SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In a rare rebuke of the state’s corrections department, an independent prison oversight office said the department erred in not dismissing a high-ranking administrator who tried to silence a subordinate after making repeated sexual and racist comments to her.

After a hiring authority dismissed the corrections administrator engaging in misconduct, the official appealed his case. In a settlement agreement, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation decided to instead demote and suspend him for 11 months.

After reviewing the case, the Office of the Inspector General argued the corrections department should not have settled the case given the overwhelming evidence that outlined a “pattern of egregious harassment” by the unnamed administrator.

The prison oversight office said CDCR could have presented evidence to support the administrator’s dismissal.

Instead, the OIG report said, “the department’s decision to settle the matter undermined the department’s zero-tolerance policy regarding sexual harassment and even suggested the administrator’s behavior was tolerable enough for the department to continue to employ him as a peace officer.”

The report, issued last week, is known as a “sentinel case”, and it’s the first that the office has issued in nearly three years. The OIG publishes this type of report “when it has determined that the department’s handling of a case was unusually poor and involved serious errors.”

The supervisor harassed his subordinate by telling her that he “owned” her because she was still on probation. He also made racist comments about the subordinate’s boyfriend.

The report relayed a conversation between the administrator and his subordinate where he told her he saw a “homeless Black guy” and asked her whether that was her “boyfriend.”

The administrator made lewd comments to other employees, according to the report. In May 2023, CDCR informed the administrator that he was being reassigned due to his language.

In response, the report said, the administrator began intimidating the subordinate by telling her he had connections that could tell him details about the investigation.

CDCR attorneys agreed with the hiring authority’s decision to dismiss the individual. Shortly after, he appealed the decision to the State Personnel Board.

After a settlement conference, the department agreed to demote, instead of dismiss, the administrator to the position of a corrections officer. In return, the administrator withdrew the appeal and “agreed to not have any measurable amount of alcohol in his system while on duty,” the OIG report said.

The prison official stated he did not remember some of his retaliatory actions against this subordinate due to excessive alcohol consumption.

In a response to the OIG report, CDCR Secretary Jeff Macomber disagreed that the incident warranted the level of rebuke associated with a sentinel case. The secretary said that in demoting the employee, instead of pursuing a dismissal, CDCR was being cautious because the outcome of a hearing is unknown.

“There were substantial risks in not settling this case should the State Personnel Board (SPB) decide to overturn the disciplinary action and reinstate the employee to the prior administrator position,” Macomber said.

The OIG stated that the dismissed employee already received training to prevent the type of behavior the administrator exhibited, so further harassment training mandated by the settlement is unlikely to prevent future misconduct.

In summarizing its decision, CDCR said that part of its mission includes rehabilitation of individuals who have committed serious criminal acts.

“It is incongruous that the Department would not also seek to rehabilitate employees when it believes it could do so,” Macomber said.

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