This report contains our assessment of the medical care provided at Wasco State Prison between December 2018 and May 2019. We rated the overall quality of health care provided at WSP during this time period as Adequate.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (the department) refused to sustain dishonesty charges against two officers who used unnecessary force against a handcuffed incarcerated person and lied about the need to use force in official reports and interviews. The incarcerated person was found guilty of a serious rules violation based on the officers’ reports that he began resisting their efforts to escort him back to his cell, which they claimed required them to take him to the ground and punch him in the head 10 to 12 times…

In the first of a series of reports examining the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, we reviewed the department’s efforts to screen prison staff and visitors for signs and symptoms of COVID-19. We found the department’s screening directives to be vague, which appears to have caused inconsistent implementation among the prisons and likely contributed to some staff and visitors entering prisons without having been screened. We also found that the thermometers prison staff used to check the temperatures of all those entering the prisons did not always work properly and that staff were not trained on the proper use and maintenance of the screening devices. The report also raises concerns with the department’s refusal to provide us with access to all of its records, which limited the scope of our review.

This report evaluates the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s progress meeting the components of its 2012 Blueprint plan that it had not previously met—adhering to the standardized staffing model for education programs and increasing the total number of offenders served in rehabilitative programs. The report also evaluates various changes the department made following its 2016 Update to the Blueprint in rehabilitative program expansion, specialized housing, gang management, and population management.

This report summarizes the work we performed in 2019 reviewing 2,296 use-of-force incidents that occurred at California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (department) facilities. We concluded that the department’s performance was overall satisfactory. We assessed the department’s performance as superior in 24 incidents, satisfactory in 2,063 incidents, and poor in 209 incidents. We issued four recommendations to address concerns we identified while assessing the incidents and the various phases of the use-of-force review process.

This report contains our assessment of the medical care provided at California State Prison, Los Angeles County between September 2018 and April 2019. We rated the overall quality of health care provided at LAC during this time period as Adequate.

Executives with the department refused to take disciplinary action against an officer despite the existence of evidence that suggested he punched his girlfriend in the face and split open her lip, which required stitches to close, and slammed a truck door on her hand, which completely severed a portion of her thumb at the first joint….

The department entered into a settlement agreement to permit a correctional officer to return to work for the department despite a preponderance of evidence suggesting that he lied under oath at a State Personnel Board hearing to protect another officer…