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By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times – September 25, 2011, 6:54 p.m. Federal authorities are investigating allegations of inmate beatings and other misconduct by deputies in Los Angeles County jails, with FBI agents going so far as to sneak a cellphone to an inmate to get reports from inside, according to law enforcement sources. The inquiries include allegations...

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By Tracey Kaplan – Mercury News – Posted: 09/25/2011 06:31:25 AM PDT To trim its bulging prison population and cut costs, California is about to gamble on a strategy no other state has tried — unload the responsibility for punishing and rehabilitating thousands of nonviolent felons from the state prison system to local communities. The state’s new massive...

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(KGET-TV) Probation officers with the “high risk offender” unit routinely search homes for weapons and drugs. But this unit – charged with keeping the community safe – is about to get a whole lot busier once hundreds of felons return to Kern County. “With the new changes comes challenges,” JJ Zahry, Supervisor High Risk Offender Unit, said. It’s...

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Megan Hansen/Times-Standard – Posted: 09/25/2011 02:40:31 AM PDT Saturday marked the start of the state’s cost-saving realignment plan for adult offenders, and county officials said they’re as prepared as possible for its implementation. Public safety realignment, also known as Assembly bills 109 and 117, transfers the responsibility of low-risk offenders from the state to counties. Offenders committing crimes...

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The San Diego Union-Tribune – SAN DIEGO — County officials have been working for months to figure out how to deal with a state mandate that would send thousands of low-level criminals to jails rather than prison and require some parolees to be supervised locally. It was a difficult balancing act, the officials said, between working within the...

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By Scott Beaulieu – NBCConnecticut.com There is a new tool in the ongoing war on drugs and it comes from a forensic scientist at the University of New Haven. Heather Miller Coyle, an associate professor in the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences is setting up a national databank that will allow law enforcement...

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(AP) NEW YORK — The day Barbara Sheehan shot her husband to death, she said, she was trying to leave him. She had hidden cash because he often took her wallet. She had told him she wasn’t traveling with him to Florida. That made him angry, she said, so angry he threatened to kill her, which happened frequently...

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Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writer- San Francisco Chronicle SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco district attorney’s office, which hired a specialist in DNA evidence to help bring unsolved murder and rape cases to trial, is now dealing with the fallout from its decision to keep secret an internal memo the veteran lawyer wrote about the Police Department’s DNA...

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Executive Committee Diana Becton, Presiding Judge Cynthia Belon, Health Services Philip Kader, Chief Probation Officer (Chair) Robin Lipetzky, Public Defender David Livingston, Sheriff-Coroner Chris Magnus, Chief, Richmond Police Department Mark A. Peterson, District Attorney Contra-Costa-CountyAB109 DRAFT-2011-Implementation-Plan 9-15-11 Read more: California – Contra Costa County – 2011/12 Public Safety Realignment Implementation Plan

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By Marissa Boyers Bluestine – Philadelphia Inquirer Witness misidentification is a leading cause of wrongful conviction, having contributed to 75 percent of the 273 convictions that have been disproved by DNA evidence nationwide, and nine of Pennsylvania’s 11 such convictions. The problem got worldwide attention with this week’s execution in Georgia of Troy Davis, which went forward even...