(a) The Inspector General shall be responsible for contemporaneous oversight of internal affairs investigations and the disciplinary process of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, pursuant to Section 6133 under policies to be developed by the Inspector General.
(b) When requested by the Governor, the Senate Committee on Rules, or the Speaker of the Assembly, the Inspector General shall initiate an audit or review of policies, practices, and procedures of the department. The Inspector General may, under policies developed by the Inspector General, initiate an audit or review on the Inspector General’s own accord. Following a completed audit or review, the Inspector General may perform a followup audit or review to determine what measures the department implemented to address the Inspector General’s findings and to assess the effectiveness of those measures.
(c) (1) Upon completion of an audit or review pursuant to subdivision (b), the Inspector General shall prepare a complete written report, which may be held as confidential and disclosed in confidence, along with all underlying materials the Inspector General deems appropriate, to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and to the requesting entity in subdivision (b), where applicable.
(2) The Inspector General shall also prepare a public report. When necessary, the public report shall differ from the complete written report in the respect that the Inspector General shall have the discretion to redact or otherwise protect the names of individuals, specific locations, or other facts that, if not redacted, might hinder prosecution related to the review, compromise the safety and security of staff, inmates, or members of the public, or where disclosure of the information is otherwise prohibited by law, and to decline to produce any of the underlying materials. Copies of public reports shall be posted on the Office of the Inspector General’s internet website.
(d) The Inspector General shall, during the course of an audit or review, identify areas of full and partial compliance, or noncompliance, with departmental policies and procedures, specify deficiencies in the completion and documentation of processes, and recommend corrective actions, including, but not limited to, additional training, additional policies, or changes in policy, as well as any other findings or recommendations that the Inspector General deems appropriate.
(e) The Inspector General, pursuant to Section 6126.6, shall review the Governor’s candidates for appointment to serve as warden for the state’s adult correctional institutions and as superintendents for the state’s juvenile facilities.
(f) The Inspector General shall conduct an objective, clinically appropriate, and metric-oriented medical inspection program to periodically review delivery of medical care at each state prison.
(g) The Inspector General shall conduct an objective, metric-oriented oversight and inspection program to periodically review delivery of the reforms identified in the document released by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in April 2012, entitled The Future of California Corrections: A Blueprint to Save Billions of Dollars, End Federal Court Oversight, and Improve the Prison System (the blueprint), including, but not limited to, the following specific goals and reforms described by the blueprint:
(1) Whether the department has increased the percentage of inmates served in rehabilitative programs to 70 percent of the department’s target population prior to their release.
(2) The establishment of an adherence to the standardized staffing model at each institution.
(3) The establishment of an adherence to the new inmate classification score system.
(4) The establishment of and adherence to the new prison gang management system, including changes to the department’s current policies for identifying prison-based gang members and associates and the use and conditions associated with the department’s security housing units.
(5) The implementation of and adherence to the Comprehensive Housing Plan described in the blueprint.
(h) The Inspector General shall, in consultation with the Department of Finance, develop a methodology for producing a workload budget to be used for annually adjusting the budget of the Office of the Inspector General, beginning with the budget for the 2005–06 fiscal year.
(i) The Inspector General shall provide contemporaneous oversight of grievances that fall within the department’s process for reviewing and investigating inmate allegations of staff misconduct and other specialty grievances, examining compliance with regulations, department policy, and best practices. This contemporaneous oversight shall be completed within the Inspector General’s budget excluding resources that, beginning in the Budget Act of 2019, were provided to restore the Inspector General’s ability to initiate an audit or review pursuant to subdivision (a). The contemporaneous oversight shall be completed in a way that does not unnecessarily slow the department’s review and investigation of inmate allegations of staff misconduct and other specialty grievances. The Inspector General shall issue reports annually, beginning in 2021.
(j) The Inspector General shall monitor the department’s process for reviewing uses of force and shall issue reports annually.
(Amended by Stats. 2019, Ch. 364, Sec. 12. (SB 112) Effective September 27, 2019.)