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SACRAMENTO - The new chief of the nation's largest prison system says it will take years and wholesale ethics retraining to end a corrosive "code of silence" that she has experienced within the California Department of Corrections.
Director Jeanne S. Woodford blamed the prison system's chronic overspending on unrealistic underfunding by the previous administration as costs soared to meet federal and state laws and the requirements of running an around-the-clock operation.
But Woodford defended the controversial overtime and sick leave provisions in a union contract negotiated by former Gov. Gray Davis during a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press in her second week on the job.
While critics say the California Correctional Peace Officers Association had extraordinary power within the department and Davis' administration, Woodford said the union never tried to influence her while she was warden at San Quentin State Prison, nor does she expect such attempts while she is director.
Woodford, 50, has spent a career at San Quentin, starting as a prison guard there in 1978 and working her way up to become the first female warden at the 152-year-old facility. She becomes the state's second female Corrections director, overseeing a system of 33 state prisons, 38 conservation camps and 16 community correctional facilities.
"Being with the department for 25 years, I have experienced the code of silence first hand," she said in her first print interview since becoming director. "I think there's no question it exists."
A federal court monitor in January alleged such a code protects wrongdoers and punishes whistleblowers within the department. He recommended Woodford's predecessor be charged with contempt of court for prematurely shutting down inmate abuse investigations.
Youth and Adult Correctional Secretary Roderick Hickman, Woodford's boss, responded by promising a "zero tolerance" policy for employees who could be fired if they don't disclose wrongdoing.
"That is one my highest priorities," Woodford said. "For me, it's really about changing the culture" of the department. That's the only way to finally stamp out a problem she said has plagued the department for years despite periodic attempts at eradication.
Changing the culture means ethics training for all employees, and not only protecting but rewarding those who step forward.
It means establishing "fair and consistent" discipline so employees know where they stand and whistleblowers don't themselves become the targets of retaliatory investigations.
That's one reason the independent Office of Inspector General is being revived, she said, after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reversed his plans to sharply trim internal investigators and merge them into the very agency they are supposed to oversee. In addition, Woodford said a single prosecutor will oversee investigations from start to finish to ensure fairness and minimize errors that can ruin disciplinary cases.
Employees must learn to work through a mental checklist to systematically review the ethical, legal and financial consequences of their actions. That's a trick Woodford said she learned from her 10-year-old son's DARE anti-drug program, one she's since used with San Quentin inmates who have spent their lives making poor and often illegal decisions.
Changing illegal behavior also is the goal of the department's new parole program, which aims to keep more inmates from quickly returning to prison by easing their return to the streets.
"We need to remember that the door of the prison swings both ways," she said, so inmates need to be provided with more training and education inside and out that will help them in the community.
The parole program began only in January, but is showing early promise, Woodford said. The number of parolees returning to prison has dropped by 4,248, from 24,696 at the end of February 2003 to 20,448 this year.
If it works as projected, there will be 15,000 fewer inmates and hundreds of millions of dollars in savings for the prison system.
That means closing several prisons, but Woodford said San Quentin, the state's oldest prison, likely won't be among them: the Bay area needs a prison, and by law San Quentin is site of the state's death row. No other county has been lobbying to host executions, she noted, and the state is building a new condemned unit at the Bay-side prison.
Saving money has become a priority, as Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers push to renegotiate a lucrative five-year contract Davis signed with the guards' union, one of his key political backers.
An AP analysis in January found the department overspent its budget by nearly $1.6 billion since 1999, with much of it going for overtime and sick leave.
But Woodford said the department was chronically underbudgeted for spending over which it largely had no control.
Sick leave, for instance, is largely governed by state and federal laws that also are reflected in the much-criticized union contract. Guards don't necessarily abuse it anymore than employees elsewhere, she said; the difference is the department has no choice but to pay someone else overtime to work the shift.
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