The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog: December 2004 Archives

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December 30, 2004

The Economic Consequences of the 1960's Race Riots Come Into View

"The riots not only destroyed many homes and businesses, resulting in about $50 million in property damage in Detroit alone, but far more significantly, they also depressed inner-city incomes and property values for decades."

December 30, 2004
ECONOMIC SCENE
The Consequences of the 1960's Race Riots Come Into View
By VIRGINIA POSTREL

As an economic historian, Robert A. Margo has long wanted to study the 1960's. But, he says, "for the longest time people would say, 'That's too close to the present.' "

Not so anymore. The 1960's are as distant from today as the Great Depression was from the 1960's, and economic historians, including Professor Margo, of Vanderbilt University, are examining the decade's long-term effects.

Consider the wave of race riots that swept the nation's cities. From 1964 to 1971, there were more than 750 riots, killing 228 people and injuring 12,741 others. After more than 15,000 separate incidents of arson, many black urban neighborhoods were in ruins.

As soon as the riots occurred, social scientists began collecting data and analyzing the possible causes. Until recently, however, few scholars looked at the riots' long-term economic consequences.

In two recent papers, Professor Margo and his Vanderbilt colleague, William J. Collins, do just that by estimating the impact on incomes and employment and on property values.

The riots not only destroyed many homes and businesses, resulting in about $50 million in property damage in Detroit alone, but far more significantly, they also depressed inner-city incomes and property values for decades.

(The papers, "The Labor Market Effects of the 1960's Riots" and "The Economic Aftermath of the 1960's Riots: Evidence from Property Values," are available at www.vanderbilt.edu/Econ/wparchive/working03.html and www.vanderbilt.edu/Econ/wparchive/working04.html.)

The economists start with sociologists' findings on the riots' causes: whether a city had a riot was essentially unpredictable, assuming the city was outside the South (where few riots occurred) and had a substantial African-American population. The sociologists' research, Professor Margo says, suggests that "there was so much racial tension in the air in the 1960's that a riot could happen almost anywhere, anytime."

That unpredictability is bad news for sociologists looking for causes but good news for economists analyzing consequences. It creates a natural experiment, dividing otherwise similar places into those that had riots and those that did not.

In cities with major riots, the economists find that the median black family income dropped by about 9 percent from 1960 to 1970, compared with similar cities without severe riots. This impact on the labor market may have actually been more severe in the long run.

From 1960 to 1980, male employment in cities with severe riots dropped four to seven percentage points, compared with otherwise similar cities.

The impact on property values is even more striking. In cities with severe riots, Professors Collins and Margo found, the median value of black-owned homes dropped 14 percent to 20 percent, compared with cities that experienced little or no rioting, from 1960 to 1970. The median value of all central-city homes, regardless of owner, dropped 6 percent, to 10 percent.

The racial difference is not surprising, because both riot damage and the perceived risk of future riots were concentrated in predominately black neighborhoods.

Again, these numbers reflect not just immediate property damage but long-term declines. If it is more expensive or less desirable to live or work in a particular neighborhood, property prices will drop.

"This effect," the economists write, "could work through any number of the channels that feed into the net benefit stream: personal and property risk might seem higher; insurance premiums might rise; taxes for redistribution or more police and fire protection might increase, and municipal bonds may be more difficult to place; retail outlets might close; businesses and employment opportunities might relocate; friends and family might move away; burned-out buildings might be an eyesore; and so on."

In a second statistical test, Professors Collins and Margo identify two factors that separate cities with riots from those without riots: whether the local government used a city manager (which lessened the chances of a riot) and how much rain fell in April 1968, the month that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

"If you have a lot of rain, people don't go out in the streets and riot," Professor Margo notes. So the same national event had different effects in cities that were otherwise similar. Here, too, the two economists find that cities without riots did significantly better economically over the long run.

These results help address an important economic puzzle. Since World War II, the incomes of black and white Americans have begun to converge. But racial differences in wealth, or net worth, have remained enormous, even for people with similar incomes and family configurations.

In 1998, the median income for African-American households was $20,000, or 54 percent of the median white household income of $37,000, according to calculations by Edward N. Wolff of the Jerome Levy Economics Institute. But the median net worth of black families was only $10,000, a mere 12 percent of the median white net worth of $81,700.

Wealth reflects history as well as current economics. And while there are many reasons for the wealth gap, it certainly does not help that the 1960's riots destroyed much of the accumulated wealth of many of the most prosperous African-Americans, those who had left the South for the greater economic opportunity of industrial cities.

A home is the most important asset for most American families, and home ownership is even more significant for African-Americans, who historically have had held little wealth in financial securities or business equity.

In 1940, black-owned homes were worth only 37 percent as much as white-owned homes, as against 62 percent in 1970 - still a significant gap, but a much smaller one. From then on, however, the gap barely budges, with the ratio reaching only 65 percent by 1990.

The riots help explain why. These numbers include all houses nationwide. In inner cities, the trend actually reversed, and the gap in home value began to widen instead of narrow.

From 1940 to 1970, the value of homes owned and occupied by blacks in central cities jumped to 69 percent of the value of urban homes owned and occupied by whites, from 51 percent. (Home values were rising over this period as well.) By 1990, however, the ratio was down to a mere 53 percent, nearly as low as in 1940.

"That's a really startling number," Professor Margo says.

Virginia Postrel (www.dynamist.com) is the author of"The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture and Consciousness," just published in paperback by Perennial.

Posted by lois at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)

December 27, 2004

Why Some Politicians Need Their Prisons to Stay Full

By Brent Staples, New York Times, December 27, 2004

"An eye-opening analysis by Prison Policy Initiative's Peter Wagner found seven upstate New York Senate districts that meet minimal population requirements only because prison inmates are included in the count. New York is not alone. The group's researchers have found 21 counties nationally where at least 21 percent of the ''residents'' were inmates."

The mandatory sentencing fad that swept the United States beginning in the 1970's has had dramatic consequences -- most of them bad. The prison population was driven up tenfold, creating a large and growing felon class-- now 13 million strong -- that remains locked out of the mainstream and prone to recidivism. Trailing behind the legions of felons are children who grow up visiting their parents behind bars and thinking prison life is perfectly normal. Meanwhile, the cost of building and running prisons has pushed many states close to bankruptcy -- and forced them to choose between building jails and schools.

Seldom has a public policy done so much damage so quickly. But changes in the draconian sentencing laws have come very slowly. That is partly because the public thinks keeping a large chunk of the population behind bars is responsible for the reduced crime rates of recent years. Studies cast doubt on that theory, since they show drops in crime almost everywhere -- even in states that did not embrace mandatory minimum sentences or mass imprisonment. In addition, these damaging policies have done nothing to curb the drug trade.

Changing prison policy, however, is no longer a simple matter. The business of building and running the jailhouse has become a mammoth industry with powerful constituencies that favor the status quo. Prison-based money and political power have distorted the legislative landscape in ways that will be difficult to undo.

These problems are on vivid display in New York, which started mass imprisonment when Gov. Nelson Rockefeller persuaded the Legislature to pass the toughest drug laws in the nation at the start of an ill-starred ''war on drugs'' 30 years ago. The Rockefeller laws introduced the country to mandatory sentencing policies that barred judges from deciding who goes to jail and for how long. Instead, the laws required lengthy sentences -- 15 years to life -- for nonviolent, first-time offenders, many of whom would have received brief sentences, drug treatment or community service under previous laws.

Nearly all of the prisoners ended up in upstate New York, where failing farms and hollowed-out cities offered a lot of room for building. Politicians in these sparsely populated districts caught on quickly and began to lobby to have the new prisons located in their communities. As a result, nearly 30 percent of the people who were counted as moving into upstate New York during the 1990's were prison inmates.

The influx of inmates has brought desperately needed jobs to the region and resulted in districts whose economies revolve around prison payrolls and whose politics are dominated by the union that represents corrections officers. The inmates also helped to save political careers in areas where legislative districts were in danger of having to be merged because of shrinking populations. Inmates, as it turned out, were magically transformed into ''residents,'' thanks to a quirk in the census rules that counts them as living at their prisons. Although people sentenced under the drug laws frequently serve long sentences, many prisoners remain behind bars only briefly before returning to homes that are often hundreds of miles away.

Felons are barred from voting in 48 of 50 states -- including New York. Yet in New York, as in the rest of the country, disenfranchised prisoners are included in the population counts that become the basis for drawing legislative districts.

An eye-opening analysis by Prison Policy Initiative's Peter Wagner found seven upstate New York Senate districts that meet minimal population requirements only because prison inmates are included in the count. New York is not alone. The group's researchers have found 21 counties nationally where at least 21 percent of the ''residents'' were inmates.

The New York Republican Party uses its majority in the State Senate to maintain political power through fat years and lean. The Senate Republicans, in turn, rely on their large upstate delegation to keep that majority. Whether those legislators have consciously made the connection or not, it's hard to escape the fact that bulging prisons are good for their districts. The advantages extend beyond jobs and political gerrymandering. By counting unemployed inmates as residents, the prison counties lower their per capita incomes -- and increase the portion they get of federal funds for the poor. This results in a transfer of federal cash from places that can't afford to lose it to places that don't deserve it.

Lately, polls have shown growing support for drug law reform. In November, prominent New York Republicans ran into trouble when they faced candidates who made Rockefeller reform an issue. In response, the State Senate endorsed a plan that cut sentences for drug possession crimes, which was the easy part. But it stonewalled on the crucial change, which would have returned to judges the discretion to sentence at least some offenders to drug treatment instead of prison.

While other political forces support the mandatory sentences -- most notably the powerful local prosecutors -- prison rights advocates have recently begun to argue that prison district politicians are more concerned about keeping the prisons full than about crime. The idea of counting inmates as voters in the counties that imprison them is particularly repulsive given that inmates are nearly always stripped of the right to vote. The practice recalls the early United States under slavery, when slaves were barred from voting but counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportioning representation in Congress.

[URL: http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/fact-27-12-2004.shtml ]

Posted by lois at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)

December 23, 2004

Doing Time...And Doing It Time and Time Again

By Matthew T. Mangino
Sunday, December 19, 2004, Washington Post

In 1994, John Popovich, a 34-year-old convicted felon, was found guilty on charges of forging a drug prescription -- a crime committed almost exclusively by substance abusers. He was sentenced to five years probation.

During the 10 years since, he has violated his probation and then his parole eight times. By July 1, 2004, Popovich had served more than two years in jail, even though his original sentence did not require jail time.

Today, Popovich sits in a state correctional facility, having been resentenced to a prison term of 2 1/2 to five years. Popovich doesn't deserve pity; he has a criminal record dating back to 1981. He also committed at least two additional criminal offenses while on probation. But his case, which I have followed with growing dismay, highlights the need to make real changes in the rehabilitation and treatment of prisoners in order to end the cycle of re-incarceration.

Every page of Popovich 's lengthy criminal history is evidence not only of enormous waste of public resources but also of a correctional system that has run amok. So much so, that I sometimes feel as if we are operating a revolving door in the courtrooms here in Lawrence County, just north of Pittsburgh, where Popovich is only one of many repeat offenders. Our experience is not unusual. State and local governments are being crushed under the fiscal demands of America's prison system. Cells across the country are full, not because of mandatory sentencing or the incarceration of drug offenders, but because the system produces thousands of people like Popovich every day, having repeatedly failed to help them gain the skills necessary to manage life on the outside.

We are incarcerating more people for longer periods than at any time in our history. That number isn't just increasing; it is soaring. In 1980, the United States had approximately 316,000 inmates in state and federal prisons; by 2000, there were 1.3 million. Currently, we have more than 2 million people incarcerated when you add together federal, state and local jails, not to mention an additional 4.8 million people who are on parole or probation, totaling approximately 3.2 percent of the adult U.S. population.

Behind those numbers lie patterns of behavior that could be treated. Nearly 75 percent of people who enter the prison system have substance abuse problems; they are drug addicted or alcohol dependent. Nearly one in five has mental health issues. There are few life sentences in this country. Virtually everyone who goes into prison eventually gets out, and many go right back.

Here is the irony of the situation: As the cost of maintaining and expanding prisons has increased, most of the funds that states set aside to help prisoners make the transition from prison to life outside have been slashed. In 1991, one in four state prison inmates received treatment for drug addiction. By 1997, one in 10 received treatment. This has occurred even in light of research suggesting inmates in federal prison who receive residential drug treatment are 73 percent less likely to be rearrested.

Of course, the lack of support for inmates goes beyond drug treatment. A significant majority of released inmates face challenges in housing, education, employment and the availability of assistance on release from incarceration. Imagine yourself as an unskilled, unemployed, homeless parolee, possibly prohibited from getting a driver's license, student loans or even access to public housing. What are your options?

Few, as Popovich found out. Sixty-seven percent of parolees nationwide are rearrested or back in prison within three years.

The costs of this are staggering. Between 1980 and 2000, when the total prison population quadrupled from 500,000 to 2 million, corrections' share of all state and local spending doubled while education's share of all state and local spending dropped by 21 percent. In fact, state spending on incarceration increased annually by 6.2 percent, outpacing health care at 5.8 percent, education at 4.2 percent and natural resources at 3.3 percent.

There is another way to look at how we are spending money on prisoners. The average annual cost to incarcerate an inmate in state prison is $22,650, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. If the cost of meaningful substance abuse treatment, skills training and reentry support added 25 percent to the cost of incarceration and reduced recidivism by 25 percent, states would face a short-term loss, then break even within six years and save money within nine. More importantly, there would be 75 to 100 fewer victims of crime for every 100 inmates during that period. With fewer victims, the nearly $450 billion in annual losses experienced by crime victims would also begin to decrease. Not to mention that 37 former inmates would be gainfully employed, paying taxes, raising families and contributing to the local, state and federal economies.

Unfortunately, few people think in these terms, and they often confuse the cause for the burgeoning prison population with measures designed to get tough on crime. Because of mandatory sentencing, criminals who committed multiple violent offenses, used weapons or sold drugs have been put behind bars. Such efforts have had an impact on violent crime. However, those who have paid their debt to society should be given an opportunity to succeed upon reentry into society. Instead they are being dumped on the street to fend for themselves and will eventually feed the cycle of reincarceration.

To complicate matters, in an effort to deal with the soaring costs, government leaders are arbitrarily releasing inmates. Kentucky, Oklahoma and Texas, to name a few, are opening prison doors, often commuting sentences or repealing mandatory drug sentences. This shortsighted reaction does nothing but put citizens at risk.

Parole and probation officers, burdened by ever-larger caseloads, struggle with their evolving roles in the criminal justice system. Inmates are normally released conditionally, for a period of parole for which they must comply with rules and regulations monitored by a parole officer.

With the enormous caseload that most parole officers handle -- 50 percent higher on average than it was in the mid-'70s -- interactive supervision has given way to electronic surveillance, rigid drug testing and mandatory reporting. Instead of providing support for a former inmate, parole officers have become quasi-law enforcement. They carry guns, wear badges and often re-incarcerate parolees for technical violations like failing to report or failing a drug test.

In 1985, 70 percent of parolees successfully completed their parole periods. By 2003, fewer than 47 percent were making it through their parole periods, according to national averages for state prisons. Those who violate their parole and are re-incarcerated account for 35 percent of all prison admissions -- the fastest growing area of incarceration.

There is some reason for hope. Organizations like the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention at the University of Illinois at Chicago, for example, provides innovative programs aimed at treating violence as a disease. The Chicago program, called CeaseFire, uses ex-offenders in much the way Alcoholics Anonymous uses recovering alcoholics to convey a message of recovery and hope. Some suggest that CeaseFire is part of the reason the homicide count in Chicago has dropped significantly from last year's nation-leading numbers. There were 393 homicides through the beginning of November 2004, down 126 from the same time the previous year.

Many progressive counties are considering reentry programs to assist former inmates to reintegrate into their communities. The programs vary in scope, but the emphasis is on providing life skills, employment opportunities, housing options and educational enhancement. Drug and alcohol treatment, mental health services and behavioral disorders are also provided. Through such efforts, the goal of local government is to help former inmates become productive, law-abiding citizens.

The federal government has also acknowledged that helping ex-offenders successfully reenter society can prevent and deter future criminal acts, although it has not allocated anywhere near the amount of resources needed to deal with the problem.

If men and women like John Popovich are to have a good chance of making a go of it on the outside, governors and state legislatures will ultimately have to deal with this issue, even in an era of declining state budgets. Logic dictates that re-incarcerating two out of every three offenders is a costly, self-defeating effort. A public official can still be tough on criminals while being smart on crime prevention by reducing the cycle of incarceration and, in turn, reducing costs and victimization.

Author's e-mail:

matthewmangino@aol.com

Matthew Mangino is the district attorney of Lawrence County in western Pennsylvania. He also serves on the executive committee of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Institute. He was a Democratic candidate for Congress in 2000.

Posted by lois at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)

In New Data, a Redefinition of Drug Felon

"Mr. Newman added, "There are many more Elaine Bartletts in the system than kingpins.'"

December 23, 2004, NY Times
In New Data, a Redefinition of Drug Felon
By LESLIE EATON

New data from New York's Department of Correctional Services are providing a clearer - and in some ways surprising - picture of the population of long-term inmates eligible to be released or to have their sentences reduced under changes to state drug laws that Gov. George E. Pataki signed into law last week.

The inmates are the roughly 440 so-called A-1 felons, sentenced to at least 15 years to life in prison under the Rockefeller drug laws for possessing or selling narcotics. The new data suggest that these prisoners are in some ways very different from the general prison population, and even from lower-level drug offenders.

Although experts disagree about why this is and what it means, they agree that the new numbers provide a first real snapshot of those affected by the changes in the Rockefeller laws, which were instituted in the 1973 and put first-time offenders behind bars based merely on the amount of drugs they were caught with. Critics have called the laws unduly harsh and said they unduly penalized young African-American men, and women who were involved with someone in the drug trade.

But according to the new data, almost half of the A-1 felons were born outside the United States, coming from about 20 different countries. The largest group by far after native New Yorkers, which account for more than a quarter of the A-1's, is from the Dominican Republic. Less than 13 percent of the total prison population was born overseas, and only 8 percent of lower-level drug offenders were born abroad.

About 55 percent of the A-1 felons are Hispanic, while the overall prison population is less than 30 percent Hispanic. (The prison system divides inmates into four racial categories that do not overlap: white, black, Hispanic and other.)

Though much of the impetus for changing the drug laws has come from black leaders including Russell Simmons, the hip-hop mogul, only a third of the A-1's are black. But blacks make up about half of the total prison population and almost 60 percent of lower-level drug offenders. Just 8 percent of the A-1's are white, while whites make up 18 percent of the total prison population.

About 60 percent of the A-1's were convicted in New York City, with the largest number, almost 150, coming from Manhattan through the district attorney's office and the city's special narcotics prosecutor. But Monroe County, home to Rochester, sent more than 50 of these inmates to jail, making it third after Brooklyn.

The 440 inmates are slightly older than other prisoners - their average age is 42 - and far more likely than lower-level drug offenders to have no previous felony record. And they have, on average, already spent more than nine years in prison, which means that more than half of them may be eligible to get out of jail very soon.

That is because the new law, which takes effect next month, reduces sentences for the most serious drug crimes to eight to 20 years, and allows the A1 felons currently imprisoned under the Rockefeller laws to ask a judge to re-sentence them under the new range.

But how many will actually be released remains unclear, in part because no one yet knows how many of those still in prison were first-time low-level offenders who made a single bad mistake, and how many are major narcotics traffickers and distributors whom judges will be reluctant to release. The Rockefeller drug laws and the new law do not distinguish between the two because both sets of laws emphasize the amount of drugs seized, not the role played by the convict.

"They range from couriers to kingpins," said Chauncey G. Parker, director of criminal justice for the state. "There have been cases where judges have said, 'I would give you less than 15 years, but the law doesn't allow me.' Now, we've also had judges say, on the record, 'I wish the law would let me go higher.' "

Prosecutors look at individual cases and, not surprising, tend to focus on the inmates they believe are major criminals, and tend to discount the number of low-level offenders who received unfairly harsh sentences.

"The ones who came out of our office don't fall into the category of innocent dupes," said Bridget G. Brennan, a special narcotics prosecutor, who said she was reviewing about 80 of the cases.

She pointed out inmates like Wilfredo Schery, who ran a cell of a Colombian cartel that prosecutors said had distributed thousands of pounds of cocaine a month before Mr. Schery pleaded guilty to an A-1 charge and was sentenced to 20 years to life in 1996.

More than 30 of the inmates were sentenced to more than three decades of prison time each, according to correction department data.

Defense lawyers, however, say that many in the drug trade - if not most - were low-level participants who may have been entrapped or lured by law-enforcement agents.

"There's no one archetype," said Robert C. Newman, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society, which is reviewing about 280 cases that were filed in New York City. But in his experience, Mr. Newman added, "There are many more Elaine Bartletts in the system than kingpins."

Elaine Bartlett spent 16 years in prison for her first offense, delivering cocaine to Albany from New York City, in the hopes of making $2,500, according to the book Jennifer Gonnerman wrote about her, "Life on the Outside" (Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004).

In the book, Ms. Bartlett is said to have been set up by a "confidential informant." The book also describes her years in prison, her struggle to rebuild her family and her life after she received clemency in 2000.

Though for many people Ms. Bartlett has become the public face of the group who may now have its sentences reduced, she is unusual in at least one way - she is a woman. In part because of clemency and pardons granted by the governor, there are only 10 women in the group left in prison, according to correction department data.

Over all, the number of A-1 felons has dropped almost by half in recent years, said Mr. Parker, the director of state criminal justice, who attributed the decline to relatively new opportunities that allow inmates to shorten their prison time by participating in special "merit" programs.

The number of new inmates has also been declining, except for in 2003, when 35 prisoners were added to the system, which appears to be the highest number since 1998.

Because little formal research has been done on the A-1 inmates, as opposed to drug-related offenders as a whole, experts offer several explanations for why they are so different from the general prison population and lower-level drug offenders.

For example, asked why so many are foreign born, and so many are Dominican, prosecutors said it had probably been a function of where the drugs were coming from and how they were distributed. "A lot of drugs are coming from South America, by people who speak Spanish, and Washington Heights is a major transshipment hub," said James M. Kindler, chief assistant district attorney for Manhattan.

But advocates for prisoners said that those most likely to receive an A-1 drug sentence were those who did not speak English, were unfamiliar with the American legal system and did not understand the consequences of going to trial rather than accepting a plea offer.

Many were couriers, said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a liberal nonprofit prison monitoring group. "They don't know what could happen to them, nobody's looking out for them, and they have no information to offer."

Posted by lois at 05:37 PM | Comments (0)

December 22, 2004

Letter from Martha Stewart

12/24/04 Letter from Martha Stewart
I beseech you all to think about these women -- to encourage the American people to ask for reforms, both in sentencing guidelines, in length of incarceration for nonviolent first-time offenders, and for those involved in drug-taking. They would be much better served in a true rehabilitation center than in prison where there is no real help, no real programs to rehabilitate, no programs to educate, no way to be prepared for life "out there" where each person will ultimately find herself, many with no skills and no preparation for living.

12/22/04
Dear Friends,

When one is incarcerated with 1,200 other inmates, it is hard to be selfish at Christmas -- hard to think of Christmases past and Christmases future -- that I know will be as they always were for me -- beautiful! So many of the women here in Alderson will never have the joy and wellbeing that you and I experience. Many of them have been here for years -- devoid of care, devoid of love, devoid of family.

I beseech you all to think about these women -- to encourage the American people to ask for reforms, both in sentencing guidelines, in length of incarceration for nonviolent first-time offenders, and for those involved in drug-taking. They would be much better served in a true rehabilitation center than in prison where there is no real help, no real programs to rehabilitate, no programs to educate, no way to be prepared for life "out there" where each person will ultimately find herself, many with no skills and no preparation for living.

I am fine, really. I look forward to being home, to getting back to my valuable work, to creating, cooking, and making television. I have had time to think, time to write, time to exercise, time to not eat the bad food, and time to walk and contemplate the future. I've had my work here too. Cleaning has been my job – washing, scrubbing, sweeping, vacuuming, raking leaves, and much more. But like everyone else here, I would rather be doing all of this in my own home, and not here -- away from family and friends.

I want to thank you again, and again, for your support and encouragement. You have been so terrific to me and to everyone who stood by me. I appreciate everything you have done, your emails, your letters, and your kind, kind words.

Happy holidays,

Posted by lois at 07:35 PM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2004

Alberto Gonzales's Nomination for Attorney General

If you are concerned about Alberto Gonzales's qualifications for the role of U.S. Attorney General, please check the list of Senate Judiciary Committee members below. If a Senator from your state is listed, please call his or her office and suggest questions you would like your Senator to ask the nominee. Feel free to use or adapt BORDC's sample questions below. If neither of your Senators is on the committee, please call them and ask them to pose your questions to the Judiciary Committee. For contact information, go to http://www.congress.org/.

In light of Congress's upcoming holiday recess, we advise you to pose your questions to your Senator's office via phone or fax no later than Wednesday, December 22, 2004.

Senate Judiciary Committee members:

Alabama
Arizona
California
Delaware
Georgia
Idaho
Illinois
Iowa
Massachusetts
Sen. Jeff Sessions, (202) 224-4124
Sen. Jon Kyl, (202) 224-4521
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (202) 224-3841
Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., (202) 224-5042
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, (202) 224-3521
Sen. Larry Craig, (202) 224-2752
Sen. Richard J. Durbin, (202) 224-2152
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, (202) 224-3744
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, (202) 224-4543 North Carolina
New York
Ohio
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Wisconsin
Sen. John Edwards, (202) 224-3154
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, (202) 224-6542
Sen. Mike DeWine, (202) 224-2315
Sen. Arlen Specter, (202) 224-4254
Sen. Lindsey Graham, (202) 224-5972
Sen. John Cornyn, (202) 224-2934
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, (202) 224-5251
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, (202) 224-4242
Sen. Russell D. Feingold, (202) 224-5323

Sample Questions

Torture

As White House Chief Counsel, your work included considering whether international laws such as the Geneva Conventions and the international Convention Against the Use of Torture applied to the President, and you concluded they did not apply. If you had been the Attorney General rather than White House Counsel, would you have come to different conclusions?

In condoning the use of torture in interrogations, why did you choose to keep your recommendation secret from military leaders and from Congress?

Many Americans believe that the United States' system of justice must set an example for countries with poor human rights records. How do you believe your reinterpretation of international laws against torture will affect the example we set?

Enemy Combatants
You also advised the President that he had the right to hold U.S. citizens and foreign nationals indefinitely as "enemy combatants," without charge or access to the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned that authority last summer. Do you believe the Court was wrong in its decision?

Former U.S. enemy combatant Yaser Esam Hamdi was held in solitary confinement for nearly three years without being charged. He was returned to Saudi Arabia after agreeing not to sue the U.S. government for his treatment. Do you believe his designation as an "enemy combatant" was just? If not, should he have been given access to a court?

Military Tribunals
Why did you determine that military tribunals, rather than courts martial, were the appropriate procedure to try detainees being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison? Military defense attorneys have condemned the proceedings as unfair. Please explain your position.

Government Oversight and Accountability
One of the principal laws giving citizens a check against unnecessary government secrecy is the Freedom of Information Act, under which all federal agencies are generally required to disclose records requested in writing by any person. In 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft issued a memo to agency heads encouraging their agencies to find ways to withhold "sensitive but nonclassified" information that is not protected under FOIA exemption #1. Do you believe this policy serves the public? If not, what changes do you plan to make to this policy?

The current Attorney General has refused many Judiciary Committee requests for meetings. If confirmed, under what circumstances would you be available to meet with our committee?

Millions of Americans have expressed concern about the government's growing powers of surveillance and its extensive use of secrecy, such as the weakening of laws that formerly limited FISA use to "agents of a foreign power." They fear that increased government power and decreased accountability increases the likelihood that their rights and liberties will be violated. Four state legislatures and 363 local and county governments with a combined population of 56 million people have passed resolutions or ordinances critical of laws and policies such as parts of the USA PATRIOT Act that they see as encroaching on their constitutional rights. What steps will you take to address their concerns?

Written into the USA PATRIOT Act and other laws are provisions that the DOJ is to report to this and other congressional committees periodically on its use of certain sections. The DOJ has not always complied with these laws on a timely basis. How do you view Congress's oversight responsibility for laws and policies pertaining to DOJ actions? What steps will you take to put your view into practice?

Within the DOJ, in the last few years, whistleblowers who have come forward to report system failures before or after the September 11th attacks have been silenced in various ways, including the classification by the current Attorney General of their testimony. How will whistleblowers be treated in your administration?

Transition
Many people have attributed your nomination for Attorney General to reflect your loyalty to President Bush. Will you continue that loyalty to the President as Attorney General? How might your current close relationship to the President change? What conflicts of interest may require you to recuse yourself?

Having served as Counsel to the President, do you believe you are qualified to take over as Attorney General? Are there recommendations or decisions you have made in your current role that you would reverse as Attorney General?

In light of your past support for torture and detentions without charges-in other words, that laws are open to interpretation and selective enforcement--how can you now assure the American people that the DOJ under your leadership will stand for the principle of "blind justice"?

Nancy Talanian, Director
Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Web: www.bordc.org

Posted by lois at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)

NY Times: San Quentin Debate: Death Row vs. Bay Views

December 18, 2004
By DEAN E. MURPHY
SAN QUENTIN, Calif., Dec. 17 - So many people in California have been sentenced to death that the state is about to spend $220 million to build a bigger death row next to the current one on a spectacular bayside bluff here.

The state has long had the most populous death row in the country - it now has 641 condemned inmates - and the problem is that very few residents ever leave. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977, just 10 inmates have been put to death, and many spent 20 years or so in their cells before being executed by lethal injection. Four times as many have died from other causes like suicide and AIDS.

"The comment may sound a bit whimsical, but it's literally true that the leading cause of death on death row is old age," said Chief Justice Ronald M. George of the California Supreme Court, a former prosecutor of capital cases.

The decision to build the new prison was made by the State Legislature last year and the environmental reviews are nearing completion. With construction scheduled to begin next September, there is a stepped-up effort by opponents to block it.

But in an indication of how accustomed Californians have grown to their Potemkin-like death row, the debate over the new prison is centered on real estate prices and panoramic views, not the snail-paced approach to executions that has made a bigger prison necessary. Many elected officials here in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, do not oppose a new prison, they just insist that it be built far away on less valuable property, and for that matter would like to move the entire complex.

"The site's location on the bay and proximity to San Francisco along with access to nearby cultural and recreational opportunities provide a unique opportunity to leverage the physical characteristics and natural beauty of the property," states a developmental plan prepared by the county. The proposal, called the San Quentin Vision Plan, contemplates residential communities, bike paths, parks and a transportation center in place of death row and the rest of the prison and its 5,000 inmates.

Margot Bach, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Corrections, characterized the county's approach to San Quentin this way: "They want the real estate. That's the bottom line."

Even with a sharp drop in the number of people sentenced to death in recent years, the new prison is being designed to house 1,408 men, more than double the current death row population. (Women will continue to be housed at a prison in Chowchilla, in the Central Valley.) Most everyone involved expects that death row will get more populous in the coming years because so few of the condemned will be executed.

Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of a book on capital punishment, said a bigger prison at San Quentin would be an appropriate metaphor for a state that values law and order but seems to have little appetite for Texas-style justice. Texas leads the nation in executions, with 336 since 1976. Its death row now houses 444 inmates.

"What we are talking about looks like an inefficiency, but it may function to give us exactly what we want, which is a death penalty without executions," Professor Zimring said. "When people are ambivalent and not very honest about their priorities, it is very difficult to distinguish between ingenuity and inefficiency."

He said that what was most remarkable about capital punishment in California was that even with strong public support for it - a Field Poll in March showed 68 percent favored the death penalty for serious crimes - there was scant outrage over the courts' slow-paced application of it.

"There isn't a crisis here," said Professor Zimring, a death penalty foe. "Nobody's mad. The district attorneys get death sentences. That is their reward. They frame that. But they are not sitting there waiting for executions."

Many advocates of capital punishment, while unhappy with the situation, say they are resigned to it.

"Our Legislature is run by people who don't want the death penalty to work," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a Sacramento-based group that favors stepped-up executions. "They can't repeal it outright because the voters would hang them, but they can sabotage it. It is basically a matter of not pushing."

Chief Justice George said in a telephone interview from Sacramento that the slow pace of executions was caused by both the state and federal courts. The state courts have been cautious in making sure defendants receive the best legal representation possible, he said, while on the federal level, "an active federal bench looks at these cases more carefully than the federal bench in other parts of the country." Unlike the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which handles cases from Texas, the appeals court that serves California, the Ninth Circuit, is well known for its liberal interpretation of federal law.

California is very slow in processing death penalty appeals, starting with the State Supreme Court itself, which under the state's Constitution is the first to review death sentence appeals. The waiting list for an appeals lawyer to be assigned by the court is about four years. Right now, 118 people on death row have not yet been assigned a lawyer. Six years ago the number reached 170.

"The virtues of the system also represent its vices because it does end up causing a lot of delay," Chief Justice George said. "We take great care to try and appoint competent counsel." He added, "I could take care of that backlog in two or three days if I were not following the very rigorous standards that California has established."

Professor J. Clark Kelso, director of the Capital Center for Government Law and Policy at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific, was a consultant to the state in the late 1990's, when legislation was passed to speed up the appeals process, including paying higher hourly fees to lawyers. But even with those changes, Professor Kelso said it would take 15 or 20 years to catch up with the backlog of cases before the Supreme Court.

Some groups opposed to the death penalty objected to a new prison when the State Legislature was considering it, but the debate has been minimal since then. Some of the groups have even thrown their support behind the bigger prison because it promises to offer better facilities and would keep the inmates close to San Francisco, maintaining easy access to them by death row lawyers, volunteers and service organizations.

"This was an effort that kind of pulled the movement apart a little bit," said Lance Lindsey, executive director of Death Penalty Focus, a San Francisco group that opposes a new prison. "Of course a lot of us are for humane conditions, but conditions could be improved without expanding death row, and if we ended the death penalty, we wouldn't need all that money to expand death row."

The Prison Law Office, a nonprofit firm located outside the gates to the 152-year-old prison here, is among the groups that have supported a more modern death row. It has also resisted efforts to move it away from San Quentin, insisting that executions, when they do occur, need to be held in a big urban center so that they receive public scrutiny.

Steven Fama, a lawyer with the Prison Law Office, said the new prison was indicative of "a sort of stalemate that has become entrenched" in the state over capital punishment. While the overcrowded death row signals "a legal system that cannot accommodate the death judgments," Mr. Fama said there was widespread acceptance of the status quo and a feeling on both sides to make the best of an imperfect situation.

"Increasingly it just doesn't work the way it is now," he said of death row. "There are not enough cells for the disabled. The mental health care has to be given out in a makeshift way. They have had to be creative, building a chapel in an old shower area."

Assemblyman Joe Nation, a Democrat from Marin County, has been promised a meeting with aides to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has expressed support for the new death row, to make a last-ditch pitch to sink the plan. Mr. Nation, who wants the new prison to be built somewhere less expensive than the Bay Area, said his presentation to the governor's staff would focus entirely on economic issues.

A state audit of the prison proposal last spring raised some financial questions about the plan, and Mr. Nation said it was a mistake for the state to "box itself into having a prison" at San Quentin for another 50 to 100 years by making such a big investment. He said state officials had estimated that the land there was worth as much as $750 million.

In the long run, opponents of the death penalty hope money concerns might also persuade Californians to give up on death row entirely. Though there have been few comprehensive analyses of the financial impact, the Indiana Criminal Law Study Commission in 2002 found that the additional legal and incarceration costs to that state for a death sentence versus one for life without the possibility of parole was about 30 percent.

"In a perfect world, we would have a serious discussion about the death penalty in California," Mr. Nation said.

Posted by lois at 04:27 PM | Comments (0)

Illinois: Treatment on Demand Soars to Victory

"An unprecedented recovery-advocacy campaign led to resounding approval of an Illinois ballot initiative calling for addiction treatment on demand."

December 17, 2004

News Feature By Bob Curley

A whopping 76 percent of voters in Cook County, Ill. (home to Chicago and surrounding Chicagoland communities) voted "yes" on the ballot question, "Shall the state government provide adequate funding for comprehensive and appropriate substance-abuse treatment for any Illinois state resident requesting services from a licensed provider, community-based organization, or medical-care facility in the state?" The 1.2 million votes cast in favor of treatment on demand were more than Cook County voters cast to successfully return Rod Blagojevich to the governor's mansion and Sen. Dick Durban (R-Ill.) to Congress.

Although non-binding and limited to just one county (albeit the state's largest by far), the ballot question is widely expected to prompt state lawmakers to quickly take steps toward increasing treatment availability in Illinois. "I'm 100-percent confident that this will be translated into some sort of policy," said Brad Olson, Ph.D., an addiction researcher at DePaul University and chair of Citizens Activated to Change Healthcare (CATCH), which spearheaded the campaign to get the question on the ballot. "The extent that we can get true treatment on demand will be a challenge, but that will come over time."

Dogged supporters of treatment and recovery actually snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. The original idea was to get the question on the statewide ballot, but despite the work of more than 700 volunteer petition gatherers -- who got 118,000 Illinois residents to sign -- the drive fell short of the 282,000 signatures needed to get the measure on the state ballot. Next, organizers tried to convince state lawmakers to pass a law enabling the question to be added to the ballot; the House approved the plan, but it stalled in committee in the state Senate.

Organizers didn't give up: instead, they went to the Cook County Board of Commissioners, which had unanimously endorsed the goals of the petition drive. The board met and agreed to place the question on the county ballot for November 2004.

Tremendous Momentum

Tumia Romero, director of public policy and programs for Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.), told Join Together that the overwhelming support for addiction services demonstrated by voters in Illinois' most populous and influential county -- which includes many affluent suburbs as well as the urban core of Chicago -- will be almost as influential on policymakers as a statewide question would have been. Romero, who oversees a broad range of community advocacy groups established by Davis' office, including one on addiction, said the election results have generated "tremendous momentum" for improving treatment services.

"I think policymakers can agree that substance abuse is a major issue in the state of Illinois, and we have to find ways to fix it," said Romero. "We're on the verge in Illinois of not just having policymakers looking at treatment on demand, but having people in the system working on it. They feel empowered."

Indeed, Romero and Olson credit grassroots recovery advocates, local religious leaders, and supporters of addiction-related issues (such as advocates for the homeless and people with AIDS) for laying the groundwork for the campaign's success. "It was most impactful to see people who were so proud because they had asked their whole family to sign the petition, and their family was so proud of them for doing something so positive in their lives," said Romero.

In addition to Rep. Davis and the Cook County Commission, a number of prominent local political leaders lent their support to the treatment on demand campaign, including the Chicago City Council, Mayor Richard Daley, and Senator-elect Barack Obama. However, noted CATCH's Olson, "We're trying to get the average person to think differently about recovery. When you talk to people on the streets of Chicago, they almost immediately recognize this is something that needs to be done. In the suburbs, there's a lot of support but also a lot of questions about cost."

In a report issued in support of the ballot question, CATCH argued that Illinois would save $18 for every $1 invested in treatment on demand. Romero acknowledges that the costs of full treatment on demand would be significant -- perhaps $2,500 for each of the one million in state residents believed to need treatment services. But, she adds, the per-person cost is far less than the $35-40,000 needed annually to keep someone in jail.

Treatment-on-demand advocates plan to meet with Gov. Blagojevich soon, and a Jan. 11 Chicago town hall meeting convened by Davis will give the public a chance to weigh in on the issue.

"We don't want a quick shot of money for treatment providers," stressed Olson. "Some of them are suffering, but the key is to focus on more systemic changes. We want more people served."

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Join Together is a project of the Boston University School of Public Health. This information may be freely reproduced and distributed, provided that attribution is made to Join Together Online (www.jointogether.org). (Mail ID: 315548)

Posted by lois at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2004

For over 20 years, activists like Randy Credico, Anthony Pappa, and Elaine Bartlett have fought tirelessly to repeal these laws.

"Credico, director of the Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice and an organizer of the group Mothers of the New York Disappeared, said in The New York Times that he is faced with calling many of the group's members and telling them their children "are not coming home.""

Rockefeller's Rocky Road
By Rosa Clemente, AllHipHop.com
Posted on December 15, 2004, Printed on December 17, 2004
http://www.alternet.org/story/20765/

"We should be ashamed of ourselves. Rockefeller drug reform – ha! – I don't think so." – State Sen. Thomas Duane (D-Manhattan)

While many are praising the recent reform of the Rockefeller drug laws, many more are not. Although the reform bill will reduce the most severe mandatory sentences for drug offenses, according to data from the New York State Department of Correctional Services, the reform change will affect only 446 prisoners, while 15,600 felons imprisoned under the drug law will remain imprisoned.

Even with the proposed revisions, New York still has the harshest drug-sentencing laws in the country. According to Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, "Absent structural changes to the Rockefeller Drug Laws – which requires restoring to judges the authority to order treatment as an alternative to sentencing – we will not have meaningful reform."

According to the NYCLU the new law will leave in place sentencing procedures that give prosecutors authority to charge and sentence.

Judges have no discretion over sentencing. Prosecutors can demand a sentence of 10 years for an addict with no criminal record who is induced by a dealer to deliver four ounces of a drug to a buyer. A judge who believes justice – and the public interest – are better served by ordering the defendant into treatment instead of prison is prevented from doing so. Even if the judge had the discretion to choose treatment, nowhere in the reform bill is there funding for drug treatment programs. The new law will also do little or nothing to reform the harsh sentences imposed on B felons, those charged with lesser drug offenses, the NYCLU said.

For example, an individual who is caught with a gram of a controlled substance, but has a prior offense still faces three to 12 years in prison. The majority of drug offenders serving time in New York prisons are non-violent B felons. Once again the hip hop community, the overwhelming victims of these drug laws, has been hoodwinked.

"It's because of the artists. There's no way that it would have happened without the help of Jay-Z and Puffy and all the people who contributed," Russell Simmons told AllHipHop.com. "All those people really worked hard, they pushed, and it's really the power of hip hop that made that happen. People came out, it was a big deal."

Unfortunately, once again Simmons is wrong, and his praise of this reform bill has me questioning how relevant he and his organization are. By criticizing the so-called hip hop leader I open myself to attack, but ultimately I am more concerned about the impact of this sham and the 15,600 majority black and brown folks that will continue to sit in upstate prisons.

As someone who has been part of the campaign to repeal these laws – repeal not reform – I, along with many activists are uphappy with this compromise reform bill. Once again, our elected officials, who are supposed to serve the interest of the people, have pulled the wool over our eyes, and just at the right time. November 2005 is a huge election year in New York – what a perfect way to appease the electorate. Governor Pataki and other elected officials are up for re-election in 2005, and we should remember this betrayal when we go to the election booths. The governor and his Republican and Democratic cohorts knew they had to do something, and so they did nothing.

For over 20 years, activists like Randy Credico, Anthony Pappa, and Elaine Bartlett have fought tirelessly to repeal these laws. Credico, director of the Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice and an organizer of the group Mothers of the New York Disappeared, said in The New York Times that he is faced with calling many of the group's members and telling them their children "are not coming home."

In the last five years, Drop the Rock, a coalition spearheaded by Robert Ganagi and the Correctional Association of New York and composed of young community activists, veteran criminal justice reformers, artists, students, former inmates, politicians, and religious, civic and labor leaders has also worked hard to repeal these draconian laws. What happened in Albany was a disservice to all the people who dedicated themselves to this movement.

It's time to dust ourselves off and dig into the trenches. We should no longer as a community be satisfied with answers that leave more questions. Amilcar Cabral, leader of the Guinea-Bissau liberation struggle once said, "Tell no lies, expose lies wherever they are told, mask no difficulties, mistakes or failures, claim no easy victories."

We cannot claim victories that are not real. When Russell Simmons stated in The New York Times, "I am very, very happy," we must ask, what is he happy about?

Posted by lois at 05:48 PM | Comments (0)

MS is on its way to judicial recovery....

"Mississippi's 22nd Circuit Court District of Jefferson, Copiah and Claiborne counties was listed last year as the No. 3 judicial hellhole in the country for litigation abuse. Holmes County was ranked 12th and Hinds County 13th. They were described as "emerging hellholes."

December 16, 2004
Miss. off 'judicial hellhole' list

American Tort Reform Association says state on its way to recovery

By Jimmie E. Gates
jgates@clarionledger.com

Mississippi is off the Washington-based American Tort Reform Association's "judicial hellhole" list and touted as a model for the rest of the country in judicial reform.

In the association's third annual survey released Wednesday, nine areas of the country are listed as "judicial hellholes," but none in Mississippi.

That comes a year after five Mississippi counties were listed among the country's 13 worst "judicial hellholes" because of high jury verdicts.
In one section of the 56-page report," the report underscores the choice local judges and policymakers have when identified as a judicial hellhole — fix the problems or sink further into the abyss.

"There is no better example of that than the divergent path taken by last year's top judicial hellhole: Madison County, Illinois, and Mississippi's 22nd judicial circuit," American Tort Reform Association president Sherman Joyce said in the report.

"Madison County, (Ill.) sunk deeper as a judicial hellhole; Mississippi, through the resolve of the executive, judicial and legislative branches has started to turn its judiciary around," Joyce said. "It's too early to give Mississippi a 100 percent bill of health, as many reforms only recently went into effect, but Mississippi is well on its way to judicial and economic recovery."

Mississippi's 22nd Circuit Court District of Jefferson, Copiah and Claiborne counties was listed last year as the No. 3 judicial hellhole in the country for litigation abuse. Holmes County was ranked 12th and Hinds County 13th. They were described as "emerging hellholes."

But in the last two years, the state lawmakers have adopted legislation putting caps on most jury awards. The state Supreme Court also has thrown out numerous large jury awards and adopted rules limiting the joining of plaintiffs in large product liability lawsuits.

"It's outstanding news," Mississippians for Economic Progress executive director Steve Browning. "It validated that if Mississippi improved its legal environment, Mississippi's business climate would improve."

The state's legal climate is significantly better than it was at the beginning of the year, he said.

Mississippians for Economic Progress is a coalition of 40 statewide associations representing small business owners, health- care providers, convenience stores, Realtors, auto dealers and contractors.

But Mississippi Trial Lawyers Association President Buddy Coxwell said the list doesn't validate anything.

"Mississippi never deserved to be on a judicial hellhole list," he said.

Coxwell said there had been only a few large jury verdicts in the state and all were reduced during the appeal's process.

"I'm glad we're off the list," Coxwell said sarcastically.

Posted by lois at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)

NH: Lack of services at women's prison contributes to incarceration

CONCORD - A lack of services at the women’s prison contributes to a “cycle of incarceration” that disrupts families and financially burdens the state, according to a report released Wednesday.

Calling it an urgent situation, the study by the New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Woman said the conditions at the prison require the immediate attention of state leaders."

Article published Dec 16, 2004
Report cites poor services at women’s jail

By J.M. HIRSCH
The Associated Press
“The implications are truly cataclysmic when you add them up,” said Theresa de Langis, the group’s executive director.

In the report, the commission calls for a demographic study of female prisoners and for establishing a statewide planning program to ensure corrections programs meet their needs.

It also said that corrections workers need to be trained to deal specifically with women, noting that female inmates can differ significantly from men in their job skills and rates of sexual and physical abuse.

Corrections Commissioner Stephen Curry said his department will look at the report, but it could be a couple of months before a plan for addressing the issues it raises is formed.

Among the problems cited in the report, the study found that programs for helping inmates deal with anger management, parenting skills and substance abuse get no state funding, relying instead on sporadic volunteer efforts.

“The lack of such programming has a direct impact on expense to the state in an increased likelihood of recidivism and in longer sentences served by female inmates,” the report said of the lack of substance abuse programs.

The commission also was critical of the prison’s limited work and education programs, and the absence of a formal visitation programs for families and inmates, as is available at the prison for men.

The report noted that nearly 90 percent of the inmates are mothers, many of whom complained about difficulties maintaining relationships with their children while in prison.

“These and other examples suggest women face double jeopardy in that, with incarceration they lose not only their liberty, but their children, as well,” the report said.

The report was requested last year by Gov. Craig Benson and Executive Councilor Ruth Griffin. It says the lack of programs for women “contributes to a ‘cycle of incarceration’ for women offenders and a ‘double jeopardy’ for incarcerated mothers, further disrupting families and adding exorbitant cost to the state.”

The women’s prison in Goffstown was built after a 1983 lawsuit by 23 female inmates who complained that the state’s policy of housing them at out-of-state facilities was unfair and denied them access to their children and lawyers.

The state was court-ordered to provide a women’s prison with programs on par with the men’s prison. Yet the report notes that a 2003 review by the National Institute of Corrections called the facility “woefully inadequate” and a “potential legal liability.”

Wednesday’s report said the court ruling and “the reality of a quickly growing female offender population require the deliberate and immediate attention of state leadership.”

The state’s female prisoner population has grown dramatically, from 23 in 1983 to 182 last year.

The study said serving the needs of female prisoners will require a better understanding of who they are, and calls for collecting data on what led them to commit crimes, as well as the number, ages and custodial status of their children.

Posted by lois at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)

2005 Soros Justice Fellows Chosen

We congratulate Dana Kaplan and the others who were just chosen as Soros Justice Fellow! Dana took part in the RCPP Train the Trainers Training in October 2004.

2 0 0 5 S o r o s J u s t i c e F e l l o w s

Soros Justice Advocacy Fellows

Kenavon Carter ACLU of Texas Austin Texas
Mr. Carter, a lawyer and community organizer, will launch a project that will reduce racial profiling by law enforcement agencies in Texas. The goals of the project are to enforce Texas’s Racial Profiling Statute through public education, grassroots mobilization, and selective litigation targeting law enforcement agencies that engage in racial profiling or otherwise fail to abide by the racial profiling statute. Mr. Carter will graduate in May from the University of Texas School of Law. He has worked at a number of social justice organizations including the Center for Constitutional Rights, Texas Civil Rights Project and ACLU.

Kristi Couvillon Texas Defender Service Austin, Texas
Ms. Couvillon, a lawyer and social worker, will conduct a multi-state, multi-faceted effort to implement the American Bar Association Guidelines regarding defense representation in death penalty cases in several southern states. The goals of the project are to improve the quality and availability of competent legal representation for indigent defendants through public education, coalition building, and communications strategies. Ms. Couvillon will graduate in May from the University of Texas School of Law.

Shaena Fazal John Howard Association Chicago, IL
Ms. Fazal, a lawyer and advocate, will launch a project that addresses the needs of long-term prisoners by developing policies and incentives to reduce their sentences, standards and incentives for transferring them to lower security facilities and re-introducing jobs, education and mental health programs to this ‘forgotten’ contingent of incarcerated people. Ms. Fazal will achieve this through research, litigation and coalition building. She is a former appellate defender in Chicago, IL and has worked for several legal services and anti-death penalty groups.

Norris Henderson Innocence Project New Orleans, LA
Mr. Henderson, an organizer and advocate, will launch a project that seeks to remove barriers that prevent formerly incarcerated people from participating fully in the economic, social and political life of the community. Through community engagement, public and policymaker education, and coalition building, Mr. Henderson will advocate on behalf of and empower this important constituency to demand access to the their political rights as citizens. Mr. Henderson has become a celebrated local leader in New Orleans after spending 18 years in prison.

Dana Kaplan Center for Constitutional Rights New York, NY
Ms. Kaplan, an organizer and activist, will launch a project that addresses the expansion of local jails which has accelerated considerably even as prison growth has slowed. Through dissemination of research and provision of technical assistance related to organizing and policy, Ms. Kaplan will highlight the role of jail construction in the continued incarceration of low-income and immigrant communities and provide a mechanism for challenging this expansion in New York specifically and assist similar efforts nationally. Ms. Kaplan has been involved in criminal justice reform work for a number of years and has worked or consulted for groups including the Prison Moratorium Project and National Resource Center on Prisons and Communities. She will graduate with a Masters in American Studies in May.

Alexander Ndaula National Immigration Project Boston, MA
Mr. Ndaula, an organizer and advocate, will provide support to immigrants who are detained in the rural South, assist detainees and their families in investigating, documenting and combating abuses perpetrated by guards and develop alliances with others working on immigration detention and deportation issues and raise public awareness about the plight of immigrants in the criminal justice system. Mr. Ndaula spent three years in immigration detention and has worked tirelessly during his own incarceration and since to advocate on behalf of detainees and their families.

Vivian Nixon First Episcopal AME Church Queens, NY
Ms. Nixon, an advocate, will launch a project to educate members of African-American churches in five states about the disproportionate number of people of color in prison and the need for community supports and policy change. The project will develop tools to educate and empower faith-based communities in assisting people returning from prison and advocate for policy change. Ms. Nixon has worked for several prison reform organizations, most recently as the executive director of the College and Community Fellowship at CUNY Graduate Center. She is a former prisoner and long-time activist for social change.

Emmett Soloman Texas Criminal Justice Coalition Huntsville, TX
Mr. Soloman, a minister and former prison chaplain, will develop a network of religious leaders and lay volunteers who can educate the public, policymakers and the media on the need to promote alternatives to incarceration. His project will focus primarily on mainstream and conservative religious leaders. Mr. Soloman was a prison chaplain in the Texas Department of Corrections for thirty years and was most recently the director of Restorative Justice Ministries Network of Texas.

Soros Justice Senior Fellows

Michelle Alexander Stanford Law School Palo Alto, CA
Ms. Alexander, a Stanford University Law professor and former director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Project, will write a book arguing that the war on drugs and mass incarceration is “The New Jim Crow”. The book will inspire a new public dialogue about the role of the criminal justice system in our society and challenge the civil rights community and public-at-large to understand mass incarceration as the defining racial justice issue of our time.

Michele Deitch Center for Criminal Justice Initiatives Austin, TX
Ms. Deitch, a consultant for the Center for Criminal Justice Initiatives and University of Texas law professor, will research, promote the need for and develop independent prison oversight mechanisms in the U.S. that are in keeping with international human rights standards and practices. Her research and writing will raise visibility of this issue and lay the groundwork for implementation of oversight mechanisms in specific jurisdictions in the U.S.

Jeffrey Fagan Columbia University Law School New York, NY
Mr. Fagan, a Columbia Law and Public Health professor, will critically examine new research evidence or “propaganda” on the deterrent effects of capital punishment. His analysis will identify the potentially fatal technical and conceptual mistakes made by public policy researchers and clarify how such claims have skewed the public’s perception and understanding of the death penalty. Mr. Fagan will write articles for popular publications and policy journals and policy briefs for legislators, policy makers and the media.

Gregory Hooks Washington State University Pullman, WA
Mr. Hooks, a sociologist at Washington State University, will launch a multi-faceted effort to expand and disseminate his research that debunks the widely held assumption that prisons provide economic benefits to struggling rural economies. Through scholarly articles and dissemination of findings among community groups, policymakers and activists, Mr. Hooks’ groundbreaking work will advance efforts to curtail prison expansion and provide alternative economic development strategies that promote education and community revitalization.

Ababukr Karim The Eisenhower Foundation Washington D.C.
Mr. Karim, a community economic development expert, will spearhead the replication of a model re-entry program in the District of Columbia to serve and be run by formerly incarcerated people. Mr. Karim will implement a set of innovative reintegration strategies that guarantee support and sustainability for former prisoners and the community in which they return.

Harmon Wray Vanderbilt Divinity School Nashville, TN
Mr. Wray, a minister and advocate, will open a dialogue with leaders of national and Southern regional faith communities to enlist their partnership in developing and implementing an alternative model for what faithful, responsible, and progressive ministry would look like in the context of crime and the criminal justice system.

Soros Justice Media Fellows

Fredric Dannen Austin, TX
Mr. Dannen, a published author and writer for The New Yorker, will complete research and writing of a book about an innocent person who was executed in Texas in 1997. Mr. Dannen has been investigating this case for seven years and when published, it will be the first book to prove that a wrongful execution has taken place in America during the past quarter century and on the watch of then Governor George W. Bush and his general counsel, Alberto Gonzalez.

Dan Hunt and Janet Baus Monson, MA
Mr. Hunt and Ms. Baus, both filmmakers will complete and distribute their groundbreaking documentary, “Cruel and Unusual” which tells the stories of five trangender women serving time in state and federal prisoners for men. The film examines the severe and pervasive punishment they endure in prison, their unique needs, and the suffering that our most marginalized citizens face as they seek to actualize themselves.

Joe Loya Oakland, CA
Mr. Loya, an acclaimed writer and author of “The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell”, will write a memoir about his re-entry into society after leaving federal prison in California. Mr. Loya is a contributing editor for the Pacific News Service and his essays and commentaries have appeared in newspapers across the U.S.

Annie Sundberg and Rickie Stern New York, NY Ms. Sundberg and Ms. Stern will complete and distribute “The Trials of Darryl Hunt”, a feature documentary about a brutal rape and murder case and a wrongfully convicted man who spent nearly twenty years on prison for a crime he did not commit.

Posted by lois at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

December 16, 2004

Prison System Fails Women, CA Study Says

Prison System Fails Women, Study Says
State policies designed for violent men make female offenders' rehabilitation difficult, an oversight panel finds.
By Jenifer Warren
Times Staff Writer

To download the Little Hoover Commission report, see:
http://www.lhc.ca.gov/lhc.html

December 16, 2004

SACRAMENTO — California's one-size-fits-all correctional system is failing one group of offenders more dramatically than any other: the 22,000 female convicts and parolees, whose crimes are overwhelmingly nonviolent, according to a study released Wednesday by a government oversight panel.

Continuing its critical reporting on the state's $6-billion-a-year penal system, the bipartisan Little Hoover Commission said the number of women in California prisons has increased fivefold during the last two decades. Despite that surge, the state continues to run a system with policies, practices, programs and facilities designed mostly for violent men, the report said.

Few women leaving prison receive help finding a job, housing or counseling for the drug addictions that typically landed them behind bars. Compounding their struggle, women convicted of drug crimes — about one in three offenders — are barred by federal rules from receiving most welfare benefits and, in many cases, do not qualify for public housing.

Not surprisingly, nearly half of all female ex-convicts violate their parole and wind up back in prison, almost always for nonviolent behavior, the report said.

The costs of such failures are steep — for women and their families, the report said. About 64% of women offenders are mothers of minors, and of those, nearly half are single parents.

Prison System Fails Women, Study Says
State policies designed for violent men make female offenders' rehabilitation difficult, an oversight panel finds.
By Jenifer Warren
Times Staff Writer

December 16, 2004

Not surprisingly, nearly half of all female ex-convicts violate their parole and wind up back in prison, almost always for nonviolent behavior, the report said.

The costs of such failures are steep — for women and their families, the report said. About 64% of women offenders are mothers of minors, and of those, nearly half are single parents.

As a result, their incarceration and re-incarceration take a heavy toll on their children and on the state's child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Research shows that children of imprisoned parents are five to six times more likely than their peers to end up behind bars, and 10% are in foster care.

"If we fail to intervene effectively in the lives of these women and their children now, California will pay the cost for generations to come," said Commissioner Teddie Ray, chairwoman of the subcommittee that produced the report.

The Little Hoover Commission is composed of five public members appointed by the governor, four members appointed by the Legislature, two senators and two Assembly members. Created in 1962, the panel provides oversight of government agencies in hopes of improving their efficiency and service to the public. Its reports are submitted to the governor and lawmakers, often leading to legislation.

A Department of Corrections spokeswoman, Terry Thornton, said prison officials agreed with the report's conclusions. She said that over the last two months, the department had begun investigating ways to tailor programs, housing and other aspects of its operations to the needs of women.

In addition, prison officials have applied for a federal grant to identify initiatives in other states that have improved the odds of success for women inmates.

Jeanine Tobias, 36, said the report's findings mirror her experience. Tobias, released in mid-November after serving 10 months on a parole violation, has been in and out of prison since a drug conviction in the 1980s.

"There's nothing in that environment that helps them with addiction or job skills or any of that," said Tobias, who is living with her newborn baby boy at the New Way of Life transitional home for parolees in Los Angeles. "Most people get out and they don't have anywhere to go, they don't have any funds, and they're back out on the streets and back in jail. It's a blessing for me to be here."

The report comes during a year of intense scrutiny for the Department of Corrections, which operates 32 prisons with about 165,000 inmates, an all-time high. Officer misconduct, cost overruns, shoddy medical care, the scarcity of rehabilitative programs and the use of lockdowns to manage gang violence are among the issues investigated by the Legislature, the independent Office of the Inspector General and others in recent months.

Because their numbers are comparatively small, women offenders have received less attention from prison reformers. The average female convict in California is in her late 30s and was probably a victim of physical or sexual abuse early in life. She is addicted to drugs, has mental health needs and most likely was sent to prison for using narcotics or stealing to support a habit, according to the Little Hoover Commission.

Despite these and other special characteristics of women convicts, California "has remained focused, almost singularly, on a policy of punishment and incapacitation designed for male offenders," said the 72-page report.

While male offenders are scattered at prisons throughout the state, most women inmates — 75% — are housed at two large lockups in Chowchilla, a remote San Joaquin Valley town far from the urban centers where most of the convicts previously lived.

That isolated location, the report notes, strains family ties — considered a crucial factor in whether a parolee succeeds or fails. More than half of the children of female prisoners never visit their mothers during their incarceration, in part because of transportation difficulties.

"Despite the relatively low security risk of female inmates," the report said, "the primary considerations in the design and operation of these facilities are preventing escapes and minimizing violence behind bars."

The commission also faulted the department for its gender-blind programs. With the exception of two small programs — 140 beds in all — for pregnant offenders or those with short sentences and children under 6, the vast majority of programs in the four women's prisons are identical to the offerings in male lockups, the report said. Less than one-third of female convicts are enrolled in academic, vocational or job training classes.

The report includes a series of recommendations to improve conditions, such as using halfway houses and other community programs as alternatives to prison for some inmates, shifting responsibility for parolees to local governments, and appointing a director of women's programs to guide reforms.

Among those applauding the commission's work was Barbara Bloom, a professor of criminal justice at Sonoma State University and one of the few scholars who study women offenders.

Bloom endorsed the report's recommendations and stressed that although prison officials could certainly improve their performance, "this is a problem that goes way beyond corrections and won't get fixed without strong involvement from the community."

Most female offenders, she said, come from communities that lack the sort of safety net that might have helped them avoid a criminal conviction in the first place. When they return to those communities, Bloom said, those difficult conditions remain, so it's no wonder many parolees run afoul of the law again.

"Somehow, we as a state have to acknowledge that this is a systemic problem, and encourage communities to get involved with these women," Bloom said. "Otherwise, this cycle of incarceration will just continue, generation after generation."

Posted by craig at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2004

Brent Staples: How the Justice System Criminalizes Mental Illness

December 13, 2004
EDITORIAL OBSERVER
How the Justice System Criminalizes Mental Illness
By BRENT STAPLES

Jesse McCann was a baby-faced teenager of 17 the day he hanged himself in a New York State prison. The letters he had written to family and friends in the final weeks of his young life were not at all what one would expect of a person about to take his own life. In a letter dated March 16, 2001 - the final day of his life - he wrote passionately about wanting to pursue a degree in paralegal studies while in prison so that he could make a difference for young people in trouble. He asked his Uncle Dennis for a shipment of coffee - and talked about Twizzlers, one of his favorite candies. He signed the letter, "Love you, Jesse," and added a smiley face to the salutation.

This optimistic tone probably came from the medication he was taking. It seemed to ease his panic attacks and the depression and rages for which he had been treated often. The mood on display in this last letter, however, was not destined to last. According to official accounts, Jesse was being escorted to the mental health unit for his medication when he lost control - as inmates with mental problems often do - and began shouting obscenities. Predictably, a corrections officer tried to quiet him. Just as predictably, Jesse exploded. He struck the officer and was placed in the disciplinary housing unit, where unruly prisoners can be shut up for 23 hours each day.

Isolation, a hardship for even healthy inmates, is often catastrophic for those with mental problems. Their symptoms get worse and they often end up trying to harm themselves. Studies show, for example, that mentally ill inmates who are placed in isolation are far more likely to attempt suicide. The prospect of being isolated as a result of the latest outburst was apparently too much for Jesse. Shortly after being placed in the cell, he tied one end of a sheet to the window, the other to his neck and hanged himself.

This story has become familiar in New York, which has been widely criticized for using isolation too freely, especially with the mentally ill. Studies of suicide in the state prison system, underscored with stories like Jesse McCann's, have led the New York State Legislature to consider passing a law that would give psychiatric workers more latitude in the handling of inmates with serious mental illnesses. The proposed statute aims to expand access to psychiatric treatment and prevent disturbed inmates from trying to hurt themselves.

The prison mental health crisis, which has gotten so much attention lately in New York, is actually national in scope. Simply put, most of the mental institutions that would have once housed and cared for mentally ill people have been closed down - in most cases deservedly so, because they did their jobs poorly. But the community-based mental health system that was supposed to replace the mental hospitals never materialized. As a result, prisons have been become de facto mental hospitals, but without the treatment that would allow mentally ill patients to control their symptoms and organize their lives.

The debate surrounding this problem goes well beyond the admittedly serious matter of suicide. Also at issue is the fact that mentally ill people often serve substantially longer sentences than other prisoners convicted of similar crimes. No one has yet accounted for the difference. But it seems clear that mentally ill people often enter the criminal justice system for offenses and aberrant behaviors related to their illnesses. They end up doing longer sentences - and harder, more punitive time - for acting out in prison. To put it another way, people who hear voices - or who can't control themselves or follow even the most basic instructions - become automatic candidates for punitive sanctions like solitary confinement.

Jesse was not exactly innocent, but his case fits this category, too. He was initially arrested and confined to a county jail for a nonviolent offense. While there, he succumbed to hysteria and was charged with assaulting a corrections officer, which is a felony. The offense seems to have drawn him special attention from corrections officers, who make it their business to keep close tabs on inmates charged with assaulting one of their own. Isolated and under more pressure than ever in prison, Jesse McCann ended his life.

The federal government began to focus on the mental health problem when it became clear that mentally ill inmates were driving up the prison population and contributing to recidivism. Congress made a promising start when it passed a law that encouraged states to integrate community mental health services more closely into the corrections system. What the country needs to do, however, is decriminalize mental illness. That means taking mental problems into account in the first instance - at least with nonviolent crimes - so that as many offenders as possible can go into treatment instead of into prison.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 06:20 PM | Comments (0)

Supreme Court agrees to consider flexibility of corrections officials to put people in super-max

Justices will review an appeal next year from Ohio, which opened a super-security prison with about 500 beds in 1998 after a deadly inmate riot five years earlier at a state prison.

Supreme Court to review 'supermax' prisons
By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer
(Updated Friday, December 10, 2004, 10:37 AM)

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider how much flexibility corrections officials have to put inmates in super maximum-security prisons.

Most states and the federal government have such prisons, intended to separate the most dangerous prisoners from other inmates.

Justices will review an appeal next year from Ohio, which opened a super-security prison with about 500 beds in 1998 after a deadly inmate riot five years earlier at a state prison.

In the so-called Ohio "supermax," inmates are held in 23-hour-a-day lockdown, in 90-square-foot cells built to prevent prisoners from communicating with each other. They also face tighter security with strip searches and less access to telephones and personal items.

Civil rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit against the state on behalf of prisoners in 2001, claiming that the inmates were not given a chance to prove they didn't belong in the Ohio State Penitentiary near Youngstown. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled earlier this year that prisoners are entitled to hearings, with witnesses, before being assigned to the prison.

Ohio Solicitor Douglas Cole told justices that the requirements imposed by the appeals court make it almost impossible to "neutralize the threats posed by dangerous inmates."

"The question presented here has significant safety implications for tens of thousands of state prisoners," he wrote in a court filing.

Lawyers for the Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union, representing the prisoners, said the confinement "imposes an atypical and significant hardship" on the detainees. The 6th Circuit decision, they said, appears to be the first to declare that prisoners in super maximum security prisons have a constitutionally protected liberty interest.

The case forces the Supreme Court to revisit a 1995 decision that limited prisoners' rights to have hearings before they lose privileges or are disciplined for misconduct.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote in that opinion that inmate liberty interests are "limited to freedom from restraint which ... imposes atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life."

The case is Wilkinson v. Austin, 04-495.

Fresno Bee

Posted by lois at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2004

NY Times Editorial: A First Cut at Sentencing Reform

"Rigid drug laws that penalize some drug dealers convicted for the first time more severely than the penalties for murderers or rapists have succeeded in driving up the prison population tenfold. But what the laws haven't succeeded at doing is limiting the drug trade. Now, with prison costs soaring, some states are finally backing away from the mandatory sentencing guidelines and embracing treatment options instead for some drug defendants, many of whom are addicts. After starting the whole mandatory sentencing trend 30 years ago, New York took a preliminary but welcome stab this week at revising its sentencing practices.

About time."

Gov. Nelson Rockefeller spawned a disastrous national trend in the 1970's with drug laws that required mandatory minimum sentences, including 15 years to life for the most serious drug felony. This policy tied the hands of judges in cases where stiff sentences were not warranted and encouraged a few hard-core judges to throw away the keys.

The Rockefeller laws swept away the sensible policy that treated drug kingpins more severely than small-time peddlers. Under the new arrangement, an addict selling a small amount of drugs to feed a habit was treated no differently than a bulk-rate dealer moving drugs into the state by the truckload.

New York State legislators who were fearful of being cast as "soft on crime" if they revised the law seem to have had a change of heart after hearing the stories of first-time offenders who have been separated from their families by unjust life sentences and forced to watch their children grow up in prison visiting rooms.

The changes proposed by the Legislature would reduce the maximum sentences for the most serious offenses and would allow the inmates serving the longest sentences to seek retroactive reductions. The new policy also doubles the amounts of drugs that an offender would have to be caught with to get the harshest penalties for possession crimes - but leaves the weight thresholds intact for sales and attempted-sales crimes.

The State Legislature has done the easy part. Now it needs to deal with the core issue: doing away with mandatory minimum sentences, and leaving sentencing to the discretion of judges.

Published: December 11, 2004

Posted by lois at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2004

"Non-Reform" Reform ---opinions from various NY newspapers

'Non-reform' reform of NY's Rockefeller drug laws. Different views from the Christian Science monitor, op-ed by Robert Gangi in Newsday, Newsday editorial, and an article form the NY Times. (These were compiled by Tracy Huling)

Christian Science Monitor

USA > Justice
from the December 10, 2004 edition

More states roll back mandatory drug sentences
The move this week by New York, the pioneer of tough laws, reflects concern about prison overcrowding and 'fairness.'

By Alexandra Marks | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW YORK - New York's dramatic move this week to roll back its mandatory drug laws is symbolic of a growing movement in dozens of states to rethink how they deal with nonviolent drug offenders.

From California to New Jersey, lawmakers either are considering or have already taken steps to reduce sentences, replace prison time with drug treatment, and return some discretion to judges.

The movement is being driven by the desire to ease overcrowding in prisons and concern about the fairness of mandatory sentences. While not everyone agrees with the tilt, even some conservatives have joined the reformers, arguing that more needs to be done than just being tough on crime.

The New York move may be the most important, both for substantive and symbolic reasons. It was the first state in the nation to usher in tough mandatory-minimum drug laws more than 30 years ago.

It was also one of the first where reformers started working to overturn them, arguing the laws designed to net drug kingpins were instead snaring low-level offenders and locking them away, sometimes for life. Critics faulted them for bloating prison populations and unfairly targeting blacks and Hispanics. Conservatives countered that the get-tough laws helped bring down crime rates.

After a heated 12-year battle, the state legislature voted this week to roll back some of those mandatory sentences. In doing so, it became the 22nd state in recent years to reassess or change its drug laws. Some, like Michigan, did away with mandatory life-without-parole sentences for certain felons. Others, like New Jersey, have set up a commission to study changes.

The move by New York lawmakers is "very good news," says Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, an advocacy group in Washington. "They have been one of the most recalcitrant of states, and their penalties are some of the harshest. The states are the real laboratories on this issue, and they seem to be moving far ahead of the federal government."

Currently, a first-time class-A felony in New York - defined as possession of four ounces or more of a hard drug - would get an offender 15 years to life. Under the new law, a person would have to possess eight ounces or more to be categorized as a class-A felon, and the mandatory sentence was reduced to eight to 20 years.

Supporters of drug reform see the New York move as a turning point in the battle to replace mandatory minimums nationwide. But some think New York lawmakers did not go far enough in either reducing the length of mandatory sentences or in

returning discretion to judges. "It's a small but encouraging step," says Alan Rothstein of the New York bar association. "But we're also hopeful the legislature will turn to this issue again in the next session and make even more substantive changes."

Many conservatives still support mandatory minimums as key deterrents to drug crime. They also see them as a way to ensure uniformity in sentencing, avoiding having some judges hand out stiff jail terms and others lenient ones. But some also now support elements of the reform movement.

"My sense is that the country is coming to the conclusion that the levels of penalty are about right, and maybe even a little too harsh," says Paul Rosenzweig of the Heritage Foundation in Washington. "I don't see people abandoning the deterrent, but trimming, assessing, and figuring out whether the marginal value of an additional three years in jail is worth it, or whether that money could be spent in more cost-effective ways."

Newsday Opinion
DOING TIME
Drug laws are still too harsh
Real reform remains elusive as prosecutors still have the power to stack the decks against the small fry

Robert Gangi is the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York.

December 9, 2004

Despite the fanfare, the Rockefeller Drug Law modifications approved this week in Albany do not amount to real reform. The amendments reduce sentences for drug offenses but leave intact the harshest aspects of these statutes and don't address the most serious problems caused by these laws.

The mandatory sentencing provisions remain on the books, meaning that judges still cannot consider significant mitigating factors - such as an individual's role in the drug transaction or history of addiction - and fashion appropriate penalties to suit the offenses before them. Mandatory sentencing schemes like the Rockefeller Drug Laws do not eliminate discretion; they remove it from the judge's hands and place it in the prosecutor's offices. Under the new system - as under the old one
- the district attorneys will maintain power to control the outcome of drug cases, and the old imbalance associated with the drug laws will persist. The deck will still be stacked.

Prison terms, especially for the highest categories of drug offenses, remain excessive. For example, under the new system, instead of 15 years to life, the most serious provision of the drug laws carries a sentence of eight to 20 years - still far too long.

Many other drug offenders, most of whom have no history of violent or predatory behavior, will still be incarcerated for inordinate periods of time, and New York's taxpayers will still foot the bill. It costs the state hundreds of millions of dollars annually to lock up people convicted of minor drug crimes.

The main criterion for guilt remains the amount of drugs in a person's possession, not the person's actual role in the drug transaction. Drug kingpins are rarely foolish enough to carry narcotics; they employ other people, often in dire economic circumstances, who agree to do it. Couriers are the ones who get caught literally holding the bag and face long prison sentences. As a main weapon in the "war on drugs," this statute will continue to result in law enforcement agencies concentrating on minor offenders - mainly from poor communities of color
- who are most easily arrested, prosecuted and penalized, rather than on
middle- and high-level criminals who are the drug trade's true masterminds.

Another problem is that the legislature did not include any additional resources for drug treatment and other alternatives to incarceration. Drug treatment is a well-documented success. Fully funded rehabilitation programs not only cost less than imprisonment, they are also much more effective in helping individuals recover from addiction and in reducing the crime associated with the drug trade.

The prevailing wisdom is that Albany was finally willing to move on this issue because of political considerations: an insurgent candidate who ran on a platform promoting drug-law repeal recently defeated the sitting district attorney in Albany County, representing the first time any elected official has been voted from office because of his support for the drug laws. The Republicans in the State Senate - often seen, fairly or not, as obstacles to meaningful change - lost three seats in November, with another hanging in the balance. All observers assume, rightly or wrongly, that New York's next governor will be the progressive Democrat Eliot Spitzer, who will most probably be a strong proponent of real reform. Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno likely saw an advantage in supporting this measure: He could at least claim that he and his colleagues took some action.

So, the concerns here are not only substantive; they are also political. If this legislation turns out to be the first small step on the path toward meaningful reform, then it will have been a positive measure. If, in fact, these modifications wind up undercutting the momentum for real change that has been building, then it will be viewed mostly in a negative light. The final history on this issue has yet to be written, and all of us will help shape the ultimate outcome. Copyright C 2004, Newsday, Inc. __________________________________________________________
Newsday Opinion
THEY CALL THIS REFORM?
Albany leaves itself more work to do after tweaking outdated drug laws

December 9, 2004

Given the history of paralysis in Albany, the impulse is to cheer anytime the legislature rouses itself into action, including this week when it approved changes in the antiquated Rockefeller drug laws.

Give credit where credit is due: Ratcheting back the worst excesses in sentences for drug crimes is progress. But reform it's not. Albany danced around the margin, leaving the hard heart of the wasteful Rockefeller drug laws intact.

Even after Gov. George Pataki signs this week's changes into law, prison will still be mandatory for non-violent drug offenders. Judges will still have no authority to sentence anyone to drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration and almost no discretion to tailor appropriate punishments for individual offenders and circumstances.

Albany has much to do before it can lay claim to real reform. Obstructionists will insist that it's mission accomplished after this week's action, a position that should not be allowed to blunt the momentum for further change.

The state's inflexible grid of mandatory drug sentences may have appeared to make sense 30 years ago when the state and fearful citizens were in the grip of an epidemic of drug abuse and violent crime. Since then it has become clear that drug treatment is less costly than long-term imprisonment and often more effective in moving non-violent drug abusers away from a life of crime, which protects the public.

The legislature responded to at least a portion of that reality this week. It voted to shorten mandatory sentences for drug crimes, increase the weight of drugs needed to trigger the law's automatic penalties and to allow some inmates quicker entry into drug treatment programs operated behind bars. The bill that both the Senate and Assembly approved will also allow about 400 offenders doing the most time under the Rockefeller laws to apply for resentencing in line with the bill's reduced penalties.

Prison sentences will still be stiff: 8 to 20 years for the worst, first offenses, for instance, instead of the current 15 years to life. The legislature provided no new money for drug treatment. But it ensured that non-violent drug offenders will no longer face the prospect of life behind bars.

Albany took a step this week toward more rational sentencing for drug crimes, and every journey begins with one step. Copyright C 2004, Newsday, Inc.

____________________________________________
The New York Times
December 9, 2004
Changes Made to Drug Laws Don't Satisfy Advocates
By LESLIE EATON and AL BAKER
By finally tackling New York State's three-decades-old drug sentencing laws - considered among the most severe in the nation - the State Legislature has raised a lot of hopes and plenty of questions among prisoners, their families, and their lawyers. It has also raised fears among advocates for prison reform, who contend that the changes enacted to the Rockefeller drug laws on Tuesday are relatively modest, but may nevertheless reduce public pressure for a more comprehensive overhaul in the way New York treats drug offenders. Indeed, to some advocates, the new bill is not even half a loaf, but more like a heel of bread, which will leave many prisoners and their families with dashed hopes.

"The important message to get out is that the laws are virtually as harsh as ever," said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a prison watchdog group. For example, he noted, judges must still sentence drug offenders to prison, rather than to alternatives like drug treatment. But if New York still has some of the longest mandatory drug sentences in the country, "I think they should be," said Senator Dale M. Volker, a Republican from western New York who was in office in 1973 when Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller pushed for laws to fight a growing heroin scourge. Chauncey G. Parker, director of criminal justice services for the state, said that people arrested for felony level drug offenses have an average of three previous felony arrests and four prior misdemeanor arrests.

The new legislation, which Gov. George E. Pataki has pledged to sign, will reduce minimum sentences for drug offenses. For example, first-time offenders convicted of a Class A-1 drug felony, who under current law must receive a minimum sentence of 15 years to life in prison, would instead generally face terms of less than eight years. In cases of drug possession, rather than sales, the new law also doubles the amount of heroin, cocaine and some narcotics that automatically turn cases into top-level felonies.

But the most heralded change will affect prisoners who were sentenced to especially long sentences, as much as 25 years behind bars, and will now be able to petition the courts to have their lengthy sentences reduced to the new, lower levels. According to data from the New York State Department of Correctional Services, that change could affect 446 prisoners. That is only a sliver of the 15,600 felons imprisoned on drug charges. So many families who were cheering the Legislature's efforts are now deeply disappointed, said Randy Credico, director of the Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice and an organizer of the group Mothers of the New York Disappeared. He is faced with calling many of the group's members, he said, and tell them their children "are not coming home." One of those mothers is Cheri O'Donoghue, who said that her son, Ashley, 21, pleaded guilty to a lesser drug charge upstate to avoid a possible life term in prison under the old law; in March, he was sentenced to serve 7 to 21 years and is now in Clinton Correctional Facility near the Canadian border and far from his home in Manhattan. He is not eligible for the new reduction program. "If you are going to reform the laws after all this time, and they are so harsh to begin with, then why not really reform them and reform them in a way that makes sense for someone like Ashley's situation, which is a lot of people?" she asked. "He is young and he really wants to come home and he is in shock." Many families do not know whether their child or spouse or parent qualifies for the sentencing reduction program.

But they hope. In the Bronx, Jane L. Gooden has been waiting more than seven years for her youngest son, Timothy Merritt, to be released from prison. She said he was living with friends upstate when drugs were found in the apartment where he was staying; according to court records, in 1997 he pleaded guilty to one count of criminal possession of a controlled substance in Columbia County. It is hard for her to travel to Ulster County to visit him at the Eastern Correctional Facility, said Ms. Gooden, who is 61. "I've been sick since he's been gone," she said, adding that her husband died recently. "So I lost one - but I'm gaining one."

Public defenders, who are likely to handle the vast majority of the resentencing efforts, are still trying to figure out how the process will work. While some cases will be straightforward, in others "a lot of advocacy will be involved," said Alfred A. O'Conner, a lawyer with the New York State Defenders Association. The Legislature promised the prisoners lawyers, but did not authorize any money for the effort, he noted. Still, he added, "it's a chore that we welcome." Ronald L. Kuby, the defense lawyer who has a daily radio program on WABC with Curtis Sliwa, said that his phones had already started ringing with inquiries from clients, ex-clients and family members. "They want to know how does this affect them, what can we do?" he said. "I assume my experience is being duplicated and replicated" in lawyers' offices across the state. So far, he added, he does have one likely candidate, Roberto Oms, a Miami construction worker with no criminal record who came to New York with some friends who were drug dealers - and four kilos of heroin. Indicted in 1999, he went to trial, arguing that he was "just along for the ride," Mr. Kuby said. The judge disagreed and sentenced him to 15 years to life. But the judge, Rosalind Richter, noted that she had adjourned the sentencing "a number of times to see if the Legislature had any willingness, along with the governor, to come to some thoughts about reducing the mandatory sentences under what is known as the Rockefeller drug laws." And if they did so, she was willing to hear from Mr. Oms's lawyers, she said, according to a transcript Mr. Kuby supplied.

Many judges have long pressed for a change in the Rockefeller drug laws, including Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye of the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, who has been advocating for a rethinking of the laws since 1999. "We do feel it is a major step forward," said Jonathan Lippman, chief administrative judge of the courts. But, he added, "We hope they continue to look at the whole issue of the Rockefeller drug laws." Some defense lawyers wish the new law had gone further, but prefer to focus on the hundreds of people who could be freed soon, or at least sooner. One is Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services, who said she had one client in his 60's who has already spent 19 years in prison. "Instead of having his old age in jail," she said, "he's got a chance to come home."

Posted by lois at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)

How & Why To Bring a Prison to Your Town

TOP TEN BENEFITS OF THE ALEXANDER CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION TO THE CITIZENS AND TAXPAYERS OF ALEXANDER COUNTY

How and why to bring a prison to your town by local boosters.
http://www.co.alexander.nc.us/2004docs/20040315m.htm

Excerpt from the minutes of
BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
ALEXANDER COUNTY
REGULAR MEETING
STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA

March 15, 2004

***SPECIAL RECOGNITIONS***

Commissioner Harbinson discussed the new Alexander Correctional Institution at which a ribbon cutting ceremony would be held on Tuesday, March 16, 2004. Commissioner Harbinson stated that the prison was the result of much effort, persistence, and hard work and he discussed the benefits of having this facility in Alexander County, which including the following:

TOP TEN BENEFITS OF THE ALEXANDER CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION TO THE CITIZENS AND TAXPAYERS OF ALEXANDER COUNTY

Alexander County paid $1.3 million for the land and water and sewer accommodations as an incentive for the State of North Carolina to construct, with State funds, an $80 million State prison in Alexander County one of the largest in the State-funded projects in the history of western North Carolina. As a result, the citizens and taxpayers of Alexander County have already received or will receive the following benefits:

1. The sum of $83,000 paid by the State to the County for a building
permit fee for construction of the new prison.

2. A new $2.8 million State-funded regional juvenile detention center
at the location of the old prison unit creating 35 jobs.

3. The employment of approximately 200 construction workers during the
2-year building phase of the prison.

4. The use of local vendors during the construction process such as
McLeod-Feimster Hardware, Lowe¹s Foods, Sipe Lumber Company, and Rogers Mills.

5. A gift from the State of 25 acres located behind the new juvenile
detention center at the intersection of Highway 16 South and Highway 64 Bypass across from Wal-Mart worth about $1.1 million for future County use.

6. An increase in local sales tax revenues from the $18 million annual
operational costs of the prison (which is mostly payroll) in the purchase of local products and services from local businesses by the prison and prison employees.

7. An increase in the local property tax base from businesses being
built along Highway 16 South due, at least in part, to the location of the prison such as Bojangle¹s, Wendy¹s, the Coffee House, the State Employees¹ Credit Union, and Catawba Valley Medical Center's Family Medicine Associates.

8. Benefits to the Town of Taylorsville from double sewer rates
received from the prison with the future possibility of annexing the prison adding the 1,000 inmates as ³citizens² for Census purposes (even though the prisoners cannot vote and would not receive any Town services) thereby increasing substantially the Federal and State revenue-sharing funds the Town would receive.

9. An annual savings to the County of a minimum of $50,000 in meals
supplied to inmates in the County jail.

10. The creation of between 420-460 good-paying, recession-proof jobs with State benefits at the prison with the prospect of another 300-500 jobs in the future at no additional expense to the County when a prison hospital is constructed within the next 5 years.

Commissioner Harbinson also mentioned that Michele Hoyman, Ph.D, a Political Science Professor from UNC Chapel Hill, had completed a study of State prisons and their location over the last 20 years. Her report included the following information:

³North Carolina has used its need for increased prison capacity to help facilitate economic growth in poor, rural communities. The feared stigmas associated with the flourishing of ³prison towns² have not materialized, nor has the oft-cited concerns of increased crime, lowered property value, and overall decrease in quality of life. Why have the counties with prisons tended to view them as economic development trophies? The main reason rests in the associated jobs. The prison sitings in recent years have tended to go to counties without many other economic development opportunities. These communities have found a vehicle for economic stability that provides countywide benefits in the form of employment opportunities and a steady consumption of local goods and services. While no two locales will report exactly the same results of having a prison in its community, some general
observations can be drawn based on NC data. Based on contextual case study
information and economic trend data, it appears prisons have been and continue to contribute positively to the economic status of rural NC communities that pursue this vehicle as an economic development strategy.²

Commissioner Harbinson stated that Alexander County almost didn¹t get a prison in 2001; however, he explained that a group of people went to Raleigh to lobby the NC Department of Correction, the General Assembly, and the Governor¹s Office for the prison. Commissioner Harbinson stated that the group pointed out to individuals in these offices the economic impact that the prison would have in Alexander County and the fact that it would create many jobs. Commissioner Harbinson noted that staff soon learned after the trip that Alexander County would be included in the 3 counties to receive a State prison.

Commissioner Harbinson stated that he wished to recognize those individuals who went on the trip to Raleigh to convey his appreciation for their part in helping to establish the Alexander Correctional Institution. Commissioner Harbinson, at his own expense, presented Keys to the County to the following
individuals:

Glenn Fox, Chamber of Commerce Vice-Chairman, stated that, being a lifelong resident of Alexander County, he had always been concerned with economic growth and job opportunities. Mr. Fox felt that Alexander County was often overlooked by the legislature in Raleigh since it was one of the smallest counties in the State; however, he noted that the Alexander Correctional Institution would be a lasting investment for employment and economic development. Mr. Fox stated that on a recent tour of the prison facility, a correctional officer told him that many citizens didn¹t realize what an economic boost the prison would be for the County. Mr. Fox stated that he was proud of the facility and felt that any fears of security would soon be alleviated.

Keith Hertzler, Chamber of Commerce Executive Director, stated that he and the Chamber of Commerce had greatly supported the prison because of the many jobs it would provide the County. Mr. Hertzler stated that during a tour he had taken of the facility on March 2, 2004, many guards shook his hand and thanked him for their jobs. Mr. Hertzler noted that money would be spent in Alexander County due to the prison and he also felt that the fears of security would fade away with time.

Ronnie Robinette, Town Commissioner, stated that he had 2 separate interests in getting a new prison when discussions began; one as a Town commissioner and the other as a Department of Correction employee. Mr. Robinette stated that Town officials quickly saw the economic benefits of having this facility and he accepted the Key to the County in honor of all the citizens, rich and poor, young and old, that fought to get the prison built in Alexander County. Mr. Robinette stated that he hoped the new prison would be as good of a neighbor as the old prison was.

Ben Hines, Register of Deeds, stated that when he was asked to take the trip to Raleigh to lobby for the new prison, he had just been to the Waldorf plant that had been closed and had noticed the grass growing in the parking lot. Mr. Hines stated that he felt that many citizens would have jobs if the County received a new prison, which meant that there would be a parking lot with no grass growing in it. Mr. Hines stated that once in a while a window of opportunity comes along and he felt that the invitation to take the trip to Raleigh was no exception. Mr. Hines stated that he and the others met with Representative Aaron Plyler as well as other State Representatives and officials from the Governor¹s Office for which he was honored to be apart of. Mr. Hines also conveyed his appreciation for being allowed to take part in the groundbreaking ceremony in November 2001.

Seth Chapman, Clerk of Court, was not able to attend the meeting. Commissioner Harbinson explained that Mr. Chapman was involved in a murder trial at the Courthouse and he noted that he would accept the Key to the County on Mr. Chapman¹s behalf.

Ray Warren, former Sheriff of Alexander County, stated that he felt a new prison was a good opportunity for the County from day one. Mr. Warren mentioned that his friend Senator Fountain Odom worked diligently with County officials to get a prison worked into the budget for Alexander County; however, many ups and downs would follow. Mr. Warren conveyed his appreciation to all those who went on the trip to Raleigh as well as all State and County officials and citizens that made the prison possible. Mr. Warren felt that the prison would be a provider of jobs and economic growth for Alexander County.

Commissioner Harbinson informed the Board and audience that Mr. Warren was the most instrumental person in making the prison a reality. Commissioner Harbinson explained that approximately 10 years ago, Mr. Warren traveled to Raleigh as soon as he received word that the former prison would be closing in order to get Alexander County on the list for a new correctional facility. Commissioner Harbinson also thanked Mr. Warren for his part in getting the State to deed 25 acres of property, worth $1.1 million, behind the old prison to the County.

John Watts, former County Commissioner, stated that the responsibility of an elected official was to determine how consequences of actions taken would affect the citizens 10, 15, or 20 years in the future. Mr. Watts felt that vision was what made a good leader and he noted that he, David Odom, and Joel Harbinson had a vision of a new state prison in Alexander County. Mr. Watts felt that the new prison would be an economic engine for the County, creating many new jobs for Alexander County residents. Mr. Watts also noted that those initially opposed to the prison had adapted the philosophy to make the best of the new facility and he felt that the prison and the CVCC / Alexander Center was the most important projects that took place during his tenure as commissioner.

David Odom, Town Manager and former County Commissioner, thanked the Governor, State legislature, and the citizens of the County for their investment in the prison facility. Mr. Odom spoke on the bonds of brotherhood and stated that the first bond was his family support. He stated that his parents, brothers, wife, and friends supported him and stood behind his decisions, which played a large role in his ability to stand firm on commitments made as an elected official. However, Mr. Odom stated that the irony of the situation was that his brother, who was employed with the Department of Correction for over 21 years, would unfortunately not be employed with the new prison. Mr. Odom stated that the second bond of brotherhood was the bipartisan leadership that was in place during discussions of obtaining a new prison. Mr. Odom mentioned that 5 men including himself, John Watts, Joel Harbinson, Darrell Robertson, and Wes Bolick, had the opportunity to debate the merits of spending $1.3 million for property to deed to the State for the new prison facility. He stated that the expenditure came down to finance and placement only, even though some saw the debates as political feuds. Mr. Odom stated that that the County could¹ve had a substantial tax cut that year if the property for the prison had not been purchased, which was why Commissioners Bolick and Robertson took the position they did in not voting in favor of the prison; however, he noted that he, Mr. Watts, and Mr. Harbinson felt that a prison would benefit the County economically and surpass the $1.3 million invested. Mr. Odom stated that Commissioners Bolick and Robertson took into consideration that citizens were afraid to have a high-security prison in
their back yard. He stated that he respected the position that
Commissioners Bolick and Robertson took because they were simply against spending local funds for a State project. Mr. Odom pointed out that Commissioner Bolick said in the final hearing for the prison that he was against the prison, but if a prison was to come to Alexander County, he hoped it was the best it could be. Mr. Odom stated that the new prison was the most modern prison and the largest expenditure of State funds for economic development in western NC. Mr. Odom stated that the third bond of brotherhood was the friendship gained between himself, Mr. Watts, and Mr. Harbinson and the decision they made to strive for better education and the chance to give their children better opportunities than they had. He felt that additional classrooms, higher quality teachers, an auditorium, and the prison would provide those opportunities. Mr. Odom challenged the citizens to strive to leave the County in better shape than they found it for their children and grandchildren to enjoy. Mr. Odom thanked the Town and County agencies that worked together on the prison and he noted that progress came at a cost but that it waited on nobody.

Commissioner Harbinson also presented Keys to the County to David Icenhour, Human Resources / Economic Development Director, and County Manager Rick French who also went on the trip to Raleigh.

Commissioner Harbinson discussed an article he viewed on the Internet recently in regard to Caldwell County Commission¹s recent trip to Raleigh to lobby for a prison. Commissioner Harbinson also stated that Wilkes County had visited the Alexander Correctional Institution and he noted that Burke County was trying to get a prison as well as Iredell County.

Commissioner Bolick stated that during the initial conversation about obtaining a State prison, he was aware that many people had fears about a prison being in the County. Commissioner Bolick stated that because of this, he visited several prisons and actually went to people¹s homes to talk to them about the fear factor. Commissioner Bolick stated that his concern was spending $1.3 million for property that would be given to the State; however, he noted that he did, in fact, say that if a prison was to come to Alexander County, he hoped that it would be the best. Commissioner Bolick stated that he now felt that this prison would be the best, especially with
the work of Forgiven Ministries which he was involved in. Commissioner
Bolick explained that Forgiven Ministries was a Christian organization that worked with the prison to allow inmates to spend quality time with their children, sometimes on retreats away from prison walls.

Commissioner Harbinson encouraged the citizens of the County to take part in a tour of the prison this weekend. Commissioner Harbinson stated that tours would be held on Saturday, March 20, 2004 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM and on Sunday, March 21, 2004 from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM.

Posted by lois at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2004

Rockefeller Drug Laws news December

Compiled by Tamar Kraft-Stolar

Below, fyi, are a number of articles discussing the recent changes to the Rockefeller Drug Laws:

December 9, Times Union, “Reform, New York-style”
December 9, Newsday, “Political considerations and drug law `reform'”
December 9, Newsday Opinion, “Doing Time - Drug laws are still too harsh”
December 9, Newsday Opinion, “They Call This Reform?”
December 9, The New York Times, “Changes Made to Drug Laws Don't Satisfy Advocates”
December 8, Albany Times Union, “Drug law deal raises debate Even as state lawmakers tout Assembly, Senate's passage of bill to ease harsh Rockefeller-era penalties, some say it doesn't go far enough”
December 8, The New York Times, “New York State Votes to Reduce Drug Sentences”
December 8, Newsday, “Changes to law heralded, decried”
December 8, Newsday, “Westchester DA says revised drug laws must be backed with resources”
10. www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/120904/a0109rockylaw.html

11. www.stargazettenews.com/opinion/Thopin1.html

12. www.nypost.com/cgi-bin/printfriendly.pl

13. www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/120904/a0109rockreact.html

14. www.recordonline.com/archive/2004/12/09/09edit.htm

15. www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13521557&BRD=1170&PAG=461&dept_id=7018&rfi=6

see articles under extended entries

1. December 9, 2004

Times Union
“Reform, New York-style”

Editorial

The Legislature softens the Rockefeller Drug Laws, but more needs to be done

It's wrong to apply the reform label to Tuesday's agreement between the Assembly and Senate on softening the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws. The more accurate description is partial reform. Partial -- as in the need for the Legislature to continue to address the issue next year.

Yet it would also be wrong to dismiss Tuesday's agreement as mere window dressing. "Don't minimize it, please, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, pleaded Tuesday. And he's right. Some major changes -- welcome changes -- were made to statutes that have ruined the lives of many first-time, non-violent offenders even as drug kingpins continue to roam free.

The changes include an end to life sentences for some offenders and reduced penalties for others. Other sentences are likely to be reduced under appeal, while repeat violent offenders will face longer prison time. It's estimated that some 400 inmates now serving long sentences could go free under the partial reform.

To qualify as genuine reform, however, the agreement would have had to include a return to judicial discretion in sentencing, replacing the mandatory minimums that now tie judges' hands even in cases where a miscarriage of justice is evident. And genuine reform would have also provided the option of treatment rather than jail for addicted drug offenders, as well as added funds to expand those treatment programs.

These are serious shortcomings, to be sure. But what was agreed upon was not exactly minimal progress, either. That is likely why some champions of Rockefeller Drug Law reform, especially Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, and newly elected Albany County District Attorney David Soares, hailed the agreement Tuesday. But neither is fully satisfied with it, either. They recognize that more must be done.

Mr. Aubry is being a realist when he describes Tuesday's agreement as an opportunity to move forward, but only that. The issue of genuine reform remains very much alive, he warns, and the issue "still plays in Senate races" and district attorney races. "The public," Mr. Aubry correctly notes, "still believes that reform and judicial discretion is important."

Fortunately, that message seems to have gotten through to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, and Sen. Bruno, who conceded Tuesday that despite the agreement more must be done on drug law reform.

As it happens, Senate Minority Leader David Paterson, D-Harlem, will give the leaders just such an opportunity to do more as he pledges to push for additional reform measures as soon as the Legislature returns in January. "What we're going to fight for is that the issue stays alive," Sen. Paterson vows. "It is my belief that our capacity to influence the situation is greater than before." The sooner that capacity is used to its maximum, the better.

2. December 9, 2004

Newsday
“Political considerations and drug law `reform'”

Joel Stashenko, Associated Press Writer

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The changes to the Rockefeller drug laws approved by the Legislature this week were similar to those on the table 18 months ago when hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons came close to brokering reforms of the mandatory drug-sentencing statutes.

In fact, proponents of reforming the drug laws probably could have had the legislation approved this week several years ago. Or something very much like it.

The measure's most dramatic changes concern the infamous A-1 and A-2 provisions that date back to 1973 and the near-hysteria former Gov. Nelson Rockefeller felt at the burgeoning heroin trade in the state's inner cities. Offenders in those categories face prison sentences of up to life for possessing and selling relatively small amounts of narcotics, even without accompanying convictions for violent crimes.

For many years, if not decades, no one in Albany has seriously disputed that a maximum life sentence for drug possession is not excessive. Killers, rapists, sex offenders and career criminals all routinely receive shorter potential terms in prison.

Plus, the harsh sentencing statutes never seemed to appreciably hamper the trafficking or use of drugs or the distribution of new and beguilingly addictive substances that have appeared since Rockefeller left office in 1974.

For years, reform advocates have tried to hold out for sweeping changes in other mandatory drug sentencing categories. That's what the debate over Rockefeller drug laws has really been about.

In particular, the Class B felony of the sentencing laws and the sentence of four-and-a-half to nine years in prison that nonviolent offenders must serve has been the real target of reform proponents.

There are perhaps 400 prison inmates serving time under the A-1 part of the Rockefeller drug laws. They will now be allowed to ask courts to shorten their sentences under new drug sentencing guidelines.

There are as many as 9,000 inmates sentenced under the Class B felony provision of the mandatory sentencing law. The changes approved this week will scale back the minimum sentence for nonviolent, Class B offenders to about three years from the current four-and-a-half years _ a modest alteration that many reformers said was almost worse than not getting any changes at all.

And the pro-prosecutorial forces on the other side of the drug law debate in Albany "won" in this week's legislation in the sense that judges were not given the near-total sentencing discretion reformers have sought for decades in drug cases. In addition, no felony offenders were given the ability to avoid prison altogether for automatic diversion into treatment.

Nevertheless, state Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, a Brooklyn Democrat with 36 years in the Assembly, called the legislation a "great compromise."

"As we know, around here change does not come easily," Lentol said.

Robert Gangi of the pro-reform state Correctional Association said the agreement was little different from the one Simmons tried to get Gov. George Pataki and state legislative leaders to agree to during their usual closed-door bargaining session in Pataki's office at the state Capitol in 2003.

Simmons, the force behind Def Jam music, left that meeting thinking a deal was done. But any accord fell apart within hours and nothing came of the negotiations in 2003.

Gangi questioned the political timing of the agreement reached this week and whether a better deal could have been made by reformers.

Pro-reform forces made much of this fall's defeat of Paul Clyne, Albany County's adamantly pro-drug law district attorney, by pro-reform opponent David Soares in a race in which Soares made Rockefeller reform a centerpiece issue. Reform forces also felt they knocked their drug law opponents in the Republican-controlled state Senate on their heels when Democrats took three or four GOP seats in the chamber during the Nov. 2 elections.

"The calculation was made, `Let's grab this small step forward while we can, even though the political landscape looks like it is shifting in our direction,"' Gangi said. "`Who knows what happens down the road? There could be all sorts of ways that the political landscape shifts against reform or appeal."'

Legislative leaders and Pataki said they'd keep talking about further changes. But supporters of more drug law reforms said they were worried that the first steps taken this week would persuade state leaders they don't have to make good on those promises.

Former federal Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo, a close ally of Simmons in the drug reform fight, said it is too late for legislators in Albany to use this week's "half-a-loaf" reform bill as political cover.

"This is their attempt to alleviate the pressure. It's not going to work," Cuomo said. "The pressure is for Rockefeller reform and that's not what this is. This is not judicial (sentencing) discretion. This is not significantly reducing the burdensome length of punishment. ... This is simply not what we've been working for all these years."

Joel Stashenko is Capitol Editor for The Associated Press. He can be reached at P.O. Box 7165, Capitol Station, Albany, N.Y., 12224.

3. December 9, 2004

Newsday Opinion
“DOING TIME - Drug laws are still too harsh”

Robert Gangi is the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York.

Real reform remains elusive as prosecutors still have the power to stack the decks against the small fry

Despite the fanfare, the Rockefeller Drug Law modifications approved this week in Albany do not amount to real reform. The amendments reduce sentences for drug offenses but leave intact the harshest aspects of these statutes and don't address the most serious problems caused by these laws.

The mandatory sentencing provisions remain on the books, meaning that judges still cannot consider significant mitigating factors - such as an individual's role in the drug transaction or history of addiction - and fashion appropriate penalties to suit the offenses before them.

Mandatory sentencing schemes like the Rockefeller Drug Laws do not eliminate discretion; they remove it from the judge's hands and place it in the prosecutor's offices. Under the new system - as under the old one - the district attorneys will maintain power to control the

outcome of drug cases, and the old imbalance associated with the drug laws will persist. The deck will still be stacked.

Prison terms, especially for the highest categories of drug offenses, remain excessive. For example, under the new system, instead of 15 years to life, the most serious provision of the drug laws carries a sentence of eight to 20 years - still far too long.

Many other drug offenders, most of whom have no history of violent or predatory behavior, will still be incarcerated for inordinate periods of time, and New York's taxpayers will still foot the bill. It costs the state hundreds of millions of dollars annually to lock up people

convicted of minor drug crimes.

The main criterion for guilt remains the amount of drugs in a person's possession, not the person's actual role in the drug transaction. Drug kingpins are rarely foolish enough to carry narcotics; they employ other people, often in dire economic circumstances, who agree to do

it. Couriers are the ones who get caught literally holding the bag and face long prison sentences. As a main weapon in the "war on drugs," this statute will continue to result in law enforcement agencies concentrating on minor offenders - mainly from poor communities of

color - who are most easily arrested, prosecuted and penalized, rather than on middle- and high-level criminals who are the drug trade's true masterminds.

Another problem is that the legislature did not include any additional resources for drug treatment and other alternatives to incarceration. Drug treatment is a well-documented success. Fully funded rehabilitation programs not only cost less than imprisonment, they are

also much more effective in helping individuals recover from addiction and in reducing the crime associated with the drug trade.

The prevailing wisdom is that Albany was finally willing to move on this issue because of political considerations: an insurgent candidate who ran on a platform promoting drug-law repeal recently defeated the sitting district attorney in Albany County, representing the first

time any elected official has been voted from office because of his support for the drug laws. The Republicans in the State Senate – often seen, fairly or not, as obstacles to meaningful change - lost three seats in November, with another hanging in the balance. All observers

assume, rightly or wrongly, that New York's next governor will be the progressive Democrat Eliot Spitzer, who will most probably be a strong proponent of real reform. Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno likely saw an advantage in supporting this measure: He could at least claim that he and his colleagues took some action.

So, the concerns here are not only substantive; they are also political. If this legislation turns out to be the first small step on the path toward meaningful reform, then it will have been a positive measure. If, in fact, these modifications wind up undercutting the momentum for real change that has been building, then it will be viewed mostly in a negative light. The final history on this issue has yet to be written, and all of us will help shape the ultimate outcome.

4. December 9, 2004

Newsday Opinion
“THEY CALL THIS REFORM?”

Albany leaves itself more work to do after tweaking outdated drug laws

Given the history of paralysis in Albany, the impulse is to cheer anytime the legislature rouses itself into action, including this week when it approved changes in the antiquated Rockefeller drug laws.

Give credit where credit is due: Ratcheting back the worst excesses in sentences for drug crimes is progress. But reform it's not. Albany danced around the margin, leaving the hard heart of the wasteful Rockefeller drug laws intact.

Even after Gov. George Pataki signs this week's changes into law, prison will still be mandatory for non-violent drug offenders. Judges will still have no authority to sentence anyone to drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration and almost no discretion to tailor

appropriate punishments for individual offenders and circumstances.

Albany has much to do before it can lay claim to real reform.

Obstructionists will insist that it's mission accomplished after this week's action, a position that should not be allowed to blunt the momentum for further change.

The state's inflexible grid of mandatory drug sentences may have appeared to make sense 30 years ago when the state and fearful citizens were in the grip of an epidemic of drug abuse and violent crime. Since then it has become clear that drug treatment is less costly than long-term imprisonment and often more effective in moving non-violent drug abusers away from a life of crime, which protects the public.

The legislature responded to at least a portion of that reality this week. It voted to shorten mandatory sentences for drug crimes, increase the weight of drugs needed to trigger the law's automatic penalties and to allow some inmates quicker entry into drug treatment

programs operated behind bars. The bill that both the Senate and Assembly approved will also allow about 400 offenders doing the most time under the Rockefeller laws to apply for resentencing in line with the bill's reduced penalties.

Prison sentences will still be stiff: 8 to 20 years for the worst, first offenses, for instance, instead of the current 15 years to life. The legislature provided no new money for drug treatment. But it ensured that non-violent drug offenders will no longer face the

prospect of life behind bars.

Albany took a step this week toward more rational sentencing for drug crimes, and every journey begins with one step.

5. December 9, 2004

The New York Times
“Changes Made to Drug Laws Don't Satisfy Advocates”

Leslie Eaton and Al Baker

By finally tackling New York State's three-decades-old drug sentencing laws - considered among the most severe in the nation - the State Legislature has raised a lot of hopes and plenty of questions among prisoners, their families, and their lawyers.

It has also raised fears among advocates for prison reform, who contend that the changes enacted to the Rockefeller drug laws on Tuesday are relatively modest, but may nevertheless reduce public pressure for a more comprehensive overhaul in the way New York treats

drug offenders.

Indeed, to some advocates, the new bill is not even half a loaf, but more like a heel of bread, which will leave many prisoners and their families with dashed hopes. "The important message to get out is that the laws are virtually as harsh as ever," said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a prison watchdog group. For example, he noted, judges must still sentence drug offenders to prison, rather than to alternatives like drug treatment.

But if New York still has some of the longest mandatory drug sentences in the country, "I think they should be," said Senator Dale M. Volker, a Republican from western New York who was in office in 1973 when Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller pushed for laws to fight a growing heroin scourge.

Chauncey G. Parker, director of criminal justice services for the state, said that people arrested for felony level drug offenses have an average of three previous felony arrests and four prior misdemeanor arrests.

The new legislation, which Gov. George E. Pataki has pledged to sign, will reduce minimum sentences for drug offenses. For example, first-time offenders convicted of a Class A-1 drug felony, who under current law must receive a minimum sentence of 15 years to life in prison, would instead generally face terms of less than eight years.

In cases of drug possession, rather than sales, the new law also doubles the amount of heroin, cocaine and some narcotics that automatically turn cases into top-level felonies.

But the most heralded change will affect prisoners who were sentenced to especially long sentences, as much as 25 years behind bars, and will now be able to petition the courts to have their lengthy sentences reduced to the new, lower levels.

According to data from the New York State Department of Correctional Services, that change could affect 446 prisoners. That is only a sliver of the 15,600 felons imprisoned on drug charges.

So many families who were cheering the Legislature's efforts are now deeply disappointed, said Randy Credico, director of the Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice and an organizer of the group Mothers of the New York Disappeared. He is faced with calling many of the group's

members, he said, and tell them their children "are not coming home." One of those mothers is Cheri O'Donoghue, who said that her son, Ashley, 21, pleaded guilty to a lesser drug charge upstate to avoid a possible life term in prison under the old law; in March, he was sentenced to serve 7 to 21 years and is now in Clinton Correctional Facility near the Canadian border and far from his home in Manhattan.

He is not eligible for the new reduction program.

"If you are going to reform the laws after all this time, and they are so harsh to begin with, then why not really reform them and reform them in a way that makes sense for someone like Ashley's situation, which is a lot of people?" she asked. "He is young and he really wants

to come home and he is in shock."

Many families do not know whether their child or spouse or parent qualifies for the sentencing reduction program. But they hope. In the Bronx, Jane L. Gooden has been waiting more than seven years for her youngest son, Timothy Merritt, to be released from prison. She said he was living with friends upstate when drugs were found in the apartment where he was staying; according to court records, in 1997 he pleaded guilty to one count of criminal possession of a controlled substance in Columbia County. It is hard for her to travel to Ulster County to visit him at the Eastern Correctional Facility, said Ms. Gooden, who is 61. "I've been sick since he's been gone," she said, adding that her husband died recently. "So I lost one - but I'm gaining one."

Public defenders, who are likely to handle the vast majority of the resentencing efforts, are still trying to figure out how the process will work. While some cases will be straightforward, in others "a lot of advocacy will be involved," said Alfred A. O'Conner, a lawyer with the New York State Defenders Association. The Legislature promised the prisoners lawyers, but did not authorize any money for the effort, he noted. Still, he added, "it's a chore that we welcome."

Ronald L. Kuby, the defense lawyer who has a daily radio program on WABC with Curtis Sliwa, said that his phones had already started ringing with inquiries from clients, ex-clients and family members.

"They want to know how does this affect them, what can we do?" he said. "I assume my experience is being duplicated and replicated" in lawyers' offices across the state.

So far, he added, he does have one likely candidate, Roberto Oms, a Miami construction worker with no criminal record who came to New York with some friends who were drug dealers - and four kilos of heroin.

Indicted in 1999, he went to trial, arguing that he was "just along for the ride," Mr. Kuby said. The judge disagreed and sentenced him to 15 years to life. But the judge, Rosalind Richter, noted that she had adjourned the sentencing "a number of times to see if the Legislature had any willingness, along with the governor, to come to some thoughts about

reducing the mandatory sentences under what is known as the Rockefeller drug laws." And if they did so, she was willing to hear from Mr. Oms's lawyers, she said, according to a transcript Mr. Kuby supplied.

Many judges have long pressed for a change in the Rockefeller drug laws, including Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye of the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, who has been advocating for a rethinking of the laws since 1999. "We do feel it is a major step forward," said Jonathan Lippman, chief administrative judge of the courts. But, he added, "We hope they continue to look at the whole issue of the Rockefeller drug laws."

Some defense lawyers wish the new law had gone further, but prefer to focus on the hundreds of people who could be freed soon, or at least sooner. One is Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services, who said she had one client in his 60's who has already spent 19 years in prison. "Instead of having his old age in jail," she said, "he's got a chance to come home."

6. December 8, 2004

Albany Times Union
“Drug law deal raises debate Even as state lawmakers tout Assembly, Senate's passage of bill to ease harsh Rockefeller-era penalties, some say it doesn't go far enough”

Elizabeth Benjamin

ALBANY -- Depending on who you talked to Tuesday, state lawmakers either broke a long-standing logjam and took real steps to reform the Rockefeller Drug Laws, or merely tinkered with the harsh laws and frittered away any chance of future negotiations. "We are doing something here that changes people's lives; don't minimize it, please," said Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick.

"It would be an unbelievable stretch to call this Rockefeller Drug Law reform," said Sen. Thomas Duane, D-Manhattan. "Everybody is going to say: Oh, congratulations, we did this big reform, and now we can forget about it for years." Backed up by Gov. George Pataki,

legislative leaders touted their deal Tuesday to reduce some of the mandatory sentences in the 1973 laws, which require lengthy terms or life in prison for people convicted of possessing or selling relatively small amounts of drugs. The bill passed both houses the

same day it was printed, thanks to a message of necessity from Pataki that lets legislators circumvent the required three-day "aging" process. The governor said he will sign the bill when he receives it.

The measure ends life sentences for the highest-level, Class A1 and A2, drug offenders, slightly reduces sentences for nonviolent lower-level, Class B, offenders, and increases sentences for offenders with prior felony convictions. It also doubles the weight of drugs an

offender must possess or intend to sell to trigger prison sentences.

In addition, Class A1 felons now in prison could retroactively appeal their sentences under the new sentencing structure. Lawmakers estimated the provision could set free some 400 inmates serving long sentences. Class A2 and B felons could apply for "merit time" through

efforts like earning a GED or completing a drug treatment program to reduce their sentences. The bill does not return sentencing discretion to judges, which many advocates consider crucial. It also does not provide an option of treatment rather than incarceration for

addicted drug offenders or additional funding to expand treatment. Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, who has long championed drug law reform, called the bill a "first step." He acknowledged many things long sought by advocates and Assembly Democrats were missing, but insisted the Assembly majority could still revisit these issues. "The Senate wants to do it to put it to bed and die, and we want to do it to move it forward," Aubry said, before his house passed the bill, 96-41. "We're not anywhere different than where we

were, we've just taken off what we can agree on." "It still plays in Senate races," Aubry continued. "It still plays in (district attorney) races. The public still believes that reform and judicial discretion is important." The agreement, which lawmakers said was built on progress made in conference committees last spring, required compromise from all sides. Assembly Democrats gave up judicial discretion and additional treatment funding. Senate Republicans and Pataki agreed to some reduced time for Class B offenders and to drop "enhancements," such as increased penalties for offenders who sold drugs on the Internet or used a gun to commit crimes. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, said "external forces" had

motivated the Senate to make a deal on drug law reform. Silver cited incumbent Albany County District Attorney Paul A. Clyne's defeat in the September Democratic primary to David Soares, who made drug law reform central to his campaign. Soares' win sent a chill through the state's district attorneys, who have been among the most vociferous opponents of drug law reform. Silver also mentioned the recent call for reform by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, an 85-year-old, eight-term incumbent and "dean" of the state district attorneys, who faces a primary challenge from a pro-reform candidate next fall. "I think the Senate found out that the tide had shifted on this issue, plain and simple," Silver said. The Senate Republicans are under additional pressure after losing three, and potentially

four, seats in their majority to the Democrats in the fall elections.

Asked whether the Senate's approval of the bill in a 53-6 vote was the result of political pressure, Bruno spokesman John McArdle said: "Absolutely not." All the no votes in the Senate were cast by Democrats who felt the bill didn't go far enough to change the drug

laws. "There is no more treatment in here," said Duane, speaking against the bill. "I can't believe, after all this time, this is what ends up on our desks." His comments were echoed by some longtime drug law reform advocates like Robert Gangi, executive director of the

Correctional Association of New York, a prison watchdog group, who called the bill "not worthy of the name reform," and said the process by which it passed was too secretive and too rushed. But Russell Simmons, the hip-hop mogul who had vigorously pushed for the changes, said he was "very, very happy," and credited pressure from the hip-hop community for raising awareness on the issue, according to The New York Times. Both Silver and Bruno conceded more needs to be done on drug law reform. Senate Minority Leader David Paterson, D-Harlem, pledged to start pushing for additional changes as soon as the Legislature returns in January. "What we're going to fight for is that this issue stays alive," he said. "It is my belief that our capacity to influence the situation is greater than before. So we're rolling the dice on this one."

7. December 8, 2004

The New York Times
“New York State Votes to Reduce Drug Sentences”

Michael Cooper

ALBANY, Dec. 7 - After years of false starts, state lawmakers voted Tuesday evening to reduce the steep mandatory prison sentences given to people convicted of drug crimes in New York State, sanctions considered among the most severe in the nation. The push to soften the so-called Rockefeller drug laws came after a nearly decade-long campaign to ease the drug penalties instituted in the 1970's that put some low-level first-time drug offenders behind bars for sentences ranging from 15 years to life.

Under the changes passed Tuesday, which Gov. George E. Pataki said he would sign, the sentence for those same offenders would be reduced to 8 to 20 years in prison. The law will allow more than 400 inmates serving lengthy prison terms on those top counts to apply to judges to get out of jail early.

The changes reflected a nationwide push in recent years to lessen some of the punishments for drug offenders, as states like Michigan and Pennsylvania have moved to emphasize drug treatment options or to give judges more discretion in sentencing those convicted of narcotics crimes.

The law's passage also represented a major achievement for a state legislature that studies have called the least efficient in the nation. Until now, state leaders have strived for years and without success to overhaul the drug laws, named for Nelson A. Rockefeller, who was governor when they were enacted.

The State Legislature also broke another logjam Tuesday when it passed a bill authorizing the expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on the West Side of Manhattan so that New York City could compete with other cities for major conventions. As part of that deal, the Republican-led State Senate won a provision that $350 million would be spent on other projects outside of New York City, and the Democrat-controlled State Assembly ensured that the bill remained neutral on the question of whether to allow the New York Jets to build a football stadium on the site.

be allowed to apply for early release, and that judges were not given the power to sentence some offenders to treatment programs rather than prison.

"This is it?" an exasperated State Senator Thomas Duane, a Manhattan Democrat, shouted during the debate. "This is it? After all this time, this is what comes to the floor? It would be an unbelievable stretch to call this Rockefeller drug reform."

But Russell Simmons, the hip-hop mogul who had vigorously pushed for the changes, said he was "very, very happy," and credited pressure from the hip-hop community for raising awareness on the issue.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver credited a changed political landscape - including the election of a new district attorney in Albany County, David Soares, who ran with the backing of the Working Families Party on a platform seeking drug-law changes - for bringing the state's leaders to a compromise. He said he would continue to push for more changes next year.

"It isn't everything we wanted, and I think we will continue to press for some of those things, but I think the climate has changed here," he said. In the mad scramble of late-session activity, though, several significant issues remained undone: how to comply with a court order requiring the state to fix New York City's schools, and how to overhaul a budget process that has yielded late budgets for 20 years in a row. Senator Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate Republican majority leader, backed away from a plan to override Governor Pataki's veto of the budget overhaul bill that the Legislature passed earlier this year.

Governor Pataki said the new drug law "reflects a greater knowledge than we had 30 years ago."

Senator Bruno urged his colleagues not to underestimate the importance of their vote to change the state's drug laws. "We are doing something here that changes people's lives," he said, citing the case of Elaine Bartlett, who served 16 years in prison for a single sale of cocaine, and whose story was chronicled this year in "Life on the Outside" by Jennifer Gonnerman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004). "And don't minimize it. Please don't minimize it."

Still, he said, "There is more to be done, and we're going to get there."

A study by the Democrats in the State Senate found that New York imposed the harshest penalties in the nation for low-level drug offenders. It found that 32 states, including Texas and Florida, offer probation to nonviolent offenders who sell small amounts of drugs, and that New York was the only state that required more than three years in prison for such offenses.

But year after year, talks to overhaul the laws have fallen apart.

sentence offenders to treatment instead of prison, to allow more inmates to seek early release and to add more treatment options.

Assemblyman Jeffrion L. Aubry, a Queens Democrat who has led the Assembly's efforts to overhaul the drug laws for years, said: "We reached a point where you're going to do something this year or you're not. So, since nobody was willing to give on those other

issues, you boil it down to what you can concur on." But a number of drug policy advocates complained that even with the changes, the state's drug laws remained unduly harsh, and that the new law did not change the state's basic approach to fighting drugs, which they said has failed. Robert Gangi, the executive director of Correctional Association of New York, a prison monitoring group, said that the current system was still weighted in favor of prosecutors.

And the judge is the neutral arbiter who is supposed to weigh their claims. What mandatory sentencing does is stack the deck in favor of one side in the adversarial process, and that is the prosecutors." Mr. Gangi complained that after years of negotiations, and a brief

flirtation with public conference committees, the final agreement was reached behind closed doors, with interested parties unable to weigh in.

One district attorney who was happy to see the change was Mr. Soares, the incoming district attorney of Albany County, who upset an incumbent, Paul Clyne, in a race dominated by their debate on the drug laws. And on Monday, District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau of

Manhattan called for overhauling the laws.

Bertha Lewis, the co-chairwoman of the Working Families Party, which backed Mr. Soares's candidacy, said, "The incumbent D.A. paid a political price for his public opposition to reforming arcane and outdated laws, and clearly the State Legislature took notice."

Governor Pataki said that the deal struck Tuesday was largely the same as one that was early sealed in 2003 during a bizarre late-night negotiating session on the second floor of the capitol with the leaders of the Legislature and Mr. Simmons. (Assemblyman Aubry,

famously, was left outside the closed-door meeting.)

Mr. Simmons said that he was pleased something had finally happened. "I think it is a big win," he said. "Do I believe that there is more room? Yes is the answer. I think the people who fought, the kids who came out, the artists who worked hard, I think they will embrace it.

It shows their power. That they have a political might that can be used to benefit the state and the country."

Al Baker contributed reporting for this article.

8. December 8, 2004
Newsday

“Changes to law heralded, decried”

Curtis L. Taylor

It has been almost 11 years since Norma Arenas saw her son, Miguel, who is serving a 15 years-to-life sentence for his conviction under the Rockefeller drug laws.

But Arenas was in tears late yesterday after realizing that an agreement to change the tough drug laws, which were passed in 1973, could result in her son's early release.

"It has been 10 years that I don't see my son," Arenas, who suffers from a heart condition and other ailments, said in a phone interview from her South Bronx home. "I don't believe it ... I am so happy, I can't talk right now."

For Elaine Bartlett, who served 16 years after being convicted as a first-time offender for selling 4 ounces of cocaine, yesterday held a great deal of emotion.

While the compromise is too late to help her, she was "happy because it will prevent another family from going through what my family went through."

"I may have suffered while being incarcerated, but this is the beginning of breaking a cycle that will spare my community and other families my pain," said Bartlett, who was convicted at 26, leaving her relatives to raise her four young children.

Cheri O'Donoghue expressed anger and disappointment at the news. The proposed changes would not reduce the 7- to 21-year sentence her son, Ashley, 21, was serving for trying to sell 2.6 ounces of cocaine last year.

"I don't think it affects him at all," she said. "He was a first-time offender and I think the sentence was ridiculously high and inhumane. Not to say that what he did was right, but this law does not give the judges discretion and there is not a treatment option."

Bartlett, who was granted clemency in 2000 by Gov. George Pataki, and O'Donoghue joined other advocates yesterday in calling for total repeal of what they said are "draconian drug laws."

"Of course more needs to be done, but I told the governor when he got me off that clemency was only putting a Band-Aid on the problem," said Bartlett, 46, who has dedicated her life to overturning the laws.

Local activist Randy Credico, who started organizing the repeal effort seven years ago, said the legislature should have done more. The tentative agreement includes reducing the current 15-to-25-years-to-life maximum sentence to a sentence of 8 years to 20 years. It also includes eliminating the maximum term of life for the most serious offenses.

"After seven years, this is a small payoff," he said. "It is not reform, but it is a first step."

Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, who led a rally against the laws at City Hall last year, said he was "very happy and proud" of the agreement.

"We wanted more, but it's as much as we could have realistically hoped for," Simmons said.

9. December 8, 2004
Newsday

“Westchester DA says revised drug laws must be backed with resources”

Jim Fitzgerald, Associated Press Writer

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro applauded new restrictions on the state's Rockefeller-era drug sentences Wednesday but said more resources are needed to treat addicted criminals.

The state Legislature voted Tuesday to trim the most severe of the mandatory sentences that became law under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. For example, offenders who now have to serve at least 15 years would be eligible for parole in less than seven.

"We've got to be tough on the violent drug kingpins who are arrested with guns, who have a criminal enterprise," Pirro said. "That's where these laws should come into play, not for the individual who is addicted and is simply trying to support a habit that she or he can't control."

Pirro touted Westchester's programs that divert many small-time drug defendants into treatment rather than prison, but said compassion for drug addicts must be backed with more resources. Punishment, she said, is "only half the battle."

Addicted criminals "are valuable human beings who deserve treatment by a caring society as opposed to being warehoused in prison," she said.

Her office often arranges for a defendant to plead guilty to a felony and to get drug treatment before sentencing, she said.

"Upon completion of that program, we may drop those felony charges and they walk away with a clean record," Pirro said.

However, those opportunities may be limited. One rehabilitation center told Pirro that it had no beds available.

"We need to make sure that defendants don't get sent to prison just because there is no bed available for them," Pirro said. "If we are the caring society we say we are, we need to provide the help that these people deserve."

Pirro, a Republican who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for attorney general in 2006, did not elaborate on her political future.

"The last thing I'm focused on is 2006," she said, adding that she planned to be district attorney "as long as the people of Westchester County will have me."

Posted by kym at 06:45 PM | Comments (0)

Revisions to the Rockefeller Drug Laws Embrace the Status Quo

Changes Represent Reform in Name Only, ACLU Charges

http://www.aclu.org/DrugPolicy/DrugPolicy.cfm?ID=17169&c=19

Revisions to New York Rockefeller Drug Laws Embrace the Status Quo

December 8, 2004

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@aclu.org

NEW YORK--The New York Civil Liberties Union today charged that legislation passed in Albany, while reducing the most severe mandatory sentences for drug offenses, leaves in place a sentencing scheme that is inherently unfair and unjust. Even with the proposed revisions, New York still has the harshest drug-sentencing laws in the country.

"Absent structural changes to the Rockefeller Drug Laws - which requires restoring to judges the authority to order treatment as an alternative to sentencing - we will not have meaningful reform," said Donna Lieberman, the NYCLU¹s Executive Director.

The legislation, which Governor George Pataki says he will sign, reduces the current sentence of 15-years-to-life for persons charged with severe drug felonies and permits those serving time for these offenses to apply for a reduced sentence. However, the NYCLU said that the sentencing "grid" for these offenses is still harsh and inflexible.

The new law will leave in place a sentencing procedure that gives prosecutors authority to charge and sentence. Prosecutors can demand a sentence of ten years for an addict with no criminal record who is induced by a dealer to deliver four ounces of a drug to a buyer. A judge who believes justice -- and the public interest -- would be best served by ordering the defendant to treatment rather than prison is prevented from doing so.

"The concern is that a small first step will be characterized as meaningful reform; that the legislation will give political cover to apologists for the status quo," said Robert Perry, the NYCLU¹s Legislative Director. "The fight for real reform begins on the first day of the 2005 legislative session."

The new law will also do little or nothing to reform the harsh sentences imposed on "B" felons, those charged with lesser drug offenses, the NYCLU said. For example, an individual who is caught with a gram of a controlled substance, but has a prior offense for illegal use of food stamps, faces 3 to 12 years in prison. The majority of drug offenders serving time in New York prisons are non-violent B felons.

Posted by lois at 06:14 PM | Comments (0)

December 08, 2004

Military Prison Project

WHAT IS IT?

This project will be a combination of research, analysis and
personal accounts of life inside the military prison. It will
result in a pamphlet or zine of some sort that will be available
for distribution in Winter 2005.

INTERESTED IN SUBMITTING TO OR WORKING ON THIS PROJECT?

Are you a veteran who has served time in a military prison and has
a story to tell (you may remain ANONYMOUS)? Are you a family member
or friend of someone who was or is currently in a military prison?
Are you a concerned activist interested in doing research and
analysis? Do you have access to some resources we should know about
in pursuing this endeavor? Email:militaryprisonproject@yahoo.com

Military Prison Project

WHAT IS IT?

This project will be a combination of research, analysis and personal accounts of life inside the military prison. It will result in a pamphlet or zine of some sort that will be available for distribution in Winter 2005.

There is research, activism, and organizing around the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), and also the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) in terms of recruitment, corporate interests, and racism and sexual violence within the military and in its praxis around the world. However, very little research, activism and organizing exists to expose the prison system within the military. Since the Abu-Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal came to public attention in the summer of 2004, international attention has been brought to the treatment of people held as prisoners of war by the US, but there was no analysis of the US military justice system as a whole, and how it imprisons those within it! s own ranks. This project will help to fill that void by looking at the following issues:

1. Who is in military prison?

2. What offenses are people serving for, and what are their sentences?

3. What is the racial breakdown, and sentence disparities among race, class and gender?

4. What are the conditions of confinement and treatment of folks in military prisons?

5. How does the military justice system reproduce ideologies about certain communities being criminal, pathological and violent that are common in the "civilian" world?

6. Does the military justice system and how it works change the situation of young, poor black women and men who enter the military as a means of escaping poverty, gaining status as a "respectable citizen" and to evade their likelihood of being incarcerated in the PIC, or does it replicate this situation within the military?

This publication will assist family members of military prisoners, former military prisoners, activists, organizers, and educators who are doing work around prison issues, military recruitment, and racial, sexual and economic justice.

INTERESTED IN SUBMITTING TO OR WORKING ON THIS PROJECT?

Are you a veteran who has served time in a military prison and has a story to tell (you may remain ANONYMOUS)? Are you a family member or friend of someone who was or is currently in a military prison? Are you a concerned activist interested in doing research and analysis? Do you have access to some resources we should know about in pursuing this endeavor? Email:militaryprisonproject@yahoo.com

***BEHIND THE PROJECT***

ABOUT THE EDITOR: Kenyon Farrow is a 30 year old Black Gay man, writing and organizing in Brooklyn, NY. He recently served as the Southern Regional Coordinator for Critical Resistance, a prison abolition organization, and continues to work in the New York City chapter. He has also served as an adult ally for FIERCE!, a queer youth of color community organizing project in New York City. Kenyon has written several articles and essays, the most widely circulated of which have been "Is Gay Marriage Anti-Black?", and "Connecting the Dots: Michael Moore, White Nationalism and the Multi-racial Left" with writer Kil Ja Kim. Kenyon has also appeared on radio, given many public lect! ures and served on many panels dealing with race and prison issues, and race and queer issues as well, including at Temple University, University of Wisconsin/Madison, and The University of New Orleans. He is currently co-editing his first book project entitled "Letters from Young Activists" with Dan Berger and Chesa Boudin, due out in Fall 2005 with Nation Books.

OTHER GROUPS BEHIND THE PROJECT: This project is sponsored by the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (www.objector.org) and the National Youth and Militarism Program of the AFSC (http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/Default.htm) as part of a multimedia project entitled "Everywhere is War, Everywhere is Resistance."

Posted by craig at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)

40,000 new "beds" voted in Intelligence Reform bill

Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Intelligence Reform Bill (9-11 Commission Leg) Passes House

Extremely brief update regarding the intelligence reform legislation (also known as the legislation to implement the 9-11 commission report):

The conference committee has agreed on a single version of the bill. The House is planning to vote on the bill today, Tuesday, Dec. 7. The Senate is planning to vote on the bill tomorrow, Wednesday, Dec. 8. Both houses of Congress must approve before the bill goes to the President for his signature in order for the bill to become law.
Most of the anti-immigrant provisions of Title III of HR 10 were NOT included. However the following provisions ARE in the compromise bill:

increase in the number of Border Patrol agents by 2,000 agents a year for each of the next five years

increase in the number of Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents by 800 a year for each of the next five years

increase in the number of beds available for immigration detainees by 40,000!!!!!

The Department of Homeland Security will be required to establish "minimum standards" for birth certificates and driver's licenses -- some have called this the first step toward a national ID card.

Posted by lois at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)

France:lslam in Jail

"Despite making up only 10 percent of the population, Muslims account for most of the country's inmates and a growing percentage of the prison populations in many other European countries, an indication of their place at the bottom of the Continent's hierarchy."

December 8, 2004, NY Times
Islam in Jail: Europe's Neglect Breeds Angry Radicals
By CRAIG S. SMITH

NANTERRE DETENTION CENTER, France - Abdullah, tall and muscular, with a shaved head and closely cropped goatee, sat on a metal bunk in the cramped cell here and described how he got religion.

"When I was in La Santé, I read books about the Prophet," he said, referring to a notorious Parisian detention center, the third of five jails where he has spent time during the past two years for dealing drugs and stealing cars.

When he arrived at the fourth, Fleury-Merogis, Europe's largest, another inmate gave him a DVD about the life of Muhammad and later, while enduring a three-week stint in solitary confinement, he vowed to devote himself to Islam.

"People here find God," he said.

In less than a decade, there has been a radical shift in France's prison population, a shift that officials and experts say poses a monumental challenge.

Despite making up only 10 percent of the population, Muslims account for most of the country's inmates and a growing percentage of the prison populations in many other European countries, an indication of their place at the bottom of the Continent's hierarchy.

With radical strains of Islam percolating through Europe, authorities are unsure how to address the spiritual needs of the prisoners while guarding against the potentially toxic mix of extremist ideology and a criminal past. One result is often neglect, which officials say can be a still greater force for radicalization.

Prison populations have been expanding across Europe in recent years, partly because of stricter anticrime regimens influenced by the sort of zero tolerance on quality-of-life crimes that was epitomized by the former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

France's prison population has risen by 20 percent in the past three years, largely because of aggressive pursuit of lower-level crimes.

The proportion of Muslims in prison has been growing even faster, reflecting the relative youth of Europe's largely Muslim immigrants.

While there are no official data on issues of race and ethnicity in much of Europe - it is in fact illegal to keep such data in many places - experts on prison populations agree on the new disproportion of Muslims here and elsewhere.

Two months ago Pierre Raffin, the director of La Santé detention center, warned officials looking into the role of religion in France that extremist proselytizing in prisons was growing.

Other countries are facing the same problem. Spain's chief counterterrorism magistrate, Baltazar Garzón, said recently that the men accused of plotting to blow up the country's main counterterrorism court were recruited from among fellow inmates by an Islamic militant serving time for credit card fraud.

Most famously, Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a Miami-bound airliner in December 2001 using a bomb in his shoe, converted to Islam while in a British jail.

Those who are detained or convicted for terrorist-related crimes are not always separated from the larger prison population and are often ready to act as spiritual guides at a time when mainstream Muslim chaplains are in severely short supply.

Abdullah (prison rules prevented him from giving his last name) said that while he was at Fleury-Merogis, militants were active in the prison yard, preaching that Christians and Jews are enemy infidels. In May, the militants defied prison rules by organizing a prayer meeting during an exercise break. Several prisoners were disciplined as a result.

"Islam is becoming in Europe, especially France, the religion of the repressed, what Marxism was in Europe at one time," said Farhad Khosrokhavar, an Iranian-French scholar who has written a book on Islam in prisons. He says the growing Muslim prison population is evidence of an Islamic underclass that is developing across Europe and, at its margins, is increasingly sympathetic to the coalescing ideologies of political Islam.

Europe has been slow to adjust to the changing ethnic and religious makeup of its prison inmates. France, in particular, has resisted approving Muslim prison chaplains, worried that inadequate screening could unleash potential militants into the system.

Missoum Abdelmadjid Chaoui, the imam responsible for the Nanterre institution, says there are only eight Muslim chaplains for the nearly 20,000 Muslim inmates in the Paris region alone. He handles 9 of the area's 25 prisons himself, but works as a chaplain only part time.

There are several efforts in France and elsewhere in Europe to train moderate clerics who are sensitive to the Continent's secular ideals, but progress is slow and Mr. Chaoui said it would take years before there were enough chaplains to meet the needs of France's prison population, which he estimates is already 60 percent Muslim.

Many people warn that neglecting the needs of Muslim prisoners breeds resentment and leaves them open for more radical interpretations of Islam.

Muslim inmates in France, which has Europe's largest Islamic community, complain that they are ignored in a system devised for a Christian population. Few of the country's prisons provide halal meat, butchered according to Islamic dietary laws, and fewer still hold regular religious services for Muslims, even though most Catholic inmates can attend Mass once a week.

"This feeds back into the community of Muslims outside the prisons, who hear what goes on and are disturbed by it," said James Beckford, a sociology professor at Warwick University in Britain, who has studied the problems of Muslims in jail. "It feeds their sense of alienation."

Abdullah said that since Sept. 11, 2001, many prisoners of his generation have grown interested in understanding the religion of their birth.

But he and one of his two cellmates, Bandjougou, complained that they got little spiritual guidance. Both men were born and raised in the working-class suburb of St. Denis, north of Paris. The neighborhood, once a village surrounding a 13th-century cathedral where France buried its kings, has grown into a sprawl of public housing peopled largely by Arab and African immigrants.

"In 30 months, I've seen the chaplain twice," said Bandjougou, a tall, clear-eyed man of West African descent. "Maybe it would go in one ear and out the other, but at least it would be an alternative vision of life."

A Catholic priest visits the block almost daily, but Bandjougou says he provides little solace for the vast majority of inmates, who are Muslim. In the absence of an official spiritual guide, he said, the prisoners counsel one another.

Prison officials say they are quick to spot serious proselytizing and regularly move prisoners deemed too influential on their fellow inmates.

"Every time we see detainees grouping in the yards to pray or proselytize, the group is broken up," said Géraud Delorme, deputy director of the Nanterre detention center. "Everything is organized to prevent extensive contacts and such exchanges of ideas."

In the French prison system, many prisoners spend as much as 21 hours a day locked behind windowless steel doors in their small cells. Meals are delivered to the cells and there is little opportunity to socialize with anyone but cellmates, except during the twice-daily exercise breaks in the small concrete prison yard.

Drugs are prevalent, passed from cell to cell by strings hung through holes cut in the mesh covering each cell's small window. The "yo-yos" are tolerated at some prisons but the mesh has recently been replaced in Nanterre.

The prisons' shifting demographics are engraved in the small brick- walled exercise yard in Fresnes, a detention center that acts as a hub in transferring inmates around the national prison system. Names carved into the bricks a century ago are all French. "Maurice Barbes, 1909," reads one. But those carved by the young men filling the yard these days are predominantly North African names like Oulmana, Chebbabi and Karim.

Professor Beckford says many countries are making adjustments for their sizable Muslim prison populations. Britain now has more than 20 full-time, salaried chaplains and hundreds of volunteer imams who go into the prisons every week, while prisons in England and Wales hold regular Friday Prayer and provide halal food in the daily diet.

But at Nanterre, a model compared with many other French prisons, halal food is available only through the prison commissary. Bandjougou pointed to boxes of dates, halal ravioli and chicken sausage piled on a shelf in the cramped cell. "We have family that gives us money so that we can buy food," he said in the fading light from the cell's small window, "but if you have no money, you're out of luck."

The men cook the food over homemade stoves, illegal but widely tolerated, that they cobble together from tin cans, tissue paper and cooking oil. Muslims have the option of ordering vegetarian meals from the regular food service, but they say that the diet, like the missing imams, leaves them hungry.

Posted by lois at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)

Glacial "Progress": NY State Votes to Reduce Drug Sentences

"Under the changes passed Tuesday, which Gov. George E. Pataki said he would sign, the sentence for those same offenders would be reduced to 8 to 20 years in prison. The law will allow more than 400 inmates serving lengthy prison terms on those top counts to apply to judges to get out of jail early."

December 8, 2004, NY Times
New York State Votes to Reduce Drug Sentences
By MICHAEL COOPER

ALBANY, Dec. 7 - After years of false starts, state lawmakers voted Tuesday evening to reduce the steep mandatory prison sentences given to people convicted of drug crimes in New York State, sanctions considered among the most severe in the nation.

The push to soften the so-called Rockefeller drug laws came after a nearly decade-long campaign to ease the drug penalties instituted in the 1970's that put some low-level first-time drug offenders behind bars for sentences ranging from 15 years to life.

As part of that deal, the Republican-led State Senate won a provision that $350 million would be spent on other projects outside of New York City, and the Democrat-controlled State Assembly ensured that the bill remained neutral on the question of whether to allow the New York Jets to build a football stadium on the site. [Page B1.]

While some elected officials and drug policy advocates hailed the drug sentencing changes as a major step forward, others complained that they did not go far enough. They complained that inmates serving what they called unduly long prison terms for lesser crimes would not be allowed to apply for early release, and that judges were not given the power to sentence some offenders to treatment programs rather than prison.

But Russell Simmons, the hip-hop mogul who had vigorously pushed for the changes, said he was "very, very happy," and credited pressure from the hip-hop community for raising awareness on the issue.

"It isn't everything we wanted, and I think we will continue to press for some of those things, but I think the climate has changed here," he said.

In the mad scramble of late-session activity, though, several significant issues remained undone: how to comply with a court order requiring the state to fix New York City's schools, and how to overhaul a budget process that has yielded late budgets for 20 years in a row. Senator Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate Republican majority leader, backed away from a plan to override Governor Pataki's veto of the budget overhaul bill that the Legislature passed earlier this year.

Governor Pataki said the new drug law "reflects a greater knowledge than we had 30 years ago."

Senator Bruno urged his colleagues not to underestimate the importance of their vote to change the state's drug laws.

"We are doing something here that changes people's lives," he said, citing the case of Elaine Bartlett, who served 16 years in prison for a single sale of cocaine, and whose story was chronicled this year in "Life on the Outside" by Jennifer Gonnerman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004). "And don't minimize it. Please don't minimize it."

Still, he said, "There is more to be done, and we're going to get there."

But year after year, talks to overhaul the laws have fallen apart.

To reach a compromise, the Senate and Governor Pataki gave up on their calls to increase penalties in some areas for drug kingpins, drug dealers who use children as couriers and drug dealers who use guns. The Assembly gave up its calls to give judges the discretion to sentence offenders to treatment instead of prison, to allow more inmates to seek early release and to add more treatment options.

But a number of drug policy advocates complained that even with the changes, the state's drug laws remained unduly harsh, and that the new law did not change the state's basic approach to fighting drugs, which they said has failed. Robert Gangi, the executive director of Correctional Association of New York, a prison monitoring group, said that the current system was still weighted in favor of prosecutors.

"What mandatory sentencing means is that judges no longer have the authority to make the threshold decision of whether someone should be incarcerated or not," he said. "We're supposed to have an adversarial system: the defense attorney on one side, the D.A. on the other side. And the judge is the neutral arbiter who is supposed to weigh their claims. What mandatory sentencing does is stack the deck in favor of one side in the adversarial process, and that is the prosecutors."

Mr. Gangi complained that after years of negotiations, and a brief flirtation with public conference committees, the final agreement was reached behind closed doors, with interested parties unable to weigh in.

Governor Pataki said that the deal struck Tuesday was largely the same as one that was nearly sealed in 2003 during a bizarre late-night negotiating session on the second floor of the Capitol with the leaders of the Legislature and Mr. Simmons. (Assemblyman Aubry, famously, was left outside the closed-door meeting.)

Mr. Simmons said that he was pleased something had finally happened.

"I think it is a big win," he said. "Do I believe that there is more room? Yes is the answer. I think the people who fought, the kids who came out, the artists who worked hard, I think they will embrace it. It shows their power. That they have a political might that can be used to benefit the state and the country."

Al Baker contributed reporting for this article.

Posted by lois at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2004

Link to Sentencing Commission Report

For the full report-- http://www.ussc.gov/15_year/15year.htm

The United States Sentencing Commission issued a report last month suggesting that while Sentencing Guidelines have fulfilled the objective of providing uniformity in federal sentencing, disparities in sentencing when keyed to race have increased. In 1984 the average sentence given to both blacks and whites was 2 years. U.S. Sentencing Guidelines were instituted in 1987. By 2002, the study found that blacks were sentenced on average to 6 year terms, while whites received a 4 year sentence.

Posted by lois at 06:18 PM | Comments (0)

December 03, 2004

Public Housing's One Strike Rule

"Human Rights Watch, an independent organization that monitors human rights abuses around the world, has issued a recent report that shows that when ex-offenders seek public housing – and even people who have been arrested but never convicted – they are often arbitrarily denied an apartment."

by George E. Curry
NNPA Columnist
Originally posted 12/1/2004

Even President Bush has come to the realization that ex-offenders need job training and transitional housing. In his State of the Union speech last January, Bush observed, “This year, some 600,000 inmates will be released from prison back into society. We know from long experience that if they can’t find work, or a home, or help, they are much more likely to commit more crimes and return to prison.” In proposing his Prison Re-Entry Initiative, Bush said, “America is a land of the second chance – and when the gates of prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life,”

But more often than not, it doesn’t.

Human Rights Watch, an independent organization that monitors human rights abuses around the world, has issued a recent report that shows that when ex-offenders seek public housing – and even people who have been arrested but never convicted – they are often arbitrarily denied an apartment. The report is titled, “No Second Chance: People with Criminal Records Denied Access to Public Housing.”

“Exclusions based on criminal records ostensibly protect existing tenants,” the report notes. “There is no doubt that some prior offenders still pose a risk and may be unsuitable in many of the presently-available public housing facilities. But U.S. housing policies are so arbitrary, overbroad, and unnecessarily harsh that they exclude even people who have turned their lives around and remain law-abiding as well as others who may never have presented any risk in the first place.”

The report explains, “The tenuous relationship between public housing restrictions and legitimate safety goals is exemplified by policies that, for example, automatically deny housing to a person convicted of a single shoplifting offense four years earlier, or to someone convicted of simple possession of marijuana ten years earlier. But it can cause homelessness or transient living for those excluded – and it can be counterproductive for community safety, as it is difficult to be law-abiding while living on the streets.”

According to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are more than 13 million ex-felons in the U.S. – 6.5 percent of the adult population. It noted that if the current trend continues, nearly 1 in 15 persons born in 2001 will go to state or federal prison during their lifetime.

“These stunning numbers are less a reflection of rates of serious crimes in the United States than they are of ‘tough on crime’ sentencing policies that have emphasized harsh punitive policies – mandatory prison sentencing and three strikes policies, for example, -- for even low level and nonviolent crimes,” the Human Rights Watch report concludes. “Arrest rates also reflect the U.S. ‘war on drugs’ which results in over 1.5 million arrests per year, over 80 percent for simple possession.”

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports show that drug abuse arrests far exceed the number of arrests for any other category.

“Racial and ethnic minorities suffer disproportionately from exclusionary housing policies because of their overrepresentation among those who experience arrest and prosecution, those who currently live in poverty, and those who seek public housing,” the report says. “Human Rights Watch is not aware of any other country that deprives people of the right to housing because of their criminal histories.”

Restricting the admission of former offenders in public housing masks the larger problem. The national goal, as articulated in the United States Housing Act of 1937, has been to provide “decent and affordable housing for all citizens.” But that’s not being done.
“Millions of American families [are] unable to afford safe and decent rental housing,” the report finds. “Wages have failed to keep pace with rental costs, rental costs have increased faster than costs of other basic needs, affordable housing is being lost to homeownership and market-rate rentals, and little or no new affordable housing is being built.”

Consequently, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty estimates that between 2.5 million and 3.5 million people will be homeless over the course of a year; 7 million over five years. Approximately 12.5 million, or 6.5 percent of the U.S. population, has been homeless at some point during their lives.

It’s time to end the shell game. We shouldn’t proclaim that we have a national goal of providing decent and affordable housing for all citizens while erecting barriers on the basis of one-strike and you’re out policies. Realizing that demand for affordable housing far exceeds the supply, we should commit ourselves to building more units. Public housing has provided the foundation for millions of poor Americans. I know because I was one of them.

Posted by lois at 10:44 PM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2004

A Changing Country Needs a Changing Census

Dear Colleague,

Welcome to this week's PrisonersoftheCensus-News, bringing you news of new research, analysis and opinion about the impact of the U.S. Census counting incarcerated people as residents not of their homes but of the prison town. This week's column looks at how incarceration patterns and uses of census data have evolved since 1880.
-------------------
Check out Peter Wagner's website: www.prisonersofcensus.org for great maps and other useful information.

[URL: http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/fact-29-11-2004.shtml]

When the Census Bureau began counting Americans in 1790, it really didn't matter that they decided to count prisoners as residents of the prison. The data was only used for one purpose: to gauge the relative populations of each state to determine how many seats in Congress each received. It didn't matter where in a state prisoners were counted because legislative redistricting didn't yet exist. Until 1900, most federal prisoners were kept in state prisons, so even these miniscule numbers were not crossing state lines. For more than a century, the impact on the distribution of political power from the Census Bureau's decision on where to count prisoners appears to have been: zero.

In 1880, there was only one federal prison and 61 state prisons. At that time, the United States had only 61 people in prison for every 100,000 people in the population. That's just above one-twentieth of one percent. It's a tiny figure that reflects just how rare incarceration was.

By 1923, the federal prison system had grown to 3 prisons, but the state system had the same number of facilities. The prison population had grown but it was growing only ever so slightly faster than the overall population in the period. In 1923, the incarceration rate in the United States was, by Census Bureau figures, 74 per 100,000.

Drawing state legislative districts somewhat on the basis of population became more prevalent around this time, but there was not a clear federal requirement that states must regularly redistrict on the basis of strict population equality until a series of court cases beginning in 1963. Prison populations were, at worst, very minimal blips in the data.

Until the 1990 Census, when the incarceration rate shot to 292, there was very little change in the portion of Americans that were confined in state or federal prisons. By 2000, the number of prisons had skyrocketed to 1,668 and the prison incarceration rate had risen to 478 per 100,000. That's almost one half of one percent of the U.S. population being in state or federal prison. (If jails were included, the numbers would be higher at 702 per 100,000 but historical comparisons would not be possible.)

Incarceration is of course not evenly distributed in the population, and the racial disparity has been increasing. In 1923, Blacks were incarcerated at a rate 4 times higher than Whites. By 2000, the disparity had almost doubled. At the time of the 2000 Census, just under 3.5% of Black men were in prison and being counted as "residents" not of their homes but of often distant prison towns.

If we want a fair and accurate count of every American community, then the Census Bureau must change how it counts incarcerated people. Two hundred years ago, both our population and how we used Census data were quite different. Only the two most recent Censuses were seriously distorted by high incarceration, and if the Census Bureau changes policy soon, they can be the last.

Peter Wagner http://www.PrisonersoftheCensus.org

Posted by lois at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)

Request for Assistance for Research Concerning Women in Prison and Their Children

The following email is from the International Quakers in Switzerland. It requests information for a study on the impact of incarceration on women and their visitors. If you are a woman who was incarcerated OR if you have visited a woman who is/was incarcerated your input would be appreciated. Please feel free to circulate this to others who might be interested.

FRIENDS WORLD COMMITTEE FOR CONSULTATION (QUAKERS) www.quno.org

Dear friend

Request for assistance with research into women in prison and children of imprisoned mothers

The Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) based in Geneva, Switzerland, is an international non-governmental organisation. We work on issues related to peace and human rights, and have a particular interest in prison conditions and prisoners' welfare.

QUNO has been working for some time on the problems surrounding the imprisonment of women: highlighting the growing numbers of women prisoners, the often poor conditions of women's imprisonment and the impact on women prisoners' families. We are particularly concerned at the effects of imprisonment of women on their children.

We are bringing these issues to the attention of the United Nations, to increase international awareness with a view to improving conditions for women in prison and children of imprisoned mothers. Last July, QUNO published a preliminary research report on women in prison and children of imprisoned mothers (at http://www.geneva.quno.info/pdf/Women_in_Prison_Preliminary.pdf), and has pursued different strategies to create a high level of interest in women in prison among international policy and decision makers.

QUNO is now undertaking more substantive global research into the circumstances and conditions of women's imprisonment. Working with the Quaker Council of European Affairs (QCEA) in Brussels, we are collecting information about women in prison from all regions of the world. Analysis of this material will assist us to identify key issues and good practice, and to develop practical policy recommendations at the national, regional and international levels. We intend to produce significant materials on which advocacy for change in the approach to the imprisonment of women can be based.

We ask for your assistance in our research. We have developed two questionnaires concerning women's imprisonment:

-for prison visitors, prison chaplains, relatives of prisoners, organisations and any other people who have contact with women who are in prison – at http://www.geneva.quno.info/pdf/Quest_NGOs_English.pdf

-for women prisoners and ex-prisoners – at http://www.geneva.quno.info/pdf/Quest_prisoners_English.pdf .

(You will need Adobe Reader to open these files, which you can download for free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html)

We would be very grateful if you could:

-complete and return a questionnaire yourselves; and/or

-distribute these questionnaires to people and organisations who might be able to complete them (for example, to individuals who work with women prisoners and their families, to individual ex-prisoners, and within women's prisons).

The questionnaires are also available in French and Spanish.

If you have other materials relevant to women in prison and their children, we would very much appreciate you sharing them with us. I have downloaded what is available without payment from your website, but if you think other publications would be particularly useful, we would be very grateful if you could share them.

We hope to receive all responses by the end of the year, although those received later will be incorporated into later analysis, so please do send them. The questionnaires may be filled out electronically or on paper. Please return them to us by:

Email to: quno2@quno.ch Fax to: +41 22 748 48 19

Or post to:

Women in Prison Project

Quaker United Nations Office

13 Avenue du Mervelet

CH-1209 Geneva

Switzerland

Thank you for helping us with this research.

Yours sincerely

Rachel Brett, Representative (Human Rights & Refugees)

Megan Bastick, Programme Assistant (Human Rights & Refugees)

Quaker United Nations Office, Geneva

Email quno2@quno.ch

Posted by lois at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)

Walpole still Walpole despite change in name

"The prison employs 520 people full-time; 440 of them are corrections officers."

Prison a source of funds, jobs for town
By Geoff Mosher / News Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 1, 2004

WALPOLE -- It's been nearly a half-century since the town first became home to a maximum security prison. The prison's name was changed several years ago to allow the town to distance itself from facility. Over the years, the stigma has gradually faded.

But even in a time when the prison's name is scarcely mentioned, MCI-Cedar Junction remains closely connected to the town of Walpole.

For many years, the town's six-member Prison Advisory Committee has met biannually with prison officials to share information and express concerns. The selectmen-appointed committee met Monday night at the prison, Superintendent David Nolan said during a media tour yesterday of Cedar Junction.

"We have a rapport where they can call my office at any time," Nolan said.

The committee is made up of Town Administrator Michael Boynton; residents Nadine Bailey, Joanne Kiscavitch, John Garoak, Charles Brassil and Stephanie Ward; Nolan, and the prison's deputies of community relations and programs. Police Chief Richard Stillman and Deputy Fire Chief Tim Bailey were also on hand Monday night.

The meeting took place three weeks after a prisoner got out of his cell and attacked two guards with a makeshift knife, seriously injuring one of them. Corrections officials yesterday would not discuss the incident, which is still under investigation by the District Attorney's Office.

Yesterday the inside of Cedar Junction appeared relatively quiet, which Nolan said is the norm.

The prison employs 520 people full-time; 440 of them are corrections officers.

Fifteen of the corrections officers hail from the Neponset towns of Walpole, Dedham, Norwood and Westwood, said Diane Wiffin, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.

There are three other corrections facilities in neighboring Norfolk that also employ residents from the region: MCI-Norfolk, a medium-security facility; the Pondville Correctional Center, medium-security; and the Bay State Correctional Center, minimum security.

"The Department of Corrections is a significant employer of people from the area," Wiffin said.

Cedar Junction also employs about 170 inmates, or 30 percent of the prison population, in a variety of jobs, said Abbe Nelligan, the director of classification for the DOC.

About 40 prisoners at Cedar Junction make all of the state's license plates, working five days a week for $5.50 a day. "It's one of the most sought-after jobs because the pay is so high," Nelligan said.

Beside license plate manufacturing, janitorial work is the second-largest employment opportunity for inmates, Nelligan said. There is an "extensive" waiting list for most jobs.

Although the Fire Department makes about 50 trips a year to MCI-Cedar Junction, Walpole Police do not respond to incidents at the facility, said Lt. Scott Bushway. "We don't because it's a state facility, and they're equipped to handle anything," Bushway said.

Walpole Fire, however, has dispatched ambulances 49 times to the prison since February, said Deputy Chief Tim Bailey. Since 1999, the department has sent its ambulances there a total of 229 times, Bailey said.

"They handle all the small stuff up there," he said. "Anything else, they call for our assistance."

Cedar Junction has also been a source of state funds for the town in the past couple of years.

In September, the state Department of Correction notified Walpole that it would receive a $69,000 reimbursement plus $500,000 for being home to one of the state's maximum security prisons.

The reimbursement was up in the air until August, when the Legislature overrode Gov. Mitt Romney's veto of the funds for Walpole in the fiscal 2005 budget.

This will be the second straight year the town will receive the money to make up for being home to the prison. Each year, the town receives a reimbursement based on the number of inmates at the prison. Last year, the town received $67,000 and in fiscal 2003 the amount was $50,000.

Assistant Town Administrator Jim Johnson said the $500,000 has been earmarked for capital projects but not spent. The town is considering spending the money on capital budget projects, such as upgrading the Turco Field bleachers, which could cost $293,000; improving air quality at Johnson Middle School, a $250,000 project; and special education overruns.

Walpole is expected to assemble a list of projects and other one-time expenses. A joint recommendation by the Finance Committee, School Committee, Capital Budget Committee and town administration will be made. The recommendations then need to be voted on by Town Meeting.

Since 1956, Walpole has shared its boundaries with MCI-Cedar Junction. Until two years ago, it was the only maximum security facility in Massachusetts. The mitigation funds helps the town absorb some of the costs of providing emergency assistance to the prison. It can be used at the town's discretion.

Last year, Town Meeting approved using $40,000 of the prison cash for a design survey of the Turco Field bleachers. The remaining money, $460,000, was put in the town's stabilization fund. And, the $67,000 was used for balancing the general fund budget.

In addition to Walpole, 10 towns where prison facilities are located receive mitigation money, including Framingham, Concord and Norfolk.

Posted by lois at 08:56 AM | Comments (0)