Publications

During the January 2024 review period, the OIG’s Local Inquiry Team retrospectively reviewed two random local inquiry cases that were closed by the department in June 2023 and September 2023, respectively, in order to assess the department’s performance on local inquiry cases that our office did not contemporaneously monitor.

During the December 2023 review period, the OIG’s Local Inquiry Team retrospectively reviewed 18 random local inquiry cases that were closed by the department from June through September 2023, in order to assess the department’s performance on local inquiry cases that our office did not contemporaneously monitor.

In this special review, we shed light on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s decision to address a backlog of incarcerated persons’ allegations of staff misconduct by converting them into routine grievances and sending them to local prison staff for handling instead of performing an investigation or inquiry. The decision violated both the department’s regulations and its policy for screening and investigating grievances received from incarcerated people who alleged staff misconduct. Our review found that the department’s decision to redirect these grievances to its prisons circumvented control measures that were put in place to prevent prison authorities from making potentially biased decisions when responding to allegations of staff misconduct.

During the October 2023 through November 2023 review period, the OIG’s Local Inquiry Team retrospectively reviewed six random local inquiry cases that were closed by the department in July 2023, in order to assess the department’s performance on local inquiry cases that our office did not contemporaneously monitor.

This report summarizes the medical inspections we performed at each of the 34 adult prisons operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation between March 2019 and September 2023. We rated the health care provided at 23 institutions adequate and the health care provided at 11 institutions inadequate during this inspection cycle.

This report summarizes the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s performance in conducting internal investigations and handling employee discipline cases we monitored and closed from January 1, 2023, through June 30, 2023. Of the 192 cases we monitored and closed, we rated 45 cases sufficient, 94 sufficient with recommendations, and 53 insufficient.

This report contains our assessment of the medical care provided to incarcerated persons at the California Health Care Facility between December 2021 and May 2022. We rated the overall quality of health care provided at the California Health Care Facility during this time period as inadequate.

In this special review, we assessed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s procedures for processing the transfer and bed change requests of transgender, nonbinary, and intersex incarcerated people in accordance with the requirements of the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act. We found significant delays in the transfer process; the department has only processed 55 of the 382 transfer requests made in the first two years since the Act went into effect. However, we found the department has properly responded to complaints of sexual assault, sexual misconduct, and assault involving transferees at CCWF and CIW.

This report contains our assessment of the medical care provided to incarcerated persons at Ironwood State Prison between January 2022 and June 2022. We rated the overall quality of health care provided at Ironwood State Prison during this time period as adequate.

This report summarizes the work we performed in 2022 reviewing 890 use-of-force incidents that occurred at California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (department) facilities. In this report, we present six monitored incidents in which we identified significant concerns, primarily with the refusal of several hiring authorities to refer apparent policy violations for investigation. We issued three recommendations to address concerns we identified while assessing the incidents and the various phases of the use-of-force review process.