Retooling Pap test to spot more kinds of cancer

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported encouraging signs that one day, there might be.

Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.

How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in the ovaries or the lining of the uterus, and float down to rest in the cervix, where Pap tests are performed. These cells are too rare to recognize under the microscope. But researchers from Johns Hopkins University used some sophisticated DNA testing on the Pap samples to uncover the evidence — gene mutations that show cancer is present.

In a pilot study, they analyzed Pap smears from 46 women who already were diagnosed with either ovarian or endometrial cancer. The new technique found all the endometrial cancers and 41 percent of the ovarian tumors, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

This is very early-stage research, and women shouldn't expect any change in their routine Paps. It will take years of additional testing to prove if the so-called PapGene technique really could work as a screening tool, used to spot cancer in women who thought they were healthy.

"Now the hard work begins," said Hopkins oncologist Dr. Luis Diaz, whose team is collecting hundreds of additional Pap samples for more study and is exploring ways to enhance the detection of ovarian cancer.

But if it ultimately pans out, "the neat part about this is, the patient won't feel anything different," and the Pap wouldn't be performed differently, Diaz added. The extra work would come in a lab.

The gene-based technique marks a new approach toward cancer screening, and specialists are watching closely.

"This is very encouraging, and it shows great potential," said American Cancer Society genetics expert Michael Melner.

"We are a long way from being able to see any impact on our patients," cautioned Dr. Shannon Westin of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She reviewed the research in an accompanying editorial, and said the ovarian cancer detection would need improvement if the test is to work.

But she noted that ovarian cancer has poor survival rates because it's rarely caught early. "If this screening test could identify ovarian cancer at an early stage, there would be a profound impact on patient outcomes and mortality," Westin said.

More than 22,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and more than 15,000 die. Symptoms such as pain and bloating seldom are obvious until the cancer is more advanced, and numerous attempts at screening tests have failed.

Endometrial cancer affects about 47,000 women a year, and kills about 8,000. There is no screening test for it either, but most women are diagnosed early because of postmenopausal bleeding.

The Hopkins research piggybacks on one of the most successful cancer screening tools, the Pap, and a newer technology used along with it. With a standard Pap, a little brush scrapes off cells from the cervix, which are stored in a vial to examine for signs of cervical cancer. Today, many women's Paps undergo an additional DNA-based test to see if they harbor the HPV virus, which can spur cervical cancer.

So the Hopkins team, funded largely by cancer advocacy groups, decided to look for DNA evidence of other gynecologic tumors. It developed a method to rapidly screen the Pap samples for those mutations using standard genetics equipment that Diaz said wouldn't add much to the cost of a Pap-plus-HPV test. He said the technique could detect both early-stage and more advanced tumors. Importantly, tests of Paps from 14 healthy women turned up no false alarms.

The endometrial cancers may have been easier to find because cells from those tumors don't have as far to travel as ovarian cancer cells, Diaz said. Researchers will study whether inserting the Pap brush deeper, testing during different times of the menstrual cycle, or other factors might improve detection of ovarian cancer.

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Irvine City Council overhauls oversight, spending on Great Park

Capping a raucous eight-hour-plus meeting, the Irvine City Council early Wednesday voted to overhaul the oversight and spending on the beleaguered Orange County Great Park while authorizing an audit of the more than $220 million that so far has been spent on the ambitious project.

A newly elected City Council majority voted 3 to 2 to terminate contracts with two firms that had been paid a combined $1.1 million a year for consulting, lobbying, marketing and public relations. One of those firms — Forde & Mollrich public relations — has been paid $12.4 million since county voters approved the Great Park plan in 2002.

"We need to stop talking about building a Great Park and actually start building a Great Park," council member Jeff Lalloway said.

The council, by the same split vote, also changed the composition of the Great Park's board of directors, shedding four non-elected members and handing control to Irvine's five council members.

The actions mark a significant turning point in the decade-long effort to turn the former El Toro Marine base into a 1,447-acre municipal park with man-made canyons, rivers, forests and gardens that planners hoped would rival New York's Central Park.

The city hoped to finish and maintain the park for years to come with $1.4 billion in state redevelopment funds. But that money vanished last year as part of the cutbacks to deal with California's massive budget deficit.

"We've gone through $220 million, but where has it gone?" council member Christina Shea said of the project's initial funding from developers in exchange for the right to build around the site. "The fact of the matter is the money is almost gone. It can't be business as usual."

The council majority said the changes will bring accountability and efficiencies to a project that critics say has been larded with wasteful spending and no-bid contracts. For all that has been spent, only about 200 acres of the park has been developed and half of that is leased to farmers.

But council members Larry Agran and Beth Krom, who have steered the course of the project since its inception, voted against reconfiguring the Great Park's board of directors and canceling the contracts with the two firms.

Krom has called the move a "witch hunt" against her and Agran. Feuding between liberal and conservative factions on the council has long shaped Irvine politics.

"This is a power play," she said. "There's a new sheriff in town."

The council meeting stretched long into the night, with the final vote coming Wednesday at 1:34 a.m. Tensions were high in the packed chambers with cheering, clapping and heckling coming from the crowd.

At one point council member Lalloway lamented that he "couldn't hear himself think."

During public comments, newly elected Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer chastised the council for "fighting like schoolchildren." Earlier this week he said that if the Irvine's new council majority can't make progress on the Great Park, he would seek a ballot initiative to have the county take over.

And Spitzer angrily told Agran that his stewardship of the project had been a failure.

"You know what?" he said. "It's their vision now. You're in the minority."

mike.anton@latimes.com

rhea.mahbubani@latimes.com

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In Old Taliban Strongholds, Qualms on What Lies Ahead

LOY BAGH, Afghanistan — The battle against the Taliban in Helmand Province was so fierce two years ago that farmers here say there were some fields where virtually every ear of corn had a bullet in it.

Now it is peaceful enough that safety concerns were an afterthought during this year’s harvest. In districts of Helmand like Marja and Nad Ali that used to be Taliban strongholds, life has been transformed by the American troop surge that brought in tens of thousands of Marines three years ago. Over several recent days, a reporter was able to drive securely to places that in the past had been perilous without a military escort, and many of the roads were better paved, too.

So why, then, was it so difficult to find an optimist in Helmand Province?

In conversations with dozens of tribal elders, farmers, teachers and provincial officials, three factors loomed large: dissatisfaction with the Afghan government, the imminent departure of Western troops and recognition that the Taliban are likely to return. Few expressed much faith in the ability of the Afghan government and security forces to maintain the security gains won by the huge American and British military effort here.

Although some people said they believed that areas near the provincial capital would remain secure, beyond that there was little confidence, and many voiced worries that much of the province would drift back under Taliban control after the NATO combat mission ends in 2014.

Even now, with at least 6,500 Marines still in Helmand after a peak of 21,000 troops last year in Helmand and neighboring Nimroz Provinces, local people say the Taliban have begun “creeping back.” Residents report that threats from nearby militant commanders have increased, and that the Taliban are sending in radical mullahs to preach jihad in the mosques and woo the young and unemployed to their cause.

As fearful as residents may be of a resurgent Taliban, they are also angry at the government for what they see as widespread corruption and hypocrisy. Some of that anger focuses on bribery connected with government services, and some on policies relating to the opium trade, which still thrives here. Helmand is the supplier of more than 40 percent of the world’s opium, according to United Nations statistics, and the poppy crop is still the most profitable one by far. Even farmers who are willing to grow other crops are angry at officials who have eradicated poppy but failed to provide enough help with alternatives. Farmers say some of those same officials profit from the drug trade they profess to be fighting.

“Before the surge, the government in Helmand did not control even a single district,” said Hajji Atiqullah, a leader of the powerful Barakzai tribe in the Nawa district of central Helmand. “They had a presence in the district centers, a very small area, but the Marines cleared many districts, and they expanded the presence of the central government.”

Afghan forces now control his district, he said, but will not be able to hold it unless “the foreigners manage to get rid of corruption in the Afghan government, in the districts and the province levels.”

Local elders fear that many farmers, especially those impoverished by the government’s strict poppy eradication policies, will return to opium cultivation and look to the Taliban or other criminals for protection because the government has not offered them a satisfactory substitute livelihood.

“Before the Marines launched this big offensive, Marja was the center of the opium trade,” said Ahmad Shah, the chairman of the Marja development shura, a group of elders that works with the government to try to bring change here. “Millions and millions of Pakistani rupees were being traded every day in the bazaar. People were so rich that in some years a farmer could afford to buy a car.

“We were part of the eradication efforts by the government, and if they had provided the farmer with compensation, we could have justified our act. But the government failed to provide compensation, and unless it does so, the people will turn against us or join the insurgency and be against development, as they were during the Taliban.”

Part of the government’s rationale for poppy eradication was to starve militants of the opium profits that have been important to their finances. As opium cultivation was pushed away from the centers of the American troop surge, the Taliban made new allies by providing protection for farmers who moved their poppy cultivation to outlying deserts. Over the past few years, militants and opium farmers have increasingly found common cause.

A largely British-financed alternative crop program made significant headway at first in persuading farmers to switch crops, but few farmers could do as well as they had with opium.

Habib Zahori contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

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Brooke Burke-Charvet Reveals Thyroid Cancer Surgery Scar

01/09/2013 at 07:25 AM EST

Brooke Burke-Charvet put on a brave face Tuesday morning, recounting the emotional distress she endured leading up to her thyroidectomy.

Managing to stay smiling, the typically upbeat Dancing with the Stars co-host, 41, told Good Morning America her initial diagnosis was "shocking," adding, "I never thought I'd hear the word 'cancer' in relation to myself. The [thought] in my mind when I [heard the news] is that I'm a mother, I've got four children, I've got a family counting on me."

Burke-Charvet's brood was very supportive of her health condition, but it was especially tough for her older daughter.

"It was in the news, and her friends had to come to her and say, 'Oh, we heard about your mom. We're so sorry,' " Burke-Charvet said. "She cried."

Now healthier, the TV personality has a permanent reminder of that tough time in her life.

"[There's] no makeup [on my scar]," she said, revealing her bare neck. "This is a first for me. I've been scarfing it up."

But a little scarring is now the least of her concerns.

"It's fresh, it's a month old and I think scars tell a story," she said. "And I think I'm so fortunate."

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Charlie Sheen downplays Baja encounter with L.A. mayor

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa found himself sucked deeper into the Charlie Sheen-TMZ-Hollywood gossip vortex Tuesday, with the actor speaking out again about the night they met up at a hotel in Mexico over the holidays.

Sheen made news last month after he tweeted a picture of himself with his arm around Villaraigosa the night of Sheen's bar opening in Baja California, Mexico. The former star of "Two and a Half Men" praised the mayor as a man who "knows how to party." But Villaraigosa downplayed the significance of the image, telling KNBC's Conan Nolan over the weekend that he had only "bumped into" Sheen and engaged in a three-minute conversation.

On Tuesday, Sheen challenged Villaraigosa's account, telling celebrity website TMZ that the mayor was drinking in Sheen's hotel suite in a room full of beautiful women, including at least one porn star. "I memorize 95 pages a week, so the last thing that I am is memory challenged," Sheen told the website. "We hung out for the better part of two hours."

Hours later, Sheen issued a more muted account, saying the mayor had spoken to many other people at the opening of the bar. "I am a giant fan of the mayor's and apologize if any of my words have been misconstrued," the statement said.

By then, however, Villaraigosa found himself fending off related questions at a news conference meant to be devoted to billionaire Eli Broad's new downtown art museum. "Can you just set the record straight for us?" asked one reporter. "What was it? Two hours or three minutes?" asked another. Then came the zinger: "Does what happens in Cabo stay in Cabo?"

Villaraigosa cackled at the Cabo crack but refused to take the bait. "I've said what I'm going to say on that, everybody," Villaraigosa declared. "You had fun. Let's talk about the important things, like a thousand jobs today" — a reference to construction work going on at Broad's museum.

Villaraigosa has frequently bristled at media questions about his personal life, going silent on some occasions and becoming visibly angry on others. Last week, he told KNBC's Nolan that Nolan had asked a "bozo question" about the Sheen photograph. He also noted that Nolan and other newsroom staffers have, like Sheen, asked the mayor to pose for pictures with them.

Sheen has been a TMZ staple, using the website as a platform to talk up his $100,000 gift to celebrity Lindsay Lohan and his porn star "goddesses." And Villaraigosa has glided easily between the world of politics and the entertainment industry since being elected in 2005.

"He's a celebrity mayor. And he's always wanted to be that," said Jaime Regalado, professor emeritus of political science at Cal State L.A. "If you're going to be a celebrity mayor, you have to take the good and the bad and everything in between" when it comes to news coverage.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

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Videos of Chávez Promote Stability During Illness

Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

In Caracas on Saturday, Venezuelans showed support for President Hugo Chávez, who is in Cuba after an operation.

CARACAS, Venezuela — They run around the clock on state television, highly polished videos of President Hugo Chávez hugging children, kissing grandmothers, playing baseball and reciting poetry. As supporters around the world hold up hand-lettered signs that say, “I Am Chávez,” the president’s voice is heard in one of them shouting, “I demand absolute loyalty because I am not me, I am not an individual, I am a people!”

In reality, officials say, Mr. Chávez lies in a Cuban hospital bed, struggling through complications from cancer surgery while his country heads toward a constitutional showdown over his absence.

Mr. Chávez’s fragile health has thrown Venezuela into political uncertainty. After being re-elected in October, he is supposed to be sworn in for the start of his new term on Thursday, but the charismatic leader who has dominated every aspect of government here for 14 years may be too ill to return in time, much less continue in office for the next six years. Top government officials insist that the swearing-in is just a formality. The opposition, meanwhile, says the Constitution requires that Mr. Chávez be present or, in his absence, that a process begin that could lead to new elections.

The government’s television barrage seems intent on reassuring loyalists — and anyone who might raise questions — that Mr. Chávez is still very much the head of the nation. By keeping his image front and center, analysts say, the government can bolster its position as the caretaker of his legacy, mobilize its supporters for the battle over interpreting the Constitution and build momentum for itself in elections should Mr. Chávez die or prove too sick to govern.

“They have combined the mechanisms of left-wing struggle with the best marketing team there is,” said J. J. Rendón, a political consultant who opposes the government.

He compared the saga over Mr. Chávez’s illness to a telenovela, one of the popular Latin American soap operas, with its unexpected plot twists that keep viewers on edge. “They are always prepared for different scenarios,” he said of the government.

During past trips to Cuba for cancer treatment over the last year and a half, Mr. Chávez worked to maintain his customary visibility back home, heading televised cabinet meetings, making phone calls to government-run television programs and posting on Twitter.

But this time is different. He has not been seen or heard from since his surgery on Dec. 11.

To fill the void, the government montages combine elements of campaign ads and music videos, sometimes with the feel of a religious revival broadcast.

They are Mr. Chávez’s greatest hits, showing him on the campaign trail or in scenes from happier times during his many years in office, a nostalgic and emotionally charged way for his supporters to connect with their absent leader. Set to rock, rap or folk music, they mine parallels between Mr. Chávez and his hero, the Venezuelan independence leader Simón Bolívar, and resonate with the religious devotion with which some of his followers regard him.

In one, Mr. Chávez is seen reciting a favorite poem exalting Bolívar. Another shows glowing pictures of Mr. Chávez while choirlike voices sing, “Chávez is the triumphant commander, Chávez is pure and noble love.”

“There is a process of converting Chávez into a myth with religious roots,” said Andrés Cañizalez, a communication professor at the Andrés Bello Catholic University.

The television spots, he said, are part of “a political strategy to keep alive this idea that Chávez is not just a political leader but he’s the father of the country, he’s a patriarch, he’s a figure who protects us, who takes care of everything for us, something more than a president.”

Many of Mr. Chávez’s followers already speak of him in religious terms, as a godlike presence, and the campaign seems intended to feed those perceptions.

María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting.

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Fifty Shades of Grey Sparks Musical Theater Spoof

By Andrea Billups

01/08/2013 at 07:45 AM EST

Even with last year's runaway success, 2013 is already shaping up to be a 50 Shades of Grey kind of year.

A feature film based on the sexually charged book, which has sold 65 million copies around the world, is in the works for this year. And a musical spoof of the book, 50 Shades! The Musical, will open at New York City's Gramercy Theater on Friday, the New York Post reports.

The stage version is heavy with innuendo but scarce on nudity, unlike the book, which has drawn high praise and vicious criticism as "mommy porn" for its frank description of the bondage tinged relationship between Anastasia Steele, a student, and Christian Grey, her billionaire sexual provocateur.

The musical version is performed by Chicago's Baby Wants Candy musical comedy troupe and is slowly earning critical buzz. The show includes 11 original songs and pokes fun of the characters including the wealthy Grey portrayed with a beer gut.

The film version of the E L James book has been adapted for the big screen by British screenwriter Kelly Marcel, and leaves nothing to the imagination, she tells the Times of London, noting the movie will not be cast until after the script is complete.

Marcel says the script is so closely guarded she is keeping shredders at her Hollywood home to keep away those whom she says are going through her trash to hunt for clues.

"This isn't going to be Twilight. It's going to be raunchy." Marcel said. "We are 100 percent going there."

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Brown seeks to lift state inmate caps

Gov. Jerry Brown says there's no need to do more to reduce crowding in state prisons, and population caps should be lifted.

In a legal filing late Monday, state lawyers balked at the federal court requirement that California outline plans to further reduce prison crowding. Instead, lawyers insisted that conditions have improved sufficiently, even in prisons with thousands more inmates than they were built to hold.

"The overcrowding and healthcare conditions cited by this court to support its population reduction order are now a distant memory," the filing said.

It is now up to a panel of three federal judges, presiding over class-action lawsuits over inmate medical, dental and mental health care, to decide the next step. Their options include accepting the state's position, previously rejected, or ordering the state to release prisoners early, a possibility backed in 2011 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Civil rights advocates who are upset by the state's refusal to produce a court-ordered reduction called it "business as usual."

"Insisting that we maintain a horrendously bloated prison population will only ensure that California remain near the bottom of the nation in per-pupil spending on public education," said Allen Hopper, director of criminal justice and drug policy for the ACLU of Northern California.

California currently has 133,000 prisoners, nearly 120,000 of them housed in its 33 prisons. That population is far below the 173,000 inmates crowded into the state in 2007, but more than 9,000 above what federal judges say they will allow. The deadline for the reductions is June 30, but the judges have said they will allow California to argue for an extension to December.

State records show that Brown has recently reduced crowding by sending inmates to private prisons out of state. After months of decline, the number of inmates transferred every week began to rise in November. The state is now operating near its contractual maximum, paying more than half a million dollars a day to house prisoners as far away as Mississippi.

Last year, Brown's administration vowed to save money by canceling those contracts.

In Monday's filing, Brown's lawyers told federal overseers that instead of scheduling early releases or championing new sentencing laws, the governor wants the court to declare that crowding no longer interferes with the delivery of prison healthcare. Among those experts the state cites is Jeffrey Beard, the former Pennsylvania prisons chief who last month took over as Brown's new corrections secretary.

Prisoner advocates criticized the governor's contention.

"This is the latest in a long string of delaying tactics by the state," said Don Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, lead attorney for inmates. "The care in California prisons remains unconstitutional and it is unfortunate that the state continues to litigate instead of spending the time and money to fix these life-threatening problems."

Brown scheduled dual news conferences in Sacramento and Los Angeles on Tuesday to explain his stance.

Inmate exports were to have been cut in half by December 2013 and stopped by the end of 2015, according to the governor's May 2012 blueprint, part of a plan that was billed as saving "billions of dollars."

"It's a shuffling of the deck chairs, instead of looking at concrete proposals," said Emily Harris, director of Californians United for a Responsible Budget, an alliance of organizations opposed to increased incarceration. Organizations such as Californians United for a Responsible Budget and the American Civil Liberties Union hoped California's prison crowding crisis would push the state into early release programs, alternative sentencing and decriminalization of some drugs.

The out-of-state transfers alone are not enough to meet federal orders to reduce California's prison population to below 137.5% of what its prisons were built to hold. Slapped with findings that inmate care was so poor it amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment," California is struggling to show it can improve conditions without resorting to mass releases.

In 2011, Brown proposed to solve most of those problems by requiring counties to take custody of tens of thousands of nonviolent felons and parole violators who otherwise would be sent to prison. In selling the plan, Brown insisted the state had no choice.

"The force we can't avoid is the United States Supreme Court," Brown said in September 2011. "That court said … let out 30,000 prisoners, so that's what you've got to do."

His office has acknowledged for a year that the state's reductions won't meet the federal target.

Though inmates are no longer triple-bunked in gyms and other open spaces, some facilities remain at 170% of their intended capacity. The Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, in mid-conversion from a women's prison to a men's facility, last week was at nearly 300% capacity.

California spends more than $440 million a year to buy space at prisons operated by Tennessee-based Corrections Corp. of America. The number of out-of-state inmates has run from a high of 10,000 in 2010 to a low of 8,500 last October as the state rolled out plans to shutter those contracts.

In November, under renewed court demands to meet population caps, California once again began increasing the number of inmates it contracted out. State prison reports show that population returned to nearly 9,000 by the end of December. To go over 9,038 will require modification of California's contract with Corrections Corp. of America.

"There's always an availability of capacity," said Corrections Corp. of America spokesman Steve Owen.

The transfers have always been opposed by the state prison guards union, which loses jobs, and by inmate advocacy organizations that contend uprooted inmates lose touch with their families and have a harder time of adjusting to post-prison life.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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