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.
He promised to restore the same authority for more of the state’s other 33 lockups in coming months.
“This is the beginning of a significant movement of the case,” Kelso said in an interview, contemplating an end to nearly a decade of federal intervention spurred by a 2001 lawsuit over prison conditions.