FOR PRISON OPERATIONS?
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<9> Id (emphasis added).
<10> Id. (emphasis added).
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