Â鶹ŮÓÅ

The state has regained full control of one of its prisons for the first time since 2006, when a federal court stripped California of control over its sprawling inmate healthcare system. J. Clark Kelso, the overseer of prison medical care and spending, returned responsibility for the health of some 2,400 inmates at Folsom State Prison to California’s corrections department on Monday. (St. John, 7/13)

California on Monday began regaining responsibility for its prison health care system after nearly a decade of federal control and billions of dollars in improvements. A court-appointed receiver returned medical care at Folsom State Prison to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the first of many steps toward ending a long-running lawsuit. The decision comes a decade after a federal judge found that conditions in the state's prisons were so poor that an average of an inmate each week was dying of medical malpractice or neglect. A receiver was appointed to run the system in 2006. Since then, the state has spent $2 billion for new prison medical facilities, doubled its annual prison health care budget to nearly $1.7 billion and reduced its prison population by more than 40,000 inmates. (Thompson, 7/13)