CHINO, CA - Mike Poulos is a man on a mission.

When he was hired in mid-2005 as warden of the California Institution for Men, Poulos' marching orders were clear: Fix the prison.

So far, he hasn't shied away from the challenge.

"This institution has had a really strong transition into a whole new way of doing things," Poulos, 53, said during a tour of the prison in June. "We are changing the culture at CIM."

It's a task simply stated, yet breathtakingly difficult.

A yearlong investigation by the Daily Bulletin found that decades of mismanagement and indifference have made CIM one of the state's worst prisons.

 Assault rates at CIM's Reception Center-Central facility are among the highest in California, and years of poor or nonexistent maintenance have left the 65-year-old institution in serious disrepair.

CIM costs more to operate than any other prison in California. It has the highest number of positions held vacant, and spends the most on overtime, temporary employees and workers' compensation benefits.

Employee morale is low, as shown by the number of lawsuits and retaliation complaints filed by CIM workers. The level of medical treatment is often substandard.

These and other concerns have long been ignored by previous administrators, but if anyone is capable of righting CIM's listing ship, Poulos seems a likely candidate.

A 28-year veteran of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, his last post was chief deputy warden at Corcoran State Prison, another troubled institution where conditions have improved over the past several years.

Poulos began his corrections career at the Deuel Vocational Institute in Tracy after stints as a reserve police officer in the Northern California cities of Manteca and Patterson. He also worked at Avenal State Prison, where he was tactical commander of the prison's Special Emergency Response Team.

Officers at the Chino prison give him generally high marks, though some believe the new warden's ability to effect change is hampered by department leadership in Sacramento.

"I have a tremendous amount of respect for Warden Mike Poulos," wrote one officer in an e-mail. Those officers who spoke with the Daily Bulletin requested anonymity.

In an e-mail, another officer described the warden: "Not bad; good communicator; likes to be transparent, but the state will only allow so much transparency."

Not everyone is convinced. "It's still the same," said one officer in an interview, who believes most of the changes at CIM since Poulos arrived are "superficial."

But the new warden still has fans. "After watching Mike in action, I will always have his back," wrote one officer on an online message board after a riot at the prison last year. "CIM needs this type of person at the helm to get us through the storm."

Poulos' presence at the Chino prison is the result of the killing last year of Officer Manuel Gonzalez, a veteran correctional officer stabbed to death on a tier in Reception Center-Central. An inmate is awaiting trial on murder charges stemming from the killing.

After Gonzalez's death, the prison system's Inspector General released a blistering report detailing the failures at CIM that led to the incident. Another report, from a specially appointed board of outside prison experts, pointed out many of the same breakdowns.

In response, department officials fired Warden Lori Di Carlo and her two top deputies. Many who work in the prison are divided over whether Di Carlo deserves all the blame for the killing and whether she took the fall for higher-ups in Sacramento.

"Sending Lori Di Carlo away wasn't the answer," said officers union president Martin Aroian. "She may have needed to go away a another. But it wouldn't have mattered who our warden was. The fix has to start (in headquarters) -- you can't start it in the middle."

The investigative reports also spurred a top-to-bottom review of the institution by a team of officers, administrators and others from across California's prison system. They interviewed staff, analyzed records, reviewed policies and observed the prison in action.

The result was a "corrective action plan" that outlined dozens of improvements intended to resolve the issues detailed in the first reports.

Many of the recommendations are one-time fixes, like inspecting the prison for maintenance needs and developing new procedures for medical emergencies.

But others aren't so simple. Consider recommendation No. 3, which asks officials to "remind all custody staff of the importance of carefully reading and following post orders."

If employees spent years doing their jobs the wrong way, as the recommendation implies, how easily can the old habits be changed?

"I feel that is always a work in progress," Poulos said.

The progress to this point has been substantial.

Hundreds of officers and their supervisors went through additional training. New procedures were put in place, including requiring staff to sign a sheet indicating they'd read the day's post orders and conducted the required cell searches.

New inmates -- who arrive at CIM throughout the day every day -- now are run through the computerized records system to determine their custody level, regardless of what time they're received at the prison.

That change was recommended after it was determined numerous inmates were being held in general population cells when their history required them to be segregated from other prisoners.

Problems remain. Tool inventories are still inadequate in some locations, meaning a potential weapon could go missing and no one would notice, according to an internal report. A review team that recently went through the institution also identified a handful of security deficiencies, such as locations where inmates could conceal themselves or climb prison walls.

But Poulos emphasizes how far CIM has come since Gonzalez's killing, rather than focusing on the prison's remaining shortcomings.

For example, it's true that for a few days earlier this year, some post order sign-off sheets weren't signed by every officer required to sign them. But as the warden points out, CIM didn't even have those sheets last year.

"The policies have been written, the procedures have been drafted. We've gone out and provided the training to staff," he said. "Now, it is maintaining and re-emphasizing the policies and the procedures (and) what we should be doing."

 Much has been made of CIM's aging facilities and obsolete design, both of which place staff and inmates at greater risk of assault and injury.

Now, for the first time in years, officials at the prison are taking steps to resolve those concerns:

* Expandable metal screens have been installed over the cell bars in Reception Center-Central's Sycamore Hall. The improvement means inmates can no longer reach through the bars to assault officers or pass items -- such as weapons or drugs -- to other cells.

* Lockable ports for meal trays will be installed in solid cell doors in Central's Madrone Hall, so officers will no longer have to open the cells to feed inmates.

* Waist-high railings were installed on the second- and third-level walkways have been extended to the ceiling, making it impossible for someone to be thrown off the tier.

That improvement was recommended in a 1986 report by the state's auditor general, but never funded by the department.

* Broken windows in Madrone Hall will be replaced with steel covers that don't allow inmates to "fish" items from one cell to another -- a practice that involves tying contraband to a string and swinging it out one window and into another.

"The covers have to have holes in them, for air circulation, but the openings are too small to reach through," said Lt. Tim Shirlock during a tour in June.

* An electric fence will be installed around Reception Center-Central, to forestall potential escapes. CIM's two other reception centers, East and West, already have the fences.

Poulos keeps a length of corroded plumbing pipe in his office, mounted with a plaque that says "1938 - 2006." The Depression-era underground water pipe burst earlier this year, and the warden saved it to show visitors so they'd understand the kind of infrastructure problems CIM faces.

More substantially, the department is considering whether to transfer reception center operations from CIM to California State Prison-Los Angeles County in Lancaster.

The move would be part of a broader effort to halt new inmate processing at three of the state's oldest prisons -- CIM, San Quentin and Deuel Vocational Institution.

If that change goes forward, CIM's Reception Center-Central will house medium- to maximum-security inmates with mild mental illnesses in what the department calls its "enhanced outpatient" program.

Those are inmates whose conditions don't allow them to be housed in the general population, but who are not so severely impaired that they require hospitalization.

"The reception centers are going to be moved to the newer facilities, which are a better design," Shirlock said.