Back in 2019, Newsom halted executions statewide and had the gas chamber’s chair hauled out of San Quentin. To many observers, that seemed like the death knell for capital punishment in California. But the reality on the ground tells a different story: 546 men and 18 women remain under active death sentences in the state, according to a new joint analysis by The Marshall Project and CalMatters. That’s roughly a quarter of every death sentence currently on the books nationwide.

Now, with his time in the governor’s office winding down, Newsom faces a decision with enormous consequences. Advocacy groups, both local and international, are pressing him to commute all 562 death sentences to life without the possibility of parole before he leaves. Such a move would align with his long-standing opposition to executions and would ripple far beyond California’s borders. It would also be a politically loaded gamble for a governor widely believed to be eyeing a run for the White House.

The irony isn’t lost on Newsom himself. Before he took office, he told CalMatters he had urged then-Gov. Jerry Brown to tackle the death penalty issue once and for all. Brown didn’t, and now the unresolved question has landed squarely in Newsom’s lap.

As Marshall Project journalists Maurice Chammah and Jill Castellano put it in their analysis, California has ended up with “a bloated, dysfunctional system that satisfies virtually nobody” — neither the state’s outright abolitionists nor supporters of capital punishment who want to see sentences actually carried out.

Complicating matters further, local district attorneys haven’t stopped seeking death sentences despite the moratorium. At least 25 people have been condemned to death in California since Newsom’s 2019 order, and 11 of those cases came out of Riverside County alone — a reminder that the Inland Empire remains a significant battleground in the state’s capital punishment debate.

Ending new death sentences altogether would require voters to repeal the punishment through a statewide ballot measure, something that hasn’t gained enough traction to date.

If Newsom leaves office without granting clemency, the unresolved fate of California’s death row will fall to whoever succeeds him. Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra, who backed the death penalty during his tenure as attorney general, has said he would keep the moratorium in place if elected governor. Republican candidate Steve Hilton, meanwhile, has indicated he would lift the moratorium — even though he says he personally opposes capital punishment.

For now, the question of whether California will empty its death row or continue in this legal limbo remains unanswered, leaving hundreds of inmates, their families, and crime victims’ families waiting for clarity that may not come until a new governor takes office.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Newsom Halted Executions Years Ago. Could Full Abolition Be Next? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Newsom made headlines in 2019 when he ordered a moratorium on executions, calling the state’s capital punishment system a failure. The gas chamber chair and lethal injection gurney were hauled out of San Quentin State Prison in a moment that seemed to signal the death penalty’s demise in California. But the reality is far messier. Some 546 men and 18 women remain under death sentences, and a handful of counties — Riverside chief among them — have continued to pursue capital cases even after the moratorium took effect.

Advocacy groups, including international human rights organizations, are now urging Newsom to commute all of those sentences before he leaves office, converting them to life without parole. Such a move would be unprecedented in scale, reducing the nationwide death row population by roughly a quarter and dwarfing similar clemency actions, including President Joe Biden’s decision to commute 37 federal death sentences before leaving the White House.

Unlike Biden, however, Newsom cannot act unilaterally. More than half of the state’s death penalty cases involve defendants with multiple felony convictions, meaning the California Supreme Court would need to sign off on any commutations. And looming over the entire decision is Newsom’s widely anticipated run for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination — a political reality that complicates any move he might make.

Asked directly about the possibility of mass commutations, Newsom’s office declined to answer. Spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo said only that the governor “has been clear about his position on the death penalty since his first year in office” and “believes the intentional killing of another person is wrong.”

A joint investigation by The Marshall Project and CalMatters, examining roughly 9,000 death sentences handed down nationwide, found troubling patterns in California stretching back half a century — many of the same issues Newsom himself has publicly criticized. Compared with other states, California courts have overturned or reduced far fewer death sentences. Black and Latino defendants are disproportionately represented on death row, and prosecutorial decisions by individual district attorneys — rather than the severity of the crime itself — appear to play an outsized role in who receives a death sentence.

Before taking office, Newsom told CalMatters he had asked then-Gov. Jerry Brown to “solve” the death penalty issue. Brown never did, and now the same unresolved dilemma has landed on Newsom’s desk as his time in Sacramento winds down.

A Troubled System’s Deep Roots

No California governor has granted clemency to someone on death row since Ronald Reagan did so in 1967. After the U.S. Supreme Court forced states nationwide to overhaul their capital punishment laws in the 1970s, California reinstated the death penalty in 1977. In the decades since, state prosecutors have sent more than 1,000 people to death row, yet only 13 executions have actually been carried out — the last in 2006.

The disconnect stems largely from California’s political geography. Conservative-leaning counties elect district attorneys who aggressively pursue capital cases, while the power to authorize executions rests with governors elected by a far more liberal statewide electorate. Even with legal challenges piling up and Newsom’s moratorium in place, more than 200 death sentences have been issued in California since executions last occurred nearly two decades ago.

Voters have twice rejected ballot measures to abolish the death penalty outright, in 2012 and 2016. A separate 2016 measure aimed at speeding up executions by streamlining appeals failed to provide adequate funding for defense attorneys, worsening an already massive backlog. The result is a system that satisfies almost no one: California spends roughly $200 million annually on capital case litigation, according to a 2025 report from the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, even though most death row inmates are still waiting to be assigned an attorney. Fully staffing every capital case with legal representation could cost more than half a billion dollars.

Because so few sentences are ever carried out or overturned, California’s share of the nation’s death row population has swelled dramatically over the decades — the state now holds more death sentences than any other in the country.

Racial Disparities and Riverside County’s Outsized Role

Newsom has long pointed to racial bias as one of his central objections to capital punishment. In 2022, he signed legislation making it easier for inmates to challenge sentences tainted by racial discrimination. He has previously stated that “California’s capital punishment scheme is now, and always has been, infected by racism.”

That claim gained further weight through a sweeping investigation by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, which examined capital cases dating to the 1980s and found that prosecutors had systematically excluded Black and Jewish jurors believed to oppose the death penalty. Twenty defendants from those cases have since been resentenced, and at least two are now pursuing multimillion-dollar civil lawsuits.

Separately, a coalition of civil rights organizations has sued the state, arguing that racial disparities in capital sentencing violate the California Constitution. Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court directed a Sacramento trial court to review the claims, which cite research showing Black defendants are up to 8.7 times more likely than others to receive a death sentence for similar crimes, and Latino defendants up to 6.2 times more likely.

Geography plays an equally significant role. A Marshall Project and CalMatters analysis of homicide data since 1987 found that someone who commits a homicide in Riverside County is four times more likely to be sentenced to death than someone who commits a similar crime in neighboring Los Angeles County.

Since Newsom’s 2019 moratorium, at least 25 new death sentences have been handed down statewide — 11 of them in Riverside County alone. District attorneys remain free to pursue capital cases unless voters vote to repeal the death penalty altogether.

Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin did not respond to requests for comment for this story, but he has previously defended local prosecutorial discretion. “Criminal justice policy should as much as possible reflect the community, because it’s a personal thing,” he told The Sacramento Bee in 2016. Hestrin, a Republican, has also criticized Newsom’s moratorium as an action that “subverted the express will of the people” and reopened wounds for victims’ families.

A Political Minefield

Hestrin’s pushback offers a glimpse of the backlash Newsom could face if he moves to commute large numbers of death sentences — particularly as he eyes a national political future. Some cases could become powerful ammunition for critics, including that of Richard Allen Davis, convicted of murdering 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993. Klaas’ father, Marc, has been an outspoken opponent of Newsom’s death penalty moratorium.

“He does, I think, have to consider how it would look in other parts of the country were he to grant clemency,” said Garry South, a veteran California political strategist who worked on Newsom’s first gubernatorial campaign in 2008. “He doesn’t want to create an issue, even a phony issue, where his opponents leading up to 2028 could demagogue in the rest of the country and claim he let killers out on the streets of his own home state.” It’s worth noting that commutation would not release anyone from prison — those affected would instead serve life sentences without the possibility of parole.

At the same time, Newsom could face pressure to grant relief to inmates whose innocence claims have drawn national attention, such as Kevin Cooper, sentenced to death for a 1983 quadruple homicide in Chino Hills. High-profile figures including Kim Kardashian and columnist Nicholas Kristof have championed Cooper’s claims that he was framed by San Bernardino County investigators — allegations local law enforcement has repeatedly denied. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing in the case, but the results did not conclusively resolve the matter, and a subsequent outside review reaffirming Cooper’s guilt has itself drawn criticism over its objectivity.

Legal experts say Newsom likely lacks the time to review each of the roughly 560 cases individually, meaning any clemency decision would probably apply broadly rather than case by case — a stark contrast to Biden’s more selective approach.

Some death penalty opponents argue that a sweeping commutation could actually boost Newsom’s standing in a competitive Democratic presidential primary. “The voters he needs to appeal to for a Democratic primary would see this as a bold, positive move, and they want people to act based on their values, who don’t seem like politicians,” said Natasha Minsker, a former ACLU attorney who now lobbies against capital punishment in California.

Should Newsom decline to act, the decision would fall to his successor. Democratic frontrunner Xavier Becerra, who supported the death penalty during his time as state attorney general, has indicated he would continue the moratorium if elected governor. His Republican opponent, Steve Hilton, has said he would lift the moratorium despite personally opposing capital punishment — leaving the future of executions in California very much uncertain.

Whatever Newsom decides, hundreds of death penalty cases will likely remain unresolved, leaving both supporters and opponents of capital punishment dissatisfied with a system that, for now, shows no clear path forward.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Holds a Quarter of the Nation’s Death Row Cases. Could Newsom Commute Them All? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

“It’s not just that I wake up in prison every day and that reminds me of the harm I caused,” she said. “It’s about how I choose to live my life. It’s about being in Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s about being part of these programs for impaired drivers. Sharing my story in those spaces is what keeps me sober.”

Her story is not an easy one to tell.

On Dec. 8, 2020, Coleman ran a red light and crashed into a car carrying a family of five. Gabriela Andrade and Henry Saldana-Mejia were killed. Their three young daughters, buckled into the back seat, survived with injuries.

Drunk-driving deaths leave behind grieving families and unanswered questions. Without any intent to hurt anyone, offenders like Coleman are often left trying to reconcile who they are with what they’ve done.

More than 1,300 people die each year in California in alcohol-related crashes, though it’s difficult to track exactly how many drivers are prosecuted and convicted for causing those deaths, since homicide statutes don’t always distinguish whether alcohol was involved.

Coleman is serving her sentence at a moment when California’s approach to rehabilitation is shifting. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed reforms aimed at preparing incarcerated people for parole and successful reentry into society. Decades of tough-on-crime policy and mass incarceration are slowly giving way to trauma-informed programming and expanded opportunities for those willing to examine why they made the choices that led them to prison.

It’s a difficult road, and many offenders never fully walk it. Some take years, even decades, to come to terms with what happened. Others never do. Coleman began working on herself almost immediately.

“At first I thought, okay, I need therapy,” she said. “I need to take care of my mental health. Clearly something is wrong with me if I wake up and find out I’ve killed people. That doesn’t just happen.”

While awaiting trial at the Orange County Jail, Coleman met face-to-face with surviving relatives of Andrade and Saldana-Mejia — a rare opportunity for a defendant, especially before sentencing. Her defense attorney, the judge, the prosecutor and the family’s attorney all helped arrange the meeting. Coleman listened to their grief, absorbed their loss and answered their questions through tears.

“As a daughter, an only child, I knew what it felt like to have my parents mean everything to me,” she said. “And I just couldn’t stand the thought of having taken away the two most important people in a child’s life.”

Soon after that 2022 meeting, Coleman pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and accepted a sentence of 21 years to life.

“For me, it really started that day,” she said. “Any denial I was still holding onto disappeared. Any selfishness I still had — worrying about myself and what was going to happen to me — stopped mattering so much.”

“But at the same time, it also brought a sense of hope, as opposed to all that crushing hopelessness.”

Attorney Jeff Roberts represented the victims’ family and remembers Coleman from that private 2022 meeting. He also questioned her during depositions in a related wrongful-death lawsuit. “I got to know Grace a little bit, and I know she has her own story too,” Roberts said. “She had a pretty rough situation, even though she came across as a privileged young woman.”

Roberts said he hopes Coleman leaves prison ready to keep sharing her story and helping others avoid drunk driving and substance abuse. He was surprised to learn her sentence doesn’t come with a fixed release date.

“Grace deserved a substantial sentence,” Roberts said. “But I don’t think it should be a life sentence, because frankly, killing two people and orphaning three kids is already a life sentence. Emotionally, she’ll never get over it.”

## Mental Health Behind Bars

Coleman’s grim reality began in a hospital bed after the crash. She woke up disoriented, sedated and in pain, her left arm in a sling and her right wrist handcuffed to the bed rail.

A nurse, working with limited information, delivered the devastating news while a police officer stood by silently.

“I didn’t know what had happened, who I had killed, or even how I ended up in my car that night,” Coleman said. “Because the last thing I remember, I wasn’t anywhere near my car. So I had a lot of questions.”

Within days she was moved to a medical unit inside the jail. COVID-19 restrictions had shut down visitation almost entirely, and information trickled in slowly. It took weeks for Coleman to piece together what had actually happened.

Her boyfriend at the time had dropped her off at home just before the crash. A day fueled by alcohol, drugs and a toxic relationship should have ended there, with him leaving her stumbling toward her front door, keys in hand. Instead, in a blackout, she got into her Range Rover and drove off.

Once in jail, she began seeing a private mental health specialist who was allowed in despite pandemic restrictions. Coleman said she’d always believed in the value of therapy, but this was the first time she truly gave herself over to it.

“I describe it as an identity crisis, because you’re stripping away layer after layer of yourself and going through this massive transition,” Coleman said.

Weekly therapy sessions, combined with the clarity of newfound sobriety, helped Coleman dig into the roots of her substance abuse. She began to understand how a deep lack of self-worth fed her codependency and her compulsive need to please others. For years, she had been the girl who always said yes — who genuinely wanted to say yes to everything.

“The crime never would have happened without severe alcoholism, and going back to the reasons why I drank, or how I ended up in those states,” she said.

Coleman, a 22-year-old white woman from Laguna Beach, worried how other incarcerated women would react to her background and privilege. Her case had made local television headlines, and word traveled fast. To get by, she needed to connect with the people around her — to show humility rather than entitlement.

She leaned on her faith in God to manage the anxiety and stress she had once numbed with alcohol, marijuana and Xanax. The jail offered few formal rehabilitation programs, so Coleman found her own ways to stay motivated.

“There was no way I could keep going without building some kind of spiritual foundation — something that gave me a reason to live,” she said.

She organized Christian fellowship groups and recovery circles with other women in custody. She found community in cooking and sharing meals. She exercised relentlessly and carved out space in cramped cells to meditate and practice yoga.

Friends from high school and college who came to visit were struck by how healthy she looked. Their last memories of her before jail were of someone constantly high or drunk. They were relieved to see the clear-eyed person they always knew she could be.

“I had to leave that party version of myself behind,” she said. “It was hard, honestly, because I felt like being fun and outgoing was part of my identity. But I realized I could still be that person without being, you know, the friend who blacks out drunk.”

## Adjusting to Life in Prison

The plea deal reflected Coleman’s determination to move forward. She knew little about the prison system at the time, but during her 18 months in county custody, she learned that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation offered more structured programming and educational opportunities than jail did.

When Coleman arrived at her first prison in the fall of 2022, other women serving time for drunk-driving offenses welcomed her into support groups. Hearing stories similar to her own helped her realize she didn’t have to carry the weight of guilt and shame alone.

She also found healing in telling her own story to others. She became deeply involved with Alcoholics Anonymous and discovered FADD — Felons Against Distracted and Drunk Driving.

Still, consistent mental health care proved harder to come by once she entered the prison system. Coleman kept up some phone sessions with her private therapist, but they never matched the depth of in-person conversations. Relying on the prison’s own mental health services meant being randomly assigned psychiatrists and psychologists, each with different approaches and priorities.

Inside prison, seeking mental health treatment carried its own risks — stigma and judgment from other inmates. Therapy or medication could be seen as a sign of weakness. Many worried how a psychiatric diagnosis might affect their chances before the parole board.

“I come from a generation that strongly believes in mental health and therapy as something positive and healthy,” Coleman said. “So walking into the prison system and running into all this stigma, and the fear that comes with it, was a real culture shock.”

She found herself at a crossroads as she adjusted to the realities of long-term incarceration. Many young offenders in her position might have slipped into the same patterns that landed them in prison — fighting, chaos, contraband, drugs.

Coleman chose a different path. Her focus on self-improvement and rehabilitation connected her with women twice or three times her age who had spent decades behind bars.

“Everyone around me is older,” she said. “I’m always the youngest, usually by about 20 years.”

She watched parole hearings come and go without guaranteeing anyone’s release. She saw the toll that aging in prison takes. It made her reckon with her own uncertain future.

“I look at the older women here, especially the ones doing the same work I’m doing,” she said. “Because one day, that could be me, or I could be them. With a life sentence, I know there’s no guarantee I’ll ever go home.”

## Navigating Treatment Decisions

Because staying sober is central to her recovery, Coleman initially worried that antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication might set her back. She turned down prescriptions offered by prison psychiatrists.

Exercise, yoga and support groups remained her primary tools for staying grounded, along with her faith.

In October 2023, Coleman was transferred to the lower-security California Institution for Women in Chino, which offered a calmer environment and stronger rehabilitative programming.

She began teaching yoga and found programs suited to her needs. She quickly became a lead facilitator in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and joined Responsibly Driven, a specialized program aimed at helping people understand the decision-making patterns behind substance abuse.

She pursued vocational training in video production and joined the prison newsletter staff. Community leaders eventually brought her onto the Inmate Advisory Council.

But internally, she still struggled.

Sabrina Limon befriended Coleman soon after she arrived, the two bonding over their shared commitment to sobriety and working the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

“You could see the anxiety in her face and body language,” Limon said. “It seemed like she was searching for something, asking herself, ‘What am I supposed to do? Where do I go?’ That anxiety was very visible.”

Limon, 46, has been incarcerated since 2016 and has dealt with her own anxiety and depression, but for years avoided seeking psychological help. “There’s a lot of talk in prison that the parole board will hold it against you. That fear is real.”

The California Institution for Women eventually opened a counseling center on-site, making mental health resources easier to access. Inmates can join therapist-led support groups or receive individual counseling without being formally classified as psychiatric patients.

That open-door approach made it easier for Coleman to talk to someone and find the right kind of treatment. She eventually enrolled in the facility’s psychiatric care program and came to accept that her sobriety didn’t have to exclude prescribed medication for anxiety and depression, taken under a psychiatrist’s supervision.

“Anxiety is part of my daily life,” Coleman said. “It’s something I ignored for a long time, and that’s part of why I turned to alcohol and marijuana. So acknowledging my anxiety today really matters.”

Limon noticed the shift therapy brought to Coleman’s life and was moved by her openness about it — enough to seek her own treatment.

“I’ve seen a real change in Grace when it comes to her anxiety and mental health because of her individual work with a therapist,” Limon said. “I decided to check it out for myself. And sure enough, thanks to Grace, I now have a therapist. It’s wonderful. It’s helping me so much.”

## Rehabilitation and the Road to Parole

Because she was 22 when she committed her crime, Coleman qualifies as a youth offender under California law, which means she’ll be eligible for a parole hearing in 2033.

Her first shot at release will hinge on what she does — and who she becomes — between now and then.

“Rehabilitation isn’t handed to us on a silver platter,” Coleman said. “It’s something we actively have to work for.”

She runs laps around the facility’s main yard to clear her head, even on days when the Inland Empire heat climbs past 90 degrees. But her yoga mat, she says, remains her true refuge.

Illicit drugs find their way into nearly every prison population one way or another, and substance abuse remains a constant temptation for anyone serious about rehabilitation.

Coleman lives in a housing unit where residents commit to a code of accountability. Within that unit, participants in the Prison Pup Program care for and train rescue dogs to become service animals — a privilege that requires a clean record and regular drug testing.

“You see a lot of people who want to start doing better and are looking for a better environment to stay sober in,” she said. “They come here hoping to find a positive support system that helps them get out of that cycle.”

Coleman fills her days with purposeful work and outside partnerships. She serves as a storyteller for the UC Sentencing Project. Poetic Justice gives her a creative outlet to process trauma and healing through writing. And ReEvolution brings together formerly incarcerated mentors and advocates to lead discussions on restorative justice — examining both the harm people have suffered and the harm they’ve caused.

Barbara Van Sickle, executive director of ReEvolution, visits the prison regularly and has spent considerable time with Coleman in group sessions.

“I’ve watched her reach a place where she lives with responsibility, accountability and remorse, to the point where it feels almost too heavy to carry,” Van Sickle said. “But I think she’s working through it with a lot of self-reflection, and she’s starting to rediscover her own worth.”

This story was produced in partnership with CalMatters and CatchLight as part of a mental health reporting initiative, supported by the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Convicted at 22, She’s Spent Years Behind Bars Searching for Redemption appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Grace Coleman was 22 years old when she got behind the wheel drunk and caused a crash that killed two parents, Gabriela Andrade and Henry Saldana-Mejia. Coleman has no memory of the collision itself; she pieced together what happened only after waking up in a hospital bed and learning the devastating consequences of her actions.

“In the beginning, I was like, all right — I clearly got to get therapy. I need to get my mental health in check,” Coleman said. “Clearly something is wrong with me if I just woke up and found out I killed people. This doesn’t just happen.”

Her journey toward accountability began in earnest after she pleaded guilty and, notably, spent time face-to-face with members of her victims’ family. Now serving a life sentence at the California Institution for Women in Chino, Coleman is incarcerated at a moment when the state is actively encouraging inmates to confront the root causes of their crimes rather than simply serve time. That shift has given her access to therapy, medication, support groups and rehabilitative programming that wouldn’t have been guaranteed to inmates in years past.

The changes echo Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stated vision for California’s prison system, including his push to suspend the death penalty and reimagine San Quentin as a rehabilitation-focused facility. Speaking at a press conference there in February, Newsom framed the effort in blunt terms: “It was always about public safety. It was about dealing with the fundamental fact that 95% of people in this system are going to go back into your neighborhood. And what kind of neighbors do you want them to be?”

Though sentenced to life, Coleman is expected to eventually be eligible for parole. What she does with her time behind bars — and how she reenters society — may serve as a real-world test of that philosophy.

Jeff Roberts, an attorney who represented Coleman’s victims, said he doesn’t believe a life sentence was necessary, even as he acknowledged the severity of what she did. “Grace needed to serve a good length of time. But I don’t think she needed to serve a life sentence, because quite frankly — that she killed two people and left three people orphaned is a life sentence,” Roberts said. “Emotionally, she won’t forget about that.”

The full account of Coleman’s case, reported by CalMatters’ Joe Garcia, examines how California’s broader prison reforms are playing out for individuals convicted of devastating crimes, and what accountability looks like when the person responsible is still working to understand why it happened.

In other Sacramento news as lawmakers race toward the end of this year’s legislative session, Solano County supervisors dealt a setback to California Forever, the billionaire-backed development venture, by voting against legislation that would have fast-tracked a new shipbuilding facility by exempting portions of it from environmental review. The vote complicates the company’s broader ambitions to build a new city and manufacturing hub in the county.

Meanwhile, Newsom is pushing to grant an environmental exemption for a Santa Monica oceanfront project tied to developer Jeff Worthe, a campaign donor, drawing sharp criticism from environmental groups who say it amounts to a backdoor deal that circumvents state coastal protection laws.

And a bill aimed at lowering the cost of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic cleared the state Assembly this week, moving closer to the governor’s desk. If signed, California would partner with a drug manufacturer to produce lower-cost versions of the medications and distribute them through the state’s CalRx program — though similar efforts, such as the state’s push for cheaper insulin, have taken years to bear fruit.

In higher education news, UCLA has launched the nation’s first academic department and bachelor’s degree program in digital humanities, blending coding, data visualization and 3D mapping with traditional subjects like history and literature. The program, which has quietly existed at UCLA for roughly two decades in smaller form, is designed to prepare graduates for a job market that increasingly values both technical skill and critical thinking. “It’s actually at our own peril when scientists are not speaking to folks in the humanities with historical knowledge, ethical knowledge, cultural knowledge,” said UCLA professor Todd Presner, who helped lead the effort.

Finally, state Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Wednesday that California is suing the Trump administration and the U.S. Postal Service over what he called unconstitutional efforts to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Woman Behind Devastating Crime Now Searches for Answers appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The probe centered on two facilities: the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino. Federal investigators launched the inquiry after hundreds of women incarcerated at the two prisons filed legal claims alleging exploitation by employees, and after a former correctional officer was arrested on charges of sexually abusing at least 22 women.

As part of the investigation, the Justice Department examined 350 separate allegations of sexual misconduct, conducted interviews with prisoners, and reviewed footage from body-worn cameras.

The findings, released Thursday, describe what investigators called an “unbroken pattern” of sexual assault by staff stretching back more than two decades at both institutions. According to the report, prison leadership was aware that women faced a real and ongoing risk of abuse yet consistently failed to take adequate steps to prevent it.

Investigators identified a range of systemic failures — missing camera coverage in key areas, the absence of truly confidential channels for reporting abuse, poorly conducted investigations, and a lack of meaningful consequences for offending staff. The Justice Department characterized these shortcomings as “deliberate indifference,” concluding they amounted to violations of incarcerated women’s constitutional rights.

“None of this should be surprising to CDCR, none of it should be surprising to the Legislature,” said Amika Mota, executive director of the Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition, a prisoner advocacy organization. She noted that survivors have repeatedly raised these concerns publicly — at legislative hearings, community forums and in prior reports — in hopes of prompting reform.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation maintains it enforces a zero-tolerance policy toward staff sexual misconduct and points to recent efforts to broaden reporting mechanisms and camera surveillance. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra Young said those changes have not addressed the deeper, structural issues driving the abuse.

“Women were not being protected,” Young told KQED. “It was the cycle that’s continuing to happen.”

At the Chowchilla facility, federal investigators documented surveillance gaps around the plant operations area and in prison kitchens. Incarcerated women told investigators that certain kitchen storage spaces lacking cameras were referred to as “sugar rooms” — named both for the sugar kept there and because the absence of surveillance made them a site where sexual activity could go undetected. Investigators also cited abandoned buildings where abuse reportedly took place.

“Things like that were extremely concerning,” Young said.

The report further found that correctional officers often failed to properly use their body cameras, at times switching them off in violation of department policy. Notably, only correctional officers are required to wear the devices, even though confirmed abuse cases have involved other prison employees, including a cook, a mental health counselor and staff overseeing work programs.

Among the cases detailed in the report is that of former correctional officer Gregory Rodriguez, accused of abusing dozens of women at the Chowchilla facility over roughly a decade. The state corrections department substantiated claims that he engaged in sexual acts with 21 incarcerated women, while federal investigators identified more than 65 alleged victims linked to him. Some women said the assaults occurred in a parole hearing room that had no camera coverage. Rodriguez was charged in 2023 by the Madera County District Attorney’s Office with 97 criminal counts tied to 13 victims, and was convicted last year on 64 counts. He is now serving a 224-year prison sentence.

At the California Institution for Women in Chino, the report cites cases going back more than 10 years, including instances where correctional officers were criminally convicted or disciplined for sexually abusing incarcerated women.

Mota said she believes the hundreds of allegations reviewed by federal investigators represent only a fraction of the actual abuse. While more survivors have come forward in recent years, she said many women still avoid reporting incidents out of fear of retaliation — a concern the federal report validates.

Investigators found that the internal system meant to let incarcerated women report abuse confidentially was, in practice, not secure. Written grievances, known as 602 forms, are digitized and stored in a system accessible to prison staff. In one instance, the corrections department discovered that an officer had improperly accessed the files of 11 incarcerated women — nine of whom had accused him of sexual misconduct.

Some women reported facing disciplinary write-ups, cell searches, confiscation of belongings and loss of privileges after coming forward with complaints. Several said they waited to report abuse until after their release, a transfer to another facility, or securing legal representation.

The federal report also addressed a mass use-of-force incident at the Chowchilla prison in August 2024, concluding it was retaliatory in nature, tied to women’s reports of staff sexual abuse. Young said investigators devoted substantial time to interviewing those involved and reviewing records connected to the incident, which left victims with injuries ranging from seizures to blindness. The state reached a $1.9 million settlement in April with 13 women harmed in that incident, and its internal investigation resulted in terminations, retraining, and other corrective measures after finding that 41 employees had violated department policy.

Federal investigators also uncovered cases where potential DNA evidence went untested, accused staff and witnesses were never interviewed, and probes dragged on for months or years without resolution. In at least one instance, delays were so extensive that the department missed its own one-year deadline to discipline the officer involved. Separately, the state’s Office of the Inspector General found that 86% of disciplinary and criminal investigations reviewed during the first half of 2025 were rated either “inadequate” or in need of improvement.

Young said that even in cases where women’s allegations appeared credible, investigations sometimes stalled for more than a year and, in some instances, concluded without substantiating the claims — even when portions of the women’s accounts had been independently corroborated.

In a written statement, the corrections department said it takes “every allegation seriously” and remains “dedicated to ensuring accountability, strengthening protections, and maintaining institutions that ensure the personal safety of all individuals.” The agency also pointed to audits conducted under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, noting that both facilities met all 45 standards evaluated.

As part of its findings, the Justice Department is now requiring California to expand camera coverage, broaden the use of body cameras among staff, create confidential reporting channels independent of the department, and improve both the quality of investigations and protections against retaliation.

“The state must confront the persistent failure of its own employees to prevent and address sexual abuse at these facilities and the systemic breakdowns that have permitted these conditions to persist,” said Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California. “This report should serve as a turning point.”

The corrections department said it looks forward to working with the Justice Department “regarding their recommendations.”

Federal officials also called for disciplinary consequences — including possible termination — for employees who improperly access or share grievance information, along with real accountability for staff found to have retaliated against those who report abuse. The Justice Department noted that the U.S. attorney general retains the authority to sue the state within 49 days if it fails to act on the findings.

Antoinette Yancey, who is currently incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility, said she hopes the federal report will finally lead to genuine accountability.

“Some of us are in here for far less than what has been done to us, doing life sentences and decades’ worth of time, while we’re also being preyed upon,” Yancey said. “And it’s just not fair.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Justice Department Report Details Ongoing Sexual Abuse by Staff in California Prisons appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Between 2020 and 2025, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spent nearly $50 million on fire watch staffing, according to figures reviewed by CalMatters. Prison employees have logged roughly 270,000 hours over that span simply patrolling facilities and visually checking for signs of fire, based on job postings for the positions.

The reason traces back to the poor condition of fire alarm systems at most of California’s 31 prisons. Replacing them all would cost an estimated $1.5 billion, according to the department’s annual report submitted to the state in January.

Faced with outdated, malfunctioning and inoperable alarm systems, the state Office of the State Fire Marshal ordered the department to maintain human fire watches until the equipment is repaired or replaced. That mandate has proven costly. In a recent budget request, corrections officials asked for $15.2 million to fund fire watch coverage for the coming year, writing that the requirement “has resulted in significant expense to the department in personnel costs for fire watch.”

That sum is a small fraction of the department’s overall $14.6 billion budget, but the costs keep climbing well beyond projections. The Legislative Analyst’s Office reported that in June, the department announced it expected to spend about $40 million on fire watch coverage for the previous year — roughly $25 million more than originally budgeted.

The price tag for fixing the underlying problem is steep. According to cost estimates in the prison system’s facility master plan, replacing the fire alarm system at a single prison can run anywhere from $3 million to $87 million.

Caitlin O’Neil, a senior fiscal and policy analyst with the Legislative Analyst’s Office who tracks the corrections budget, said the department has traditionally assigned fire watch duty to correctional officers because the job requires keys and the ability to move freely throughout a prison. Those hours are typically billed as overtime. According to a 2024 state salary survey, an experienced correctional officer earns a base salary of $9,647 a month.

O’Neil said the department is now exploring cheaper staffing options, acknowledging that fully trained correctional officers bring skills well beyond fire detection. A pilot program is underway at California State Prison, Solano, where fire watch duties have been reclassified under a lower-paid “office technician” position supervised by a correctional sergeant. According to a job posting, the top salary for that role is $4,357 a month.

Royal Ramey, a firefighter who was formerly incarcerated and co-founded the nonprofit Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, said fire safety inside correctional facilities is not something the state can afford to compromise on.

“Incarcerated people, as well as staff at these facilities, deserve reliable systems and strong safeguards that keep everyone safe during emergencies,” he said. “In a fire emergency, there’s no room for failure in protection. But the priority has to remain protecting lives, while continuing to build permanent, dependable infrastructure solutions.”

Not everyone is convinced the spending is justified. Matt Cate, who served as California’s corrections secretary under former Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, said he’s skeptical of the arrangement, describing it as paying people to stand around looking for a problem that largely doesn’t exist.

“Large-scale prison fires are extremely rare because these buildings are made of concrete and steel,” Cate said. “Every prison has its own fire crew and staff present around the clock. Coverage is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Cate said the state enforces strict regulations to manage fire risk in its prisons, which puts the department in a bind: either spend hundreds of millions of dollars modernizing alarm systems, or keep requesting additional funding each year to maintain compliance through staffing.

“It’s a bit like deciding whether to buy the house or rent it,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s up to the governor’s office and the Legislature to decide how much to invest and how much to just manage the problem by hiring more people.”

Kristen Cowan, an assistant professor at the University at Buffalo who studies how extreme weather disasters affect prisons and jails, said she was surprised to learn it’s legal for correctional facilities to operate with nonfunctioning fire alarm systems.

“This is basic disaster preparedness,” Cowan said. “It’s definitely concerning to know that technology is missing. It makes you wonder what else might be lacking at these facilities.”

Cowan warned that relying on human fire watches instead of modern detection technology could lead to significant delays in identifying fires, raising the risk of injuries, deaths and health problems tied to smoke exposure.

“We wouldn’t let anyone else live somewhere without a smoke detector,” she said.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Prisons Rely on Their Own Staff as Human Fire Alarms — Here’s Why appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

According to reporting from CalMatters, replacing the fire detection systems statewide — including smoke detectors, control panels and the networks that connect them — would run California taxpayers roughly $1.5 billion. Rather than commit to that expense, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has instead relied on what’s known as “fire watch”: assigning correctional officers, who already patrol the facilities, to keep an eye out for smoke and flames.

That staffing solution isn’t cheap either. The department has spent close to $50 million on fire watch duty between 2020 and 2025. Because the work is typically classified as overtime, it adds up quickly — a seasoned correctional officer already earns a base salary of about $9,600 a month. In search of savings, the department is testing a lower-cost alternative at Solano State Prison, where fire watch duties are being handled by workers classified as “office assistants,” who earn roughly $4,300 a month, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The approach has sparked disagreement among experts who study prison conditions and safety.

Kristen Cowan, an assistant professor at the University of Buffalo who researches how extreme weather and disasters affect incarcerated populations, argues that functioning fire alarms are simply a baseline expectation.

“It makes you wonder what else is missing in the facilities,” Cowan said. “We wouldn’t let anyone else live in a place that doesn’t have a smoke detector.”

But Matt Cate, a former secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, sees less urgency in the situation. He noted that prison buildings are largely constructed from concrete and steel, making large-scale fires uncommon. He also pointed out that prisons already have fire departments on-site and are staffed around the clock.

“Large-scale fires in prisons are extremely rare because prisons are made of concrete and steel,” Cate said. “There’s a fire department attached to each prison, and there are people throughout the prison who are there all the time. It’s staffed 24-7.”

Whether the state eventually commits to a full overhaul of its aging fire alarm infrastructure — or continues to rely on officers acting as human smoke detectors — remains an open question as budget pressures continue to shape decisions across California’s correctional system.

In other Southern California news, Inland Empire residents interested in workforce and education policy can attend a free CalMatters event Aug. 5 in Riverside. The panel discussion, moderated by CalMatters reporter Adam Echelman, will bring together health, education and workforce leaders to talk about how California can prepare its next generation of workers.

CalMatters is also partnering with inewsource for a related conversation Aug. 13 in San Ysidro, focused on the Tijuana River contamination crisis, which continues to affect the health and daily lives of residents on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Meanwhile, San Diego’s standing as a national arts hub is facing new challenges. Even though the city has long ranked among the country’s top supporters of the arts, funding cuts at both the federal and local level are threatening that reputation — fueling public disputes over how the city should prioritize its arts budget going forward.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Prisons Ditch Costly Fire Alarm Upgrade, Rely on Staff to Spot Smoke Instead appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Between 2020 and 2025, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spent nearly $50 million on what’s known as “fire watch” staffing, according to state records. Over that stretch, prison employees logged roughly 270,000 hours patrolling facilities and visually scanning for signs of trouble, walking assigned routes and checking different areas during their shifts, per job postings reviewed by CalMatters.

The practice exists because most of California’s 31 prisons — including several in the Inland Empire region and across Southern California — have fire alarm systems that no longer meet code. Fixing or replacing all of them statewide would cost an estimated $1.5 billion, according to the department’s most recent annual report submitted to the state in January.

Faced with aging, malfunctioning or entirely inoperable alarm systems, the Office of the State Fire Marshal directed the corrections department to keep human fire watch coverage in place until repairs or replacements are completed. That mandate has proven costly. In a recent request to state lawmakers, corrections officials asked for $15.2 million to fund next year’s fire watch staffing alone, acknowledging that the arrangement “has come at a significant expense to the department.”

That figure represents a small slice of the department’s overall $14.6 billion budget, but the costs keep climbing. Officials told the Legislative Analyst’s Office in June that last year’s fire watch spending was on pace to hit roughly $40 million — about $25 million more than what had been budgeted.

By comparison, replacing the fire alarm system at a single prison can run anywhere from $3 million to $87 million, depending on the facility, according to estimates included in the department’s facilities master plan.

Caitlin O’Neil, a principal fiscal and policy analyst with the Legislative Analyst’s Office who tracks the corrections budget, said the department has traditionally assigned correctional officers to fire watch duty because the job requires keys and unrestricted access throughout the prison. Those hours are generally billed as overtime. An experienced correctional officer earns a base salary of $9,647 a month, according to a 2024 state compensation survey.

But O’Neil said the department is now testing whether a lower-cost position could handle the same responsibilities, since correctional officers are trained for far more than fire monitoring. A pilot program at Solano State Prison has reclassified fire watch duties under an “office assistant” title reporting to a correctional sergeant — a position that tops out at $4,357 a month, according to a job listing.

Royal Ramey, a formerly incarcerated firefighter who co-founded the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, said there’s no room for compromise when it comes to fire safety behind bars.

“People who are incarcerated, as well as the staff inside these facilities, deserve reliable systems and strong emergency protections that keep everyone safe,” Ramey said. “In situations involving fire emergency response, there can be no gaps in protection. But the priority must also remain protecting lives while continuing to advance permanent and reliable infrastructure solutions.”

Not everyone is convinced the current approach makes sense. Matt Cate, who served as California’s corrections secretary under Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, questioned the value of paying people to watch for a fire that, statistically, almost never happens.

“Large-scale fires in prisons are extremely rare because prisons are made of concrete and steel,” Cate said. “There’s a fire department attached to each prison and there are people throughout the prison who are there all the time. It’s staffed 24-7.”

Cate said the state’s fire-safety regulations for prisons are notably strict, which leaves the department choosing between a massive upfront investment to modernize alarm systems or continuing to request incremental funding each year to maintain compliance through staffing.

“It’s a little like deciding, do we buy the house or do we rent?” he said. “It’s ultimately the governor’s office and the Legislature who have to decide how much to invest versus how much to plug the problem through adding additional staff.”

Kristen Cowan, an assistant professor at the University of Buffalo who studies how extreme weather and disasters affect prisons and jails, said she was surprised to learn that inoperable fire alarm systems are apparently permitted under current rules.

“This is baseline disaster preparedness,” Cowan said. “It’s certainly concerning to know that that technology is missing. It makes you wonder what else is missing in the facilities.”

Cowan warned that relying on human observation instead of functioning alarm technology could slow fire detection significantly, increasing the risk of injuries, deaths and long-term health problems tied to smoke exposure.

“We wouldn’t let anyone else live in a place that doesn’t have a smoke detector,” she said.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Prisons Rely on Staff, Not Alarms, to Warn of Fires, Raising Safety Concerns appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Lozano, who served time at the California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, said the support she found among other incarcerated women helped her endure conditions she describes as unsafe and traumatic. She said sexual assault in prison carries an added level of danger because incarcerated people are dependent on staff for daily movement, basic needs and access to grievance procedures.

Her call comes amid continued scrutiny of sexual misconduct allegations inside California women’s prisons. In August 2024, a leaked video showed guards at the Chowchilla prison detaining incarcerated women in a cafeteria and repeatedly using pepper spray and tear gas. The incident reportedly followed sexual misconduct grievances filed by incarcerated people and was widely viewed by advocates as retaliation.

Although some guards were fired after the video became public, Lozano said the episode reflected only a small part of a much larger problem. One prison guard was later sentenced to 224 years in prison for multiple sexual assault convictions involving at least nine women. Still, she said, many incarcerated survivors remain in the same institutions where they reported abuse and where they may continue to face retaliation.

Lozano said formal grievance systems do not reliably protect survivors. Instead, she said, reporting sexual abuse by staff often leads to punishment, intimidation or further mistreatment.

California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is responsible for the safety of people in state custody, Lozano said, and she argued that the state is failing that obligation when it keeps survivors inside facilities where alleged abusers work and where staff salaries are paid with public funds.

Lozano also recounted her own experiences, saying a male guard once put his hands under her shirt and made a remark about warming his hands. She said other officers exposed themselves or touched themselves in front of her over a period of years. In one parole hearing, she said, she had to sit in the same room with a staff member who had abused her.

She said witnessing abuse of other incarcerated people was also traumatizing, particularly because prisoners often have no safe way to intervene.

Advocates have called for broader reforms to how California responds to sexual abuse behind bars. A statewide working group examining prison sexual abuse response and prevention recommended in a 2024 report that the state consider release as a safety measure for survivors assaulted by prison staff.

Lozano said California should revise corrections policy so that a person sexually abused by prison staff can be released from custody rather than forced to remain in an unsafe environment. She also called for prioritizing releases for people held in women’s-designated facilities who continue to face dangerous conditions.

She argued that long prison sentences compound the harm many people experience while incarcerated and make it more difficult to rebuild their lives after release. Survivors who work to heal while enduring harassment or assault in custody, she said, deserve a path home that supports their recovery and allows them to reconnect with their families.

“The only way” to protect incarcerated survivors from further abuse and retaliation, Lozano said, is to allow them to leave the prisons where the abuse occurred.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Advocates Call for Release of Sexual Assault Survivors in California Prisons appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

It comes after years of complaints from prisoners about dangerous temperatures during the state’s brutal summer heat waves, warnings by advocates that the problem will only get worse as the planet warms and the death of an incarcerated woman last year during California’s hottest month on record — which officials from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation insist was unrelated to the heat.

But don’t expect the prisons to become air conditioned anytime soon. 

The pilot, approved by the Legislature this year amid a budget deficit, is a limited test of cooling systems and new insulation over the next four years at just three of the department’s 31 prisons. Results of the test are not expected until mid-2029. 

The corrections department has pointed to the pilot as a step toward addressing the heat problem as it faces pressure from activists, lawmakers and judges to do more. Critics say it falls short, since it only applies to parts of facilities that house about 8,000 of California’s 91,000 inmates and does not require any future concrete action. The department is currently required in a federal court case to protect inmates with mental illness from heat risks, and uses a decades-old protocol to do so. 

With temperatures in some prisons reaching 95 degrees each summer, some prisoners’ advocates say the only safe solution to protect all prisoners is to install air conditioning statewide. 

“Extreme heat poses a serious health risk to all in CDCR,” said Lily Harvey, senior staff attorney at the Prison Law Office, which represents inmates in several federal class-action court cases covering health care in state prisons. “Air-conditioned housing units are the only effective way to protect against that risk.”

But department attorneys have pushed back, arguing in court that some facilities in more temperate areas might not need air conditioning. They have put the price tag of “statewide implementation of effective air cooling mechanisms” at $6 billion, but have refused to provide a cost breakdown of that figure. 

Department officials declined to be interviewed for this story. Instead, in response to a detailed list of questions, department spokesperson Mary Xjimenez sent a written statement saying the heat problem can’t be solved statewide by installing air conditioning alone. For facilities that will need air conditioning, the department will also have to fix corroded roofs and other structural issues. 

The pilot will test different ways — air conditioning, insulation, or some combination of the two — to reduce indoor prison temperatures to 78 degrees at Kern Valley State Prison, Central California Women’s Facility and the California State Prison in Los Angeles County. 

Most prisons currently rely on fans or evaporative cooling units (known commonly as swamp coolers), that have limited effectiveness when temperatures near triple digits. Xjimenez said the department will use the results of the pilot “to recommend a statewide strategy for scaling air cooling in a timely, efficient and cost-effective manner.” She pointed to $246 million worth of cooling improvements the department has started at five prisons over the past five years, though not all cover the cells where prisoners are housed.

In the meantime, officials point to what they call their successful heat protocol, required by the court, which they use to monitor inmates who are most at risk of heat illness. From May to October, staff at every prison must record indoor and outdoor temperatures daily, move at-risk inmates indoors and, on the hottest days, check on them every few hours for signs of heat stroke. 

But a monitor for the federal courts this year found gaping holes in its usage, calling consistent implementation of the rules “elusive.” 

At half of the 14 prisons he toured, monitor Matthew Lopes found staff who were unaware of the protocol. He questioned the accuracy of officers’ temperature logs at two prisons; at three, he found broken or missing thermometers. 

While some prison officials “commendably” go out of their way to ease conditions during heat waves, he wrote, others are “failing to approach compliance.”

‘There’s really no reprieve’

Extreme heat is warping life for all Californians, but state prisoners will be hit especially hard.  Many are housed in inland or desert environments where temperatures are slated to rise more than the statewide average over the next few decades.

There were 182 days last year in which at least one of the state’s 31 prisons was experiencing weather hotter than 90 degrees — amounting to half the year, according to a June CDCR report. On 46 days last year, at least one prison was hotter than 95 degrees indoors.

Cal/OSHA only recently began requiring indoor workplaces to be lower than 87 degrees and to provide cooling areas that are no hotter than 82 degrees, but correctional facilities were exempted because of how much it would cost the state to comply. Some experts recommend cooling homes to at most 78 degrees during heat waves to avoid health risks.

CDCR instituted its summer heat protocol under federal court order after three inmates died in their cells of hyperthermia at the California Medical Facility psychiatric prison in Vacaville in 1991. The men, all in their 30s, had been taking psychotropic medications to treat mental illness, which elevate patients’ body temperatures.

Under the protocol, prison staff are required to share a list of inmates who take heat-sensitive medications every summer.

When outdoor temperatures reach 90 degrees, they are supposed to activate Stage 1, moving heat-sensitive inmates indoors. When indoor temperatures reach 90 degrees, they call Stage 2, giving those inmates more access to showers and ice. Indoor temperatures of 95 degrees should trigger Stage 3, during which medical staff are mandated to check on inmates every two hours to monitor for signs of heat illness.

Even outside the cells, heat affects every corner of prison life, the court-appointed monitor Lopes has found. 

Heat forces staff to shuffle counseling to less private spaces, disrupts group therapy and when inmates are forced inside during heat alerts, they sometimes lose out on programs and recreation time to stay in even hotter cells. 

One prisoner at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco declined to take an antipsychotic medication urged by his psychiatrist because he didn’t want to lose his maintenance job over heat concerns. 

In their housing units, there’s little inmates can do other than take showers and scoop ice when officers provide it. Concrete, uninsulated cells can be as much as 21 degrees hotter than common areas, the department has noted. 

Inmates may keep a personal fan in their cells; it’s available for $27 from the commissary. An inmate with no family support would have to work a minimum-wage prison job for about 4 weeks to afford one, estimates Bharat Venkat, a UCLA anthropologist who has researched the effects of heat on incarcerated people.

Lawrence Cox, an advocate with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, spent years incarcerated in Calipatria State Prison, in the Imperial County desert and California State Prison Solano, in Vacaville. He and his cellmate would wet their bedsheets in the sink to try to keep cool, but with little ventilation, the cell only became more humid, and he developed heat rashes that he said left lasting marks on his skin.

“I have never sweated so much, continuously, all day, just simply by sitting there,” he said. “There’s really no reprieve.”

The heat protocol’s success depends on who’s on shift. Over the years, the monitor has found inconsistent record-keeping and compliance, according to thousands of pages of court records reviewed by CalMatters. 

Though some facilities are testing digital temperature use, most prison staff maintain outdoor and indoor records on paper, in handwritten logs. A department spokesperson said supervisors are required to verify those records daily. 

Reviewing logs from the Central California Women’s Facility in Madera County obtained through a public records request, CalMatters found days in which prison staff did not record any indoor temperatures. Two days in 2022 the same indoor temperature was recorded at one of the facility’s housing units every three hours for the entire day, in the same handwriting.

A death at California’s largest women’s prison

Every summer, incarcerated women at the Chowchilla prison flood the phone lines of community advocacy groups and attorneys’ offices, raising alarms about hot conditions. About 2,000 women are incarcerated across 15 housing units at the facility, which opened in 1990.

Every summer from 2020 through 2024, Chowchilla saw at least seven days that reached or surpassed 105 degrees; last summer set a record at 28 days.

Adrienne Boulware, who had been incarcerated there for about a decade by 2024, told her family each summer that the prison’s evaporative cooling units weren’t working, said her daughter Michaela Nelson. 

“We were usually worried about her every summer,” Nelson said.

Even driving through the Central Valley to visit Boulware felt “treacherous” because of the heat, Nelson said. The family had helped her buy a fan for her cell, and she took showers to cool off, but in phone calls to her daughters in the summer of 2024, Boulware described the prison as “hot as hell.”

Boulware raised Nelson and three siblings in Sacramento. She was serving a 15 years-to-life sentence for second-degree murder in the 2011 beating death of a man she and another woman argued with in an abandoned car wash in north Sacramento. Nelson said her mother had been steadily repaying her debt to society, taking classes and running a Bible study. In recent years Boulware had started going to parole hearings, so her family was hoping for her release. Nelson, a home care worker in Georgia, planned to move back to California.

Like much of the state, Chowchilla was three days into a searing two-week heat wave during last year’s long Independence Day weekend when Boulware, 47, collapsed.

On July 4, when temperatures were as high as 109 degrees outside, the swamp cooler in Boulware’s building was “blowing warm air but was fixed the same day,” CDCR attorney Melissa Bentz wrote in an email later included in court records. Staff placed coolers of ice water and “large industrial floor fans” in the housing units. 

On July 5, outside temperatures reached 108. A lieutenant at the prison told the Madera County Sheriff’s Office that Boulware, who court records say was prescribed the mood stabilizer lithium, was “outside in the yard most of the day,” according to a coroner’s report. After they returned inside, dorm-mates found Boulware on the floor of the shower. 

Officers were unsure if she was having a seizure or overdose. She was given four rounds of Narcan and taken to a hospital in Merced, where she died early the next morning. 

Amid a public outcry in the days that followed, department spokespeople downplayed the role of heat in Boulware’s death, telling reporters it “appears to be the result of an ongoing medical condition and not heat-related.” 

A toxicology report showed fentanyl was found in her blood. The Madera County coroner this year listed the cause of death as undetermined.

Experts say it can often be hard to identify heat as a cause in deaths and medical events, especially when people have other health conditions. 

Advocates and Boulware’s family believe her death was preventable. Records show the department itself suspected heat from the beginning. 

In prison staff’s first phone call to Boulware’s family before she was taken to the hospital on July 5, Nelson said, they told her sister she had suffered a heat stroke. In an email to plaintiffs’ attorneys and the court monitor a few days after the death, a prison medical provider wrote that the causes of death were listed as loss of consciousness, seizures, “heat stroke and possible overdose.” The email was included in court records.

An alarmed plaintiffs’ attorney, Steven Fama, wrote to the court monitor on July 8 asking for an investigation. Citing Boulware’s prison medical records, Fama noted her body temperature was 41.5 degrees Celsius when she arrived at the hospital — 106.7 degrees Fahrenheit, eight degrees higher than the normal human body temperature. 

He also raised more questions: Why, he wrote, was an inmate who was prescribed the heat-sensitive medication lithium “outside all day” during a triple-digit heat wave?

Nelson said her family is still waiting for an answer. They also haven’t received her mother’s belongings — years of letters, photographs, everything the family bought her from the prison commissary and her mother’s Bible. Asked by CalMatters for comment, CDCR said it is following department procedures for returning Boulware’s belongings. Officials declined to comment on her death, deferring to the coroner’s report.   

“It’s hard to not know,” Nelson said. “It’s always better to know than to just be wondering, wondering if she suffered, and how things could have been different.”

Increasing pressure on the state

Seven months after Boulware died, in February of this year, court-appointed prison monitor Matthew Lopes wrote that her death was a “tragic reminder of the very real harm that can result from failing to properly monitor and treat patients on heat-sensitive medication.” 

But corrections department attorneys urged him not to include that in his report evaluating CDCR’s heat protocol. In court records, staff attorney Nick Weber called it “charged language,” noting that, as of this spring, the coroner had not yet documented an official cause of death.

Since Boulware’s death a year ago, advocates have used the incident to demand that CDCR do more to protect incarcerated people. 

Earlier this year, activists pleaded with the Cal/OSHA standards board to adopt a promised new workplace standard for state prisons. They argued that many prison inmates work in the facilities, whether in kitchens, facility maintenance, or as part of state programs that place inmates in jobs with private contractors. 

Any new rule would require a drafting and public hearings process which can take years. Spokespeople for both the department and the Cal/OSHA board said they are in “discussions” about a rule, but no public process has begun.

Cox’s group, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, sponsored a bill this year that would have forced the state to lower temperatures in all the prisons and require digitized, live temperature monitoring. The bill sailed through state Assembly committees and didn’t garner any official opposition. 

But with the corrections department estimating it would cost between $10 billion and $20 billion to make the changes, author Assemblymember Celeste Rodriguez said she knew it would be a tough sell amid a budget deficit. Rodriguez, a Democrat from Chino, agreed to hold it and revisit it next year. 

She said she’s encouraged by the pilot program the department is starting, but wants to keep the legislation alive so officials don’t lose urgency to address the heat. 

“Managing litigation costs is a factor when we consider infrastructure projects,” she said of the potential cost of installing air conditioning across prisons. 

Meanwhile, in a class action federal court case on medical care in California prisons, plaintiffs representing virtually every prisoner in the state have sought to bring heat issues before a judge.

They’ve pointed to a case in Texas in which a judge ruled in March that the lack of systemwide air conditioning there violates constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. 

The department has objected to the comparison. Unlike Texas, attorneys for the CDCR wrote in June, California prisons have experienced “very few sentinel events (such as deaths) among its patient population directly related to extreme heat.” 

But in California, U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar has expressed interest in the issue, and directed the department to provide the plaintiffs data on the matter.

“I want to say this very clearly, this is a medical issue,” he said in a June conference with attorneys on all sides. “This is a big issue, that’s only going to get bigger with the passage of time.”

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