Attorney General Bonta announced he is opening a wide-ranging civil rights investigation into the sheriff’s office.

A second inmate at the Elmwood Correctional Facility in Milpitas was also found unconscious in the jail bathroom, was revived and is hospitalized in stable condition. Neither man was identified by the Sheriff’s Office.

Two inmates who broke out of Santa Clara County jail the day before Thanksgiving will face additional charges after their re-capture.

Inmates are dying, jail guards are breaking laws and sending racist texts, and worse, some may even be raping the men and women behind bars.

An Atlanta judge last week sentenced eight public school teachers, principals and administrators to jail for conspiring to inflate students' state test scores. The sentencing was a tragic end to the Atlanta testing scandals that began in 2009.

Ex-county supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. attempted to pull strings from jail last year, according to new court filings from his political mail fraud trial. And in what could become a showdown over the use of the Fifth Amendment, the District Attorney's office plans to offer former San Jose Councilman Xavier Campos immunity in exchange for his testimony.

A new ballot initiative seeks to address the unduly harsh punishments tens of thousands of Californians face for nonviolent offenses. The proposal, sponsored by former San Jose Police Chief Bill Lansdowne, would reduce penalties for certain low-level drug and petty theft crimes.

In the end, it took longer to put former county Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. in jail than the time he actually served. But that might not be the case for long.

Santa Clara County will consider an ordinance to punish employers for wage theft, a charge that would disqualify businesses from public contracts and give workers a formal recourse to lodge complaints against stingy bosses. The motion going before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday would direct the county to come up with a draft ordinance over the coming months. Supervisor Dave Cortese brought forward the idea, citing a 2008 study by the National Employment Law Project that says two-thirds of the 4,387 low-wage workers polled in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago were denied full compensation.

Given that clientele often overlaps, Santa Clara County will integrate its departments of Drug and Alcohol Services and Mental Health. Also, on the agenda for Tuesday’s county Board of Supervisors meeting: a new name for the South County Airport, making campaign disclosure forms available online and funding an anti-terrorism law enforcement communications network.

The people in charge of providing financial and protective services for Santa Clara County residents run a department lacking structure and accountability, according to a just-released Civil Grand Jury audit that goes before the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. Other items on the board agenda include grand jury reviews for health inspections of food trucks and farmers markets, and a review of Juvenile Hall.

Santa Clara County inmates will continue receiving mail after jail officials abandoned a contentious plan to limit correspondence to just postcards. Jail chief John Hirokawa originally brought up the idea earlier this summer in hopes of limiting the amount of drugs smuggled in through envelopes or postage stamps. But the community put up a fight, saying the mail restriction could dry up prisoners’ ties with friends, family and life outside their cell. The county jail and Elmwood Correctional Facility receive about 200,000 pieces of mail a year. If the postcard-only policy passed, the county would have become the first in Northern California to enact such a ban and one of a few-dozen in the nation.

The sheriff’s office recently proposed limiting all mail sent to inmates to postcards instead of the envelope-enclosed letters currently allowed. Sorting through the 200,000 letters a year is tedious, jail officials say. Some of the letters are soaked, spliced or stamped with drugs: PCP, acid, meth and other contraband. Some contain needles. Some hide gang communications. The idea of switching to simply postcards—outside of inmates’ communications with their attorneys—would save money and time. But families and friends of inmates, as well as community activists, argue that the change would constitute a civil rights violation and endanger the rehabilitation of those incarcerated.

Most people do not consider jail inmates to be an empathic interest group. But many in custody are innocent, as they have not yet been proven guilty, and as a matter of law and right they must be treated justly. That’s why the Santa Clara County Department of Corrections (DOC) was right in halting a new proposal to limit mail in county jails.

The last week of September was busy for Gov. Jerry Brown, as he signed and vetoed bill after bill. A bill that many justice advocates were watching was SB 9, called the Fair Sentencing for Youth Act and authored by San Francisco Senator Leland Yee. The bill carved out a narrow opportunity for certain adults who were convicted as juveniles—serving life sentences without the possibility of parole—to appeal for resentencing. The Governor signed the bill September 30. 

County Supervisor George Shirakawa waded into the fight over who’s to blame for the rise in crime in San Jose Thursday afternoon, releasing a statement voicing his displeasure with comments San Jose Councilmember Sam Liccardo made to the media. In response, Liccardo shrugged before calling out Nora Campos for her letter to San Jose’s police chief. Go ahead and click through, because this gets good.