Nancy Mullane's blog

KALW's Nancy Mullane was chosen as one of nine media witnesses for the execution of Albert Greenwood Brown that was supposed to take place on Thursday, September 30 at San Quentin Prison. Read Part II and Part III of Nancy Mullane's reflections.

Earlier this year, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation notified 6,677 people out of the 110,259 people on supervised parole they qualified for the state's new non-revocable parole status, meaning they no longer had to report in to a parole agent. 

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the union representing more than 30,000 guards working inside the state's prisons and youth facilities has posted a notice on its website today acknowledging that the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) released several hundred potentially violent inmates with, "absolutely no supervision."

California has already lost out on the first round of Federal Race to the Top Education dollars, and now because of poor relations with the teachers union and a troublesome data system, state officials may not even try to compete for the second round worth nearly $3.4 billion dollars in education grants.

Michael Cornelius has been sentenced to 316 years in state prison for burglary and assault.  Under California's Three Strikes Law, the 55 year old Berkeley man will have to serve 85% of his sentence or 268 years before he would become eligible for parole.  

State Senator Leland Yee says the President of CSU Stanislaus is hiding public documents that show how much Sarah Palin is being paid to speak at a university gala event in June.  Now Yee says he wants California's Attorney General to investigate.

Students, community leaders and a state senator all want to know how much CSU Stanislaus is paying Sarah Palin, former Governor of Alaska and former contender for vice-president of the United States to speak at the University's 50th Anniversary Gala on June 25th. 

It is generally understood that getting a college education can be a boost to a person's lifetime economic potential.  And ecomomists have assumed the most advantaged high school students get the most financial benefit from higher education.  Now researchers from UCLA report the opposite is the case, that when high school students least likely to attend college find their way to a degree, these students get the biggest financial boost from the experience. 

A half-dozen representatives of more than 100 statewide organizations are halfway through a 48 day, 400 mile march through the Central Valley from Bakersfield to Sacramento to call for restoration of quality public education and a fair tax system in the state. 

With a unanimous voice vote, last night the US Senate passed legislation that would end the controversial 100 to 1 disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing.  Currently, someone convicted of crack cocaine possession gets the same sentence as someone with 100 times that quantity in powder cocaine.  The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 would decrease the quantity disparity from 100 to-1,  to 18 to-1.