The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation shall do all of the following:
(a) Create a Female Offender Reform Master Plan, and shall present this plan to the Legislature by March 1, 2008.
(b) Create policies and operational practices that are designed to ensure a safe and productive institutional environment for female offenders.
(c) Contract with nationally recognized gender responsive experts in prison operational practices staffing, classification, substance abuse, trauma treatment services, mental health services, transitional services, and community corrections to do both of the following:
(1) Conduct a staffing analysis of all current job classifications assigned to each prison that houses only females. The department shall provide a plan to the Legislature by March 1, 2009, that incorporates those recommendations and details the changes that are needed to address any identified unmet needs of female inmates.
(2) Develop programs and training for department staff in correctional facilities.
(d) Create a gender responsive female classification system.
(e) Create a gender responsive staffing pattern for female institutions and community-based offender beds.
(f) Create a needs-based case and risk management tool designed specifically for female offenders. This tool shall include, but not be limited to, an assessment upon intake, and annually thereafter, that gauges an inmate’s educational and vocational needs, including reading, writing, communication, and arithmetic skills, health care needs, mental health needs, substance abuse needs, and trauma-treatment needs. The initial assessment shall include projections for academic, vocational, health care, mental health, substance abuse, and trauma-treatment needs, and shall be used to determine appropriate programming and as a measure of progress in subsequent assessments of development.
(g) Design and implement evidence-based gender specific rehabilitative programs, including “wraparound” educational, health care, mental health, vocational, substance abuse and trauma treatment programs that are designed to reduce female offender recidivism. These programs shall include, but not be limited to, educational programs that include academic preparation in the areas of verbal communication skills, reading, writing, arithmetic, and the acquisition of high school diplomas and GEDs, and vocational preparation, including counseling and training in marketable skills, and job placement information.
(h) Build and strengthen systems of family support and family involvement during the period of the female’s incarceration.
(i) Establish a family service coordinator at each prison that houses only females.
(Added by Stats. 2007, Ch. 706, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2008.)