Citing a "staff culture of targeting inmates with disabilities" within California prisons, a federal appellate court on Thursday upheld the legality of a set of measures aimed at improving the behavior of correctional officers.
The reforms, first ordered by a federal District Court judge in 2020 in response to prisoner complaints in a long-standing lawsuit against the state, include a requirement that officers in six state prisons wear video cameras and that the number of stationary cameras in prisons be increased. They also require the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to add more supervisors to prison staffs, and improve processes for investigating, tracking and disciplining officers who abuse prisoners.
On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld the lower court's orders, finding the mandated changes were necessary in light of persistent abuse of disabled prisoners and the state's "prior failures to improve their accountability systems in the absence of specific, court-ordered instructions."
