BILL ANALYSIS Ó ------------------------------------------------------------ |SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | SB 601| |Office of Senate Floor Analyses | | |1020 N Street, Suite 524 | | |(916) 651-1520 Fax: (916) | | |327-4478 | | ------------------------------------------------------------ THIRD READING Bill No: SB 601 Author: Hancock (D) Amended: 5/31/11 Vote: 21 SENATE PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE : 5-2, 4/12/11 AYES: Hancock, Calderon, Liu, Price, Steinberg NOES: Anderson, Harman SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE : 6-3, 5/26/11 AYES: Kehoe, Alquist, Lieu, Pavley, Price, Steinberg NOES: Walters, Emmerson, Runner SUBJECT : Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: Corrections Accountability Report SOURCE : Author DIGEST : This bill requires the Secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to develop and make public a monthly Corrections Accountability Report, as specified. ANALYSIS : 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 CONTINUED SB 601 Page 2 Hearings, the State Commission on Juvenile Justice, the Prison Industry Authority, and the Prison Industry Board. (Government Code Section 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 Section 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 Section 6051) Under current law, the Inspector General is required to audit each warden of an institution one year after his or her 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 Section 6126(a)) CONTINUED SB 601 Page 3 This bill requires the Secretary of CDCR to develop a Corrections Accountability Report, as specified below, "for each institution on a monthly basis and post the department reports once a month on the department's Internet Web site." This bill requires CDCR to "post both current and all previous monthly reports for each warden on the Internet Web site." This bill requires that each report 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. The number of prisoner incidents at the prison. 2. The number of inmates disciplined. 3. The number of inmate appeals of disciplinary actions. 4. Academic programs, including capacity, enrollment, attendance, waiting lists, if any, and number of programs completed. 5. Inmate reading levels. 6. Vocational programs, including capacity, enrollment, waiting lists, if any, and program outcomes. 7. 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. 8. The number of staff vacancies. 9. Overtime and sick leave totals. 10.The number of workers compensation claims, including the number of staff persons on leave due to accepted or pending claims. CONTINUED SB 601 Page 4 11.Work orders for repairs. 12.The adverse actions regarding staff. 13.Contraband seized. 14.The budget for the prison, including whether the operations are under or over budget. Background For the last several years, CDCR has been the subject of a great deal of scrutiny and criticism. In March 2004, then-Governor Schwarzenegger 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 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." The IRP, which assessed a state correctional system prior to the reorganization approved in 2005, 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 CONTINUED SB 601 Page 5 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 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. 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," 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; Bring accountability to all department levels. With respect to management staff, the IRP stated the CONTINUED SB 601 Page 6 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. ?" 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 results? (3) What data was tracked? (4) What barriers were encountered? (5) What actions were taken to improve the problem? 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: CONTINUED SB 601 Page 7 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. 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 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. 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 CONTINUED SB 601 Page 8 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. FISCAL EFFECT : Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes Local: No According to the Senate Appropriations Committee: Fiscal Impact (in thousands) Major Provisions 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 Fund Monthly report for minor, absorbable costs to CDCR General prison institutions SUPPORT : (Verified 5/31/11) Friends Committee on Legislation of California ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT : According to the author: "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 for each warden and the warden's prison. The institution report would include information such as the 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 CONTINUED SB 601 Page 9 statistics). This measure requires the CDCR to post the report 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 institution report, established by this bill, is intended to be straightforward and easy to read because the report 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 reports 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." RJG:mw 5/31/11 Senate Floor Analyses SUPPORT/OPPOSITION: SEE ABOVE **** END **** CONTINUED