SPECIAL REPORT
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Monitoring of
Employee Discipline

OFFICE OF THE
INSPECTOR GENERAL
STATE OF CALIFORNIA

MARCH 2011

Bruce A. Monfross, Inspector General (A)

Office of the Inspector General

March 29,2011

Matthew L. Cate, Secretary
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
1515 S street, Room 502 South
Sacramento, California 95814
Dear Mr. Cate:
Enclosed is the Office of the Inspector General's report concerning the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation's (CDCR) imposition of disciplinary actions against employees
who violate CDCR policies, state laws, or regulations governing employee conduct. Our review
ofCDCR's disciplinary process examined the department's compliance with its own policies
concerning tracking and reporting of employee discipline cases, and tested a sample of cases to
determine whether prescribed penalties were actually imposed on employees found to have
committed misconduct.
The report concludes that the department does not adhere to its policies for tracking and
reporting employee discipline cases, and does not prepare required quarterly reports of
disciplinary statistics or required annual reports on the effectiveness ofCDCR's disciplinary
process. Further, in following up on past disciplinary cases, our sample disclosed cases in which
the prescribed monetary discipline was misapplied, causing employees to be either over- or
under-penalized. In some cases, the prescribed discipline was not imposed at all. Finally, our
report found cases in which financial penalties imposed upon disciplined employees were never
collected.
If you have any questions concerning this report, please contact Bill Shepherd, Deputy Inspector
General, In-Charge, Bureau of Audits, at (916) 830-3600.
Sincerely,

OSS
)
Enclosure
cc:

Scott Kernan, Undersecretary, Operations, CDCR
Elizabeth Siggins, Chief Deputy Secretary, Adult Programs, CDCR
George Giurbino, Director, Adult Institutions, CDCR
Kim Holt, External Audits Manager, CDCR

P.O.

Box 348780,

Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Governor
95834-8780 PHONE (916) 830-3600

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

FAX

(916) 928-4684

Contents
Executive Summary ..................................................................................... 1
Introduction .................................................................................................. 4
Background ....................................................................................... 4
Objectives, Scope, and Methodology ............................................... 5
Review Results ............................................................................................ 7
Finding 1 ...................................................................................................... 7
CDCR has not complied with court-ordered policies requiring
reports on employee discipline cases
Finding 2 ...................................................................................................... 11
Failure to correctly assess disciplinary pay reductions
Appendix A: Employee Discipline Reporting Process and Responsibilities . 16
Appendix B: Summary of Adverse Action Errors ......................................... 17
Appendix C: CDCR Institution Abbreviations and Names ............................ 18
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Response.......... 19

Executive Summary
This report presents the results of a special review by the Office of the Inspector General
(OIG) into the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR)
imposition of disciplinary actions against employees who violate CDCR policies, state
laws, or regulations governing employee conduct.
Pursuant to the Madrid v. Gomez lawsuit (Madrid), CDCR has established a detailed
process to report and investigate alleged employee misconduct and has formalized the
imposition of discipline for employees found to have committed misconduct. The final
step of this disciplinary process is the actual imposition of the identified penalty. Our
review of CDCR’s disciplinary process focused on determining whether penalties were
actually imposed for employees found to have committed misconduct. Our review
determined the following:
•

CDCR does not adhere to Department Operations Manual (DOM), policies
regarding the tracking and reporting of employee discipline cases. More
specifically, the Employee Discipline Unit (EDU) does not maintain copies of all
adverse action documents within a centralized repository. In addition, the
Employment Advocacy and Prosecution Team (EAPT) does not prepare required
quarterly reports of disciplinary statistics. Finally, the Office of Legal Affairs and
Office of Internal Affairs have not prepared required annual reports on the
effectiveness of CDCR’s disciplinary process. As a result, CDCR is not able to
benefit from information to assist it in identifying misconduct trends and
allocating appropriate resources to combat disciplinary problems identified
through a department-wide review of adverse action cases. Further, CDCR limits
its ability to oversee, monitor, and ensure the complete, timely, and accurate
imposition of disciplinary penalties by the hiring authority, such as a warden or
parole administrator.

•

Although generally accurate, prison personnel office employees sometimes made
clerical and calculation errors when establishing financial penalties in the payroll
system, causing some employees to fully or partially escape penalty, while
causing others to be over penalized. Of 100 cases reviewed, we identified 14
specific errors occurring in our sample. The errors fell into one or more of the
following general categories:
Failure to impose the disciplinary penalty. We discovered three cases, in
which an adverse action was authorized by the hiring authority, yet personnel
office employees did not enter the prescribed financial penalty into the payroll
system to reduce the employee’s wages; as a result, the penalty was never
imposed.
Failure to stop punitive actions on the scheduled end date. We found four
instances in which employees were over-penalized because personnel office

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

1
State of California

employees failed to make an entry in the payroll system to end a financial
penalty.
Miscalculation of financial penalty or pay restoration. In four cases, prison
personnel office employees made either clerical or calculation errors in
determining the financial penalty assessed against the disciplined employee.
For example, one case involved an employee who was assessed a 10 percent
salary reduction for twelve months. However, when the penalty ended the
personnel staff restored his pay by only five percent. The employee continued
to be underpaid by five percent for 11 months until OIG inspectors informed
the prison of this error and back pay of $2,503 was issued to the employee.
Failure to collect monies owed by employees from disciplinary actions. When
a financial penalty is not initiated in the payroll system on time, CDCR must
establish an account receivable and collect the amount owed by the employee
through a payroll deduction. OIG inspectors found three instances in which
CDCR failed to initiate a payroll deduction to collect accounts receivable
from disciplined employees.
Recommendations
The Office of the Inspector General recommends that the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation take the following actions:
•

Ensure that the department collects and maintains copies of adverse action
documents, as required by DOM Sections 33030.5.4 and 33030.5.6.

•

Ensure that the Employment Advocacy and Prosecution Team prepare quarterly
reports of adverse action cases, as mandated by DOM Section 33030.31.

•

Ensure that the Office of Legal Affairs, in conjunction with the Office of Internal
Affairs, audits the effectiveness of the employee discipline process annually, as
required by DOM Section 33030.32.

•

If it believes the reporting and auditing requirements for employee discipline as
described in DOM Sections 33030.31 and 33030.32 should be changed, the
department should initiate the changes.

•

Require that key hiring authority representatives for adverse action cases discuss
and monitor new and on-going cases with institution personnel to ensure that all
cases are accounted for, processed promptly and fully completed, and that each
responsible party is held accountable for performing their required duties.

.
•

Remind all personnel employees to use the official method of calculating payroll
reductions as currently identified in the California State Civil Service Pay Scale
Manual.

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

2
State of California

•

Follow established department procedures intended to ensure that disciplinary
penalties begin and end on the dates identified in the notice of adverse action.

•

For salary reductions that are not fully collected, establish and collect payroll
accounts receivable from the affected employee.

•

For employees who have paid financial penalties in excess of amounts owed,
promptly repay the employees all amounts due.

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

3
State of California

Introduction
Fair and consistent consequences for employee misconduct in the California Department
of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is not only a prudent business practice, it is
mandated by the federal court. In Madrid v. Gomez1 (Madrid), the federal court noted
that a meaningful disciplinary system is essential, arguing that if there are no penalties
imposed for misconduct, the underlying policies and procedures become ineffective. In
response to the court’s mandate to implement a meaningful disciplinary system, CDCR
established Chapter 3, Article 22, of the Department Operations Manual (DOM), which
requires that “all disciplinary action be imposed in a fair, objective, and impartial
manner,” and specifies that CDCR “shall consistently apply accepted principles of due
process and progressive discipline when corrective or adverse action is imposed.” To
determine if penalties were actually imposed, OIG inspectors reviewed a sample of
disciplinary cases. We conducted this review under the authority of California Penal
Code section 6126(a) (1), which assigns the Office of the Inspector General responsibility
for oversight of CDCR.

Background
Hiring authorities are individuals authorized by the Secretary of CDCR to hire, discipline,
and dismiss employees. These authorities include parole administrators, wardens,
superintendents, and various headquarters personnel. Each hiring authority is responsible
for taking “adverse action”—that is, imposing penalties—whenever warranted by an
employee’s conduct and for ensuring that such penalties are imposed fairly and
objectively. The hiring authority determines an appropriate penalty by using the
Employee Disciplinary Matrix established in CDCR’s policy. Depending on the
seriousness of the misconduct, the hiring authority can impose one of nine penalty levels
from the Employee Disciplinary Matrix, including official reprimand, work suspension or
salary reduction for a specified period, demotion, or dismissal. After determining a
penalty based on the Employee Disciplinary Matrix, the hiring authority communicates
that penalty to the employee by preparing and serving a Notice of Adverse Action
(NOAA). The NOAA articulates to the employee the charges on which the proposed
penalty is based and the date on which the proposed penalty takes effect. It also informs
the employee of their right to a Skelly Hearing2 and their right to appeal the case to the
State Personnel Board.
Employee misconduct investigations are conducted by CDCR’s Office of Internal
Affairs. In some instances, the Office of the Inspector General’s Bureau of Independent
Review (BIR) monitors internal affairs investigations conducted by the Office of Internal
Affairs and the hiring authority. For example, the BIR monitors cases involving abuse of
1

Madrid v. Gomez, 889 F. Supp. 1146, 1156 (N.D. Cal. 1995).
A Skelly Hearing is an informal proceeding in which the employee, along with his or her representative,
is provided an opportunity to respond to management regarding the charges in the Notice of Adverse
Action.

2

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

4
State of California

authority, use of deadly force, use of significant force with injury, employee dishonesty,
lack of integrity, and serious allegations against supervisors and managers. If the hiring
authority imposes discipline based upon evidence obtained during the investigation, the
hiring authority consults with the department’s attorney and the BIR regarding the
appropriateness of the penalty. However, the BIR has not historically used its monitoring
authority to confirm that CDCR actually imposes on its employees the financial penalties
reported to the BIR at the conclusion of each case, nor was it ever charged with doing so.
The parties responsible for completing certain tasks in the employee discipline process
vary, depending on whether the employee works at an adult prison, a parole office,
CDCR headquarters, or the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). Each of California’s 33
correctional institutions and four regional parole offices has an Employee Relations
Officer (ERO), who serves as the disciplinary officer. The ERO monitors and coordinates
the adverse action process and drafts Notices of Adverse Actions (NOAA) for all cases
that are not designated for assignment to a department attorney. For cases originating at
CDCR’s headquarters offices, regional parole offices, and the Department of Juvenile
Justice (DJJ), CDCR’s Employee Discipline Unit (EDU) drafts NOAA’s and may
represent CDCR before the State Personnel Board.
For employee discipline cases processed at prisons, the respective prison’s personnel
office processes payroll transactions that impose financial penalties such as salary
reductions or suspensions. For disciplinary cases originating at the CDCR’s headquarters
offices, regional parole offices, or the DJJ, CDCR’s Office of Personnel Services
Transactions Unit processes such payroll transactions.

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology
The objective of the review is to assess whether CDCR is complying with policies and
procedures established in the Madrid litigation regarding employee discipline. To
determine if CDCR is meeting employee discipline reporting requirements, we reviewed
the Madrid litigation which ordered CDCR to enact Chapter 3, Article 22 of the DOM.
We then examined this DOM section to understand the reporting process for employee
discipline (see Appendix A). Finally, we interviewed several employee relations officers,
management from the Office of Legal Affairs, and the Office of Internal Affairs to
determine the current process for reporting employee discipline.
To determine whether CDCR is completely and correctly implementing disciplinary
penalties, OIG inspectors reviewed a statewide sample of employee disciplinary cases.
To understand CDCR’s employee discipline process, we reviewed relevant state laws and
regulations as well as CDCR policies and procedures, and we interviewed personnel from
employee relations and personnel offices at CDCR headquarters, at various prisons, and
at a regional parole office. In addition, we conducted a site visit to a CDCR institution to
investigate specific allegations of failure to implement disciplinary penalties.
To select our sample, we obtained from CDCR a statewide listing of employee
disciplinary actions involving financial penalties. We targeted salary reductions and
Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

5
State of California

suspensions because they have a direct monetary impact upon the employee when
imposed and because their imposition is easily verified. The list included 1,219 adverse
action cases with effective dates between January 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009. We
sampled 100 cases from this list involving either suspension without pay for ten or more
days, or a salary reduction of at least five percent for six or more months. For each
sampled case, we recalculated the prescribed financial penalty and compared our result
with the penalty shown within the state payroll system, noting whether the penalty was
imposed, and if so, was it imposed correctly. In addition, we reviewed supporting
documents such as Notices of Adverse Action and Stipulation Agreements in employee
adverse action files to confirm that the final financial penalty imposed through the
adverse action process was properly imposed.
The scope of our review was limited because, as discussed in Finding 1, EDU’s database
of adverse actions does not include all adverse action cases. The statewide sample we
selected for review was limited to those cases in the EDU adverse action database, which
contains only the cases it received. We were unable to determine the extent to which the
EDU’s files are complete.

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

6
State of California

Review Results
We found that CDCR does not adhere to its policies in the Department Operation Manual
(DOM) requiring the Employee Discipline Unit (EDU) to collect and maintain a separate
repository of all adverse action documents. Further, CDCR does not adhere to its policies
requiring quarterly reporting by its Employment Advocacy and Prosecution Team
(EAPT) on statistics for disciplinary cases, and require annual reporting by the Office of
Legal Affairs in conjunction with the Office of Internal Affairs on the effectiveness of the
department’s disciplinary process. As a result, CDCR limits its ability to oversee,
monitor, and ensure the complete, timely, and accurate disposition of disciplinary
penalties. Further, CDCR is not able to benefit from information to help it identify
misconduct trends among its staff and allocate appropriate resources to combat
disciplinary problems that might be identified through a system-wide review of adverse
action cases. The employee discipline reporting process and responsibilities are charted in
Appendix A.
In our review of 100 disciplinary cases involving financial penalties imposed on CDCR
employees, we found 14 errors involving 11 employees at different prisons who did not
receive the correct penalty as a result of those errors. Employees were both under- and
over-penalized, with the errors ranging from a $6,949 penalty not collected to a penalty
over-collected from the employee by $2,503. Most of the errors resulted because
personnel employees did not initiate the payroll deduction to collect the penalty, did not
stop the deduction at the scheduled time, or started the deduction late. Other errors
resulted from incorrect calculations. All of these errors undermine a principal tenant of
discipline - that disciplinary penalties be consistently applied to all affected employees.
Appendix B provides a complete listing of the errors we discovered.

Finding 1
CDCR has not complied with court-ordered policies
requiring reports on employee discipline cases
In late December 2005, the court in Madrid ordered CDCR to implement the
department’s proposed modifications to employee discipline policies. The modifications
required CDCR to maintain a separate repository of all adverse action documents,
provide quarterly reports on adverse actions to the Secretary of CDCR beginning March
2006, and complete an annual audit of the effectiveness of its disciplinary process. CDCR
has not complied with these requirements. As a result, CDCR is not in compliance with
those policies and is not able to benefit from information to help it identify and address
any patterns of employee misconduct.

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

7
State of California

Centralized Repository of Adverse Actions Not Implemented
The Employee Discipline Unit (EDU) does not maintain copies of all adverse action
documents within a centralized repository. In order to prepare accurate and relevant
quarterly reports and annual audits, CDCR must first compile information from all of its
employee disciplinary actions.
DOM Section 33030.5.6 requires the EDU to collect and maintain the official CDCR
copies of all adverse action documents separate and apart from those held in official
personnel files. The EDU, which reports to CDCR’s Office of Legal Affairs, is also
required to maintain statistical information and generate reports regarding adverse
actions. DOM Section 33030.5.4 requires Employee Relations/Disciplinary Officers to
provide copies of pending employee disciplinary actions to the EDU every quarter.
Each of California’s 33 prisons and four regional parole offices maintains an Employee
Relations Office, which is managed by an employee relations officer who also serves as
the disciplinary officer. The employee relations officer monitors and coordinates the
adverse action process. Several prisons’ employee relations officers told us that they were
either not aware of the requirement to submit copies of adverse action documents to the
EDU or that their workload demands prevented it.
The failure to maintain copies of all adverse action cases in a single location deprives
CDCR’s management of potentially useful information that may assist it in monitoring
the imposition of penalties, identifying trends, or tracking problems occurring with its
disciplinary process. Further, the lack of a central repository inhibits the preparation of
complete quarterly reports and annual audits, as required by CDCR policy and procedure.
Quarterly Report of Employee Disciplinary Actions Not Completed
DOM Section 33030.31 mandates that the
Table 1
Employment Advocacy and Prosecution
Section 33030.31 requires the EAPT to prepare
a quarterly report that documents the number
Team (EAPT), which reports to CDCR’s
of adverse actions by type, including the
Office of Legal Affairs, prepare a quarterly
following:
report with detailed information (see Table
• Cases by type of discipline
1) on adverse action cases. The quarterly
• Cases without an investigation, by type of
report is to be sent to the Secretary of
adverse action
CDCR.
• Cases with an investigation, by type of adverse
An EAPT manager told us that the EAPT
has not prepared the required quarterly
reports primarily because it does not have a
database that captures the required
information.
A manager at CDCR’s Office of Internal
Affairs (OIA), which maintains the case
management system database, explained
that when the court approved the policy

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

action
• Cases in which the discipline was sustained by
the Skelly officer
• Cases in which the Skelly officer
recommended modification of the discipline,
showing the hiring authority’s acceptance or
rejection of the recommendation
• Cases in which settlement was reached prior to
the State Personnel Board (SPB) decision
• Cases in which the SPB upheld, modified, or
revoked the hiring authority’s recommended
discipline
• Cases in which the State Personnel Board
(SPB) upheld, modified, or revoked the hiring
authorities’ recommended discipline.
8
State of California

changes, the database in use at that time did not track information which was
subsequently determined to be necessary. The current database tracks all required
investigation and disciplinary information, but specific programming is required to
provide customized information.
Annual Employee Discipline Audit Not Completed
Section 33030.32 of the DOM requires CDCR’s Office of Legal Affairs and Office of
Internal Affairs to jointly prepare an annual audit of the effectiveness of the employee
discipline process. Those audits have never been done. Table 2 outlines the scope of the
annual audit.
Table 2
Section 33030.32 requires that
the annual audit include the
following elements:
• An assessment of the adequacy
of the monitoring of the statute
of limitations, and
• An assessment of training needs
by evaluating the following:
o The effectiveness of the
attorneys assigned to EAPTmonitored cases
o The appropriateness and
thoroughness of the
investigation, investigation
report, penalty, NOAA, and
settlement, and
o The policy issues involved
and/or at stake.

An EAPT manager recommends CDCR’s Office of
Audits and Court Compliance, rather than the Legal
Affairs Office, perform the annual audits, and further
recommends revising Section 33030.32 of the DOM
because it is unclear how some of the required audit
elements can be evaluated.

The annual audit required by DOM Section 33030.32
provides an opportunity for CDCR to identify and
correct systemic weaknesses in its disciplinary
process. For example, evaluating the adequacy of
CDCR’s monitoring of the statute of limitations in
various phases of its disciplinary cases may reveal
cases in which the hiring authority lost its ability to
impose discipline because investigations were not
completed before the statute of limitations expired.
Prisons report the number of investigations exceeding
the statute of limitations in monthly CompStat (comparative statistics) reports. There can
be numerous reasons that the statute of limitations may be exceeded. For example, a
disciplinary officer can cause a case to be lost by failing to serve the NOAA on the
employee before the statute of limitations date expires, but the CompStat reports do not
include such cases. The EAPT manager believes that because CDCR constantly strives to
avoid losing cases through an expired statute of limitations, this area should be a required
component of the annual employee discipline audit.
The EAPT manager uses the semi-annual report of the OIG Bureau of Independent
Review in conjunction with information maintained by EAPT to evaluate the work of
EAPT attorneys providing legal consultation to the hiring authority. 3 Nonetheless, the
reporting and auditing requirements of DOM Sections 33030.31 and 33030.32 apply to
all of CDCR’s adverse action cases, and the cases assigned to the EAPT represent only a
fraction of the total cases.
3

According to a department manager, EAPT monitors designated adverse action cases continually, and are
working with other CDCR employees to develop new reporting and auditing requirements to help
executive management evaluate CDCR’s hiring authorities.
Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

9
State of California

Therefore, OIG believes that many of CDCR’s adverse action cases are not subjected to
review except by the hiring authorities who initiated them.
Recommendations
The Office of the Inspector General recommends that the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation take the following actions:
•

Ensure that the department collects and maintains copies of adverse action
documents, as required by DOM Sections 33030.5.4 and 33030.5.6.

•

Ensure that the Employment Advocacy and Prosecution Team prepares quarterly
reports of adverse action cases, as mandated by DOM Section 33030.31.

•

Ensure that the Office of Legal Affairs, in conjunction with the Office of Internal
Affairs, audits the effectiveness of the employee discipline process annually, as
required by DOM Section 33030.32.

•

If it believes the reporting and auditing requirements for employee discipline as
described in DOM Sections 33030.31 and 33030.32 should be changed, the
department should initiate the changes.

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

10
State of California

Finding 2
Failure to correctly assess disciplinary pay reductions
A review of 100 employee discipline cases identified 14 errors when establishing
financial penalties in the payroll system. As a result, some employees fully or partially
escaped penalty, while others were over-penalized. Specific errors included employee
disciplinary penalties not imposed, not terminated on the scheduled end date,
miscalculated, or started late.
Failure to Impose the Disciplinary Penalty
During our review, we encountered three instances in which the hiring authority issued a
Notice of Adverse Action (NOAA) to an employee, yet no financial penalty was imposed
because the hiring authority did not enter the penalty into the payroll system. In one case,
the hiring authority imposed a 10 percent salary reduction over a period of 24 months.
The employee appealed the adverse action to the State Personnel Board (SPB) and
reached a stipulated agreement with the hiring authority decreasing the punitive action to
a 10 percent salary reduction over a period of 16 months. However, the hiring authority
missed two opportunities to impose the penalty. First, it never entered the original penalty
into the payroll system prior to the employee’s appeal to the SPB, and secondly, it failed
to enter the reduced penalty after the SPB ruling. The lack of communication between
the hiring authority’s representative for adverse action cases, the employee relations
officer, and the personnel department contributed to the failure to properly impose the
adverse action. Such communication is essential to ensure that cases are accurately,
promptly and completely imposed by the hiring authority. Consequently, the employee
avoided a penalty of approximately $6,949 over the 16-month punitive period until OIG
inspectors brought the case to CDCR’s attention.
Failure to Terminate Punitive Actions on the Scheduled End Date
We also found four instances in which CDCR appropriately entered the pay reduction
into the payroll system decreasing employees’ wages, but over-penalized the employees
when the prison’s personnel employees failed to terminate the transactions when they
were scheduled to end. In one case, the prison continued to dock the employee’s wages
for a full four months after the adverse action was scheduled to end. When OIG
inspectors informed prison officials of the error, the prison corrected the transaction by
issuing nearly $1,000 in back pay to the disciplined employee.
Miscalculation of Financial Penalty or Pay Restoration
In addition to the seven errors noted above, we found four calculation errors made by
personnel employees when imposing penalties. For example, one employee received a 10
percent reduction in pay for a year, but when the prison’s personnel employees ended the
penalty, they reinstated the employee’s salary by only five percent. Consequently, for
eleven months the employee was paid five percent less than he was entitled to be paid,
until OIG inspectors discovered this error. The prison subsequently issued the employee
$2,503 in back pay.

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

11
State of California

Another type of error occurred when personnel employees used an incorrect calculation
for computing salary reductions rather than the proper calculation method established in
the California State Civil Service Pay Scale Manual. The employees may have believed
that their method used to calculate a punitive penalty would equal the results using the
formula found in the pay scale manual, when the results were in fact different. The failure
to calculate the penalty in accordance with instructions within the Pay Scale Manual
resulted in a $748 underpayment of the employee’s wages over 11 months.
Failure to Collect Monies Owed by Employees from Disciplinary Actions
Finally, we identified three cases in which the salary deduction was entered into the
payroll system late, up to three months after the effective dates mandated by the official
disciplinary documents. Generally, the Notice of Adverse Action (NOAA) specifies the
beginning and ending dates of the period during which the employee’s salary will be
reduced. The transaction to commence the salary reduction is sometimes delayed until
after the start date designated on the NOAA, while the transaction to cease the reduction
occurs on the NOAA’s designated ending date. As a result, in these instances the penalty
collection period is shortened and the disciplinary penalty is not fully deducted from the
employee’s pay check.
To collect the remaining amounts owed in such cases, an account receivable is
established for the employee debt, and institution personnel must collect the receivable
from the employee through either a payroll deduction or direct payment. In each of the
three instances we noted, the prisons failed to collect the accounts receivable from the
subject employees until informed by OIG Inspectors.
OIG inspectors questioned an institution personnel officer (IPO) as to the reasons for the
delays in starting salary reductions on time. The IPO stated that input delays can happen
because the State Controller’s Office (SCO) must process certain types of payroll
transactions such as those for adverse actions that would decrease an employee’s wages
below the minimum base pay for that employee’s civil service classification. In addition,
the IPO said that the SCO is required to input payroll transactions for adverse actions
resulting from amended disciplinary rulings by the State Personnel Board (SPB).
Sometimes, the SCO may not input these transactions until after the intended start date
designated in the NOAA, while the penalty is completed on the ending date designated in
the NOAA, resulting in under-collection of the intended penalty amount. Similarly, for
penalties that may be processed directly by institution personnel employees, the
personnel specialists can inadvertently fail to enter penalty transactions into the payroll
system promptly, thus shortening the period for collecting salary reductions.
One such case involved a situation where the initial adverse action recommended by the
hiring authority was amended at an SPB hearing to a 5 percent salary reduction over 12
months. The SCO, responsible for entering the penalty into the payroll system because it
involved an amended disciplinary ruling by the SPB, delayed inputting the disciplinary
penalty into the payroll system by three months. According to the prison’s IPO, the
prison’s payroll specialist is responsible for making sure that all transactions attendant to
an adverse action are actually complete, but the personnel specialist failed to follow-up

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

12
State of California

with SCO to ensure this happened. The prison did not initiate the payroll deduction to
collect the accounts receivable, thereby allowing the employee to avoid approximately
$722 in wage deductions over the three-month period.

A valid solution: Institution Initiates Oversight of Employee Discipline Process
During our review, we determined that one institution had detected and corrected a
number of its own employee discipline errors. The institutions personnel employees hold
monthly meetings to discuss new adverse action cases and the status of ongoing cases to
prevent and detect the types of mistakes identified above. Although improvement is still
needed, these meetings help ensure that all adverse action cases are accounted for, and
that each responsible party is held accountable.
In 2007, the warden discovered that the prison’s personnel department failed to
completely process several adverse actions against prison employees and that those
employees had not been penalized. As a result of the failure to properly discipline its
employees, OIG inspectors reviewed the institutions employee discipline cases from
January 2006 through December 2009. The prison’s current disciplinary officer identified
several adverse action cases that a prior employee failed to process completely. We
reviewed those cases and found that the employee had not followed CDCR policy and
had missed the statutory deadline for serving the NOAA on four employees, thus denying
CDCR any further opportunity to take action against them. The warden addressed this
problem by recommending adverse action against this individual and by initiating regular
meetings of the prison’s management team to discuss the status of adverse action cases.
We also found two additional cases in which employees received suspensions without
pay as a result of misconduct, but the suspensions never took place. In one case, a
correctional officer was suspended from work without pay for six days. However, when
we reviewed the officer’s employee history, we found no directive to suspend the
officer’s pay. Further, our review of the officer’s timesheet for the suspension period
revealed that not only had he worked his regularly scheduled hours, he had also worked
overtime. According to the prison’s employee relations officer, this error was likely
caused by the personnel department not forwarding the NOAA to the personnel office for
entry into the state payroll system and failing to inform the prison’s watch office of the
officer’s suspension, in accordance with established procedures. Similarly, in the second
case, a sergeant was suspended from work without pay for ten days. Our review of the
officer’s timesheet revealed that the sergeant did not serve his prescribed ten-day
suspension.
In addition to the cases discussed above, the personnel department employee failed to
properly process other cases in 2007 as well, causing the cases to be lost because the
statute of limitations period was exceeded. In addition, the lack of management review
over the work of the personnel department created an environment in which policies and
procedures specific to the adverse action process were not followed. As a result of
suspected deficiencies in the handling of an adverse action case, in late 2007 the then-

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

13
State of California

warden requested an investigation of the personnel department employee’s work
performance. The warden subsequently determined that adverse action against the
employee was warranted. However, the personnel employee retired from CDCR
employment before the adverse action was served. The breakdown in the disciplinary
process highlights the potential for similar problems at other institutions.
According to the current disciplinary officer, the prison began holding regular meetings
to review all adverse action cases as a result of discovering the mishandled disciplinary
cases. These meetings include the warden (or chief deputy warden), the lieutenant (or
sergeant) from the investigative services unit (ISU), and the disciplinary officer. The ISU
officer provides information about new cases submitted to the CDCR’s Office of Internal
Affairs for review and information about cases the ISU has completed or is currently
reviewing. The prison’s disciplinary officer informs the group of the status of each active
case and provides subject matter expertise.
Holding such meetings is a reasonable method of ensuring that all adverse action cases
are accounted for and that each responsible party is held accountable. However, by not
including a representative from the prison’s personnel office or requiring a review of a
disciplined employee’s payroll status during these meetings, the potential for errors
similar to those discovered in our statewide sample remain. In fact, our review of more
recent disciplinary cases at the prison identified two errors made by prison personnel
employees, in which punitive actions were not terminated by personnel employees after
the penalty periods expired. One of the cases continued for a full 12 months after the
scheduled end of the action, costing the employee five percent of his salary each month,
or $2,566. In the second case, an officer received an additional 10 percent salary
reduction for 14 months, an overcharge totaling $4,369. After the OIG informed
personnel employees of these errors the personnel department stated that they would
remit all monies owed the employees for the reduction in their wages. These two cases
underscore the need to have prison management interact with personnel employees
regarding the termination of punitive actions.
Correcting problems such as those we identified is critical because errors in enforcing
and calculating disciplinary penalties erode employees’ and CDCR stakeholders’
confidence that the disciplinary system operates in a fair, objective, and impartial
manner. Moreover, the CDCR resources required to handle employee discipline cases,
including the investigations and appeals process, are wasted when the penalties are not
initiated as necessary to collect the penalty, do not stop at the scheduled time, or are
started late.

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

14
State of California

Recommendations
The Office of the Inspector General recommends that the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation take the following actions:
•

Require that key hiring authority representatives on adverse action cases discuss
and monitor new and on-going cases with institution personnel to ensure that all
cases are accounted for, processed promptly and fully completed, and that each
responsible party is held accountable for performing their required duties.

•

Remind all personnel employees to use the official method of calculating
payroll reductions as currently identified in the California State Civil Service
Pay Scale Manual.

•

Follow established department procedures intended to ensure that disciplinary
penalties begin and end on the dates identified in the notice of adverse action.

•

For salary reductions that are not fully collected, establish and collect payroll
accounts receivable from the affected employee.

•

For employees who have paid financial penalties in excess of amounts owed,
promptly repay the employees all amounts due.

.
.

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

15
State of California

Appendix A
Employee Discipline Reporting Process and Responsibilities

California Department
of Corrections and
Rehabilitation

Office of
Legal Affairs
(OLA)

Employment
Advocacy and
Prosecution Team
(EAPT)

Employee
Discipline
Unit (EDU)

Employee
Relations/
Disciplinary
Officer

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

Annual audit of
employee
discipline
effectiveness
DOM 33030.32

Office of
Internal
Affairs
(OIA)

Quarterly report of
employee discipline
DOM 33030.31

1. Collect and maintain copies of all
adverse action documents
(Central Repository)
2. Maintain statistical information
and generate reports using CMS
DOM 33030.5.6
Provide copies of employee
discipline log and all documents
relevant to pending adverse
actions to the EDU quarterly
DOM 33030.5.4

16
State of California

Appendix B

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

Employee

Adverse
Action Errors

Summary of Adverse Action Errors

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

Institution

Salary Reduction Error

Percent and
Duration of
Salary
Reduction

Amount Due
From or
<Owed To>
Employee

CCI
CCWF
LAC
LAC
SOL
SQ
SAC

Never Imposed
Never Imposed
Never Imposed
Did Not End as Scheduled
Did Not End as Scheduled
Did Not End as Scheduled
Did Not End as Scheduled

10% / 16 months
10% / 12 months
10% / 24 months
10% / 12 months
5% / 5 months
5% / 12 months
5% / 12 months

$ 6,9491
$4,6441
$2,6362
<$1,318>2
<$328>1
<$894>1
<$979>2

SAC

5% / 12 months

$5862

PVSP
HDSP
COR
CCC

Accounts Receivable (A/R)
Collection Errors
Calculation Errors
Calculation Errors
Calculation Errors
Calculation Errors

10% / 12 months
10% / 11 months
10% / 12 months
10% / 6 months

<$2,503>
<$748>1
<$386>
$87012

CCC

A/R Collection Errors

10% / 6 months

$17612

WSP

A/R Collection Errors

5% / 12 months

$7221

1 Amount estimated by OIG or provided by respective institutional personnel staff.
2 Employee Nos. 6 and 10 each had two errors within a single adverse action case; while
Employee No. 3 had two errors from two separate adverse action cases [Note: Item No. 3 was not
in the statewide listing of employee disciplinary actions provided by the department].

Population:

Adverse action cases with effective dates between January 1, 2008
through June 30, 2009

Population
Size:
Sample
Size:

1,219

Sample
Results:

100 (Suspension without pay for 10 or more days or a salary
reduction of at least 5 percent for 6 months or more)
14 (Adverse action errors causing an amount due from or owed to
department employees)

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

17
State of California

Appendix C
CDCR Institution Abbreviations and Names (used in Appendix B)

CDCR Institution
Abbreviation
CCC
CCI
CCWF
COR
HDSP
LAC
PVSP
RJD
SAC
SOL
SQ
WSP

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

CDCR Institution Name
California Correctional Center
California Correctional Institution
Central California Women's Facility
Corcoran State Prison
High Desert State Prison
California State Prison, Los Angeles County
Pleasant Valley State Prison
R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility
California State Prison, Sacramento
California State Prison, Solano
San Quentin State Prison
Wasco State Prison

18
State of California

California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation’s Response

Bureau of Audits
Office of the Inspector General

19
State of California

STATE OF CALIFORNIA -DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS AND REHABILITATION

EDMUND G. BROWN JR., GOVERNOR

OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY
P.o. Box 942883
Sacramento, CA 94283-0001

March 25, 2011

Mr. Bruce Monfross
Inspector General (A)
Office of the Inspector General
P.O. Box 348780
Sacramento, CA 95834-8780
Dear Mr. Monfross:
This letter is being submitted in response to the Office of the Inspector General's (OIG) report
titled Special Review: The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's
Monitoring ofEmployee Discipline, dated March 2011.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has implemented
processes to report and investigate alleged employee misconduct and procedures for imposition
of employee discipline when warranted. These processes include the tracking and reporting of
, employee discipline cases. CDCR has several methods, including the Case Management
System, which capture investigative and disciplinary information and assists to ensure complete,
. timely, and accurate investigations and impositions of discipline. However, we recognize the
value of the recommendations set forth in the report, and we will be reviewing those
recommendations to comply with or modify the relevant sections of the Department Operations
Manual (DOM). Meanwhile, direction will be given to require institution personnel staff to
conduct monthly meetings to discuss new and ongoing adverse action cases and to ensure all
cases are accounted for and processed appropriately. Additionally, in accordance with DOM, the
Office of Legal Affairs and the Office of Internal Affairs will· collaborate to review the
effectiveness of the employee discipline process annually. Finally, the Department will review
the audit requirements and take appropriate action as necessary.
, We would like to thank the 0 IG for allowing us the opportunity to comment on the special
review and value your continued professionalism and guidance in our efforts to improve our
.operations. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's Office of Audits and
Court Compliance will monitor and document the Department's progress in addressing the
report's recommendations. If you should have any questions or concerns, please call my office
at (916) 323-6001.
Sincerely,

LEEE.SEALE
Deputy Chief of Staff