OIG

Amarik K. Singh

OFFICE of the
INSPECTOR GENERAL

Inspector General

Neil Robertson
Chief Deputy
Inspector General
Independent
Prison Oversight

JANUARY 29, 2024

№ SR-23-01

The Department Violated Its Regulations by Redirecting Backlogged
Allegations of Staff Misconduct to Be Processed as Routine Grievances
The Office of the Inspector General (the OIG)
provides contemporaneous oversight of the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (the
department) process for reviewing and investigating
incarcerated persons’ allegations of staff misconduct.
To summarize the results of our monitoring of this
process, we issue annual reports that assess several
different facets of the department’s overall statewide
staff misconduct process. We are issuing this special
review to shed light on one particularly problematic
decision the department made when determining how
to address a backlog of complaints it amassed under
its prior process for handling incarcerated persons’
allegations of staff misconduct. The decision violated
both the department’s regulations and its policy for
screening and investigating grievances received from
incarcerated people who alleged staff misconduct.

control measures that were put in place to prevent
prison authorities from making potentially biased
decisions when responding to allegations of
staff misconduct. The redirection resulted in a
wasteful duplication of efforts and misallocation of
resources because departmental staff had already
determined that the grievances contained allegations
of misconduct and had referred the grievances
for allegation inquiries or investigations.2 The
department also allowed the statutes of limitations to
take disciplinary action to expire in many grievances,
and prison staff who reviewed the grievances did not
always adequately address or investigate complaints
that its Centralized Screening Team (screening
team) had already determined included allegations of
staff misconduct.
The Department’s Process for Investigating
Grievances Alleging Staff Misconduct

The department’s decision came to our attention
during the course of our monitoring when we
received a departmental memorandum outlining
a directive to convert backlogged grievances
containing allegations of staff misconduct into
“routine grievances” and redirect them for handling
by prison grievance offices. After receiving this
memorandum, we reviewed a backlog of allegations
of staff misconduct the department received from
February 24, 2022, through February 27, 2023,
which the department closed pursuant to this
directive. From this backlog of 5951 cases, we
performed detailed analyses of 22 grievances for
which the statutes of limitation had expired before
the grievances were redirected and 71 grievances
that prison staff closed after the grievances
were redirected.

The department’s current process allows incarcerated
people to submit allegations of staff misconduct
by filing a grievance with their prison’s Office of
Grievances (grievance office). However, prior to
2020, staff at the prisons where the staff misconduct
allegedly occurred investigated these grievances
themselves. After reviewing this process at Salinas
Valley State Prison, we found that investigations
of alleged staff misconduct at the prison were
inadequate and lacked independence.3 In response to
our review, the department shifted the responsibility
of investigating allegations of staff misconduct to a
new and independent 47-member Allegation Inquiry

2. Department regulations generally define an allegation inquiry
as the process of gathering relevant facts and evidence concerning
a claim that involves an allegation of staff misconduct to establish
that staff misconduct may have occurred.

Our review found that the department’s decision to
redirect these grievances to its prisons circumvented

3. In January 2018, the secretary of the department and attorneys
from the Prison Law Office requested that the OIG assess Salinas
Valley State Prison’s process of handling incarcerated persons’
allegations of staff misconduct. Our summary of the results
of this review can be found on our website in the report titled
Special Review of Salinas Valley State Prison’s Processing of Inmate
Allegations of Staff Misconduct.

1. Excluded from the 595 backlogged grievances were those
alleging improper use of force, violations of the Prison Rape
Elimination Act, allegations made by incarcerated people no longer
in custody or under parole supervision, and outstanding AIMS
cases whose status the department was still researching as of the
date of this publication.
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OIG

Amarik K. Singh

OFFICE of the
INSPECTOR GENERAL

Inspector General

Neil Robertson
Chief Deputy
Inspector General
Independent
Prison Oversight

JANUARY 29, 2024

№ SR-23-01

Management Section (AIMS). This new procedure
was subsequently codified in regulation and
departmental policy.

incarcerated people to submit allegations of staff
misconduct directly to AIMS.
Consequently, in 2022, the department requested and
received approximately $34 million to restructure
its staff misconduct allegation screening, referral,
investigative, and disciplinary process. The
department then revised its regulations to require
the newly established screening team within the
Office of Internal Affairs to receive and screen all
grievances for allegations of staff misconduct. The
new regulations require the screening team to return
“routine issues,” defined as any complaint that is not
identified as staff misconduct, to prisons for review and
processing (see figure below).

In 2021, the OIG reviewed the department’s new
process and found that it required prison staff to
subjectively determine what allegations constituted
staff misconduct using an overly complex method.
Furthermore, the department’s decision to allow
prison staff to retain the authority to decide whether
to route grievances to AIMS left the department’s
inadequate and potentially biased staff misconduct
investigation process largely unchanged. To increase
independence and fairness, we recommended that
the department restructure its process to allow

Figure. An Overview of the Department’s Staff Misconduct Investigation and Review Process

A prison receives
a complaint

If NO, then CST
returns complaint
to the prison for
processing as a
routine complaint

Centralized Screening Team
(CST) reviews complaint
to determine whether it
contains an allegation of
staff misconduct

If YES, then CST assigns
case using Allegation
Decision Index (ADI)

If staff misconduct on the
ADI, CST refers complaint to
the Office of Internal Affairs’
Allegation Investigation Unit
for an investigation

If staff misconduct NOT
on the ADI, CST returns
complaint to the prison
for an inquiry by a locally
designated investigator

Source: The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

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OIG

Amarik K. Singh

OFFICE of the
INSPECTOR GENERAL

Inspector General

Neil Robertson
Chief Deputy
Inspector General
Independent
Prison Oversight

JANUARY 29, 2024

№ SR-23-01

In addition, regulations require the screening team
to refer grievances alleging staff misconduct for
an allegation inquiry or investigation. Allegations
of staff misconduct that include complex issues
requiring specialized investigative skills or resources
are referred to the Office of Internal Affairs’
Allegation Investigation Unit (AIU), which replaced
the deactivated AIMS in approximately March
2023.4 Allegations of staff misconduct that do not
require specialized skills or resources are referred to
prisons for an allegation inquiry conducted by locally
designated investigators who receive training by the
Office of Internal Affairs to gather relevant facts
and evidence. Both AIU staff and locally designated
investigators are required to conduct thorough
investigations, complete necessary interviews, and
ensure that all relevant evidence is gathered and
reviewed. The department’s current regulations
also require AIU managers to review all allegation
inquiry and investigation reports for sufficiency,
completeness, and bias.

had not been processed. To address the backlog, on
July 26, 2023, the department issued a memorandum
redirecting the backlogged cases to prison grievance
offices for review and processing. Subsequently,
the department closed 595 cases containing
allegations of staff misconduct, reclassified them as
“routine grievances,” and redirected them to prison
grievance offices to be opened as new grievances.
The department redirected the first cases in August
2023, and instructed grievance offices to elevate the
grievances if their staff identified misconduct.
This redirection violates the department’s regulations
requiring all allegations of staff misconduct from
incarcerated people to be referred for an allegation
inquiry or investigation and have these reports
reviewed by AIU managers. The department
explicitly stated, “If an AIMS case was converted
to a routine claim pursuant to the Undersecretary’s
memo then it would be answered through the local
Office of Grievances without OIA [Office of Internal
Affairs] review (meaning no AIMS or AIU review).”
Consequently, the department’s action circumvented
regulations and authorized prison staff who had
been found to conduct inadequate and potentially
biased investigations to respond to allegations of staff
misconduct without oversight.

Routine grievances on the other hand are processed
very differently because regulations do not require
them to be thoroughly investigated or reviewed by
AIU managers. For example, grievance office staff,
who may not have been trained by the Office of
Internal Affairs to collect evidence and investigate
allegations of staff misconduct, are only required
to interview incarcerated people and witnesses if
they determine interviews would assist in resolving
the claim.

The department’s decision to redirect complaints
resulted in a wasteful duplication of efforts and
misallocation of resources because the screening
team had already determined that the grievances
alleged staff misconduct that required at least an
allegation inquiry. In some cases, inquiry work
had already been initiated. By deviating from its
regulations, the department wasted resources
and reverted to handling these allegations of staff
misconduct as it did in 2021, before it received
approximately $34 million to restructure and improve
its process.

The Department Violated Its Regulations by
Redirecting Backlogged Allegations of Staff
Misconduct to Prisons for Processing and Review
Beginning February 2022, the department began
developing a backlog of over 900 grievances that the
screening team determined contained allegations of
staff misconduct. These grievances had been referred
for allegation inquiries or investigations, but most

The Department Allowed the Statutes of
Limitations to Take Disciplinary Action to Expire in
Many Grievances Before They Were Redirected

4. Allegations of staff misconduct that include complex issues
requiring specialized investigative skills or resources to investigate
by the Allegation Investigation Unit include all allegations listed
on the Allegation Decision Index contained in the department’s
operation manual, Section 33070.9.7.

State law generally requires the department to
initiate discipline against peace officers within

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OIG

Amarik K. Singh

OFFICE of the
INSPECTOR GENERAL

Inspector General

Neil Robertson
Chief Deputy
Inspector General
Independent
Prison Oversight

JANUARY 29, 2024

№ SR-23-01

The Department Did Not Adequately Address or
Investigate Allegations of Staff Misconduct That
Were Redirected as Routine Grievances

one year of discovery of the alleged misconduct
and within three years of the alleged misconduct
for all other staff. The department identified a
one-year statute of limitations in each redirected
grievance.5 Consequently, the failure to timely
process the backlogged grievances resulted in the
statutes of limitations expiring in 127 cases before
the department began redirecting the allegations of
staff misconduct back to prisons for handling. The
department was precluded from initiating discipline
even if investigators uncovered sufficient evidence
supporting the allegations of staff misconduct.

We reviewed 71 grievances the department closed and
redirected as routine grievances to determine whether
prison grievance offices adequately addressed them.
All grievances we reviewed contained at least one
allegation of staff misconduct that included complex
issues requiring specialized investigative skills
or resources according to current departmental
regulations and policies. Regulations require that all
allegations of staff misconduct containing complex
issues be referred for investigation by the Office of
Internal Affairs. Instead, 16 of the cases we reviewed
(23 percent) were processed by staff who were
not identified as locally designated investigators
and likely did not receive Office of Internal
Affairs’ training to conduct allegation inquiries or
investigations of staff misconduct.

We reviewed 22 of the 127 grievances that had
expired statutes of limitations and found that
they included allegations which, if substantiated,
could have resulted in penalties ranging from a
letter of reprimand through dismissal. Eight of the
22 grievances alleged misconduct such as fabricating
evidence and forging documents, which could have
resulted in dismissals.6 Twelve of the 22 allegations
could have resulted in suspensions or salary
reductions, while two could have resulted in letters
of reprimand.

As shown in the table on the next page, the most
common staff misconduct allegations in the
grievances we reviewed were categorized as “Other
Misconduct” on the department’s Allegation Decision
Index, a tool established in departmental policy to
identify complex issues. Included in that category
is threatening incarcerated people, misconduct
that results in significant injury or death of an
incarcerated person, or actions that endanger others.
Allegations that staff lacked integrity or retaliated
against incarcerated people were also common.

The department also redirected 129 grievances
alleging staff misconduct with statutes of limitations
that were set to expire within 60 days after they were
redirected. This is significant because departmental
policy states that investigations should generally
be completed at least 60 days prior to the statute
of limitations expiring to allow the department
sufficient time to initiate discipline if warranted.
Therefore, it is unlikely that the department would
have had sufficient time to complete a thorough
investigation and initiate discipline in an additional
129 cases if investigators substantiated the allegations
of staff misconduct.

Grievance office staff did not address all allegations
of staff misconduct in at least three grievances we
reviewed. For example, one incarcerated person
alleged discrimination and harassment because a
correctional officer reportedly called him “Maxine
Waters, [sic] grandson,” because he is African
American. The incarcerated person perceived the
moniker to be derogatory. Despite the allegations of
harassment and discrimination, the grievance office
did not address them in its decision.

5. For purposes of this report, we did not review the accuracy of
the department’s determination.

In another grievance, an incarcerated person alleged
a correctional officer threatened him, stating that he

6. California Code of Regulations, Title 15, section 3392.5 outlines the
department’s employee disciplinary matrix misconduct categories,
and penalty ranges and levels.

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OIG

Inspector General

Neil Robertson
Chief Deputy
Inspector General
Independent
Prison Oversight

JANUARY 29, 2024

№ SR-23-01

interview the incarcerated people who made the
allegations or the staff who allegedly committed
misconduct. Interviews are important because they
can provide additional information supporting or
refuting the allegations of staff misconduct.

Table. Total Number of Allegations Found on the
Allegation Decision Index
Categories

Total Allegations

Other Misconduct

26

Retaliation

25

Integrity

25

Discrimination/Harassment

16

Dishonesty

14

Code of Silence

4

Use of Force

3

Total

Amarik K. Singh

OFFICE of the
INSPECTOR GENERAL

In other allegations involving complex issues, we did
not find evidence in case records that grievance office
staff reviewed relevant and available documentation
such as the form CDCR 7219 (Medical Report of
Injury or Unusual Occurrence), reports of the
incident, and housing records. In some grievances we
reviewed, it did not appear that grievance office staff
attempted to gather evidence at all. Finally, grievance
offices closed two grievances as duplicates even
though they contained new allegations and a third
as a duplicate even though it was not duplicative of
another grievance.

113

Source: OIG analysis of the CDCR 602-1 grievance forms
for 71 redirected cases we reviewed. Categories are not
mutually exclusive as a single grievance may contain
multiple allegations, and each allegation may fall under
more than one category.

As previously mentioned, the screening team
already determined that the redirected grievances
alleged staff misconduct. However, we found
that grievance offices determined only one of
the 71 cases we reviewed contained allegations
necessitating elevation to the screening team and
likely referral to AIU for investigation. In that case,
the incarcerated person alleged that a correctional
officer threatened him and his cellmate with use
of force and a retaliatory cell extraction. Grievance
office staff interviewed the incarcerated person and
his cellmate and determined that staff misconduct
may have occurred. Interestingly, the incarcerated
person’s cellmate also filed a grievance concerning
the same incident, but different grievance office
staff concluded that there was no evidence of staff
misconduct and denied the grievance. Given that the
screening team had already determined that these
two redirected grievances alleged staff misconduct, it
is unreasonable that grievance office staff determined
that only one case warranted elevation to AIU
for investigation.

would have his sergeant “place [him] in administrative
segregation, and beat the shit out of [him], and plant
drugs on [him].” None of these allegations were
addressed in the grievance office’s decision.
Finally, in another case, an incarcerated person
alleged a sergeant retaliated against him for filing a
prior grievance by denying his packages and referring
to him in a derogatory manner. The incarcerated
person also asked about the department’s policy
regarding packages. However, the grievance office
only responded with information on the quarterly
package policy and did not address the allegation
of retaliation.
The unaddressed allegations in all the grievances
described above could have warranted discipline
with penalties up to and including dismissal if
substantiated. By failing to address these allegations,
the department violated its regulations that require a
response to each claim in a grievance.

The department’s decision to reclassify allegations
of staff misconduct as routine grievances likely
contributed to the inadequate grievance reviews that
we found. Had these allegations been investigated
by the Office of Internal Affairs or locally designated

We also found that the actions taken by the grievance
offices were not reasonable and sufficient overall
in 22 grievances we reviewed. In some cases,
documentation showed that prison staff did not

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OIG

Amarik K. Singh

OFFICE of the
INSPECTOR GENERAL

Inspector General

Neil Robertson
Chief Deputy
Inspector General
Independent
Prison Oversight

JANUARY 29, 2024

№ SR-23-01

incarcerated person assaulted him. However, the
grievance office rejected the grievance as untimely
because it considered the grievance submitted on the
date it was redirected on August 31, 2023, rather than
when it was originally submitted.

investigators as current regulations and policy
require, the allegation inquiries and investigations
would likely have been more thorough and reviewed
by managers responsible for verifying the sufficiency
of the investigations. At a minimum, instead of
reclassifying the allegations as routine and treating
them as though they contained no allegations of staff
misconduct, the department should have assigned
the backlogged grievances to locally designated
investigators to complete allegation inquiries. By
doing so, Office of Internal Affairs managers would
have been able to review the locally designated
investigators’ reports as required by current
regulation and departmental policy.

The rejection stated:

You did not submit this claim within the
timeframe required by the California Code
of Regulations, title [sic] 15. The date you
discovered the adverse policy, decision,
action, condition, or omission by the
Department was 10/14/2022; yet the date
you submitted this claim was 8/31/2023.
You should have submitted your claim on
or by 12/13/2022 to meet the requirement
set forth in the regulations.

The Department Did Not Timely Investigate the
Redirected Allegations of Staff Misconduct
In addition to failing to address all allegations of
staff misconduct and conducting inadequate reviews,
the department took an excessive amount of time to
respond to the redirected grievances. Regulations
generally require that staff complete their responses
to grievances within 60 days. In the 71 cases we
reviewed, the department took an average of 346 days
from the date it first received the claim to close the
grievances. The department’s total processing time in
the 71 case files we reviewed ranged between 214 to
548 days, and it took the department more than a year
to close 28 of the 71 cases (39 percent).

The grievance office’s reason for this rejection was in
error as it was received by the screening team within
five days of the incident—well within the time frame
required by regulations.
Regulations also authorize grievance offices to reject
grievances if they are unable to respond within
60 days. We found that one grievance office rejected
two redirected grievances on that basis. In both cases,
grievance office staff had already finished gathering
facts, interviewing potential witnesses, and reviewing
records. However, they only submitted their draft
decisions for review approximately 24 hours before
the 60-day deadline elapsed. Because the grievance
office submitted their draft decisions for review so
close to the deadline to respond, and because prison
management did not expedite reviewing the draft
decisions, the grievances were not decided on the
merits of the claims. Instead, the department wasted
the time and effort it spent gathering evidence and
simply rejected the grievances because the responses
were not timely completed. This is particularly
concerning because in one of the cases, there were
still over three months remaining in the one-year
statute of limitations for the department to initiate
discipline if sufficient evidence supported the
incarcerated person’s allegation of staff misconduct.

The Department Mishandled Some Redirected
Grievances by Improperly Rejecting or
Closing Them
California regulations and departmental policy
generally require incarcerated people to file
grievances alleging staff misconduct within 60 days
of discovery. However, one grievance office rejected
a redirected grievance after staff improperly
determined an incarcerated person did not file
it within 60 days as required by regulations. The
screening team first received the grievance on
October 14, 2022, only five days after the date the
incarcerated person was allegedly subjected to
retaliation by a correctional officer. The grievance
alleged the officer fabricated allegations that the

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OIG

Amarik K. Singh

OFFICE of the
INSPECTOR GENERAL

Inspector General

Neil Robertson
Chief Deputy
Inspector General
Independent
Prison Oversight

JANUARY 29, 2024

№ SR-23-01

Some Redirected Allegations of Staff Misconduct
Were Investigated By Staff Ranked Lower Than the
Staff Alleged to Have Committed Misconduct

grievance compared with what we reviewed in
relevant confidential reports regarding the incident.
Finally, we found that the sergeant did not address
all allegations of staff misconduct, including acts
involving dishonesty, retaliation, integrity, and
other misconduct related to health and safety of the
incarcerated person. Although these flaws are similar
to other inadequacies we discuss above, they are
particularly concerning in this context because lowerranking staff may be hesitant to document evidence
that their superiors engaged in misconduct.

Regulations require that locally designated
investigators be ranked at least one classification
higher than the staff allegedly involved in the
misconduct. However, regulations do not require
grievance office staff to be ranked higher than the
accused staff member because they are only supposed
to review and process routine grievances that do
not allege staff misconduct. Therefore, grievance
offices were placed in the position of reviewing
allegations outside their usual responsibilities and
potentially reviewing allegations against staff with
higher classifications. Both circumstances violate
departmental regulations.

The findings from the grievances we sampled are
concerning, and it is likely that similar issues are
present in grievances we did not review. We strongly
disagree with the department’s decision to reclassify
staff misconduct allegations and redirect them to
prisons to process as routine grievances. The decision
not only violates regulations and departmental policy
but also impairs the department’s ability to
investigate and pursue disciplinary action on
substantiated staff misconduct. Equally alarming is
the department’s failure to acknowledge the damage
this decision may have on incarcerated people
affected by the misconduct and on the intended
transparency of the staff misconduct complaint
process. Given the importance of thoroughly
investigating allegations of staff misconduct which
include complex issues, we would have expected the
department to have addressed the backlog in a
manner that was both transparent and in compliance
with departmental regulations and policy. OIG

We found several instances of lower ranking staff
reviewing grievances alleging staff misconduct. In
two grievances, a lieutenant was assigned to gather
facts concerning allegations against an associate
warden and a warden. In another case, a sergeant
reviewed an incarcerated person’s allegations
of misconduct against several staff, including a
lieutenant. In the grievance, the incarcerated person
alleged the lieutenant confronted and cursed at him
by “getting in [his] face & telling [him] to get the
fuck out of his building.” After reviewing grievance
log records, we did not find documentation that
the sergeant interviewed the incarcerated person,
the lieutenant, or other staff. In fact, we noted
inconsistencies in the reasoning the sergeant
cited in his recommended decision to deny the

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OIG

Amarik K. Singh

OFFICE of the
INSPECTOR GENERAL

Inspector General

Neil Robertson
Chief Deputy
Inspector General
Independent
Prison Oversight

JANUARY 29, 2024

№ SR-23-01

DocuSign Envelope ID: 9967A58F-B745-44B4-BDD6-B2288CC026EC
STATE OF CALIFORNIA — DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS AND REHABILITATION

GAVIN NEWSOM, GOVERNOR

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

January 22, 2024
Ms. Amarik K. Singh
Office of the Inspector General
10111 Old Placerville Road, Suite 110
Sacramento, CA 95827
Dear Ms. Singh:
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation submits this letter in response to
the Office of the Inspector General’s report titled: The Department Violated Its Regulations by
Redirecting Backlogged Allegations of Staff Misconduct to Be Processed as Routine Grievances.
Although significant improvements have been made, the Department acknowledges there is
more work to be done regarding its staff misconduct process, which over the past several years
has undergone monumental transformation. At several points, the Office of the Inspector
General’s report appears to conflate aspects of the new staff misconduct process, the Allegation
Investigation Unit, and grievances routed through it with grievances previously handled by the
now deactivated Allegation Inquiry Management Section, which is confusing and at points
misleading. It is important to note that as the Department began a phased activation of its new
process for investigating allegations of staff misconduct, it simultaneously began a phased
deactivation of the now fully deactivated Allegation Inquiry Management Section.

1

One component of the new staff misconduct process, which in January 2022, was among the first
to activate, is the Centralized Screening Team. This was an important and critical activation for
the Department, as the Centralized Screening Team serves as the initial independent reviewer of
all source documents that may contain allegations of staff misconduct toward or involving an
incarcerated or paroled person, ensuring consistency and standardization. At the outset, this new
team screened and routed all grievances submitted by an incarcerated or paroled person that
contained an allegation of staff misconduct either to the newly created Allegation Investigation
Unit for investigation or to Allegation Inquiry Management Section for inquiry. The deciding
factor in determining whether to route the grievance for investigation or inquiry was based on
the institution at which the incarcerated person was housed, as specified in the regulations
governing activation of the new process.
The volume of grievances routed by the new Centralized Screening Team to the former Allegation
Inquiry Management Section outpaced its staffing resources. As a result, the Department initially
redirected internal resources to the Allegation Inquiry Management Section to address the
accumulating backlog, but the backlog continued to grow. Ultimately, the Department undertook
a review of the grievances within the backlog. The Department identified grievances the newly
activated Centralized Screening Team had incorrectly screened as including allegations of

2

Highlight for № 2 continued on next page.

The OIG’s comments begin on page 10.

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OIG

Amarik K. Singh

OFFICE of the
INSPECTOR GENERAL

Inspector General

Neil Robertson
Chief Deputy
Inspector General
Independent
Prison Oversight

JANUARY 29, 2024

№ SR-23-01

DocuSign Envelope ID: 9967A58F-B745-44B4-BDD6-B2288CC026EC

Amarik Singh, Office of the Inspector General
Page 2

3

potential staff misconduct and assigned and routed to the Allegation Inquiry Management
Section for inquiry rather than to local Office of Grievances for review and processing as routine
grievances. As a result, the Department proactively initiated a process to ensure these incorrectly
screened grievances were reassigned to the correct area of responsibility, with knowledge that
under the regulations, if facts were discovered suggesting staff misconduct occurred, the matter
would be suspended and elevated to the Office of Internal Affairs. This reassignment complied
with regulations and was shared with the Office of the Inspector General in advance. Of note, the
reassigned grievances amounted to less than one-third of one percent of all grievances reviewed
by the Department in calendar year 2023.
The Department acknowledges and takes responsibility for the reassigned grievances which
exceeded statute of limitations dates prior to reassignment. By August 2023, all allegations of
staff misconduct previously routed to the Allegation Inquiry Management Section for inquiry
were completed and closed and in November 2023, full implementation of the Department’s new
staff misconduct process was achieved. The Department’s new, robust staff misconduct process
includes safeguards, such as mandatory investigation completion deadlines and an enhanced
supervisory monitoring processes to prevent this from occurring in the future.
It is important to note that the now fully deactivated Allegation Inquiry Management Section
completed fact gathering inquiries into allegations of staff misconduct made by incarcerated and
paroled persons. If during the inquiry process, a reasonable belief was established that an
allegation of staff misconduct may have been true, the inquiry was suspended and referred to
the Hiring Authority, who either handled the matter locally or elevated it to the Office of Internal
Affairs for a complete, thorough, and unbiased investigation. The Allegation Inquiry Management
Section was never responsible to conduct formal investigations.
The Department remains committed to being proactive and will continue to refine overall staff
misconduct processes to improve accountability, efficiency, and transparency throughout. The
Department is also committed to continuing to work with the Office of the Inspector General and
other stakeholders to ensure open communication on these very important issues.
Sincerely,

JEFFREY MACOMBER
Secretary

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2

4

OIG
№ SR-23-01

Amarik K. Singh

OFFICE of the
INSPECTOR GENERAL

Inspector General

Neil Robertson
Chief Deputy
Inspector General
Independent
Prison Oversight

JANUARY 29, 2024

The Office of the Inspector General’s Comments on the Response
From the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation			
To provide clarity and perspective, we are commenting on the California Department
of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (the department) response to our report. The
numbers below correspond with the numbers we have placed in the margin of the
department’s response on pages 8 and 9.
1. On December 13, 2023, we provided the department with a draft of this
seven-page report along with a list of the 71 staff misconduct allegations it
converted into routine grievances that we sampled during our review. On
January 3, 2024, the department identified one factual error on our part, which
we corrected in the final draft before providing the department with the
revised report on January 18, 2024. The department’s only other comments
centered on our use of the terms “inquiry” and “investigation” and the
difference between AIMS and AIU, which we also addressed in the revised
draft we sent to the department for a second review.
On pages one and two of our report, we clearly outline the evolution of
the department’s staff misconduct investigation process beginning with
the previous process that assigned local prisons the responsibility for
investigating allegations of staff misconduct, to the interim Allegation Inquiry
Management Section (AIMS) process, through the transition away from
AIMS to the department’s current process. The department implemented its
current regulatory process for processing allegations of staff misconduct from
January 2022 through January 2023. Consequently, this current process had
been fully implemented for approximately six months when the department
reclassified its backlog of unaddressed grievances alleging misconduct and
redirected them to prisons for processing. Despite having two opportunities
over nearly six weeks to review the draft report and examine the sampled
grievances, the department did not identify any factual inaccuracies or any
specific statements in the final report that it believed to be misleading, until
it issued this response vaguely characterizing the report as “confusing and at
points misleading.”
2. Nothing in the July 26, 2023, memorandum indicates that the department
made its decision to reclassify the 595 backlogged grievances because it had
performed a review of those grievances and determined that they had been
incorrectly screened or misclassified. The department did not mention that
it had performed such a review during any of the conversations we have
had with the department either prior to or following its issuance of the

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10111 Old Placerville Road, Suite 110, Sacramento, California 95827

5

Telephone: (916) 288-4233

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www.oig.ca.gov

OIG
№ SR-23-01

Amarik K. Singh

OFFICE of the
INSPECTOR GENERAL

Inspector General

Neil Robertson
Chief Deputy
Inspector General
Independent
Prison Oversight

JANUARY 29, 2024

memorandum. Nor did the department provide us with any records of having
conducted such a review. The department has consistently explained this
decision to our office as being necessary due to understaffing and a higher
than anticipated workload.
We also disagree with the department’s assertion that all 595 grievances
it redirected to local prisons were properly categorized as routine
grievances. During our review, we confirmed that each of the 71 grievances
we sampled (nearly 12 percent of all the redirected grievances) contained
allegations of staff misconduct that were properly classified as serious staff
misconduct that must be referred to the Office of Internal Affairs under the
applicable regulations.
Although the department contends there were safeguards in place whereby
local grievance offices would refer grievances back to the Office of Internal
Affairs if they identified staff misconduct, only one of the 71 grievances we
sampled was elevated to the Office of Internal Affairs after being redirected to
the prisons for processing as a routine grievance.
3. Contrary to the department’s assertion, it did not inform us that it was
“reassigning” all grievances assigned to AIMS alleging staff misconduct to the
prisons for processing as routine grievances until two days after it issued the
July 26, 2023, memorandum described in our report.
In April and May 2023, the department informed us that it was overwhelmed
with AIMS cases, and its staff were seeing twice as many grievances than
they had originally projected. The department further stated it contemplated
reviewing some of the AIMS cases to ensure they were processed correctly
and alleged staff misconduct. We asked how many AIMS cases, but, despite
our request, the department did not inform us of the number of cases in its
AIMS backlog. Then, on July 26, 2023, the department issued its memorandum
instructing its staff to close all the backlogged AIMS cases and to redirect the
grievances to prison grievance offices for processing as routine grievances
effective August 20, 2023. The OIG did not receive a copy of the memorandum
until July 28, 2023, when a departmental employee provided it to an OIG staff
member in the course of their regular monitoring activities.
On August 1, 2023, we immediately requested additional information from the
department regarding the implementation of the memorandum, including the
list of the redirected cases and their new case numbers. On August 8, 2023,
after receiving no response to our request, we elevated our request to
the department’s Undersecretary of Administration. On August 18, 2023,

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10111 Old Placerville Road, Suite 110, Sacramento, California 95827

5

Telephone: (916) 288-4233

5

www.oig.ca.gov

OIG
№ SR-23-01

Amarik K. Singh

OFFICE of the
INSPECTOR GENERAL

Inspector General

Neil Robertson
Chief Deputy
Inspector General
Independent
Prison Oversight

JANUARY 29, 2024

we again asked the department to provide us with the information we
requested. Finally, on August 22, 2023, the OIG received some of the
information requested indicating the department had hundreds of cases in the
AIMS backlog.
Although the department made the OIG generally aware of its problem,
the department never notified the OIG of its intent to solve its problem by
redirecting allegations of staff misconduct to prisons to process as routine
grievances, contrary to its current regulations. The department also did
not inform us of the magnitude of the AIMS backlog until after its order to
redirect the grievances had gone into effect. Had we been informed of the
extent of the backlog and the department’s plan to redirect these allegations
of staff misconduct to prisons for review, we would have recommended the
department resolve its AIMS backlog in a manner that was both transparent
and in compliance with its current regulations and departmental policy.
4. The department’s attempt to downplay the impact of its decision by pointing
out that it only affected a small percentage of grievances ignores the impact
its decision had on the incarcerated people whose allegations of staff
misconduct were not reviewed in compliance with the department’s current
regulations. The purpose of this report was not to provide an assessment of
the department’s overall process for reviewing allegations of staff misconduct
that incarcerated people file; that is an assessment we provide in our annual
staff misconduct monitoring reports. This report highlighted the department’s
poor decision-making when determining how to address a backlog of
grievances that the department believed it was not adequately staffed to
handle. Rather than temporarily redirect resources or personnel to address the
backlog, it chose to subject the grievances to a less robust review process than
is required by regulation. We believe it is important to provide transparency to
this decision and its impact, so the department can make a more appropriate
decision when deciding how to address any future backlogs it may face.

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10111 Old Placerville Road, Suite 110, Sacramento, California 95827

5

Telephone: (916) 288-4233

5

www.oig.ca.gov