Judge calls inmate care wretched

By Mark Gladstone
TIMES SACRAMENTO BUREAU

SACRAMENTO - Declaring the state's $1 billion-a-year prison health system "horrifying," a federal judge Tuesday threatened to strip the Schwarzenegger administration of control of inmate care and put it in the hands of a receiver.

Noting that the administration inherited many of the deficiencies, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson nonetheless cited "the problem of a highly dysfunctional, largely decrepit, overly bureaucratic and politically driven prison system" that "is too far gone to be corrected by conventional methods."