Rehabilitating California’s Prisoners

California’s state superintendent for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Office of Correctional Education explains how the department provides programming and teaches skills to both prisoners and parolees to reduce their reconviction or return-to-prison rate, three years after release from a CDCR institution.

Quick Fixes in Corrections: Reconsidering Private and Public For-Profit Facilities

This article focuses on some of the theoretical and practical issues involved with public proprietary correctional facilities as compared to private proprietary facilities as they are operated in California. Questions are raised about whose interests are served by public proprietary facilities and what some of the problems are. The California experience with contracting for public proprietary facilities is analyzed based on an audit done by the State Controller's Office that showed expenditures viewed as outside contract agreements. Six public proprietary facilities are in court with the California Department of Corrections to retain these funds. It appears that the process for contracting with public proprietary facilities in California was flawed. The fact that the experiment with public proprietary facilities in California had some problems may contain some lessons for the future operation of both public and private proprietary operations.