Author: Frangulian Shushan

Panel to examine California prison system

United Press International
March 6, 2004 Saturday

SACRAMENTO

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has appointed former Gov. George
Deukmejian, a fellow-Republican, to lead a panel on the state’s
prisons.

The panel will recommend short- and long-term fixes of the youth and
adult penal system recently described in reports as racked with
corruption and mismanagement, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

“Go find out how to make this the best system in the country,”
Schwarzenegger said Friday, according to one panel member.

Last month, state-hired experts described the California Youth
Authority, which oversees teenage offenders, as a decrepit, violent
system.

Besides examining personnel, training, discipline, structure and
ethics, the panel will consider whether to close some facilities.

Deukmejian served as California’s governor from 1983 to 1991, during
which time the number of prisons doubled and the number of convicts
rose from 40,000 to more than 100,000.

Corrections Panel

City News Service
March 5, 2004 Friday

LOS ANGELES

Former Gov. George Deukmejian will chair an independent review panel
of the state’s troubled youth and adult correctional systems,
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced today. “I can think of no one
more qualified to lead this effort, no one with more integrity and
experience than Governor Deukmejian,” Schwarzenegger said. “It has
been too long since our correctional system has undergone a
fundamental review of its operations.” The panel will produce a series
of short- and long-term goals. “The mission of this inquiry team is to
chart a course of action to turn around the crisis of confidence in
California’s correctional system,” Schwarzenegger said. Deukmejian is
a former California legislator and state attorney general from Long
Beach who helped Schwarzenegger get elected. The announcement comes
after months of bad news for the California Youth Authority and the
adult corrections system. A report last month showed CYA facilities to
be dangerous and filthy with frequent acts of violence among the young
inmates. On Jan. 19, the CYA was back in the news when two boys
committed suicide in their shared cell. On the adult side, Sen. Gloria
Romero, D-East Los Angeles, has attempted to take a closer look at
problems in the prison system. She says she has been threatened as a
result of her actions. After heading a Senate hearing where testimony
revealed an alleged rogue band of correctional officers, she received
a letter filled with non-toxic white powder. Last summer, she received
a death threat involving prison gangs.