Report 2010-118 Highlights - May 2011
California Prison Industry Authority:
It Can More Effectively Meet Its Goals of Maximizing Inmate Employment, Reducing Recidivism, and Remaining Self-Sufficient
HIGHLIGHTS
Our review of the California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA) revealed the following:
- It cannot determine its impact on post-release inmate employability because it lacks reliable data.
- It is unable to match parolees' social security numbers from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's (Corrections) information system to employment data from the Employment Development Department.
- In attempting to use another of Corrections' databases to track employment data, we noted it contained numerous errors—we found more than 33,000 instances of erroneous parolee employer information.
- Although CALPIA created a set of comprehensive performance indicators, several of these indicators are either vague or not measurable.
- Since 2004 it has introduced only a modest number of new revenue-generating enterprises while it has closed, deactivated, or reduced the capacity of six enterprises at 10 locations throughout the State.
- Although CALPIA prepared pricing analyses to support its product-pricing decisions, it did not document the basis for how it determines profit margins and in some instances, we found no analysis of market considerations.
