It seems not a week passes without some story getting out about how badly prisons in the U.S. are run. In California, at least, one step in the right direction has been taken with officials demanding prisons stop counting crossword puzzles and word-search games as part of a guard's training time.

Prison guards are supposed to be given 52 hours of training annually in relevant areas, such as firearms, use of force and prisoner transport. A new union contract dropped that to 40 hours of practical training and added 12 hours of reviewing policies, directives and prison bulletins. Somehow that got swapped out for word games. Completing a word-search puzzle was equivalent to an hour of training.

Calling it "totally unacceptable," state assemblyman Rudy Bermudez demanded the issue be corrected. Chief deputy directors of the Corrections Department quickly issued a memo saying crosswords would no longer be acceptable. An official for the guards' union blamed the stupidity on a lack of funding toward anything useful.

» Scott Saxon