California is increasing restrictions at its highest security men’s prisons, including at a facility in Los Angeles County where two officers have been stabbed in recent days, as it conducts investigations into a “concerning rise” in violence, drug overdoses and contraband.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced Thursday it had immediately implemented a “modified program” at 21 of its Level III and Level IV facilities — classified as the two highest security tiers — across the state.

A modified program is not a full lockdown, but it does impose severe restrictions on inmates’ movement throughout the facilities and cuts off access to visitations, phone calls and electronic communications until it is lifted.

The restrictions follow a “recent and concerning rise in violent incidents directed towards both staff and incarcerated individuals” as well as an “increase in overdose cases and findings of contraband,” officials said in a news release.

All movement within those facilities, including access to showers, “will be conducted in a controlled and secure manner.” Meals will be delivered to housing units directly in Level IV units, while access to dining halls at Level III facilities will be “under controlled conditions,” according to the corrections department.

Two inmates have been slain inside department facilities in Lassen and Kern counties since the start of the month, records show. In Lancaster, inmates at the state prison attacked officers with makeshift weapons twice in 10 days and are now under investigation for attempted murder.

Michael O’Neill, 42, who is serving time for burglary and robbery, allegedly stabbed an officer during the morning meal on June 1 and attacked another as the second officer responded to help. Staff at the facility managed to stop the attack without additional injuries, according to the corrections department.

Both officers were taken to an outside medical facility and later discharged, officials said.

Eight days later, Cosmin Badiu, 28, who is serving a burglary sentence, allegedly used an improvised weapon to attack a supervising correctional officer in the yard. The officer sustained “multiple puncture wounds to the back of the head” and staff had to use “physical force and chemical agents” to quell the attack, officials said.

The officer was taken to a hospital and was in good condition as of Monday.

Both attacks are under investigation. Badiu and O’Neill are expected to have their cases referred to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for felony charges, officials said.

Data released by California Correctional Health Care Services indicates 148 deaths have occurred in state prisons since the start of the year. Of those, 12 were homicides and nine were drug overdoses. Investigations into the causes of death for 34 of the cases are still pending.

By this time last year, 194 inmates had died in custody statewide. That figure jumped to 419 total by the end of 2024.

Locally, 15 deaths have occurred in state prison facilities in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties since January, the records showed. Three of those deaths were homicides, while two were attributed to drug overdoses.

A total of 57 people died in state prisons in those three counties in 2024. Only one of those was a homicide.

An analysis of in-custody deaths from 2006 to 2023 by the California Correctional Health Care Service lists cancer as the leading cause of death in California’s state prisons for nearly every year until 2023, when drug overdoses became the top cause. Homicides typically have fallen in the fifth or sixth rank across the nearly 20-year period reviewed.

The rise in overdoses seemingly continued in 2024, with cancer and drug overdoses each accounting for 79 deaths, according to the state’s data. The second highest cause, cardiovascular disease, was attributed to 59 deaths, by comparison.

This is the second time this year the corrections department has implemented a modified program at its facilities following violent events. Similar restrictions were put in place in March in response to a “surge in violence against staff and incarcerated people,” but those restrictions were limited only to Level IV facilities at the time.