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| State releases injured prisoner |
| By San Jose Mercury News |
| Published: 02/15/2005 |
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After spending more than $30,000 in taxpayer funds to guard an inmate who is brain-dead, California's prison authorities released Daniel Provencio to his family Monday and relieved the officers who watched him around the clock. ``We'll credit him with time served and cut him loose,'' said Todd Slosek, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections. The Mercury News first reported that Provencio was shackled and under 24-hour guard at a cost of $1,056 a day in overtime. The ensuing controversy prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to label his own administration's policy as ``ludicrous.'' Soon afterward, the department unshackled the 28-year-old felon from Oxnard. Provencio's case was the most visible example of a longtime state policy whereby all sick or injured inmates who are treated outside prison walls are required to be escorted and guarded by two officers. The Mercury News reported how the cost of transporting and guarding inmates who are comatose or incapacitated has jumped 61 percent to more than $30 million annually. In the wake of those reports and the mounting cost of guarding Provencio, the department has launched a broad review of the policy of guarding bedridden inmates taken outside prison walls for treatment. Provencio was hit in the head with a rubber projectile shot by a guard during a disturbance at Wasco State Prison on Jan. 16. As he's lingered in an intensive care unit at Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield, his case has raised questions about the credibility of the $6.5 billion-a-year prison system, especially its ability to adequately provide health care for the 165,000 inmates in the state's 32 prisons. Monday, Provencio was technically discharged by the Board of Prison Terms. |
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