Tagged With "inmates"

By The Times Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times, November 1, 2019 As California continues to burn, the state’s firefighters have spent day after day in the searing heat and ferocious wind, hiking toward the flames, cutting fire lines and protecting homes. It’s grueling, heroic work that saves lives and prevents more devastation. And sometimes, it’s done by prison inmates. Among the thousands of federal, state and local firefighters on the fire lines, there are also more than 2,500 prisoners...

By Maria Dinzeo, Courthouse News Service, February 3, 2020 For years, the city and county of San Francisco has housed inmates awaiting trial in tiny cells, letting them out for only a few hours a day for exercise and often depriving them of any time outdoors, but conditions are set to improve for some after a federal judge ruled Friday that pretrial detainees incarcerated for more than four years must be given at least one hour a week of access to direct sunlight. The order handed down by...

By Nate Gartrell and Annie Sciacca, The Mercury News, April 16, 2020 Arrests that result in jail bookings have dropped to staggeringly low rates throughout Contra Costa, in response to state and local directives aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 in the county jail system. Over the past 30 days, the rate of new inmates being booked in Contra Costa jails fell by 84 percent, from a norm of roughly 60 per day to roughly 10 per day, Sheriff David Livingston told the county Board of...