New Classes Aim to Help 'Lifer' Inmates After Parole
There's a profound change underway in California's criminal justice system. Inmates serving life sentences with the possibility of parole are being released in record numbers. Since 2009, nearly 2,300 lifers have been paroled. Gov. Brown's office insists it has nothing to do with the state's prison overcrowding issue, rather he says, it's being driven by recent court rulings that make it harder to deny parole if inmates are no longer considered a public safety risk. Now, for the first time, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is offering classes aimed directly at lifers.
'The Tempest' Gets a Californian Makeover
You might say California politics are full of Shakespearean drama, with a history full of power grabs, betrayal and fatally flawed leaders. Los Angeles' Cornerstone Theatre is taking that idea to a new level. The community theater troupe re-imagines the magic realism of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" as a parable steeped in California politics, agriculture and the hunger that drives so many Californians.
Scientists Seek to Redefine Schizophrenia
Walk through the streets of almost any big city in California, and you're likely to encounter homeless people suffering from schizophrenia. The symptoms -- disturbing hallucinations and delusions -- are frightening and obvious. And yet we know almost nothing about the biology of schizophrenia. There's no blood test for it, and no scan that can diagnose it. In the second of a three-part series on schizophrenia, we meet scientists who are redefining the disease and proposing new treatments.
Sacramento Program Empowers Minority Students Through Art
It's been a tough few years for California schools. A series of deep budget cuts has left some districts reeling -- and of course art and music classes are typically the first to go. But in Sacramento, there's a little place called the Sol Collective, an arts and activism center that helps fill that vacuum with free and low-cost after-school classes for kids of color. The center comes out of Sacramento's little-known radical arts history.