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CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS ROOM | |
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| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 54 Dore Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
The special master overseeing discipline and other issues within the state prison system issued a report Wednesday that rips the Schwarzenegger administration for reversing course on prison reform.
Special Master John Hagar's report said that "a recent series of disturbing events signals an abrupt reversal of policy by the Governor's Office."
Hagar, who works under U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson in San Francisco, linked the policy shift to the January appointment of Susan Kennedy as Schwarzenegger's chief of staff.
Under Kennedy, Hagar said, prison policy developments under Schwarzenegger have signaled "a return to the Davis Administration's practice" of allowing the California Correctional Peace Officers Association "to overrule the most critical decisions" of the secretary in charge of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The governor's office withheld immediate comment on the Hagar report.
Hagar's report said that two former CDCR secretaries "committed to reform," Rod Hickman and Jeanne Woodford -- both of whom resigned within six weeks of each other earlier this year -- departed as a result of "CCPOA's influence with the Governor's Office."
Woodford cited personal reasons for her April 20 resignation. Hickman, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, cited the CCPOA's influence as one of the reasons he stepped down on Feb. 25.
Hagar described the current leadership at the prison agency as "confused, understaffed, dispirited, and most important, uncertain who is really in charge: the Acting Secretary (Jim Tilton) or the President of the CCPOA."
At the same time, Schwarzenegger's Department of Personnel Administration has undergone "a quiet purge," Hagar wrote, of "experienced labor administrators" while undertaking negotiations with the CCPOA on a new contract.
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