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May 31, 2005

NYC Agrees to Pay Housing Works $4.8 million to Settle Lawsuit

New York City Agrees To Pay Housing Works $4.8M To Settle Lawsuit Over Alleged Retaliation by Giuliani for Criticism by Group

New York City has agreed to pay the New York-based AIDS advocacy group Housing Works $4.8 million to settle a lawsuit in which Housing Works alleged that the city government withdrew contracts from the group because it criticized the policies of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R), the New York Times reports.

The payment is "by far the largest" of several settlements between the city and groups and people who have sued over alleged illegal retaliation by the city for criticism of Giuliani's administration, according to the Times. Housing Works lost city funding in October 1997 after an "unflattering audit" and an inquiry by the city Department of Investigation, according to the Times. The group claimed it lost funding because Housing Works was "among the earliest and loudest" critics of Giuliani's HIV/AIDS policies, according to the Times. Charles King, executive director of Housing Works, said the settlement is a "vindication of the group's advocacy work" and a "repudiation" of Giuliani, according to the Times (Dwyer, New York Times, 5/27). "The record is clear -- they wanted to punish us for sticking up for the rights of New Yorkers living with AIDS and HIV," King said, adding, "This settlement marks another victory for free speech and another expensive payment by the city over Mayor Giuliani's vicious and illegal attacks on those who disagreed with him" (Housing Works release, 5/26). However, Lawrence Kahn, senior litigator for the city, said the government had withdrawn funds from Housing Works because the group "mismanaged funds," adding that the city agreed to pay the $4.8 million settlement because of the "unpredictability of litigation" and because the group had performed services for which it was not paid, according to the Times. Giuliani declined to comment on the settlement, according to spokesperson Sunny Mindel, the Times reports (New York Times, 5/27).

Daily Health Policy report http://www.kaisernetwork.org/healthpolicyreport

Daily HIV/AIDS Report http://www.kaisernetwork.org/HIVAIDSreport

Daily Reproductive Health Report http://www.kaisernetwork.org/reproductivehealthreport

kaisernetwork.org Daily Reports. http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=30403

Posted by lois at 08:19 PM | Comments (0)

Great Britain: Prisoners May be Set Free to Ease Jail Numbers

May 31, 2005, London, Sunday Times

By Richard Ford, Home Correspondent.

CHARLES CLARKE has been given warning that drastic measures, including releasing prisoners early, may need to be implemented to tackle Britain's record jail population.

Inmate numbers have risen by almost 3,000 - the equivalent of six medium-sized jails - since the start of the year to reach 76,035.

The options sent to the Home Secretary include the Government ordering the executive release of prisoners, postponing the refurbishment of jail wings and even delaying the planned closure of the country's only prison ship.

The rapid rise in prison numbers this year is causing mounting concern in the Home Office. Martin Narey, the head of the National Offender Management Service, has put part of the blame for the increasing numbers on judges and magistrates.

But he has told ministers that judges and magistrates are only reacting to the tough language on crime by politicians and reflecting public concern about offending and antisocial behaviour. One official said that judges and magistrates were like a weather vane in the way in which they reacted to the current political and public climate with its emphasis on tackling yobbish behaviour.

Richard Garside, of the Crime and Society Foundation, a think-tank on crime policy, said that it was clear that judges and magistrates were reacting to politicians. "The real drivers of sentencing policy are not the judges but politicians. If politicians call for ever tougher sentences and action, then judges, within the broader context of sentencing policy and their own independence, are clearly going to be influenced by them," he said.

A briefing paper prepared for the Home Secretary after prison numbers exceeded 76,000 last week outlines a selection of options in the event of continuing increases. The paper, which Mr Clarke will study over the the Whitsun parliamentary recess, puts forward a variety of options, including the executive release of prisoners before the end of their sentence or extending early release of offenders on curfews.

Executive release was last used under the Conservatives in the early 1980s and is probably considered a non-starter in the current political climate. But the Government could extend early release under the home-detention curfew scheme introduced by Jack Straw to ease an earlier prison population crisis. Under it, offenders are released from jail 41/2 months before the end of their sentence, electronically tagged and put under curfew.

There are 3,300 prisoners released on home-detention curfew and the numbers would increase if the early-release period were extended beyond 41/2 months. The paper also suggests more new jails, though this would not deal with the immediate problem as it takes years to commission and build them. Jails at Peterborough and Ashford, Surrey, have opened in the past year but the programme to build new jails has ended as Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, has refused to provide funds.

Other options for dealing with the population problem, which is worst in overcrowded local jails, include recategorising offenders more quickly so that they can be moved into low-risk open prisons; bringing into use wings and landings which have been mothballed; and postponing refurbishment of accommodation.

One idea being looked at is delaying the closure of The Weare , the prison ship moored in Portland Harbour, near Weymouth, Dorset. The Prison Service announced three months ago that it intended to close the jail holding 400 low-risk prisoners this year.

Another option is for ministers to urge courts to make greater use of non-custodial sentences. Mr Narey has tried to persuade judges and magistrates throughout England and Wales to make greater use of community penalties.

A Home Office spokesman said that although the prison population "has reached an all-time high", the National Offender Management Service was able to handle the record numbers in jail. He said: "Whilst the prison population has risen sharply in the last few weeks growth has been slower in the past 14 months."

The spokesman added that 2,600 new spaces had opened and that by 2007 the Prison Service would have a capacity to hold 80,400 inmates.

THE INSIDE STORY
* Total jail population: 76,035

* 128 state-run jails

* 11 privately run jails

* Average cost per prisoner a year in state jail: £25,718

* Average cost in private jail: £31,502

* Total number of people sent to jail in 2003: 93,500

* 24,280 offenders serving four years or more in 2003, a 109 per cent increase in a decade

* Average length of custody, excluding life, given at Crown Court rose from 20.4 months in 1993 to 26.8 months in 2003

* It costs more than £2 billion a year to run Prison Service

* Average age of those going to jail was 27

* 5,420 life-sentence prisoners, of whom 26 told they will die in jail

* 25 per cent of jail population is from minority ethnic groups

Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.
Webpage has a graph showing the increase in UK's prison population from 1997-2005 (up over 25%)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1634669,00.html

Posted by lois at 08:14 PM | Comments (0)

MA: "A World Apart: Women, Prison and Life Behind Bars"

EILEEN MCNAMARA
Hard choices, hard time
By Eileen McNamara, Globe Columnist | May 25, 2005

Will a familiar message strike a deeper chord if it is presented between hard covers?

That is the hope as one reads Cristina Rathbone's compelling new book, examining the long-documented and long-ignored deficiencies at MCI-Framingham, the oldest active prison for women in the United States.

Five years in the making, ''A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bars" exposes it all: the overcrowding, the shoddy healthcare, the depression born of separation from children in a prison packed with nonviolent offenders, most of them incarcerated for drug or property crimes that sprang from poverty and addiction.

It was not an easy story for Rathbone to tell. Twice, she had to turn to the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts to challenge efforts by the Department of Correction to restrict her access to inmates at the state's only prison for women. Such was the paranoia of the state agency that her second lawsuit was aimed at orders preventing her from attending something as benign as a Girl Scouts meeting with inmates and their daughters. The taxpayers paid for that frivolous and fruitless restriction.

Her previous book was about troubled teenagers in New York City. The new book was a logical outgrowth of that work, she said. ''If I had known how difficult it would be, how overwhelming and depressing, I do not think I would have done it. I would not have had the energy to fight. But because I knew so little about it, I just pressed ahead."

Rathbone's findings about the critical need to bolster the relationship between incarcerated women and their children, told in a narrative style that interweaves history and policy issues with the life stories of individual women, echo those of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. In a report issued this spring, the center's researchers cited a lack of coordination among state agencies, from the Department of Social Services to the Department of Mental Health, that undermines families. It is little wonder that so many children of incarcerated women wind up in the system themselves.

The state lacks the most fundamental data, including the number of children with mothers behind bars and their whereabouts, the report found. Representative Kay Khan of Newton got the House to agree to a $100,000 line item in the budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 to study the needs of incarcerated women and their children, an effort supported by Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey

But none of this is new. Last summer, the Governor's Commission on Corrections Reform, headed by Scott Harshbarger, a former state attorney general, urged the state to do what his panel was not designed to do: address the problems particular to Framingham prison. Commissioner Kathleen M. Dennehy has appointed an External Female Offender Review Panel, but it is hard to imagine that yet another short-lived study group -- this one's mandate expires in July -- will bring about long-term change at MCI-Framingham.

Studies are cheaper than action. Thirteen years ago, after several deaths at Framingham, the Legislature appointed a similar committee to investigate conditions. Little changed, for the simple reason that there is little political will and even less sympathy for women in prison.

Rathbone is discovering just how little as she begins to talk about her book in public. On talk radio, from Massachusetts to Utah, she has fielded questions from listeners incredulous to hear her suggest that most of the women inside Framingham's walls are not so different from the women outside. ''They think it is ridiculous of me to say such a thing, but I try to insist that this is indeed the case," she said. ''Given the situations these women found themselves in, I cannot say I would not have made the same choices. What I want readers to see is how narrowed their choices really were."

Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com.

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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

SF: Justice for Julio

by mesha Monge-Irizarry

Idriss Stelley Foundation

Julio with his mother, Mirna Ayala
Last month, a neighbor, accompanied by his daughter, in tears, came knocking at my door: “Sorry for bothering you, Senora. We have been looking at your son’s altar in the front of your house for a long time – now Julio ...” This is how the Idriss Stelley Foundation took on the fight for justice for Julio Ayala, a 26-year-old youth brutally murdered by San Mateo police on April 3 at the South San Francisco Airport Inn.

His courageous parents, Julio Sr. and Mirna Ayala, first generation Salvadoran immigrants, are desperately looking for answers about the murder of their only son, a gentle, children-loving man who was not given time to give them grandchildren.

According to a “local brief” in the San Mateo Daily Journal on April 16, “The San Mateo County Coroner’s Office reported Tuesday that it is still trying to determine what caused a man to die Sunday while in the custody of South San Francisco police.

Julio Ayala
“An autopsy was performed Monday on Julio Ayala, 26, of San Francisco.

“’There are no gross findings that would have solely contributed to his cause of death,’ said San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault. The coroner’s office is awaiting toxicology results, Foucrault said.

“Ayala died after a confrontation with police …. (He) was allegedly ‘immediately combative,’ police reported. Additional officers were called to the scene to assist in Ayala’s arrest.

“After a 15-minute struggle, five officers restrained Ayala in a ‘body wrap restraint device.’ Officers noticed Ayala was not breathing. Paramedics began lifesaving efforts but were unsuccessful, according to police.”

No further mention of this bizarre, tragic death has appeared in the news media since, not even in the Latino press.

What the Daily Journal failed to mention is that Brother Julio did not just stop breathing while in a “body wrap.” He was beaten to death by 13 South San Francisco police officers after the occupant of the adjacent room complained about excessive noise.

Did Julio, cranking up his music and thus annoying his neighbor, know that by doing so he would sign his death sentence?

Julio’s friend Tony went by the funeral parlor before the undertaker started prepping the body for the wake and took detailed pictures of Julio, who sustained multiple lacerations and contusions, was covered with blood, his nose 3and arm broken. You guessed it: when the police beat you to death, you eventually stop breathing.

Julio’s family was not authorized to identify his body at the coroner’s office, due to the “lack of appropriate facility.” Nor were they given any preliminary report from the police department, the paramedics or the fire department, though all were at the scene of the homicide.

Hotel employees have been intimidated by the authorities, who forbade them to share any information with Ayala’s family. A shady character, falsely claiming to be the lawyer in the Rudy Cardenas and Ricky Escuvedo cases, called the Ayalas, pushing to find out how much they knew, offering to represent them. But the Cardenas and Escuvedo families have two different attorneys.

We are familiar with the list of Black brothers and sisters slaughtered by Bay Area police; among them Idriss Stelley, Richard Tim, Gregory Hooper, Cammerin Boyd, Gus Rugley. But the press has not often covered the murders by law enforcement of our Brown brothers and sisters: Marcos Garcia, San Francisco; Sheila Amaya, Union City; Rickie Escuvedo, Redwood City; Rudy Cardenas, San Jose; Cau Tran Bich, San Jose; Fernando Caseres, San Jose.

All were innocent victims of the Men in Blue, puppets of the Men in Black, city government officials feeding their official version to the corporate press about “suicide by cop” or yet another “excited delirium casualty.”

These tragedies bring us together. In this tragic turn of events, the Ayala family lives on Jamestown in Bayview Hunters Point, only a few houses away from our house. Surely Julio and Idriss knew each other.

Although in an inconceivable vacuum, the Ayalas are bravely stepping up to the plate, launching the Justice4JulioAyala Campaign. They have spoken out on KPOO and at the “Enough is Enough” community forum on race and civil liberties violations at the Bayview Opera House on April 30, where they built support in their Bayview community.

Crying out for justice and extending their support to other families and victims, the Ayalas received an outpouring of support that night from Assemblyman Mark Leno, Barbara Becnel, producer of “Redemption” on the life of death row prisoner Tookie Williams, Charlene Smythe from the Green Party’s People of Color Caucus, Sandra-Juanita Cooper from the Bayview Coalition to End the Death Penalty and Bayview ACORN, Donna Wallace from the End Police Brutality Network, Pam and Ramona Africa from the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Campaign, the mother of Brother McLaine on death row, Black Panther Kiilu Nyasha, Critical Intensive Response Team Program Coordinator Cati Hawkins and a multitude of peace activists.

On the 30-day anniversary of Julio’s death, some 60 people gathered in front of the Airport Inn and silently built an altar to honor his life and mourn his death. Co-sponsoring the Justice4Julio campaign with the Idriss Stelley Foundation are the October 22 Coalition Against Police Brutality, the Ella Baker Center and staff from SF Carecen and Coleman Advocates.

The Ayala family attended the first anniversary march and rally for Cammerin Boyd in the Fillmore Thursday and are bravely joining the rank of families whose loved ones have been killed by law enforcement in the Bay Area, struggling for justice. On Friday, May 13, at 7 p.m., there will be a traditional 40-day mass at St. Paul of the Shipwreck Church on Third Street and Jamestown in Bayview Hunters Point.

The community is organizing a press conference and protest on the steps of the South San Francisco City Hall on Wednesday, May 18, at 5 p.m., and is scheduling a special hearing with the San Mateo City Council in June.

For more information, log onto http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Justice4Julio/. Please post a message of support to Julio’s grieving mother, father and sister. You may send your message to iolmisha@cs.com, and it will be posted on the site and transmitted to the family on the same day. Or call the Idriss Stelley Foundation’s 24-hour bilingual crisis line at (415) 595-8251.

A fund for Julio has been set up. Donations may be sent to First National Bank of Northern Caliornia, 1450 Linda Mar Shopping Center, Pacifica CA 94044, Ayala Family Fund #9118985.

We will obtain Justice 4 Julio Ayala! Black and Brown brothers and sisters, you did not die in vain!

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Posted by lois at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

Julio Ayala---killed by the So. SF police

Bottle thrown from car injures protester

by mesha Monge-Irizarry

On May 18, braving the wind and nasty drizzle, about 70 protesters rallied in front of South San Francisco City Hall on Grand Avenue demanding Justice 4 Julio Ayala, the 26-year-old Salvadoran and U.S. legal resident killed by 13 SSFPD officers on April 3 inside the San Francisco Airport Inn.

At 5 p.m., the crowd starts addressing passing drivers, merchants and neighbors, chanting: “No justice, no peace!” “Justicia para Julio Ayala!” while drivers blow their horn back, some even joining our contingent. Among the speakers are Tania Ortega, Julio’s sister; his parents, Julio Sr. and Mirna Ayala; Renee Saucedo of La Raza Centro Legal; Marylon Boyd, the mother of Cammerin Boyd, the 28-year-old disabled Black brother killed by SFPD on May 5, 2004; Brother Lucas from the Campaign to End the Death Penalty; Rita Akayama from the October 22nd Coalition Against Police Brutality; Jose Luis Pavon from Coleman Advocates; and Brother Antonio Arenas from SF Carecen.

The event is MCed by Sister Kissi, a fierce young activist and member of the Bayview Chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, who leads us into prayer after our two-hour rally and protest.

We soon start wondering, “Where’s the police?” Mr. Ayala steps up and looks through City Hall’s front door peep hole and lets us know: “There are seven or eight inside” – likely ready for us, just in case. “Look, they are videotaping us from two cameras by the second floor windows” – nonstop for the next two hours.

Love and unity is strong, surrounded as we are by community activists, many young Latino homies dressed in black and proudly wearing their Justice4JulioAyala T-shirts, and Julio’s huge extended family.

Frank Rosenberg, whose son was killed by Hayward PD five years ago while experiencing a mental health crisis, holds high his October 22nd Coalition Against Police Brutality sign, telling it like it is: “We’ll NEVER give up!” while youngsters and seniors alike are chanting: “1, We are the People! 2, A little bit LOUDER! 3, Justice for JulioAyala!” At first watching timidly at a safe distance, bystanders, mostly Latinos, start to join the protest and pick up signs, chanting: “Justice for Julio Ayala!”

The harassment of Julio’s family and buddies has already been set in motion, in an attempt to demonize them and weaken the Justice4JulioAyala Campaign: phone interrogations of Tony, his childhood friend, and his sister Tanya, who simply state that they have nothing to divulge.

Yet, at our very protest, a way more despicable violation of our right to protest occurs, in total disrespect of the safety of our participants, including parents with young children. A late model black Mitsubishi with tainted windows slowly drives by, and a bottle flies at our crowd, as the car suddenly speeds away.

Young Brother Paulo, forehead and left brow spurting blood, is badly cut and rushed to the Ivy Clinic by his homies. I carefully pick up the broken bottle from the ground, covered with blood, for police investigation and fingerprinting. Yeah, right. We’ll call San Mateo PD and make a report anyhow.

We do NOT call 911, as we figure the holice serve and protect the ruling class and keep assaulting po’ people of color.

This cowardly attempt to silence the Ayalas and the community is not working! Silence is killing La Raza as surely as evildoers. Marylon Boyd, greeted with warm applause, tells the crowd: “This must end! You are fighting for Julio’s memory but also for all other families and for your own lives! None of our children should die this way. No more, in California, in the U.S.!”

A homie is quietly burning sage in the background, and a donation can, decorated with the October 22 logo, “Danger! Police in Area,” is passed around, as we notice even humble poor folks fumbling through their pockets and adding their few cents to the Justice4Julio Campaign.

Except for La Radio Grande 1010 and San Mateo Daily Journal, the media did not respond to the Justice4Julio press release about our protest. Are we surprised? The bigger the scandal, the longer the cover-up through the corporate media!

Hate mongers injuring a teen of color at the rally, watch out: To the perpetrators of genocide and war against Black and Brown, you know that we da people are a force to be reckoned with!

The bullhorns are now switching hands, as we shout toward police video cameras upon leaving SSF City Hall: “We’ll be back! Every month, we’ll be back, assassins!”

On Thursday, the Idriss Stelley Foundation emailed the San Mateo Board of Supervisors requesting their June calendar for the community to schedule a special hearing, demanding answers about the PD killing of Julio Ayala at their earliest (if not zealous) convenience. Tentatively June 6, later to be confirmed.

Unlike San Francisco, San Mateo does not have a police commission. Instead, the City Council, with only one non-white member, hears complaints against the police.

The Ayala family demands immediate release of the San Mateo police and DA reports, the coroner’s report, a list of witnesses to Julio’s execution, the names of all 13 “peace officers” involved in Julio’s wrongful death, the launching of a federal investigation and justicia para Julio Ayala, NOW!

On our way back to Bayview Hunters Point, Julio’s parents, Sister Kissi and I stop by Julio’s altar under Room 203 of the Airport Inn, where Julio fought for his last breath. Julio Sr. and Mirna Alaya tiressly set it back up every time it has been dismantled by the South San Francisco DPW. Mirna collapses in front of Julito’s picture and profusion of flowers, under la Virgen de Guadalupe. “The protest was great. It does not bring my Julio back!”

For further background on the PD killing of Julio Ayala, log onto http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Justice4Julio/. Mail to Julio’s family can be sent to Justice4Julio@yahoogroups.com or iolmisha@cs.com.

If you have any information on the killing of Julio Ayala or want to send messages of support to his family, call (415) 595-8251, the Idriss Stelley Foundation 24-hour bilingual crisis line.

Email mesha, the mother of Idriss Stelley, murdered by SFPD in the Metreon Theater in June 2001, at Iolmisha@cs.com.

Posted by lois at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2005

Marie La Pinta Freed At Last!

Freed La Pinta home
After pleading guilty to manslaughter charge and admitting role in husband's murder, she's released from prison based on time served

BY ALFONSO A. CASTILLO
STAFF WRITER; Staff writers Robin Topping and Jennifer Sinco Kelleher contributed to this story.

May 26, 2005

The black Lincoln Town Car that escorted Marie La Pinta from the Riverhead jail made one stop before pulling into the driveway of the Sayville home that awaited her yesterday. It was at St. Lawrence the Martyr Church, blocks away.

"She wanted to thank God for helping her get through the 22 years she was in prison," said her son Lenny La Pinta as he stood beside his brother Anthony, "and also for watching over us."

Hours after admitting her role in the 1983 slaying of her abusive husband, Michael La Pinta, Marie La Pinta, 69, carrying a bouquet of red roses and flanked by her two grown sons, walked into her home a free woman.

"We're happy as happy can be," said Anthony La Pinta, the Hauppauge attorney who successfully argued a motion that got his mother's murder conviction overturned last month.

As Anthony talked with reporters outside his brother's Harp Lane house, where his mom will be staying, she gleefully played with a dog that jumped to greet her. "This is the best ever," he said.

In an emotional courtroom scene earlier, Marie La Pinta pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. In return, she will be sentenced to 8 1/3 to 25 years, which she's already served. Afterward, Lenny La Pinta said it was the end of a "long, painful journey.

"I really feel we lost her in body and her being around in our daily lives, but we never lost the bond between a mother and her two sons," he said. "We never lost faith."

But although the courtroom scene was one of hugs and joyful tears, in North Babylon, Michael La Pinta's brother, Leonard, said his family felt "hurt" and "terrible" over the plea deal.

"He's not here to defend himself. My brother was a loving husband and a hard worker," said Leonard La Pinta, 75. "I understand about her being a model prisoner, but the [original] judge imposed a term of 25 to life. ... It's wrong."

He disputed allegations that his brother beat and imprisoned his sister-in-law during their 27-year marriage.

"She was not a battered woman," he said, but acknowledged that "I didn't see what went on behind closed doors." Other members of Michael La Pinta's family, including his mother, have supported efforts to free Marie La Pinta. Anthony La Pinta said his uncle was estranged from the family for 25 years before the murder.

Marie La Pinta entered the courtroom wearing a dark blue suit with a long skirt, glasses and handcuffs. As soon as the cuffs were removed, she blew a big, animated kiss to Anthony and Lenny, who sat beaming in the front row.

Marie La Pinta did not speak, other than to reply "yes" to the prosecutor's questions regarding her actions the night her husband was killed. She confirmed that her husband was involved in a fight with her brother, Leonard Crociata; that she hit her husband with a baseball bat during the scuffle; and that after Crociata shot her husband dead, she helped dispose of his body at the local dump.

In his motion, Anthony La Pinta argued that his mother had long been the victim of domestic abuse at the hands of her husband, and that if she'd had adequate legal representation, the jury in her murder trial should have been informed of that fact.

State Supreme Court Justice Robert W. Doyle agreed with the argument and overturned the conviction. In court yesterday, Doyle said that had the "battered woman" defense been available at the time of La Pinta's conviction, she would have faced "a conviction of a lesser offense."

District Attorney Thomas Spota gave his blessing to the reversal of the conviction, and helped craft a deal to have La Pinta return home.

"It's a happy day for all of us when we could see that something was done the way it should be done," Spota said outside the courtroom. "Today, justice was done."

After Marie La Pinta pleaded guilty to the manslaughter charge, Assistant District Attorney Emily Constant read a statement in court.

"It is often said that the role of a prosecutor is not simply to obtain convictions, but to seek justice, and that the role of a judge is to temper justice with mercy," Constant said, her voice quivering. "Today, in this courtroom, we don't just speak those words, we act on them.

"She is no threat to society," Constant added. "It is time for her to go home."

Doyle agreed, and released La Pinta without bail until her June 20 sentencing date. He also commended Anthony La Pinta for his efforts in defending his mother.

"You have been well represented in this case," Doyle told Marie La Pinta. "Your attorney will have many more cases in his career, but he'll never have a case of greater significance."

Wringing his hands in the court gallery, Anthony La Pinta welled up with tears.

About two hours later, from the back of a car, La Pinta got her first glimpse of the world she left more than two decades ago. Lenny La Pinta said his mother marveled at how the two-lane Sunrise Highway she knew was now a major thoroughfare. She held a cell phone in her hand for the first time, in awe of its technology. She asked what a Home Depot was.

"She's absolutely mesmerized by the concept of the Internet," Anthony La Pinta said yesterday evening. "It's almost like magic, she says."

Once home, Anthony La Pinta extended a hand to help his mother out of the car. She smiled meekly at reporters, then walked inside, followed soon afterward by Anthony and Lenny, arms draped over each other.

"It's a surreal situation," Anthony La Pinta said. "And we're just loving every minute of it."

La Pinta's role in the crime

As part of entering her guilty plea in court to a charge of manslaughter in the death of her husband, Marie La Pinta answered several questions in court yesterday from prosecutor Emily Constant about what happened on the night of March 27, 1983.

Constant: Was there an argument between your brother and husband that resulted from your brother being at your home?

La Pinta: Yes.

Constant: During the course of that argument, did you hit your husband with a baseball bat, intending to cause him serious physical injury?

La Pinta: Yes.

Constant: Did your brother shoot your husband?

La Pinta: Yes.

Constant: Did your husband die as a result of these actions?

La Pinta: Yes.

Constant: After your brother shot your husband, did you assist in removing the body from the house?

La Pinta: Yes.

Constant: Did you help your brother dispose of your husband's body in the local dump?

La Pinta: Yes.
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

Posted by lois at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)

Episcopal Church Takes Prison Ministry to Dioceses

Church takes prison ministry to dioceses
by Val Hymes
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
[Prison Ministry Network News] An Episcopal Church emissary for prison ministry traveled the State of Maryland May 5-12, visiting two state prisons and meeting with the bishops and prison ministers of four dioceses -- Maryland, Washington, Easton and Delaware.

It was part of a series of regional prison ministry conferences by the Rev. Jacqueline A. Means, criminal justice officer in the Episcopal Church's Office of Peace and Justice Ministries.

"The bishops, the clergy and lay ministers were open to dialogue and are working on the issues of reentry, inmates' children, gangs, faith-based programs, help for families traveling long distances to visit prisoners, and the private prison industry," she said.

Means, a former prison chaplain, addressed the 221st convention of the Diocese of Maryland, urging the delegates to start a camp program for inmates' children. She also urged a partnership with Big Brothers and Sisters to mentor the children, met with area prison ministers and the Prison Ministry Task Force, and visited the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown.

The convention adopted a resolution calling for prison ministry Sundays during Epiphany -- modeled after that of the Diocese of New York -- to focus on ways to support inmates, their families, prison ministers and staff members.

After preaching at Epiphany Church in Odenton, Maryland, May 8, where the congregation does preventive prison ministry, Means met with Annapolis area prison ministers, including leaders of Kairos, Touchstones Discussion Groups and the Maryland Justice Coalition.

In the nation's capital May 9, she met with Bishop John Bryson Chane of Washington and a member of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Stephen T. Rippe. She also worked with the Prison Ministry Committee and met with two White House Faith-based Initiative officials about funds for reentry and youth programs.

The next day, she met with Bishops James. J. Shand of Easton and Wayne Parker Wright of Delaware, and spoke to their Clericus members in Easton. On May 11, she addressed an ecumenical prison ministry group and urged those attending to minister to families traveling to the nearby state prison.

There, she addressed more than 200 inmates at the Eastern Correctional Institution in Princess Anne, Maryland.

"You have a purpose in life," she told the inmates. "Most of you are probably on a faith journey. Consider this a resting place. Show society you do have value and worth, and want to do the right thing. Give people a chance.

"Many of us are fighting on your behalf. There are people out there who care for you. Let the light shine through one another, and don't give up," she added, to a standing ovation.

Means recently spearheaded and attended regional multidiocesan prison ministry conferences in North Carolina, Florida and the dioceses of the Four Corners in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

She said she has found in her travels around the country a new awareness about the immensity of the "industrialized prison complex, the fastest-growing industry in the nation."

She said she saw "more attention being paid to the problems this industry creates. There is a greed for more prisons and longer sentences to pay for them." She pointed to plans in Memphis for the largest for-profit prison in the country and efforts by the faith community to stop it.

"The shipping of fathers and mothers to private prisons in far-flung states is guaranteeing a new generation of frightened, angry, disenfranchised children, who are future inmates," she said, adding that "families who try to visit loved ones are treated as suspects in many prisons. The children cannot understand the lack of warmth and hospitality in the visiting rooms."

The Episcopal Church's General Convention is on record in opposition to private prisons.

For Peace and Justice Ministries:
www.episcopalchurch.org/peace-justice
For Prison Ministry Network News.
-- Val Hymes is editor of Prison Ministry Network News.

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_62396_ENG_HTM.htm

Posted by lois at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2005

Red Hook Justice

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/redhookjustice/community.html
Website with info about the film and information on community justice.

Posted by lois at 08:51 AM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2005

Wall St. Journal: Hurdles Faced After Coming Back from Prison

Arrested Development After Prison Boom, A Focus on Hurdles Faced by Ex-Cons Housing, Work -- Even an ID-- Can Be Hard to Attain; A Bill Would Smooth Path

By GARY FIELDS

May 24, 2005; Page A1

In the kitchen of an Applebee's restaurant in Queens, N.Y., Jacqueline Smith has been a model hire. In less than two years working as a cook, she got a promotion to supervisor, doubled her salary and won the award for employee of the year.

Her success hasn't come easily. The dark-haired 38-year-old is an ex-convict who served more than nine years for transporting more than half a pound of crack cocaine from New York to Washington. Since being released in July 2003, she has struggled with basic necessities such as finding affordable housing and getting a valid state ID card.

A single parent with a steady but low-paying job, Ms. Smith would normally be considered a prime candidate for public-housing assistance, but she knows the odds are against her. Local housing rules bar ex-felons from living in public housing for six years after completing their sentence. So every night around midnight, Ms. Smith takes a few buses and switches subway lines for an hour-long trek to a Manhattan shelter for female ex-convicts where she and her daughter have been living for more than a year.

"It's one battle after the next -- trying to obtain housing, trying to obtain employment," Ms. Smith says. "I want a second chance. I want people to see I made mistakes, but I am making it right."

Ms. Smith is one of more than 630,000 people released each year from corrections institutions in the U.S. Not surprisingly, people who have been locked up for many years, often poorly educated and lacking in financial support, face a range of obstacles to re-entering society. Yet some of the biggest are put there by federal, state and local governments, including hurdles to getting student loans, public housing and other forms of government assistance.

For years, the thinking among law-enforcement officials and politicians was that this was the price people should pay for breaking the law. Now there is an emerging belief that the larger price is being borne by society, since the practical barriers facing ex-prisoners make it more likely that they will slip back into a life of crime.

Two-thirds of ex-felons return to police custody within three years of their release for new crimes or for probation or parole violations, according to Justice Department studies. U.S. taxpayers spent $60 billion on corrections in 2002 at the local, state and federal levels, up from $9 billion two decades earlier. Over that same time frame, corrections has been the second fastest growing government spending category after health care.

Aside from public-housing restrictions, many former felons find they need special waivers to get licensed in vocations they learned while serving time. Some find their attempts to get an education are stymied by laws barring loans to those convicted of a crime. Still others can stumble into technical violations that send them back to prison, such as reporting late for a meeting with a probation officer. For those who have completed lengthy sentences, the most frustrating barrier is also the most basic -- getting a legitimate ID card, such as a driver's license.

"One barrier may not be that big a deal," says Debbie Mukamal, director of the prisoner re-entry institute at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Usually, though, offenders face several barriers, she says, adding: "You can't get housing, you have child support" payments to make, "you can't get ID and no one will hire you. Cumulatively, that sends a signal: You're not wanted." Ms. Mukamal is the co-author of a sweeping report last year funded by the Justice Department and conducted by the Legal Action Center, a New York nonprofit, examining "roadblocks to entry" facing ex-offenders.

After years of pushing for tougher sentences, politicians in Washington are rethinking their approach. The Second Chance Act, hammered out by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and introduced last month, would provide more than $80 million in grants for programs to help ex-offenders re-enter society.

Kellie Mann Owens might have benefited from a key part of the
legislation: a provision ensuring that ex-offenders can be licensed in occupations they trained for in prison.

Ms. Owens was determined to learn a skill so she could land a job when she left the Alderson, W.Va., women's prison made famous recently for housing Martha Stewart. In 1993, Ms. Owens, who had just finished her sophomore year at Santa Rosa Junior College in Northern California, obtained LSD for her ex-boyfriend and mailed it to him in Georgia. He was caught and cooperated with authorities against those he had enlisted to secure drugs, including Ms. Owens. He was sentenced to two years while she received 10.

Ms. Owens, now 34 years old, joined the prison's all-women fire-fighting team, a group that provides fire protection for the prison and backup for other local fire squads. She figured it would position her well for a decent job. For more than five years, she slogged through classes and training, entering smoke-filled rooms with her oxygen mask blackened to simulate rescue situations and navigating the Appalachian mountain roads near the prison in a yellow fire truck.

"Any of the physical requirements that you had to do" for state licensing, "we were required to do in our classes," says Ms. Owens.

She eventually rose to the fire team's top rank of lieutenant, garnering 300 hours of training and 100 hours at the scenes of actual fires in the towns outside the prison.

In January 2001, President Clinton granted her clemency on his last day in office after receiving her name from Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a group that advocates changes in sentencing laws.

After eight years in prison, she left Alderson for her parents' home in Alpharetta, Ga., confident a fire department in one of Atlanta's booming suburbs would hire her. She filled out each job application truthfully, noting she was a felon. But state law bars hiring former felons.

Ms. Owens says she offered to "clean hoses, flush the truck," anything to get her foot in the door -- to no avail.

Eventually, she got a job with an organization that trains service dogs for people with debilitating diseases and injuries. Last year, she moved to Hawaii and started a catering business with her husband, who she had met back in high school. The business didn't take off so they are planning to try again in Mississippi.

Many ex-convicts leave prison wanting to start anew, and the first step is often trying to get an education. But while 63% of all undergraduates receive some form of financial aid, money isn't easy to come by for ex-felons.

Emily Wheeler, of Kenosha, Wis., says she was arrested Aug. 5, 2003, for growing and selling marijuana with her boyfriend.

Nineteen years old and in the early stages of pregnancy, she received a sentence of three months in jail and three years on probation --
reasonable, given that "I did screw up," she now says.

After she was released in January 2004, she applied to take classes in word-processing and other office skills at Gateway Technical College in Kenosha. "I was filling out the application [for financial aid] and I got to question 35. It asked me if I'd been convicted of a drug felony," she says. "I was totally halted right there."

Federal law states that first-time offenders convicted on federal or state drug-possession or drug-trafficking charges are ineligible to receive financial assistance for as long as two years after their convictions. Completing drug rehabilitation can cut that time, but such programs can be expensive.

"I understand their concern. A college campus is a perfect place to sell drugs, but I also know I can't move forward in my life without an education and a good job," says Ms. Wheeler. She now earns $7 an hour at a Culver's Frozen Custard, a fast-food restaurant, trying to make ends meet to help support Olivia Rose, her 1-year-old.

For Ms. Smith, the Applebee's cook, finding housing for herself and her teenage daughter has been the toughest challenge. Upon being released in July 2003 from the women's prison in Danbury, Conn., Ms. Smith headed for a halfway house.

Like many prisoners released before their sentence is completed, Ms. Smith was required to find a job in 15 days or face the possibility of being returned to prison to finish her last six months. But to get a job, Ms. Smith needed valid identification from the Department of Motor Vehicles. In New York, residents need a combination of documentation such as bills and voter registration cards that each add up to enough cumulative "points" to qualify for a driver's license or nondriver ID.

Ms. Smith had a federal prisoner ID, a birth certificate and a Social Security card. Those were not enough. Motor-vehicle personnel asked if she had a passport, a bill with her name on it, any additional identifiers. "I kept telling them that I'd been in prison the last 10 years and didn't have any other identification." Eventually she found a sympathetic supervisor who issued her the card.

She found a job quickly at a clothing store but switched after a few months to work for Applebee's, where she could use the culinary certificate she'd earned in training on the inside.

She struggled to find a cheap yet safe place for her and her daughter. The two are now living in the Sarah Powell Huntington House, a Women's Prison Association facility, funded through the city department of homeless services.

Ms. Smith has been trying to apply for subsidized housing. The federal government has a small number of restrictions against ex-felons living in public housing, such as sex offenders and those who have manufactured methamphetamine in a housing complex. However, local housing authorities are able to impose their own restrictions on ex-felons living in public housing, and those can be expansive.

Howard Marder, spokesman for the New York City Housing Authority, says there are virtually no vacancies in the city in public housing and with about 136,000 applications pending it is unlikely that someone with a felony record will get in. Besides, ex-felons are ineligible for public housing for six years after the completion of their sentence, including probation. Ms. Smith, who will be on probation another three years, won't even be eligible until 2014.

Ms. Smith recently met with a New York City Housing Authority case agent to discuss her application. She took certificates showing her training and her work experience, but the conversation turned toward her felony record. "I asked if that meant I wasn't going to get it. They wouldn't say no outright," she said, but she was left with the impression that her application would be rejected. "I still hope everything works out," she says, "but I don't know."

Until something else comes along, Ms. Smith says she'll keep pushing for promotions at work, while staying in the shelter. Returning to a life of crime and risking a return to prison is not an option, she
says: "I don't have another 10 years to give to nobody."

Write to Gary Fields at gary.fields@wsj.com1
URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111690042392741404,00.html

Posted by lois at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)

Sol Stetin, Labor Leader Who Unionized JP Stevens

May 24, 2005
Sol Stetin, 95, Labor Leader Who Unionized J. P. Stevens, Dies
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Sol Stetin, who led the drive to unionize the J. P. Stevens textile company when he was president of the Textile Workers Union of America, died on Saturday at a nursing home in St. Louis. He was 95.
The cause was complications of leukemia, union officials said.

In leading the 17-year organizing drive at J. P. Stevens, Mr. Stetin spearheaded one of the most ambitious unionization campaigns in the anti-union South and one of the most publicized unionization drives since World War II. The effort, which ended successfully in 1980, eventually organized 3,500 workers at 12 textile mills.

In 1975, in the middle of the Stevens drive, Mr. Stetin engineered a surprise move by arranging for his 174,000-member union to merge with the larger Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. He pushed for the merger because it would make more money and manpower available for the Stevens campaign, on which the 1979 movie "Norma Rae" was based.

Mr. Stetin, who emigrated from Poland at the age of 10 and dropped out of high school in the ninth grade, was fond of saying he got his education in the labor movement. To show his gratitude to labor, he played a pivotal role in creating the American Labor Museum, the nation's first museum dedicated to the union movement. Located in a former silk worker's house in Paterson, N.J., the museum helped to commemorate the 1913 strike in which 24,000 workers struck 300 silk manufacturers.

Sol Stetin was born on April 2, 1910, in Pabianice, in what is now Poland, near Lodz, that country's silk manufacturing center. When he was 10, his family immigrated, settling in Paterson. After quitting high school, Mr. Stetin became an amateur boxer and semiprofessional basketball player, even though he was just 5 feet 4 inches tall.

In 1930, he took a job at a dye shop for 32 cents an hour, becoming active in the nationwide textile strike of 1934, involving 500,000 workers. He climbed the union's ladder, as a shop steward, organizer and director of its mid-Atlantic region.

In 1934, he married Frieda Goldstein. He is survived by her, two daughters, Sondra Gash of Lebanon, N.J., and Myra Levine of St. Louis; a sister, Sophie Sitnick of New York; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

In 1968, he was elected secretary-treasurer of the Textile Workers Union, and in 1972 he became its president. Mr. Stetin dedicated his union to organizing the South; at the time only one-tenth of 575,000 textile workers there belonged to unions. J. P. Stevens was his No. 1 target in the campaign, which began in 1963.

Meanwhile, Mr. Stetin engineered the Amalgamated merger to advance the effort. To ease the way, he agreed to take the No. 3 spot in the merged union, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, not the No. 2 position traditionally reserved for the president of the smaller union.

"The most significant thing about Sol Stetin was the decision he made in the throes of the J. P. Stevens campaign to merge," said Bruce Raynor, president of Unite Here, the successor union to Mr. Stetin's union. "At the time, he headed a very viable union that had the resources and money to survive, but he supported the merger, not for himself - he got nothing out of it - but because the deal called for the new union to expend considerable resources on the Stevens campaign and finance a national boycott."

After retiring in 1982, Mr. Stetin helped establish the labor museum, taught labor studies at William Paterson College in Wayne, N.J., and was named the first labor leader in residence at Rutgers University, where he taught students how to organize unions.

Last month, having just turned 95, he was still taking part in union protests, attending a rally in St. Louis in a contract dispute with a large laundry company.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2005

NY Times: U.S. Memo Faults Afghan Leader on Heroin Fight

May 22, 2005

By DAVID S. CLOUD and CARLOTTA GALL
WASHINGTON, May 21 - United States officials warned this month in an internal memo that an American-financed poppy eradication program aimed at curtailing Afghanistan's huge heroin trade had been ineffective, in part because President Hamid Karzai "has been unwilling to assert strong leadership."

A cable sent on May 13 from the United States Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital, said that provincial officials and village elders had impeded destruction of significant poppy acreage and that top Afghan officials, including Mr. Karzai, had done little to overcome that resistance.

"Although President Karzai has been well aware of the difficulty in trying to implement an effective ground eradication program, he has been unwilling to assert strong leadership, even in his own province of Kandahar," said the cable, which was drafted by embassy personnel involved in the anti-drug efforts, two American officials said.

A copy of the three-page cable, which was addressed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, was shown to The New York Times by an American official alarmed at the slow pace of poppy eradication.

The cable also faulted Britain, which has the top responsibility for counternarcotics assistance in Afghanistan, for being "substantially responsible" for the failure to eradicate more acreage. British personnel choose where the eradication teams work, but the cable said that those areas were often not the main growing areas and that the British had been unwilling to revise targets.

The criticism of Mr. Karzai reflected mounting frustration among some American officials that plans to uproot large swaths of Afghanistan's poppy crop have produced little success. These officials said they worried that heroin trafficking could threaten the American-led reconstruction effort in Afghanistan and worsen corruption in the country's fledgling central government.

In Washington, State Department officials defended Mr. Karzai, who is scheduled to visit next week, saying the effort had been hampered by bad weather and logistical problems as well as by political resistance.

"President Karzai is a strong partner and we have confidence in him," said the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher. "We are succeeding in our overall effort" to address the drug problem.

American and Afghan officials decided late last year that a more aggressive anti-poppy effort was too risky. State Department officials had proposed aerial spraying of poppy-growing areas, but the plan was opposed by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and American military officials in Afghanistan who agreed, though effective at killing poppies, spraying fields by aircraft could lead to protests and unrest.

A spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office defended the choice of targets. "We don't believe we are picking the wrong targets, but we have a long struggle to go," she said. "We work very closely with the U.S. and other partners."

The spokeswoman said that eradication only worked if there were alternatives in place for the poppy growers, and that is where Britain is placing most of its emphasis.

A major reason Britain was put in charge of counternarcotics efforts is that much of the heroin produced from Afghan poppies ends up in European countries - roughly 50 tons a year, compared to the 20 tons estimated to go to the United States.

Mr. Boucher said his department was working to resolve the disagreements over the British targets.

Since beginning work last month, the country's Central Poppy Eradication Force, an American-trained group, has destroyed less than 250 acres, according to the two American officials. Its original goal was to eradicate 37,000 acres, but that target has recently been reduced to 17,000 acres. With the poppy harvest already under way, the actual eradication levels will probably be far lower, the American officials said.

The department's annual drug-trafficking report, released in March, warned that Afghanistan was "on the verge of becoming a narcotics state."

American officials have said publicly that Mr. Karzai recognized the severity of the poppy cultivation problem and was determined to combat it, albeit gradually, to avoid inciting unrest among Afghans whose incomes are dependent on growing poppies for the drug trade. Congress recently passed a supplemental spending bill that included $260 million for the State Department's anti-drug effort in Afghanistan this year.

A senior State Department official said that Mr. Karzai had wanted the eradication team to begin work before the poppy harvest season began in March, when he felt there was a better chance of persuading farmers to give up that lucrative crop. But because of bad weather and other delays the team did not begin work until early April.

The American officials involved said they also believed that Mr. Karzai might not want to challenge local Afghan authorities and thus incite opposition and even violence ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for next fall.

The eradication effort got under way last month in the southern province of Kandahar and in neighboring Helmand and has now shifted to the Balkh Province in the north.

In Kandahar Province this week, farmers were scraping the last resin from poppy plants, in plain view of the main road, just 10 minutes outside the provincial capital, once a stronghold of the Taliban.

"Karzai's order will only be acceptable when he sends money to the farmers and helps them," said a poppy farmer, Jan Agha. After investing in water, fertilizer and labor, farmers would resist eradication, he said, adding, "In the villages people would fight."

A State Department official said that the United States remained optimistic that, through a combination of eradication and reduced plantings, it could achieve a 70,000-acre reduction in poppy planting from last year's record crop, which was estimated at more than 500,000 acres.

Because of the faltering eradication effort, much of the acreage reduction the Americans hope for is likely to be from farmers deciding not to plant, the officials conceded. And even if that goal is reached, the crop may still be the second largest ever, a senior American official said.

A Karzai spokesman, Jawed Ludin, said that foreign donors had failed to follow through on promises to help farmers shift to other crops and find other sources of income.

Mr. Karzai called for a "jihad" against drugs after his election last November, Mr. Ludin pointed out. But he also noted that Mr. Karzai would risk losing his moral authority if promised assistance to the poppy farmers was not forthcoming.

"It is actually the international community that is showing a lack of seriousness, by failing to show that there is an alternative for farmers," he said.

On their first day of operations in early April, in the Maiwand district of Kandahar Province, the eradication force encountered armed farmers blocking the fields. Gunfire broke out, resulting in the death of at least one Afghan protester and the wounding of several others.

The American officials said they suspected the protesters had been organized by traffickers and local officials with a stake in the drug trade.

Over the next eight days, according to the embassy cable, American and British officials in Kabul sought help from the Afghan minister responsible for the anti-drug effort, Habibullah Qaderi, to end the confrontation in Maiwand and a similar standoff in nearby Panjwayi. But he was unable to persuade the Kandahar authorities to help, the embassy cable said. Mr. Qaderi could not be reached for comment.

The embassy cable praised Muhammad Daoud, the deputy minister of the interior for the anti-drug effort, for trying to win access for the eradication teams, but it said he had "no support whatsoever from key members" of the government, "namely President Karzai."

When the eradication unit did begin work, it was permitted to destroy only limited amounts of poppies in fields designated by local officials, the cable said, which were widely scattered. On most days, only 40 to 100 workers showed up to help, not the 300 to 400 promised by the local leaders, the cable said. This month, the teams are working in the northern province of Balkh, officials said.

Afghan Bomb Kills U.S. Soldier

KABUL, Afghanistan, May 21 (Agence France-Presse) - One American soldier was killed and three others were wounded in a bomb blast in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, a military spokeswoman, Lt. Cindy Moore, said.

The casualties occurred during a patrol in the Shinkay district of Zabul Province, she said.

David S. Cloud reported from Washington for this article and Carlotta Gall from Kabul and Kandahar.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2005

NY: "Reforms" fail to address convictions of those with lesser charges

By ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, Capitol bureau
Friday, May 20, 2005
ALBANY -- Lafayette Lewis remains behind bars five weeks after a judge cleared the path for his release by invoking powers granted under the revamped Rockefeller Drug Laws.

Times Union
Albany, NY

Lewis, who has served 13 years for a first-time narcotics offense, is still at the Elmira Correctional Facility even though Albany County Judge Thomas Breslin reduced his sentence to nearly mirror his time served.

A conviction on a lesser drug charge is blocking Lewis' freedom.

Changes to the 1973 laws signed by Gov. George Pataki last December let judges resentence nonviolent felons convicted of the highest level, Class A-1, drug offenses. But judges can't reduce sentences for lower-level crimes.

When the changes were approved, critics said they did not go far enough to help the bulk of drug offenders serving time for Class B through E-level offenses. It is now becoming clear that the failure of the new law to address all but the stiffest of drug penalties is hurting even those few the limited measure was designed to assist.

"One would expect the A-1 sentence to be longer, so that would be the one to worry about," said Albany attorney Lewis Oliver, who appeared in court on Lewis' behalf. "That's probably why the so-called reform legislation overlooked this problem."

Lewis, a Niagara Falls native, and two other men were pulled over for speeding on the Thruway in September 1990. The officer found more than 4 ounces of cocaine in the car that Lewis insists wasn't his. Nevertheless, he was convicted in 1991 of first-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance -- an A-1 level crime with a sentence of 25-years-to-life.

On April 13, Breslin cut Lewis' sentence to 13 years, eight months and 16 days, making him immediately eligible for parole.

With credit for good time, it seems Lewis, 37, should be free. But he's also serving a concurrent 12 -to-25-year sentence for second-degree conspiracy to sell drugs, a Class B felony, stemming from the same 1990 incident. Breslin couldn't reduce that sentence.

Lewis' fate now rests with the parole board; his hearing is scheduled for Monday.

Lewis is not alone in his frustration of freedom deferred. Of the 446 Class A-1 offenders in the prison system when Pataki signed the new law, 66 have been resentenced, but only 21 were released as of April 30, according to the state Department of Corrections.

Not all the affected inmates share Lewis' exact circumstances.

Last month, Willie Rodriguez' relatives traveled from Atlanta and Manhattan to Albany to watch what they thought would be his resentencing and release. But Rodriguez, who has spent more than two decades in prison for a first-time drug offense, had two convictions -- an A-1 and an A-2 -- stemming from the same incident -- a situation unbeknownst to his family and his lawyer.

Rodriguez' resentencing was delayed until his attorney could submit new paperwork. His A-1, 25-year-to-life conviction was reduced Thursday to 18 years. But, under the new laws, the judge couldn't touch the A-2 conviction. Now Rodriguez, too, goes before the parole board.

The state Legislature's 2004 drug law agreement did away with life in prison and reduced sentences for A-1 offenders, but only allowed Class A-2 and B offenders to reduce their sentences through so-called "merit time," achieved by earning a general equivalency diploma, for example, or completing drug rehabilitation programs.

According to the Department of Corrections, there were 14,844 drug offenders in the state prison system as of March 14. They break down as follows: 403 A-1s; 1,646 A-2s; 4,876 Bs; 3,720 Cs; 3,555 Ds and 644 Es.

The Democrat-led state Assembly is likely to soon pass a bill seen as the next step in drug law reform. It would allow some lower-level, Class B, C, D and E, drug offenders to be diverted into substance abuse treatment facilities rather than prison and also largely return sentencing discretion to judges.

Under the current laws, judges are required to impose specific sentences based on the weight of drugs an offender is convicted of selling or possessing. With the exception of district attorney-controlled alternative incarceration programs, judges have few options outside prison for those offenders whose addictions may have driven them to commit their crimes.

The measure's sponsor, Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, said his goal is to "stake out a strong position and put it in the Senate's lap." It's unlikely further reform will be achieved this year, he said, but that is likely to change in 2006 when every statewide office and all 212 legislative seats are up for re-election.

"Whatever happens in 2005 is just a warm-up," Aubry said. "The individuals planning for 2006 are saying to the Senate, 'What you do now determines what we do next year.' "

When the Senate voted in 2004 to modify the drug laws, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, said "There is more to be done, and we're going to get there."

But revisiting this issue doesn't appear to be among the Senate's top priorities. Tougher penalties for some drug crimes have been proposed; further sentencing reform has not.

"We're willing to entertain various proposals, but it's four weeks before the end of the session, and some major three-way discussions would have to take place for there to be any movement," said Craig J. Miller, spokesman for Sen. Dale Volker, R-Depew, chair of the Senate Codes Committee.

Part of the problem is the political pressure that spurred state lawmakers to act in 2004 has now dissipated. The changes came three months after the surprise Democratic primary defeat of then-incumbent Albany County District Attorney Paul Clyne by his former employee, David Soares, who made drug law reform central to his campaign. Soares' win worried some of the state's district attorneys, who have been among the most vociferous opponents of reform.

Talk of reform in a political context this year has been confined to New York City, where it is playing a role in the contest for Manhattan district attorney. Leslie Crocker Snyder has raised the issue in her primary challenge to the eight-term incumbent, Robert Morgenthau, who -- until recently -- said little about the need to change the state's harsh drug laws.

Next year will be a much different story. With every statewide elected post up for grabs, the Senate Republicans, who lost three seats last fall and came within 18 votes of losing a fourth, might be more amenable to reconsidering their position.

"We're still hopeful that something will happen this year because there is widespread awareness that the changes made last year were not real reform," said Robert Gangi, executive direct of the Correctional Association of New York, a prison watchdog group that has long sought full repeal of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. "At the same time, if nothing does happen this year, because it's getting late, next year the heat will be on."

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=362295&category=CAPITOL&B
CCode=HOME&newsdate=5/20/2005

Posted by lois at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)

MA: Worcester Votes Down Bill that Would Alllow Needle Exchange

Worcester, Mass., City Council Votes To Oppose State Bill That Would Allow Rules, Regulations on Needle-Exchange Programs

The Worcester, Mass., City Council on Tuesday voted 8-3 to oppose a state Senate bill (SB 1272) that would allow the state Department of Public Health to establish rules and regulations for the implementation of needle-exchange programs in the state to reduce the spread of bloodborne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C, the AP/Worcester Telegram & Gazette reports. The council said that it opposes the measure because it would "remove local legislative control from the decision-making process" for implementing needle exchanges, according to the AP/Telegram & Gazette. "Local control is something that is so important to our democracy, but sometimes the folks at the state level in Boston take it for granted," council member Juan Gomez said, adding, "We don't need big brother telling us what to do. We know better than the state as to what is better for our community." However, council member Dennis Irish said the bill would establish community advisory boards that would address local issues before a needle-exchange program is implemented, according to the AP/Telegram & Gazette. "The issue is not needle exchange and drug users; it has to do with this city's high rates of HIV and hepatitis B and C," Irish said. The council defeated 7-4 a motion by Irish to refer the issue to a committee. The Worcester City Council twice has defeated measures to establish needle-exchange programs in the city (AP/Worcester Telegram & Gazette, 5/18).

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CA: 3 new prisons for 6,000 mentally ill prisoners is proposed

Buried in his recent May Revised Budget are 3 new prisons for 6,000 mentally ill prisoners. Estimated cost $1.4 Billion.

Senate Budget Subcommittee turned down the initial funding for planning funds on a 3-0 vote.

CDC CAPITAL OUTLAY DISCUSSION ISSUES
1. CIM: New Mental Health Facility
Finance Letter Request. This Finance Letter proposes $12.0 million General Fund for preliminary plans for a new mental health facility at California Institution for Men, Chino. The project envisions new housing, program space, and support services for the seriously mentally disordered inmate population, including Enhanced Outpatient Program (EOP), Administrative Segregation EOP, Psychiatric Services EOP, Inpatient non-acute, and mental health crisis levels of care as defined by the CDC's Mental Health Delivery System. The project will support approximately 1,500 mentally disordered inmates and 500 general population work crew inmates. The future estimated costs for this facility are $441,601,000. This is one of three new mental health facilities that the CDC is proposing. There is a Finance Letter request for the study phase of a facility at California Men's Colony, and the department is putting together a proposal for a facility at CSP Sacramento. These three facilities would house approximately 6,000 inmates and would cost $1.4 billion to construct. Analyst's Recommendation. The LAO has raised concerns regarding this proposal and the next proposal. The LAO recommends rejecting both proposals at this time and recommends that the CDC provide analysis of alternatives and the operational impacts prior any such project. Action. 2. CMC: New Mental Health Facility Finance Letter Request. This Finance Letter proposes $3.3 million for a study for a mental health facility at California Men's Colony, San Luis Obispo. The project envisions new housing, program space, and support services for the seriously mentally disordered inmate population, including Enhanced Outpatient Program (EOP), Administrative Segregation EOP, Psychiatric Services EOP, Inpatient non-acute, and mental health crisis levels of care as defined by the CDC's Mental Health Delivery System. The project will support approximately 1,500 mentally disordered inmates and 500 general population work crew inmates. These funds would be used to evaluate two potential locations at California Men's Colony, including an environmental impact report, architectural programming, pre-design, and schematic design. The future estimated costs for this facility are $461,167,000. Action. Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review 32

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May 19, 2005

Indiana: How low can they go? Cutting prison food to 99 cents a day

By Mary Beth Schneider
mary.beth.scheider@indystar.com
May 17, 2005

Indiana is slashing the cost of prison meals from $1.41 to only 99-cents by letting a private company operate the food service -- a move that will save the state nearly $12 million per year, Gov. Mitch Daniels said Tuesday.

The contracting out of the Department of Correction food operation is the first in what is expected to be a series of announcements moving state services from the public sector to the private.

Daniels and Department of Correction Commissioner J. David Donahue said neither quality nor nutritional value will be sacrificed. And, they said, no state employees will necessarily lose their jobs.

The state has awarded the 10-year, $258 million contract to ARAMARK, a nationally known food service company. Donahue said Indiana currently has 336 food service employees. ARAMARK will use 298 people to staff its prison food operation. State employees will be given priority in filling those positions. The balance will be offered positions elsewhere in the Department of Correction, Donahue said.

Daniels called this "a step forward in balancing Indiana's budget and protecting Hoosier taxpayers."

In addition, the state announced it has awarded the food service contract at Logansport State Hospital and an adjacent juvenile correctional facility to state employees. That contract, Daniels said, will save the state about $1 million each year.

Daniels said the state will award state employees bonuses if they are able to achieve even higher savings.

Posted by lois at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2005

Where Have All the Black Men Gone?

By JONATHAN TILOVE

May 08, 2005, The Star Ledger

http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1115528550236920.xml?starledger?prs

Darryl Jeffries, the spokesman for East Orange, calls his
city "the most densely populated community of color in the United States." The Essex County city covers less than four square miles, but it is home to more than 70,000 people. Mostly black. Some Hispanics. A few whites.

But the most salient statistic about East Orange is the
number of black men who are not there. Under the age of 18, there are more black boys than girls. Among the adult population, however, there are 37 percent more women than men.

Where are these missing men? Most are dead. Many others are locked up. Some are in the military.

Worse yet, the gender imbalance in East Orange is not some grotesque anomaly. It's a vivid snapshot of a very troubling reality in black America.

There are nearly two million more black adult women than men
in America, stark testimony to how often black men die before their time. With nearly another million black men in prison or the military, the real imbalance is even greater -- a gap of 2.8 million, according to U.S. Census data for 2002. On average, then, there are 26 percent more black women than black men; among whites, women outnumber men by just 8 percent.

Perhaps no single statistic so precisely measures the
fateful, often fatal, price of being a black man in America,
or so powerfully conveys how beset black communities are by
the violence and disease that leaves them bereft of brothers, fathers, husbands and sons, and leaves whole communities reeling.

"It just distorts the fabric of African-American life," says Roland Anglin, executive director of the New Jersey Public Policy Research Institute, whose mission is research to improve the quality of life in communities of color. "It's scandalous for us as a society."

In the March/April issue of Health Affairs, Dr. David
Satcher, surgeon general under former President Bill Clinton and now the interim president of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, exposes the core of the problem: Between 1960 and 2000, the disparity between mortality rates for black and white women narrowed while the disparity between the rates for black and white men grew wider.

Exponentially higher homicide and AIDS rates play their part, especially among younger black men. Even more deadly through middle age and beyond are higher rates of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

"The degree of loss and death that people in those
communities are experiencing at a young age is just unfathomable," says Arline T. Geronimus of the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. A few years ago Geronimus led a team of researchers who calculated that in Harlem and Chicago's South Side, two- thirds of black boys and one-third of black girls who reach their 15th birthday would not make 65.

"We live in a society right now where if you turn 25, you're
an old head," says Stanley Edwards, 45, a program developer with the recreation department in East Orange, where all the signs of the dilemma are etched in sharp relief and where three years ago Edwards drew together a small group of young people to start Teens Against Violence Everywhere. "When I was growing up, 25, you just started."

Chilling stuff. But, says Satcher, "The real question is,
does the nation really care to solve this problem?"

STARTLING STATISTICS

The imbalance between the numbers of black men and women does not exist everywhere. There is no gap to speak of in places with relatively small black populations like Minneapolis, Minn.; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco and San Diego. And Seattle actually has more black men than women.

But it is the rule in communities with large concentrated
black populations. There are, for instance, more than 30 percent more black women than men in Baltimore, New Orleans, Chicago and Cleveland, and in smaller cities like Harrisburg, Pa. There are 36 percent more black women than men in New York City, and 37 percent more in Saginaw, Mich., and Philadelphia. In Newark, the figure is 26 percent.

In East Orange, there were more black males under 18 than females in 2000. And yet, there were 29 percent more black women than men in their 20s.

How can that be? Ask Eric Perryman, 23, a first-year teacher
at Cicely Tyson School of Performing and Fine Arts in East Orange.

"The street where I grew up in East Orange, there were about
12 of us. Five of them are dead now," says Perryman, who coordinates TAVE with Edwards and Christina White, a native of Portland, Ore., who works at East Orange General Hospital while pursuing her master's in public health. Of the five, Perryman says one was a suicide and the other four homicides. "One got shot by a police officer. Another died in the hallway where he lived, another was shot in front of his grandmother's house over a coat, another died on Central Avenue."

Perryman says that of the surviving members of his crew of
12, "most are in jail."

According to The Sentencing Project in Washington, on any
given day in America, one in eight black males ages 25 to 29
is incarcerated, and nearly a third of all black men in their 20s are behind bars, on probation or on parole.

"It's worse than the Wild West," says Rochelle D. Evans, a former police commissioner in East Orange and now the city's interim director for Health and Human Services.

But getting through their teens and 20s is only the first gantlet black males must run. Evans knows.

She was five when her father, who was 42, was killed on the
job at the former Tappan Range factory in Newark; a machine fell on him, fracturing his skull. Of her four brothers, two died of heart attacks in their 40s, the third suffers from diabetes and kidney failure and lost a leg, and the fourth has gastrointestinal problems. Her husband, a retired police officer, was 15 when his father died of a heart attack, and of his seven brothers, one was shot to death in a dispute over a woman and three died of heart attacks, all before they turned 50.

By the time people reach their 60s in East Orange, there are
47 percent more black women than men, and with every
succeeding year, the winnowing continues. Isabelle Fowler,
head of the tenant organization at her senior citizen housing complex, estimates that the 110 apartments there are home to "maybe 10 men. And it's not going to get any better for us."

WHAT LIES BENEATH

Geronimus, the University of Michigan researcher, developed
an analytical framework she calls "weathering" to describe
the lifetime of stresses black people face at every turn.
This process wears them down and wears them out, compromising their health and contributing to early death.

"It can just beat you down," says Haki Madhubuti, the Chicago poet, publisher, educator and author of books such as "Black
Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous?" and "Tough Notes: A
Healing Call for Creating Exceptional Black Men." He says that's why he became a vegan and tries to bike 20 to 25 miles a day.

Madhubuti says the stress of being black takes a special toll on the minds of the men. "Men run the world, and now understand that you are not one of the men running the world, and layer on that that men you don't like are always telling you what to do," says Madhubuti. "Many brothers just drop out."

These days East Orange -- like other communities across the nation -- is gamely trying to regain its balance, contending with issues of infant mortality, lead poisoning, gun violence and AIDS.

If those challenges aren't steep enough, local leaders also face a perception problem: Many people view the crisis among black men as a consequence of social forces so large and intractable as to be beyond reach or repair.

Still, there are glimmers of hope. The gender gap is in part
a reflection of the improved lot of black women, as a consequence of a long-term national commitment to maternal and women's health and a Medicaid program that provided access to care for poor women and children -- access still denied to many poor men. And despite today's bleak realities, mortality rates for black men were actually worse in 1990, at the height of the crack-and-homicide epidemic in America's cities.

The enormous growth of the prison population, meanwhile, is largely the result of recent mandatory sentencing laws -- laws that could be reformed or reversed. And communities like East Orange seem astir with mentorship programs and a new conviction that self-destructive behavior will not be tolerated.

What's missing, many observers believe, is a national will to confront the problem in all its difficult dimensions.

"If white men were falling off the grid as rapidly as black men, it would be considered a national crisis," says Raymond Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore and author of "The Warrior Method: A Program for Rearing Black Boys."

"It would be leading all the network news shows," says Jeffries, the spokesman for East Orange and formerly a writer and producer with NBC News in New York. "It would be full- court, around-the- clock coverage on 'the gap' and all its ramifications."

[Jonathan Tilove writes about race for the Newhouse News Service.]

C 2005 The Star Ledger C 2005

Posted by lois at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2005

Cover Story--Newsday- Marie La Pinta--soon to be free

http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/

Cover photo and headlines

http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/

Cover photo and headlines

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lipint15,0,2078978.story?pag
e=4&coll=ny-homepage-bigpix2005

A life, career forged from family tragedy
BY ROBIN TOPPING
STAFF WRITER

There's a part of Anthony La Pinta who will always be that 16-year-old boy who came home one night to a dark house with an unlocked back door and something sticky on the kitchen floor.

As he reached into the refrigerator to get something to drink on that rainy March 27, 1983, La Pinta was unaware that he was stepping in his father's drying blood. He was just a teenager coming home from a movie, trying to beat his 11 p.m. curfew and unaware of the violence that had just taken place in his small, well-kept West Islip home.

Years later, when he was a man, and a lawyer, long after his mother was locked up for taking part in the murder of his father, La Pinta impassively studied the events of that night, regarding them as the "facts of the case."

It was the case that he studied endlessly, nights and weekends, searching for a legal opening through which he could release his mother, Marie, 69, from prison, and free himself and his older brother Lenny from their emotional prison.

Through this case, he came to grips with the difficult memory of his father, Michael La Pinta, a man who beat his mother but loved his sons. And they loved him back, even as they couldn't fathom the demons behind his anger.

"My brother and I were as much victims as anyone," La Pinta said. "My father was killed and that left a tremendous hole in my heart. I think about him every day and I believe he tried to do the best he could."

But back then, the teenage Anthony didn't know he was living through the hours that would reshape his life.

"I remember my mother showed up about an hour later, soaked, and I asked if she was OK, and she said, 'Go to bed, my son, I had a little problem with the car,'" recalled La Pinta, now 38.

The next day he was supposed to travel to Florida with his father, who was moving his belongings out of the house after he and Marie La Pinta had agreed to end their troubled marriage.

But no one came for Anthony that day.

At 5 o'clock, he got a call from his mother's workplace, a Babylon dress shop where she was employed as the head seamstress. They were looking for her. She was usually so reliable.

La Pinta's growing fears were confirmed when he went into the kitchen and saw a bullet hole through the window.

"I panicked," he said. "I grabbed my dog and ran out into the street. The homicide detectives pulled up and they said they had a search warrant for the house and they had found a body last night. They thought it was my father."

At first, he thought it was a practical joke, one of many his friends played on him. But when he went to stay with a neighbor that evening, his mother called him, hysterical, telling him she did not kill his father. A detective came on the line saying she would be in court the next morning.

"I didn't know what was going on. I did not grasp that she was a suspect," La Pinta remembered.

Marie La Pinta and her brother, Leonard Crociata, were convicted in 1984 of the murder of her husband of 27 years, Michael. Crociata had come over to the house at his sister's request and the two men had gotten into a struggle over a gun that Michael La Pinta was holding. The gun went off and he was killed. The defense contended the shooting was unplanned and accidental. The prosecution said it was an intentional crime.

Marie La Pinta and her brother dumped the body at the Babylon landfill, where an off-duty police officer saw them and later traced the license plate, leading to their arrest. Their jury apparently did not believe the defense lawyers who argued the shooting was unplanned and accidental.

Their mother had been able to get out on bail for a few months, during which her sons remained optimistic. When she was convicted, the three were stunned.

arie La Pinta and her brother were sentenced to 25 years to life for intentional murder. And suddenly, Anthony La Pinta, and his brother Lenny, then 20, who was about to finish college in upstate Potsdam, were alone.

"I thought my mother was going to be acquitted," Anthony La Pinta said. "I was blown away by the conviction and she was devastated. I didn't know what I was going to do. I was scared to death."

Twenty-two years later, Anthony La Pinta, propelled by the fear, pain and shame that had infused his childhood, used his skills as a criminal defense attorney and found the key to his mother's freedom.

In a motion to set aside the 1984 verdict, he argued to State Supreme Court Justice Robert W. Doyle that his mother's rights had been violated because her lawyer and her brother's lawyer had been from the same law firm. The defense was the same for both, so Marie La Pinta's story was never told. The jury never heard the whole truth about Michael La Pinta and what he did to his wife, year after year, night after night.

Behind closed doors, Marie La Pinta was a battered woman, the victim of her husband's violent temper. He threw things at her and punched her in the head. She lived with a fear that warped her existence and set the stage for their final confrontation.

"Mrs. La Pinta ... was tried in a vacuum, with no understanding of any of the participants of the human context in which these events unfolded," Anthony La Pinta argued in legal papers that convinced Judge Doyle to reverse his mother's conviction.

La Pinta's legal arguments were filled with the poignancy that only a son could bring to the tale. "I wanted it to be that way," he said, explaining why he didn't hire another attorney to do the work.

"The basis of my knowledge is my personal knowledge of the facts and circumstances of this matter," La Pinta wrote in his legal papers.

He not only wrote about the abuse, he lived through it and knew the victim and abuser as Mom and Dad. On that night when he returned to the empty house, he lost not only a mother who adored her children but a father who loved his sons.

"My dad was kind of an aloof, distant guy," La Pinta said. "He was pretty difficult to deal with. He had a short fuse. He was not a warm and tender guy. But he loved his kids and I loved him. He was my dad.

"He wasn't a child beater. However, he was a wife beater and he was very harsh to my mother. It was something we grew up with. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I realized this was a big problem. Before that, I thought this just happens in families."

nthony's brother, Lenny, who was 41/2 years older, saw the abuse too, but got away from it by going to music school at the State University of New York at Potsdam.

"I saw things deteriorate as I came home from college more and more," Lenny La Pinta said. "I noticed my father became more reclusive and would be verbally disparaging of my mother in letters to me."

Like Anthony, Lenny was aware of the physical abuse his mother endured.

"We had witnessed some of it, but most of it was kept from us," he said. "It was done after we had gone to bed behind their closed bedroom doors. And as my mother tried to get out of the relationship, he became more free with his hands as time passed."

Marie La Pinta understood physical abuse. She had lived with it as the daughter of a tyrannical father in Sicily who rarely let her out of the house. Her marriage to Michael La Pinta had been arranged and she brought with her the lessons of that upbringing: Don't complain, suffer in silence, don't talk about the pain.

"She would reiterate to us, 'He's your father, you have to love and respect him.'" Anthony La Pinta said. "She would never say, 'Your father is abusing me.' She was not the type of woman to complain about the problems in her life."

Both Anthony and Lenny La Pinta recall their mother as loving and doting. Although they grew up poor -- their mother was a seamstress and their father a mason -- they always had good meals on the table.

"My mother wasn't happy with her life. But she was happy with us," Anthony La Pinta said. "We made life bearable for her."

Shortly before the shooting, the couple's marriage had fallen apart and they planned to separate. Their arguments escalated and Michael La Pinta forbade his wife to have any of her relatives over at the house. When her brother heard about the ban, he came over to the home to plead with Michael, but the discussion ended in a fistfight. That led to a feud, which erupted again the night Michael La Pinta was shot.

As teenagers and as adults, Anthony and his brother always believed that their mother never meant for her husband to die. "There has never been a single second since this happened that we didn't absolutely believe my mother," Anthony La Pinta said.

But after the conviction, Anthony and his brother could only look on helplessly as their mother's appeals were turned down year after year. And in their own way, they went on with their lives.

nthony reluctantly went to the State University of New York at Oswego in upstate New York. His brother, Lenny, who was just starting his career as a music teacher at the West Islip schools, pushed him to get away from what had happened.

"I remember driving him up to Oswego and it was tough," Lenny La Pinta said. "It was the first time we really felt the loneliness. I got back in the car and drove on and that's when it hit me that the three of us would be in three different places leading separate lives."

At Oswego, Anthony surprised himself by excelling both academically and in student activities. He was elected student body president.

"Something magical happened up there," he said. "I had incredible success and I can't tell you how or why. It was really a grace of God."

He put himself through school with grants and loans and worked several jobs. His brother was able to stay in the house with the help of a tenant who rented an apartment their mother had helped them add while she was out on bail.

But Anthony La Pinta rarely came home. He mostly stayed in school during vacations and kept the tragedy to himself.

Both sons stayed in touch with their mother, visiting on holidays and speaking by phone.

Anthony helped to do research for some of his mother's unsuccessful appeals and began to think about the law as a career, fueled by anger over his mother's conviction.

"I felt this was just a tremendous injustice," he said. "I just said, this can't be the way things are and it provided an incredible inspiration."

At Temple University School of Law in Philadelphia, Anthony set his sights on criminal law. After his graduation in 1988, he became an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia until he returned to New York in 1993. He became a criminal defense lawyer in East Islip. After his divorce from his wife, with whom he has a daughter, he moved back into the West Islip house where his journey began.

He has carried his mother's case with him always.

"I would be reminded of it ... but especially in certain circumstances, like when I would see a family situation where the young child is affected by their parents' arrest," he said.

As before, Anthony La Pinta rarely spoke of the terrible events that formed his young adulthood. Yet, as time went by, and his mother's appeals were exhausted, she became eligible for clemency because she had no other legal recourse. So the brothers went public.

"It's not something he ever spoke about, but it does get around because he was looking for clemency," said defense lawyer Ray Perini of Hauppauge, one of La Pinta's friends. "It was one of the things I respected about him. He did everything he could but kept it as private as he could."

he brothers worked on the clemency campaign together, applying several times. They employed the help of politicians, made a 20-minute video explaining her life and the situation, created a Web site -- www.mercyformom.org -- and garnered more than 19,000 signatures for an online petition. They also convinced relatives of Michael La Pinta to write letters asking for clemency, along with jurors and the off-duty police officer who first reported the murder.

Lenny La Pinta said going public with the story enabled him and his brother to talk about what they had hidden for so many years.

"It was like finally being cleansed of the hurt and the humiliation," Lenny La Pinta said. "People would say it's impossible ... to be that bad because she has two sons who never turned their back on her and look what they are doing."

But the clemency bids were all turned down.

Then, last year, Anthony began working on a motion to set aside the verdict. He worked on it for months, anguishing over each word, occasionally asking other lawyers for advice.

"This whole experience has shaped the man, the person that he is, the lawyer that he is," said Paul Gianelli, who earlier this year welcomed La Pinta into his Hauppauge law firm. "It is altogether fitting that he was able, through his legal skills, to bring about this new chance for his mother to win her freedom."

After listening to La Pinta's story, Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota joined him in his request to overturn his mother's conviction. Negotiations on the exact plea that will someday bring his mother home are still not complete.

Spota said at the time that he "absolutely expects to reach a plea deal ... that will aid in her freedom."

When Doyle reversed the conviction, La Pinta said, "It was like a 1,000-pound weight had been taken off my shoulders."

Through the years, he has struggled to reconcile the father he loved as a boy with the abusive man he vilified in his legal case.

"The evidence revealed that Mr. La Pinta was a violent man who kept guns and bullets in his car, in the basement and in the marital bedroom, and who expressed his anger by screaming, using knives, destroying the children's toys, throwing glasses against the wall and breaking glasses in the kitchen sink," La Pinta wrote about his father in court papers.

The lawyer's composure crumbles when he speaks about his father as the man who raised him, rather than the man who beat his mother.

"If he could look down on us right now and see what has happened and how we have suffered, I don't think he would have resented any of this," La Pinta said. "I think he would have wanted us to be happy."

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

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May 14, 2005

MA: School Zone Charges Pressed

By Carrie Saldo
Berkshire Eagle Staff

Thursday, May 12, 2005 - Despite a call from some community members to seek alternate means of punishment, District Attorney David F. Capeless has opted to support a policy seeking the minimum mandatory two-year jail sentence for those charged with selling drugs within a school zone.

The policy means the charges of drug distribution within a school zone for seven of 18 youngsters arrested last year in the Taconic parking lot in Great Barrington will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

In March, a newly formed local group, Concerned Citizens for Appropriate Justice appealed to Capeless for dispensation for those seven charged with small-scale marijuana distribution.

Capeless said during a telephone conversation yesterday that he could not comment on any individual cases before him.

'Stay the course'

In a written statement released yesterday Capeless said he intends to "stay the course in the prosecution of school-zone drug-dealing offenses."

"For over 13 years, (former) District Attorney (Gerard) Downing and I pursued a policy of charging and prosecuting school-zone cases, whenever the facts supported them," the statement reads. "This past year, I have continued that policy because it is even-handed and fair, and because it has proven effective. I intend to continue that policy."

Last September, 18 people ages 17 to 24, the majority of whom live in South County, were arrested on charges ranging from marijuana possession to distribution of ketamine, a powerful horse tranquilizer. The majority of those arrested were also charged with committing a drug violation in a drug-free school zone.

Yesterday, some applauded Capeless' decision to enforce the minimum mandatory two-year jail sentence that can be applied to those charged with selling drugs within a school zone, while others said they were "saddened" and "appalled."

State law requires judges to sentence those convicted of a school-zone charge to a minimum of two years in jail. A decision whether to levy the charge in the first place lies with the district attorney.

The decision follows two meetings with members of Concerned Citizens for Appropriate Justice, which circulated a petition in March that urged Capeless to consider other forms of punishment for the seven young people facing small-scale marijuana distribution charges.

The group had advocated for a combination of probation, public service, and drug treatment for those seven, if they are convicted, as opposed to serving two years in jail.

2,000 signed petition

Erik Bruun of Concerned Citizens said nearly 2,000 residents of various ages have signed on in support of that petition, which when initially submitted to Capeless had been signed by 400 people.

"I am saddened that the Berkshire County legal system resorts to a costly and destructive path to try to resolve a costly and destructive problem," said Bruun. "I'm not saying they should get off without a punishment, but there are other ways of dealing with the situation."

He said if those seven are convicted, it would be more effective to order that they perform community service.

"Seven kids with orange jumpsuits cleaning up the parking lot, that would send a message," he said.

Capeless said in his statement that he supports drug counseling when appropriate. "At the same time, I am committed to the prosecution and punishment of those who cause other to need such treatment -- drug dealers."

Geri Rybacki's son John, 18, is one of the 18 charged in relation to the incident.

'A bad dream'

"It's like a bad dream that you can't wake up from," she said yesterday. She said John's September arrest was his first encounter with the law and that he was not charged with handling the marijuana or the money procured from selling drugs.

"If they had a part in this they deserve a punishment no doubt," she said. "But why tack on this punishment for a first-time offender? If you take off the school-zone charge there would still be other charges to consider. ... This policy doesn't serve any purpose for protecting the public or justice."

Berkshire County Sheriff Carmen Massimiano Jr. said he agreed with Capeless' policy.

"He is making the right decision and he is doing it at the right time," said Massimiano. "I understand the anguish these parents are going through and I sympathize with them. But think about the parent whose child has never used drugs and bought it -- who speaks for them? The district attorney speaks for them."

Rehabilitation programs within the Berkshire County House of Correction are available to those convicted, Massimiano said. However, it is up to each individual to take advantage of the programs available.

Michele Miller, a member of the concerned citizens group and also a Monterey selectman, said Capeless has missed an opportunity by supporting this policy.

'Out of proportion'

"It is really time for us as a society to re-evaluate ways to think of crime and punishment," said Miller. "(This policy) just seems out of proportion. It turns a blind eye to individual cases."

State Rep. William "Smitty" Pignatelli, D-Lenox, said he has received at least a dozen calls from parents and citizens concerned about the prosecution of the Great Barrington drug bust within the past week.

Pignatelli said he is not in favor of minimum mandatory sentencing and is willing to discuss ways to amend or alter the laws.

"If there is a desire to do something about (the laws) I am certainly open to hearing it because I am concerned about it as a parent myself," said Pignatelli.

That said, Pignatelli added that the public needs to understand the serious consequences, legal and other wise, of substance abuse.

State Sen. Andrea Nuciforo, D-Pittsfield, said there are several proposed changes to minimum mandatory laws before the Legislature and that they should be considered very seriously.

When asked what evidence he had to support the claim that the long-standing policy had been proven effective, Capeless said, "How do you quantify what has not happened?"

"We have kept at bay in Berkshire County the growing tide of drug use that has swept over other areas," said Capeless. "I directly attribute that to the strong stance we have taken against drug dealing."

Eight-month probe

In January 2004, police began an eight-month investigation in response to several incidents of violent behavior in the Taconic parking lot, which is in front of the Triplex Cinema complex.

Over several months, undercover police bought marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy and ketamine, mostly in the downtown parking lot area. The location is within 1,000 feet of school property that has been declared drug-free by local officials.

Some of those arrested are facing multiple school-zone charges.
Carrie Saldo can be reached at csaldo@berkshireeagle.com or at (413) 528-3660.

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

May 13, 2005

NY: Prison Healtlh Services Is Investigated

By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
Published: May 11, 2005
State officials have opened an investigation into whether the
corporation that provides health care for more than 100,000 inmates each year in New York City jails is violating state law governing medical services.

The State Department of Education, which regulates the practice of
medicine, is examining the terms of the three-year, $300 million
contract renewal the city signed in December with the corporation,
Prison Health Services. The inquiry will determine whether the contract complies with a state requirement that for-profit corporations providing medical services be owned and controlled by doctors - a law intended to prevent business considerations, like maximizing profits, from influencing medical decisions.

Prison Health executives and the city officials who oversee the
company's work say they believe that the contract is in compliance. But state education officials say the matter of who is in charge is a
serious one, with grave repercussions for the well-being and survival of inmates, as well as the public health.

The investigation, in fact, marks a renewed effort by the Education
Department, which first began to look into the Tennessee-based
corporation in 2001, after several inmate deaths in upstate jails
staffed by Prison Health began to draw stinging criticism from the State Commission of Correction, which monitors jail conditions.

The department's investigators concluded then that Prison Health was
violating the state law, saying that company executives were ultimately responsible for medical decisions and profiting from medical services. The two agencies asked the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, to halt the company's operations in New York, but Mr. Spitzer's office has declined to investigate.

Now, however, education officials have decided to look into the
company's largest contract of scores across the country, providing
medical and mental health care at nine city jails on Rikers Island and a 10th in Lower Manhattan.

State officials familiar with the new contract Prison Health signed with the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene have said in
interviews that it appears to violate the state law because it makes the doctors who are actually doing the work at Rikers answerable to Prison Health executives in Tennessee for the care they provide. Prison Health hires all doctors at Rikers Island.

On April 20, Education Department investigators met with three state
assemblymen, city health officials and Richard Rifkin, a deputy to Mr. Spitzer, to discuss Prison Health's legal status. The Assembly members at the session were Richard N. Gottfried, chairman of the Assembly's Health Committee; Jeffrion L. Aubry, chairman of the Correction Committee; and Ron Canestrari, chairman of the Higher Education Committee.

Mr. Gottfried said he called the meeting to answer questions raised by a recent series of articles in The New York Times examining Prison
Health's record in New York. Among other things, the series detailed
State Commission of Correction reports that faulted company policies and medical errors in the treatment of 24 inmates who had died in city or upstate jails.

"I and my colleagues are very concerned both about the quality of health care in our jails and prisons, and also concerned about the principal of corporatizing health care," Mr. Gottfried said in an interview last week. "If there is something illegal going on, I would want to work to enforce the law. If medical decisions are being directly or indirectly dictated by nonprofessionals, that's what we don't want."

Assemblyman Canestrari said Prison Health appeared to be in violation of the state law governing for-profit medical services.

"My understanding is their structure doesn't comply with the law," he
said in an interview last week. "There have been attempts to meet the
legal standard, but they have fallen short."

But company officials insist doctors are in charge of medical decisions. In New York City, Prison Health says it provides only administrative services to a doctor-run corporation, P. H. S. Medical Services P. C., that directs all medical care at Rikers.
But that corporation is run by Dr. Trevor Parks, who is a regional
medical director for Prison Health. State education investigators have called Dr. Parks's corporation a sham, and said that when they
questioned him, he had only a vague idea of his role in it.

Several Prison Health employees at Rikers said in interviews that Dr.
Parks recently gathered a group of supervising doctors there and
informed them that they were employees of his corporation. Dr. Parks
declined to comment yesterday.

City Health Department officials believe the Prison Health contract is legal, said Sandra Mullin, a department spokeswoman, in an e-mailed statement. "We welcome any state review that may offer additional information," she said.

Trey Hartman, Prison Health's president, said in a statement yesterday: "The city of New York has said that our structure under the Rikers Island contract is appropriate and in compliance with all legal requirements, and we have received guidance confirming that by widely respected outside legal counsel."

A spokesman for Attorney General Spitzer declined to comment on the
Education Department's new investigation into Prison Health.

City health officials first hired the company in 2001 after competitive bidding, making Prison Health the first for-profit enterprise to deliver medical care in the city's jails. The company beat out three other companies for the new contract.

Assemblyman Canestrari said that as troublesome as the fallout may be, the legal issues must be explored.

"The law is the law," he said, "and it's not going to go away."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/11/nyregion/11jail.html?th&emc=th

Posted by lois at 12:02 AM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2005

CA: Healthcare in prisons shocking

Problems in the state's medical treatment of inmates prompt a federal judge to consider appointing a receiver to manage the system.
By Dan Morain and Jenifer Warren
Times Staff Writers
May 11, 2005

SACRAMENTO - A federal judge took a major step Tuesday toward seizing
control of California's prison healthcare system, concluding that state inmates are needlessly dying and state officials cannot stop it on their own.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco said he may be
compelled to appoint "an interim receiver" to manage the California
Department of Corrections healthcare delivery system. He called on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration to appear for a July 11 hearing to present any arguments against such a plan.

"The problem of a highly dysfunctional, largely decrepit, overly
bureaucratic and politically driven system, which these defendants have inherited from past administrations, is too far gone to be corrected by conventional methods," Henderson wrote in a 19-page order.

The order comes three years after California prison officials settled a class action lawsuit over inmate care by agreeing to make ambitious
improvements. Despite that agreement, Henderson concluded - and state
corrections officials acknowledged recently - the prison healthcare system continues to put convicts' lives in danger.

Federal law requires that states provide healthcare to prisoners, Henderson noted, adding that "when prisoners are dying due to the neglect or incompetence of doctors and other medical staff employed by the state . there can be no doubt but that the Constitution is being violated." The state proposes to spend $6.5 billion on the adult prison system in the coming year, including $1.09 billion on healthcare for its roughly 163,000 prisoners.

Henderson referred to a "shocking" report given to him in February detailing "widespread evidence of medical malpractice and neglect" in the prison system.

Court-appointed experts found that 34 of 193 prison deaths in recent years were "highly problematic." The findings might have been worse except that records for several of the deceased inmates could not be found.Their findings were discussed last month at a state Senate hearing. Instead of defending the operation, Corrections Undersecretary Kevin Carruth told lawmakers that nothing in the report was overstated. Carruth also said officials have all but abandoned hope of providing healthcare on their own
and instead planned to contract with private managed-care companies.

State officials traditionally bristle at the prospect of federal court intervention. But on Tuesday, J.P. Tremblay, spokesman for the prison system, would not comment on whether a receiver might be the solution needed.

"We acknowledge that there are some issues that we need to deal with, and we are trying," Tremblay said, adding that whether appointing a receiver would be the best approach is "the decision of the court."

Prisoner rights attorneys have been suing the state alleging inadequate healthcare for years.

And even though the lawyers' efforts have forced the state to improve
aspects of medical care, problems have persisted.

Although a decision by Henderson to invoke his power to appoint a receiver would be unusual, a few judges have taken such steps. Henderson noted that heathcare in the Washington, D.C., jail system, for example, came under court oversight.

If he appoints a receiver, Henderson wrote, that person's duties would be limited to healthcare; prison officials would retain power over nonmedical aspects of prison life. The judge said any receivership would end as soon as he concludes that the state is willing and able to maintain an adequate inmate healthcare system.

At the same time, a receiver could have broad authority. Attorney Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office near San Quentin State Prison, which brought the suit, said a receiver could force the state to raise the pay of prison nurses to help fill vacancies. A receiver also could fire incompetent doctors and nurses, something that is difficult given civil service protection.

"There is no other effective alternative," said Specter, arguing for a receiver. "The state . is utterly and completely incapable of taking the steps necessary."Henderson issued his order the same day that Schwarzenegger, appearing at Folsom State Prison east of Sacramento, signed legislation that is part of
his plan to overhaul the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency and create a Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Although critics have maligned the governor's prison reorganization plan as a mere rearranging of titles and offices, Schwarzenegger said the move would give "our corrections system the structure to be more effective and accountable to the people."

The change also would mean prisons would put greater emphasis on helping inmates succeed after release. Officials plan to identify programs that have reduced recidivism in other states and launch them in California.

In a statement, state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), who has been holding prison oversight hearings, said she welcomed "Henderson's call for a federal receiver to oversee inmate healthcare." Romero said "drastic measures are necessary to address the broken healthcare system."

In his order, Henderson said the "most notable characteristic of this case has been defendants' failure to achieve any substantial progress in bringing the medical care system even close to minimal constitutional standards."

Among the troubling aspects, the judge said, was an "emerging pattern of inadequate and seriously deficient physician quality." The union
representing the doctors has sued to block steps the administration says would improve the quality of its members and remove those who are incompetent.

Henderson took it upon himself to tour San Quentin State Prison in February and found it "horrifying." In an examination room where 100 men a day are screened, the judge wrote, there was no way to ensure sanitary conditions because there was no sink. He also reported seeing a dentist examine numerous prisoners without washing his hands or changing gloves between patients.

While acknowledging that the administration has tried to make improvements, Henderson also said the state "fails to exhibit the force of will necessary to tackle the problem," pointing out that prison officials say many of the changes cannot be undertaken without more funding.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prisons11may11,1,6937695.story

Posted by lois at 11:56 PM | Comments (0)

CT: House Passes Bill Equalizing Cocaine Penalties

By SUSAN HAIGH
Associated Press Writer

May 10, 2005, 5:41 PM EDT

HARTFORD, Conn. -- State lawmakers, worried about the racial makeup in Connecticut's prisons, moved closer than ever Tuesday toward equalizing Connecticut's mandatory sentences for crack and powder cocaine convictions.

On a 92-52 vote, the House of Representatives passed a bill that eliminates the disparity in the amount of crack versus powder cocaine that would trigger a mandatory minimum prison sentence. Similar crack cocaine bills have been brought up in the past but have never passed either of the two chambers.

The bill increases the minimum amount of crack cocaine from one-half gram to one ounce. That is the current minimum for powder cocaine.

The legislation awaits Senate action. If it becomes law, it would take effect on Oct. 1.

Legislators who represent city districts where crack is more prevalent than powder cocaine said the change in law is necessary to give young people another chance at life and avoid prison time. For example, under current law, someone caught selling one-half gram of crack cocaine faces the same mandatory five-year minimum sentence as someone selling 28 grams of powder cocaine.

"Our jails are filled with young men and women. We need a solution," said Rep. Douglas McCrory, D-Hartford.

"People say we're being soft on crime. I don't think so," he said. "If you walk out this building and walk a mile up the street, you'll see people going to jail every single day because we're tough on crime."

Citing state correction statistics, Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, said 72 percent of Connecticut's adult inmates and 82 percent of the juvenile inmates are black or Hispanic.

"That apparently is driven in large part by drug offenders," Lawlor said.

But Rep. Kevin Witkos, R-Canton, a police sergeant, said the issue is not about race but illegal drugs. Witkos said there are already provisions in state law that allow a judge to impose medical treatment to help an addict or to impose lighter sentences.

"We do not need this legislation," he said. "We are saying OK to drugs."

State lawmakers have been discussing ways to improve the disparities in Connecticut's criminal justice system for the past decade. According to A Better Way Foundation, which lobbies for drug treatment over incarceration, Connecticut leads the nation in racial disparity in its prisons.

"This is a clear message we want to reverse that," said Robert Rooks, the group's executive director, of Tuesday's vote.

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

Posted by lois at 11:46 PM | Comments (0)

ICE: War Supplemental Boosts Funding for Homeland Security Agencies

...."With the funding, ICE could hire an additional 50 criminal investigators, 168 immigration enforcement agents and deportation officers, and provide 1,950 additional detention beds. Lawmakers also directed that ICE realign its Office of Detention and Removal. "

DAILY BRIEFING May 4, 2005
By Chris Strohm
cstrohm@govexec.com

Emergency funding approved by congressional negotiators late Tuesday includes almost $1 billion in new money for homeland security agencies, including the FBI, Coast Guard and U.S. Marshals Service.

The funding is part of an $82 billion emergency spending measure for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The spending package is expected to be approved by the House this week and the Senate next week, then go to President Bush to be signed into law.

The package includes $635 million for agencies within the Homeland Security Department, specifically the bureaus of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. About $455 million would go to ICE to cover existing shortfalls and lift a hiring freeze that has lasted more than a year.

With the funding, ICE could hire an additional 50 criminal investigators, 168 immigration enforcement agents and deportation officers, and provide 1,950 additional detention beds. Lawmakers also directed that ICE realign its Office of Detention and Removal.

"The conferees are aware that ICE has been unable to obligate for fiscal 2005 enhancements and initiatives due to the uncertainty of its financial condition and its pending reprogramming," negotiators said. "The conferees wish to ensure that these programs are initiated in an orderly way, that requisite funds do not lapse, and that continuity of funding is assured."

The funding would also provide CBP about $177 million to hire, train, equip and support 500 new Border Patrol agents.

In order to provide the emergency funding, however, DHS would have to cut about $185 million. The cuts would be made in areas such as CBP and ICE salaries and expenses; the DHS Working Capital Fund; and the office of the undersecretary for management.

Lawmakers also directed DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff to provide Congress with a plan by June 15 for spending the emergency money.

The FBI would receive about $74 million in new funding, including about $35 million for operations in Iraq and $35 million for the Terrorist Screening Center. Lawmakers were critical of TSC, which is responsible for merging terrorist watch lists and checking people against databases.

Lawmakers said they were concerned about TSC's continued reliance on temporary staff to perform its mission.

They also asked for a long-term plan for TSC to be submitted to Congress by Sept. 1. The report must include a five-year staffing and spending plan; a list of TSC's existing and projected users, their sponsoring agency, and that agency's financial and in-kind contributions to TSC; a comprehensive description and direct cost estimate of the unique needs of users by agency, fiscal year, project, program and activity; an estimated cost for supporting each user agency; and any additional TSC requirements and costs associated with those requirements.

Lawmakers also directed the Justice Department's inspector general to evaluate whether TSC can support the Secure Flight program, which is being developed to screen airline passengers. The IG must issue a report by Aug. 1.

The Coast Guard would get $112 million for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and about $50 million to buy or build new patrol boats.

The U.S. Marshals Service would get $12 million to pump up judicial security services.

"Recent events prove a need for increased judicial security outside of courthouse facilities to better detect, assess and respond to threats and inappropriate communications made to judges," lawmakers wrote. "The conference agreement provides this funding for off-site security enhancements for judges, such as home intrusion detection systems."

This document is located at http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0505/050405c1.htm

Posted by lois at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)

Urgent Message from FAMM on "Gang Bill

Urgent! More federal mandatory minimum sentences coming, "gang bill" must be defeated! Call your member of Congress to urge a "NO" vote!

Take Action! Visit this page: http://capwiz.com/famm/utr/1/GTAHERCBVU/BSWSERCKBC/

Sometime during the week of May 9th, the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on H.R. 1279, an extremely harsh and unnecessary gang bill that includes many new and increased federal mandatory minimum sentences. We need your help to stop this bill.

Don't be daunted by the fact that this is a "gang" bill. This bill broadens the definition of gangs and metes out even harsher punishments for offenses that already have very long sentences. Mandatory minimum sentences are bad regardless of the crime because they prevent judges from making distinctions between defendants and sentencing them according to their culpability. Instead, mandatory minimums impose one-size-fits-all sentencing, which guarantees injustices.

THE ISSUE
H.R. 1279, the "Gang Deterrence and Community Protection Act of 2005," includes many new and increased mandatory minimum sentences. House members need to hear from their constituents that this bill is full of mandatory minimum sentences that will not help deter youth involvement in gangs; it will cost an estimated $7 billion dollars over the next 10 years; and it is an unnecessary federal intrusion into matters traditionally handled by the states.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH H.R. 1279?
For a complete analysis of the bill, go to the FAMM website www.famm.org. The short list of grievances we have with the bill is that it:

- Adds many new mandatory minimum penalties to the criminal street gangs statute;
- Broadens the definition of a street gang, and changes the definition of crime of violence to include drug trafficking crimes that involve no violence whatsoever;
- Increases from five to seven years the mandatory consecutive sentence for carrying or possessing a firearm in connection with a drug trafficking offense or violent felony;
- Increases the mandatory penalty for discharging a firearm from ten to 15 years, and
- Makes defendants convicted of "conspiracy" to commit drug trafficking or crimes of violence eligible for the mandatory consecutive firearm penalties if a firearm is involved, even if the defendant did not possess or use the firearm.

HOW YOU CAN HELP
Call your Representative between now and Wednesday, May 11th, the anticipated day of the vote, to let him/her know you don't support the bill. You can reach your member of Congress by clicking the "take action" link at the top of this e-mail, inserting your home zipcode in the box on the right or by calling the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. When calling, you do not need to say much more than the short paragraph that appears when you look up your Representative.

E-mails and letters are important too. To e-mail or print a letter to send to your Representative, please copy and paste this link into a web browser and it will allow you to send a message http://capwiz.com/famm/utr/1/GTAHERCBVU/OAGIERCKBD/

ACT NOW
Thank you for taking action on this important bill. Your calls and e-mails can make a big difference, so please act now and ask your family and friends to do the same.

Posted by lois at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)

NY: Democrats Offer Ideas to Trim Jail Population

Minority lawmakers against expansion
By Anthony Farmer
Poughkeepsie Journal, Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Democratic legislators have several ideas on how to handle overcrowding at the Dutchess County Jail. Building a multimillion-dollar addition isn't one of them.

The Legislature's eight Democrats released a multipoint plan Monday for dealing with the fact the jail routinely has many more inmates than it is approved to hold at the facility on North Hamilton Street in the City of Poughkeepsie.

The Republican majority tried this year to spend more than $500,000 for a design of a jail expansion. Democrats opposed that measure and Republican County Executive William Steinhaus vetoed it.

Democrats called for expanding programs that divert criminals from incarceration and trying to help them avoid repeating mistakes. They suggested placing more people under house arrest using electronic monitoring. And they proposed establishing a program to help inmates make bail and spend less time locked up before their trials.

If all those things are done, "there should be no reason to build more cells," said Minority Whip Sandra Goldberg, D-Wappinger. "We're not willing to spend money to design [an expansion] until it's really clear what we need."

The state Commission of Correction, which oversees jails, has been pressing the county to nearly double the size of its jail by adding spots for at least 300 more inmates. The expansion could cost as much as $70 million, not including finance costs or staffing and upkeep.

No more waivers

Only last week, the county had 315 inmates in a jail approved to hold 257. The county used to receive waivers to squeeze around 300 inmates into the facility, but the state yanked those because the county has been dragging its feet on expansion.

Legislature Chairman Brad Kendall, R-Dover, agreed the 300-bed addition is too large but said the idea no expansion is needed is not realistic.

A global solution to the jail overcrowding is needed, Kendall said. Programs that provide alternatives to incarceration need to be enhanced while the county moves forward with designing an expansion, he said.

"You have to do it simultaneously," Kendall said. "It's only then you can go to the commission and get them to back off their demand for a 300-cell expansion."

Anthony Farmer can be reached at apfarmer@poughkeepsiejournal.com

Posted by lois at 11:16 PM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2005

Study Links Discrimination, Blacks' Health Stress from Persisitant Subtle Slights

Study Links Discrimination, Blacks' Health Stress From Persistent, Subtle Slights May Increase Heart Disease Risk in Women

By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 1, 2005; A17

When Sandi Stokes waits for lunch at the sandwich shop near her office in downtown Washington, she notices the counter worker often assumes the white person next to her was there first.

Brenda Person frequently finds that when she goes shopping near her home in Silver Spring, clerks seem to ignore her and instead help a white customer.

Peggy Geigher, a District resident, says restaurant hostesses often seem to seat her near the bathroom, even when better tables are available.

Many African Americans tell stories such as these -- seemingly minor examples of subtle discrimination they experience routinely.

"It happens all the time," said Person, 56, a mother of two daughters. "It's part of day-to-day experiences, unfortunately. But you are never prepared for it -- it makes you feel like you're out of rhythm with the rest of the world, and like there's no justice."

Some medical researchers have begun to suspect that such incidents take a physical toll as well and may play a role in why black people tend to have much poorer health than white people. Over time, chronic, low-level stress from such incidents may increase the risk for a host of ills, including heart disease and cancer, according to the theory.

The hypothesis remains far from proven and is highly controversial. Skeptics say it is very difficult to rule out other factors, such as diet, lifestyle, personal perceptions and cultural differences. But support for the theory has been slowly accumulating in recent years, including a new study released yesterday linking such experiences to the early stages of heart disease. Some researchers say it is among the strongest pieces of evidence so far.

"Exposure to this kind of discrimination has real health implications for African Americans," said Tene T. Lewis, a health psychologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago who presented the findings at an American Heart Association meeting in Washington. "We need to figure out how it's happening and why it's happening and how we can prevent it from happening."

Health experts have known for decades that blacks and other racial minorities are at far greater risk than whites for many health problems, tend to suffer more complications when they get sick and are less likely to recover. Most of the differences can be explained because blacks tend to be poorer and have less access to high-quality health care, experts say. But even when socioeconomic factors such as income and education are accounted for, blacks still tend to fare worse, leading some to suspect that stress from insidious, persistent discrimination may play a role.

Studies have linked discrimination to higher rates of depression, and a small number have found associations with risk factors for physical disease, such as high blood pressure. The new study is the largest, most detailed to date to examine the relationship between discrimination and the early stages of a physical ailment.

Lewis and her colleagues studied 181 black women ages 45 to 58 in Chicago and Pittsburgh who are participating in a large, ongoing project, called the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN), that is examining a host of health issues among middle-age women.

As part of the SWAN project, every year between 1996 and 2001 the women answered a questionnaire designed to measure encounters with subtle racial discrimination. The questionnaire asked each woman if, in her "day-to-day life," she had had one of 10 experiences, including: "You are treated with less courtesy than other people"; "You receive poorer service than other people at restaurants or stores"; and "People ignore you or act as if you are not there."

"We're not talking overt incidents. It's not racism in the form of being chased down the street because you have brown skin or being called a name," Lewis said. "We're talking about subtleties -- everyday insults that build up over time."

The women's scores over the years were averaged on a four-point scale, and in 2001 the participants underwent an examination known as a CT scan to measure coronary artery calcification -- buildup of calcium inside arteries that supply blood to the heart. It is considered an early stage of heart disease -- the nation's leading cause of death.

The more discrimination the women reported, the more likely they were to have calcification, the researchers found. After accounting for age, geographic location and education, the researchers found that for every unit of increase in perceived discrimination, the odds of having calcification nearly tripled. The chances of having calcification remained 2 1/2 times higher even after the researchers took into consideration such factors as high blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking, age and body weight.

"It's a strong association," Lewis said in a telephone interview before her presentation.

Although the study involved only women, it is likely the findings also would hold true for men, and possibly for other ethnic groups, as well, Lewis said. "We're seeing a real risk factor here."

Other research has suggested that chronic stress may increase the risk of heart disease by raising levels of stress hormones, such as cortisol, as well as boosting levels of inflammation in the body, Lewis said.

"We believe it's the accumulated burden of this subtle racial discrimination that's having this effect," Lewis said. "It's not just having this experience once or twice but having it over and over again throughout a person's life."

Other researchers agreed, noting that stress can also suppress the immune system.

"I think the findings clearly indicate that racism matters a lot," said David R. Williams, an expert on racial disparities in health at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. "A lot of people dismiss reports of discrimination as just something that's in people's minds. What these data suggest is these minor incivilities and minor incidents of discrimination are actually consequential for physiologic function, and adversely affect health."

Norman Anderson, the chief executive officer of the American Psychological Association who has done research in this area, called the research "groundbreaking."

"It's one of the first to link exposure to discrimination to a specific disease process," Anderson said.

But other researchers were skeptical, saying the researchers had failed, for example, to differentiate whether the women had actually experienced discrimination or just thought they had.

"It's almost meaningless," said Sally Satel, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who is a vocal critic of such research. "If someone is rude to you, you don't know if it's discrimination or your perception. People who are already high-strung and hypervigilant may bring that kind of interpretation to the situation and are probably the kind of people who would be at high risk for heart problems."

Jennifer H. Mieres, director of nuclear cardiology at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., said the researchers had not fully ruled out the possibility that the results could be explained by other factors.

"While discrimination may be a factor here, I have a hard time seeing a direct link," said Mieres, a national spokesperson for the American Heart Association.

But Mieres called the study "thought-provoking" and worth following up.

Peter Bach, a senior adviser at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services who has done work in this area, said he also was skeptical but agreed that the hypothesis warrants further careful examination.

"This is an incredibly important area of research," Bach said. "It's going to be a very hard problem to fully disentangle because of the difficulty in assigning causality in something that is a patient's interpretation of their experience over a very long period of time. But it's a very important area to pursue in a scientifically valid way."

For their part, Stokes, Person and Geigher said they were uncertain whether their experiences were adversely affecting their health, although they would not rule it out.

"At the very least," Stokes said, "I'm caught off guard every time it happens, but I've learned that you can't allow people to ruin your life. So I just deal with it. I don't walk around with a chip on my shoulder. It is my belief every person is unique, so I try to give everyone I encounter the benefit of the doubt."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Posted by lois at 07:08 PM | Comments (0)

Million Family Member and Friends of Incarcerated People March on Washington, 8-13-05

Event: A Million Family Members and Friends of Incarcerated People
March on Washington, DC, August 13, 2005
”The response to the march to Washington spearheaded by Family Members of Inmates in Alabama has been overwhelming. This is a clear indication that a march like this is long overdue. For more information please go to www.journeyforjustice.org. This is the official website for the march. Family members and friends of people incarcerated, activists, organizations and other supporters are all asked to join together as a show of support on behalf of the inmates in this country. 2 million - 2 many. Please register as soon as possible.”

Posted by lois at 07:03 PM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2005

Tallulah Could Be A Leader, Not a Follower

The Vicksburg Post, Vicksburg, MS May 8, 2005

By Damon T. Hewitt, guest columnist

I know that we can do better. If given the choice, any civic-minded Louisianian would choose more education over more prisons.¹

The people of Tallulah are waging a battle to reclaim their future. They want to rid their town of the notorious Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth and replace it with a regional educational center that will serve the poorest parishes of Louisiana.

The Vicksburg Post
Vicksburg, MS

May 8, 2005

===========================================
Tallulah could be leader, not follower

By Damon T. Hewitt, guest columnist

ŒI know that we can do better. If given the choice, any civic-minded Louisianian would choose more education over more prisons.¹

The people of Tallulah are waging a battle to reclaim their future. They want to rid their town of the notorious Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth and replace it with a regional educational center that will serve the poorest parishes of Louisiana.

If they are successful, their achievement will not only usher in a new chapter of hope and opportunity in the life of the impoverished town of Tallulah, but will also establish Louisiana as a leader in reversing the insidious national trend of funding incarceration at the expense of education.

In its heyday, the privately owned Tallulah prison was known as one of the most brutal in the nation. But in many ways it was no different from most juvenile institutions across the country that warehouse children who get into trouble as a result of years of emotional and educational neglect. And like the other institutions, it was also doomed to fail the very children it was designed to serve.

With the prison¹s harsh conditions and well-documented abuses, it never provided youth with the services and attention they needed to overcome the circumstances that led them to crime in the first place. The state eventually assumed control of the privately owned prison; the governor and the Legislature rightly shut it down in 2004.

In addition to failing to rehabilitate its incarcerated youth, the prison also failed to bring economic development to the town. The people of Tallulah permitted the prison to be built because of promises that it would bring prosperity to the area by providing much-needed jobs to residents. But in the end, like so many other prisons across the country, the Tallulah facility generated little employment and actually did more harm than good by lowering property values, stifling economic development and scaring away potential investors.

Tallulah is ready for a change. After the last children were removed, the town¹s residents had a vision to transform the facility into an educational center that would not only create jobs for the town and the surrounding parishes of Madison, Tensas and East Carroll, but also provide educational opportunities for the area¹s youth.

The people of Tallulah began to realize their vision when the Louisiana Legislature passed and Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed Senate Bill 785. Championed by Sen. Charles Jones, D-Monroe, the bill authorized conversion of the facility into an educational center. However, an infamous ³cooperative endeavor agreement² between the state and the facility¹s owners, requiring the state to pay millions of dollars per year in debt service for a facility it does not own, stands in the way. Now the Department of Public Safety and Corrections is converting the facility into an adult prison, over the objections of the community and contrary to the intention behind Senate Bill 785.

As a Louisiana native, I know that our state deserves better. I know that we can do better. If given the choice, any civic-minded Louisianian would choose more education over more prisons. Louisiana must not miss this golden opportunity to improve the economic prospects of a depressed region, and to be a leader among states in turning back the disastrous tide of funding incarceration in lieu of education.

It is time for Gov. Blanco to bring the parties involved in the cooperative endeavor agreement to the table to negotiate the state out of this quagmire and to bring the people¹s vision to fruition. By doing so, the governor will be sending an important message to states and prison towns across the country that it is not too late to invest wisely.

Damon T. Hewitt is a civil rights attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. Mail reaches him at 99 Hudson St., Suite 1600, New York, NY 10013.
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Posted by lois at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)

Close the Doors of Youth Prisons

Published on Saturday, May 7, 2005 by the Los Angeles
By Deborah Carlos
It's been a long year of fear and worry since last Mother's Day. I spent that day agonizing about my daughter. She's locked inside the California Youth Authority, or CYA, one of the most dangerous kid prisons in the nation. She's been there for a year and a half. For a year and a half, I haven't slept through the night, knowing that she isn't safe.

Two years ago my daughter was jumped on the street and badly beaten. She was terrified for her life. There was no help for her, and she was never the same after the attack. Two months later she got into a fight and really hurt her assailant.
As a parent, I knew that I needed to get my daughter help. The juvenile justice system promised rehabilitation and restoration - for my daughter and our community. But that's not what happened. Instead, she was sent to the CYA.
And since then, my daughter has changed. When she went in she was a warm but confused girl of 17. Now she's a hardened young woman, untrusting and fearful. And it's no wonder after all she's been through in the CYA. I'm more scared than ever.
But change is coming to the CYA. As news of the prison's abuse and violence has made waves across the nation, the CYA is expected to release its long-awaited reform plan later this month. As a mother, I know those reforms can't come soon enough. That's because while I've waited and worried, three young men have died in the CYA and guards were caught on videotape viciously beating prone young people. This kind of abuse isn't the exception. It's the rule.
These youth prisons are broken, plain and simple: The staff is apathetic or abusive, the facilities are crumbling, and inside them, a culture of fear, violence and alienation only grows stronger by the year. Dressing them up is not going to work. Prettying them is not going to make Californians safer or our kids healthier.
The only thing that's going to work is closing these prisons down and replacing them with real rehabilitation. Californians know that. The governor knows that. The Legislature knows that. The families of kids in the CYA sure know that. It's time to shut down CYA prisons.
There is a better way. How do you rehabilitate a young person in trouble? Not with beatings. Not with sexual assault. Not with solitary confinement for months at a time. That kind of treatment just perpetuates the cycle of abuse. It means that nine out of 10 kids get in trouble again after their release from the CYA. Rehabilitation means holding kids accountable and giving them an opportunity to turn their lives around.
And rehabilitation just works better. It's less expensive, and it has a proven track record. Some states have closed their kid prisons and replaced them with small-scale rehab centers staffed by teachers and counselors, not prison guards. In Missouri, which has such a program, the recidivism rate is 25%. In California, nine of 10 kids return.
This new plan won't be worth the paper it's written on unless it closes these brutal youth prisons and starts moving California forward.
California can move out of the dark ages of juvenile justice. And I, for one, won't give up until the last kid prison is closed and Mother's Day can be a celebration for all families.
Deborah Carlos is a leader in Books Not Bars , the statewide campaign to overhaul the California Youth Authority.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
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Posted by lois at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)

May 08, 2005

Marie La Pinta--for jailed mom, the greatest gift

Paul Vitello, May 8, 2005

By every account, Marie La Pinta has been a model inmate during her 21 years in state prison, which makes perfect sense: She had so much practice being a model inmate during her marriage.

It was an arranged marriage, agreed upon in the early 1960s by her father in Sicily and a distant relative in America, Michael La Pinta. La Pinta wed her practically right off the boat. She was 19 and spoke no English.

The marriage was conducted according to standards that some would call old world and others would call extremely abusive: La Pinta told his wife what to do, where to go and with whom; and if he didn't like her performance of her duties, he would beat her. He beat her for 20 years.

In court documents filed years later, her two sons would testify that although their mother tried to shield them from the abuse, they knew that it went on; and once saw their father throw a serving plate at her head because he didn't like his supper. She fell to the floor, bleeding.

It might have been a habit of trying to shield her children from the violence in their home, in fact, that helped send Marie La Pinta to prison.

Her brother, Leonardo Crociata, killed the abusive husband in the La Pintas' West Islip home on March 27, 1983, in a struggle over a gun. The struggle began with the two men quarrelling over La Pinta's treatment of Marie.

Because she tried to help Crociata hide the body - which she later testified was mainly about hiding it from her two sons - Marie would be convicted as an accessory to murder and sentenced to a term of 25 years to life, the same sentence her brother received.

None of the history of her abuse came up at her 1985 trial. And even if it had, the court might not have been receptive to a "battered wife" defense, which was not used successfully until the early 1990s.

Marie La Pinta didn't even know she was a "battered wife" until she attended group therapy sessions at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, where she first heard the term.

"In a sense, she went to prison as a naive, unsure immigrant woman and grew up in there," said her son, Lenny La Pinta of Sayville, a saxophonist and high school music teacher who was 20 when his father was killed, and who still speaks lovingly of him as a fellow musician, the one "who put the saxophone in my hands."

Lenny and his brother, Anthony La Pinta, an attorney, have led a long - and until last week unsuccessful - campaign to free their mother from prison. They sought clemency from Gov. George Pataki three times, and were turned down three times without explanation.

But on Tuesday, in what seems likely to lead to their mother's release soon, a State Supreme Court justice granted a motion filed by Anthony La Pinta to vacate her conviction. The order was supposedly based on the fact that Marie and her brother were represented by defense attorneys who belonged to the same law firm - a potential conflict of interest - but really, between you and me, it had to have been based on compassion for a 69-year-old woman who should never have been sent to prison in the first place.

"She's an entirely different person now," Lenny La Pinta said. "She availed herself of every educational opportunity offered to her [in prison]. She studied for her GED. She was a model prisoner ..."

The two brothers and their families planned to visit Marie today for Mother's Day at the Albion Correctional Facility, where she was transferred recently. It will be their first visit since her conviction was vacated.

They have visited her so many times over the last 20 years, they know the routine like the catechism and will follow the rules like model visitors. "We'll line up and get scanned," said Lenny. "The guards will take any food we might bring for her, to have it inspected. Then they'll assign us a spot in the visiting room and we'll go sit there.

"She'll come out of a door on the other side of the room, having been searched, of course ..."

She'll be wearing state-issued dark green pants and a shirt of her choosing, as long as it's not blue, gray or black, the guards' colors. She'll sit across from them, facing the same direction all the other inmates face - just as they, the visitors, must face the same direction as all the visitors in the room face. Prison regulations.

Then the family will convene and, for the first time in 21 years, feel the mercy with which justice can be tempered.
"My father?" Lenny said in answer to a question. "I think he'd be very happy about this."

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-livit084250829may08,0,93196.column?coll=ny-li-columnists

Posted by lois at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2005

Human Rights Watch: Getting Away With Torture

http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0405/

Getting Away with Torture? Command Responsibility for the U.S. Abuse of Detainees
Source: Human Rights Watch

"As this report shows, evidence is mounting that high-ranking U.S. civilian and military leaders — including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Major General Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — made decisions and issued policies that facilitated serious and widespread violations of the law. The circumstances strongly suggest that they either knew or should have known that such violations took place as a result of their actions. There is also mounting data that, when presented with evidence that abuse was in fact taking place, they failed to act to stem the abuse."

Posted by lois at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)

Review of Michael Jacobson's "Downsizing Prisons"

City Limits MONTHLY
Date: May/ June 2005

CITY LIT: PRISON BREAK
New York City’s ex-jails chief prescribes a cure for the nation’s incarceration addiction. > Reviewed by Sasha Abramsky


Downsizing Prisons: How to Reduce Crime
and End Mass Incarceration
By Michael Jacobson
New York University Press, 292 Pages, $29.95

Over the past 30 years, America has undergone an expansion of its prison, parole and probation populations unprecedented in scale and impact. Today, more than two million Americans live behind bars, and many millions more are on parole or probation. That much is well-known.

Less well-known is that New York City, a showpiece for crime decline in the 1990s and 2000s, actually channeled fewer people into the prison system during the past decade, at a time when the rest of the country was busily putting more and more behind bars.

True, misdemeanor arrests have skyrocketed. The number of people cycling through New York City jails has risen. But as brutal as the policing strategies of Zero Tolerance New York have been, the total number of inmates in the city on any given day has gone down, and the total number of prisoners being shipped from the city to the state prison system has also declined. While states such as California and Texas have seen astronomical increases in their prisoner numbers in the past decade, New York State’s have increased only marginally--largely as a result of fewer city residents entering the criminal justice system.

In Downsizing Prisons, Michael Jacobson points to New York as a prime example of why states can’t simply incarcerate their way out of crime epidemics. There is, he writes, “no apparent relationship...between increased use of prisons and crime reductions.”

Jacobson is particularly well credentialed to make these arguments. Currently president of the Vera Institute of Justice and professor of criminology at John Jay College, he has behind him a long public service career--as a deputy budget director for New York City and as commissioner of the city’s Probation and Correction agencies. He’s got an insider’s understanding of which policies are good-sense social interventions and which are likely to be counter-productive, tools for demagogues and headline hunters that look “tough on crime” on paper but in practice cost a fortune and have very little impact.

Five years ago, the journalist Joel Dyer published The Perpetual Prisoner Machine. Dyer argued that a series of interlocking policies, budget choices, influences of tough-on-crime advocacy groups, and media representations of crime and punishment had come together to create an almost irresistible momentum toward expansion of the U.S. correctional apparatus. Whether crime went up or down, Dyer argued, enough people, businesses and government entities now had a vested interest in seeing the prison population rise that it would be extremely difficult to create effective counterweights.

In Downsizing Prisons, Jacobson theorizes just such a countervailing force, building on ideas developed in recent years by, among others, researchers at the Urban Institute and Joan Petersilia, a criminologist at the University of California, Irvine. In a world of overstretched state budgets, cutting dollars out of the correctional system is, Jacobson argues, both logical and politically possible. Reducing mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug offenders; trimming the amount of time parole violators spend back in prison; revamping parole to help ex-prisoners reenter society rather than focusing resources on catching them in minor rule violations. If the public can be convinced that such measures won’t lead to significantly rising crime rates, Jacobson believes, they will likely tolerate a shrinking of state correctional budgets.

Because New York City saw such spectacular successes in battling crime without doubling or tripling its felon population, Jacobson suggests that it should serve as a poster child to reassure nervous public officials nationwide about the viability--and marketability to their constituents--of such an approach. He proposes diverting prison funding to rebuilding damaged, high-crime neighborhoods in order to create environments less likely to generate such large numbers of addicts and criminals in the first place.

These shifts, he suggests, would in the long term lead to public attitude changes deep-rooted enough to allow more politicians to challenge existing correctional policies, without fear of being seen as soft on crime. And that evolving political terrain would, in turn, lead to further legislative changes that would channel more people away from the correctional system and into drug treatment, community service and other programs. He posits a series of feedback loops between budget offices, legislatures, public opinion and correctional agencies that, he hopes, will cumulatively create what might be termed “a perpetual prisoner reduction machine.”

Jacobson’s writing is not stellar. He is a technocrat who loves detail and numbers. At times, Downsizing Prisons tries to cover too much ground too quickly and risks becoming a statistics-laden primer. Yet this is an important book. In particular, the recommendations for reforming parole systems will likely become an influential part of the policy debate in many states. And Jacobson’s insights on New York should give pause to advocates of 1990s-style tough-on-crime policies that expand prisons.

Thirty years ago, theorists such as James Q. Wilson used crime data and public dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system to dramatically realign America’s crime-and-punishment debate. Over the past few years, budget crises, as well as public rebellions against policies emanating from the war on drugs--expressed through various state ballot initiatives--have created the conditions for another tectonic shift. Downsizing Prisons should help direct that movement.

Sasha Abramsky is the author of Hard Time Blues (St. Martins Press).

Posted by lois at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)

Contact MCI to Challenge their exploitation of families of incarcerated women and men

CURE-NY Newsletter, the Center for Constitutional Rights is sponsoring a bus to the MCI Stockholders’ Meeting in Chantilly, VA on May 16, to make MCI stockholders aware of the telephone injustice perpetrated on families of prisoners.
In support of this, please send a letter, fax or email to the MCI Directors to make them fully aware of our concern. The fax number for the MCI Board of Directors is (703) 886 6111. You can send an email to them via their website, http://global.mci.com/about/governance/board/contactboard/
Talking points below:

Challenge MCI's illegal contract with New York which:
• Charges families of persons incarcerated 630% more for a phone call from a New York State prison than for a call by the average consumer.

• Gives a kickback of 57.5% of the huge profits each year to the state of New York.

• Has taken $175 million from prisoner’s families for kickbacks to the NYS Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) since 1996.

• Unjustly targets mostly low income women and children, families of persons incarcerated.

• Makes it even harder for persons incarcerated to bond with family members, despite the fact that close contact with loved ones has been proven to decrease recidivism rates and future crime.

• Isolates children of persons incarcerated from their parent, leading to another lost generation.

Stop family exploitation;
Support family preservation;
Support the NYS “Family Connection” Bill, A.7231;
Amend the MCI/NYSDOCS contract;
Allow low-cost “debit” and “collect” services.

Posted by lois at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)

May 05, 2005

Tattling for Profit: Student Crime Stoppers

The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, LA
Thursday, April 28, 2005

Students know more about what other kids are up to than teachers and school administrators, and students' willingness to come forward when criminal activity is afoot is an important part of keeping schools safe.

But just because the information is valuable, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to pay for it, as many schools across the country are doing. As many as 2,000 schools and colleges have set up Student Crime Stoppers programs, which offer cash, prizes and parking places in exchange for information about students who break rules or commit crimes.

Paying for tips is an effective tool for police, and such hotlines are a legitimate approach to fighting crime in the community. But in a school setting, paying informants could cause as many problems as it solves.

Students who tattle for profit -- or who are suspected of doing so -- could very well be targeted for revenge. Others might falsely implicate classmates in the hope of gain. A toxic atmosphere of paranoia, rather than a safer campus, could be the end result.

Students are naturally reluctant to tell on each other. Nobody likes a snitch, and overcoming that reluctance is a challenge for schools. But the notion that students are best motivated by the prospect of a material reward is a terribly cynical view. It may result in some tips, but it won't teach young people anything about right and wrong or the responsibilities of citizenship.

The reward system works on the principle that greed will trump loyalty. A better approach, though, would be to help young people understand that loyalty is misplaced when it allows someone to hurt themselves or others.

Schools need to help students understand that they have a vital stake in creating a safe, crime-free school and community. Surely there are better ways to do that than paying them off.

Posted by lois at 04:55 PM | Comments (0)

Machinery of Death: Seven Executions in May

The machinery of death is gearing up for a shameful month filled with executions. There are currently seven executions scheduled across the nation during May. Some of the men listed here are quite likely innocent.
Now is our time to act. We must register our outrage at the taking for so many human lives. Even though none of these executions is scheduled in Washington State, by joining our voices with the voices of countless supporters around the nation we can let these Governors know that the world is watching. We can show them they have our support if they will only act with clarity and compassion.
6 May: Earl Richmond Jr., North Carolina
12 May: George James Miller, Oklahoma
13 May: Michael Ross, Connecticut
18 May: Bryan Wolfe, Texas
18 May: Vernon Brown, Missouri
19 May: Richard Cartwright, Texas
19 May: Gary Thomas Allen, Oklahoma

Contact information and background information follows:

1. Earl Richmond, Jr. – Scheduled to die in North Carolina on May 6
North Carolina Governor Mike Easley
E-Mail: http://www.governor.state.nc.us/email.asp?to=1
Phone: (919) 733-4240, or (919) 733-5811
Fax: (919) 715-3175 or (919) 733-2120
On May 6, 2005 at 2:00 a.m., the state of North Carolina is scheduled to execute Earl Richmond Jr., a black man, for the July 1992 murders of Helisa Hayes and her two children, Phillip and Darien, in Cumberland County.

Richmond, heavily intoxicated on crack cocaine and alcohol, went to the Hayes residence on Nov. 2, 1991. There, he and Ms. Hayes engaged in an act of consensual sex. Shortly thereafter, the two became embroiled in a heated argument. The argument became violent, with Ms. Hayes hitting Richmond and Richmond, in return, punching her in the face. Richmond then raped and killed Ms. Hayes. Afterwards, Richmond killed her son and daughter.

Richmond fully confessed to the triple homicide. He was charged with the rape and murder of Ms. Hayes and the murders of her two children. At trial, he pled not guilty to all charges. The jury found him guilty of three counts of first-degree murder and one count of first-degree rape. It imposed three death sentences and one term of life imprisonment on Richmond for his crimes. Richmond’s trial lasted only two days.

Richmond’s mitigating circumstances are substantial. He was forced to endure a harsh, abusive childhood. As a child, he suffered from physical and verbal abuse at the hands of an alcoholic father. Additionally, one of his sisters claims that there is a possibility that he was sexually abused by their father.

A psychologist and psychiatrist that examined Richmond testified that he was severely depressed, possessed a personality disorder, and suffered from substance abuse. They concluded that these conditions, coupled with his troubled upbringing, significantly lessened his ability to act in accordance with the law.

In addition to these unfortunate circumstances and impairments, Richmond’s alcohol consumption and drug use on the night prior to the murders puts into question the extent to which he was able to act with premeditation. One of Richmond’s sisters testified that she witnessed Richmond consume an excessive amount of alcohol at a party that evening. Additionally, she admits that she and Richmond both smoked crack cocaine later on in the night. The large quantity of alcohol consumed by Richmond and his use of crack cocaine suggest that Richmond’s ability to plan the Hayes’ murders was significantly impaired.

Richmond’s behavior during the early morning hours of Nov. 2, 1991 was most likely a product of an unhealthy upbringing and substance abuse problems. He deserves treatment—not death. Write to Gov. Mike Easley of North Carolina and inform him of your opposition to the execution of Earl Richmond Jr.

2. George James Miller – Scheduled to die in Oklahoma on May 12
Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry
E-Mail: http://www.governor.state.ok.us/message.php
Phone: (405) 521-2342
Fax: (405) 521-3353
The state of Oklahoma is scheduled to execute George James Miller, a black man, via lethal injection for the Sept. 1994 murder of Kent Dodd in Oklahoma County.

On Sept. 17, 1994, Dodd, a hotel employee, was viciously attacked by a perpetrator. Police arriving to the scene of the crime found Dodd clinging to life. He had been stabbed multiple times, severely beaten, and burned with acid. Before he died, Dodd managed to inform the officers that his assailant was “a black man in grey pants.” Although Dodd knew Miller, albeit by the alias of Jay Elkins, Dodd never mentioned any variation of the name Jay Elkins while communicating with the officers.

While the death penalty is never an acceptable form of punishment, its potential use in this case is particularly alarming because of Miller’s strong claim of innocence. The case built against him was entirely based on relatively weak circumstantial evidence and an improbable theory about blood smears found near Dodd’s body.

At trial, the “strongest” evidence of Miller’s guilt offered by the prosecution was a bloody footprint found at the scene of the crime and a microscopic drop of blood found on a sandal that belonged to Miller. A forensic scientist called by the State was only able to conclude that Miller’s sandals could have produced the print. And while the blood found on Miller’s sandal did possess a resemblance to Dodd’s blood, the State was unable to definitively conclude that it belonged to Dodd. The State’s expert testified, “it could have come from 1 in 19 Caucasians, 1 in 16 African-Americans or 1 in 55 Hispanics.”

Due to the weak circumstantial evidence relied upon by the prosecution, it is possible that the conviction was secured during the prosecution’s closing argument, in which the absurd contention was made that Dodd had attempted to identify Miller as his assailant by using blood to smear the word “Jay” on a nearby door. Because the prosecution presented this theory in its closing argument, the defense was unable to offer a rebuttal. Had they been able to rebut the theory, the defense could have shown the jury that the blood smears in question were half way up the door, and, therefore, it was highly improbable that an immobilized Dodd produced them. The defense could have also shown that no traces of blood were found on Dodd’s fingers or under his fingernails.

Miller’s claims of innocence should not go ignored. To date, 9 men have been exonerated from Oklahoma’s death row and a total of 119 men have been exonerated from death rows nationwide since 1973.

Faced with strong doubt regarding Miller’s guilt, the state of Oklahoma should not impose upon him an irreversible punishment like the death penalty. There is simply no just remedy for a wrongful execution.

Please contact Gov. Brad Henry and urge him to err on the side of caution by halting the execution of this potentially innocent man.

3. Michael Ross – Scheduled to die in Connecticut on May 13 (the first execution in New England in more than 44 years)
Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell
E-Mail: Governor.Rell@po.state.ct.us
Phone: 800-406-1527
The state of Connecticut is scheduled to execute Michael Bruce Ross, a white man, on May 13, 2005, for the 1983 and 1984 New London County murders of Robin Stavinsky and minors Wandy Baribeault, Leslie Shelley, and April Brunais. All four victims were white.

If the death sentence is carried out, it will be the first execution in Connecticut in nearly 45 years. In 1994, the Supreme Court overturned Ross's death sentence because the jury had not been able to consider evidence that the murders were the result of sexual sadism, a psychiatric disorder. At a re-sentencing in 2000, the jury rejected the sexual sadism claim as a mitigating factor and once again sentenced Ross to death.

Ross, a graduate of Cornell University, has been diagnosed with mental illness by several mental health professionals, including the State’s own psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Miller.

According to evidence presented at trial, Ross’ childhood consisted of abuse from his mother. His siblings testified at trial that he often received the brunt of their mother’s anger through physical and mental abuse. Ross’ mother was institutionalized twice for issues pertaining to suicidal tendencies and for the abuse of her children.

One psychiatrist who evaluated Ross, Dr. Borden, stated, “All you have to do is look at the Norwich hospital records…and right there in black and white they talked about the child abuse going on….” Borden went on to note that there is reason to believe that the abuse was serious as it was rarely documented at that time.

After spending years trying to prove that he is suffering from a mental illness that he says drove him to rape and kill eight women in total, Ross now says he prefers to be executed. He claims he believes it to be the least painful scenario for the families of his victims.

The execution of the mentally ill is a deplorable violation of international human rights standards. In April 2000, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights urged all states that maintain the death penalty "not to impose it on a person suffering from any form of mental disorder” and “not to execute any such person."

Ross was scheduled for execution on Jan. 26, 2005, but received a stay when questions regarding his competency and legal counsel halted his execution.

The Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles is not able to grant clemency because Ross has refused to file a clemency petition at this time. Please write to Gov. Jodi Rell asking her to grant Mr. Ross clemency on the grounds that the execution of the mentally ill violates international human rights standards.

4. Bryan Wolfe – Scheduled to die in Texas on May 18
Texas Governor Rick Perry
E-Mail: http://www.governor.state.tx.us/contact
Phone: (512) 463-2000
Fax: (512) 463-1849
The state of Texas is scheduled to execute Bryan Wolfe, a black man, on May 18, 2005 for the Feb. 1993 murder of Bertha Lemell, a black woman, in Jefferson County.

In Feb. of 1993, Bertha Lemell was fatally stabbed in her home in Beaumont, Texas. Serology and DNA tests conducted on blood found at the scene of the crime linked Wolfe to the murder.

Because Wolfe lacked the financial resources needed to secure private counsel, he was represented at trial by a court-appointed attorney. There are many indications that Wolfe’s trial counsel, who was admittedly overburdened with other cases, did not offer adequate representation.

During the pre-trial period, Wolfe’s trial counsel failed to adequately prepare for Wolfe’s defense. He admits that he met with Wolfe only once and did not interview any witnesses during this period.

The poor pre-trial preparation likely contributed to Wolfe’s inability to secure a plea bargain from the District Attorney. Prior to Wolfe’s case, the only capital defendants in Jefferson County not to receive plea bargain offers had been accused of murdering either law enforcement officials or children.

Despite the fact that the State’s case against Wolfe largely hinged on DNA evidence, his trial counsel lacked sufficient familiarity with DNA science. DNA expert Dr. Edward Blake categorized Wolfe’s trial counsel’s understanding of DNA science as “non-existent.”

Lastly, Wolfe’s trial counsel failed to call any witnesses to testify on behalf of Wolfe or introduce any mitigating evidence at the trial’s penalty phase. Without any mitigating evidence to counter the aggravating evidence offered by the prosecution, this “strategy” virtually assured that the jury would impose a sentence of death on Wolfe.

Unfortunately, Wolfe’s representation woes did not cease with trial counsel. An application for writ of habeas corpus filed by a member of his appellate counsel was so poorly constructed that two judges in Texas’ highest court felt that it raised serious questions regarding “whether [Wolfe was] afforded effective assistance of counsel.”

Wolfe’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel clearly has merit. While capital punishment is an abhorrent practice that always lacks justification, it is particularly objectionable in this case because Wolfe was not afforded adequate representation at trial and during part of the appeals process.

Please write to Gov. Rick Perry and urge him to stop the execution of Bryan Wolfe.

5. Vernon Brown – Scheduled to die in Missouri on May 18
Missouri Governor Matt Blount
E-mail: mogov@mail.state.mo.us
Phone: 573-751-3222
Fax: 573-751-1495

Shortly after midnight on May 18, 2005, the state of Missouri is scheduled to execute Vernon Brown. Brown is to be executed for the October 1986 murder of Janet Perkins in St. Louis City. Perkins was 9 years old at the time of her death.

On Oct. 24, 1986, Brown lured Perkins into his residence, tied her up, and then strangled her to death. He was arrested three days later for the murder.

Brown was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. In a later, unrelated case, Brown was convicted of first-degree murder for the March 1985 death of Synetta Ford. He received a death sentence for that crime as well.

Brown experienced a tumultuous childhood. His father had absolutely no presence in his life and his mother was often not around the house. This left Brown to be largely reared by his grandparents. Brown’s grandfather was overly stern and terribly abusive, sexually molesting and severely beating Brown throughout his youth. Brown’s difficult childhood was further complicated by a head injury that he endured at a young age. Brown’s attorney maintains that, “since the injury, [Brown] has suffered severe headaches during which his body would become rigid, he would lapse into a trance and would not remember what happened.”

Although Brown has confessed to Perkins’ murder, he claims that his ability to reflect upon his behavior prior to and during the commission of the crime was diminished by drug use. Brown, an admitted PCP user, asserts that his PCP use caused him to experience an episode of blackouts while Perkins was inside his home. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, PCP, which has anesthetic properties, “induces a profound departure from reality, which leaves the user capable of bizarre behavior and severe disorientation.”

Because Brown endured a traumatic childhood and there exist indications that he was not acting in a conscious manner when he took Perkins’ life, his execution should not proceed.

Please write to Gov. Matt Blunt and express your opposition to the state of Missouri’s plan to execute Vernon Brown.

6. Richard Cartwright – Scheduled to die in Texas on May 19
Texas Governor Rick Perry
E-Mail: http://www.governor.state.tx.us/contact
Phone: (512) 463-2000
Fax: (512) 463-1849
Richard Cartwright, a white man, is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas on May 19, 2005 for the Aug. 1996 murder of 34 year-old Nick Moriada a Latino man in Nueces County

Prosecutors allege that on the night of Aug. 1, 1996, longtime friends, Kelly Overstreet and Dennis Haygood, and their recent acquaintance, Cartwright, robbed Moriada. The men robbed Moriada, a gay man, by pretending to be homosexual. Following the robbery, it is claimed that Overstreet stabbed Moriada in the neck and back and then Cartwright shot him. A state medical examiner contended that Moriada’s death was caused by the gunshot wound.

Cartwright was charged with capital murder for Moriada’s death. The State’s case against Cartwright relied heavily on the testimony of his co-defendants and circumstantial evidence. Nevertheless, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Lesser charges in connection with the robbery and murder of Moriada were brought against Overstreet and Haygood. They were convicted and received sentences of 50 years and 20 years, respectively. Their lesser charges and relatively light sentences were, in large part, due to their willingness to turn State’s evidence against Cartwright.

Since arrest, Cartwright has continuously maintained his innocence. He contends that Overstreet and Haygood are responsible for Moriada’s death. At trial, evidence was presented that indicated that the gun used in the commission of the robbery and murder of Moriada belonged to either Overstreet or Haygood. A medical examiner testified that when multiple people are involved in a crime in which gunfire occurs, it is typically the owner of the gun that does the shooting. Additionally, the medical examiner stated that he believed that Moriada was attacked by two individuals. In his opinion, the strong familiarity that Overstreet and Haygood possessed with one another made them the most likely assailants—not Cartwright, who they had met only one week prior.

Cartwright has a strong innocence claim. Please write Gov. Rick Perry and demand that this execution be halted.

7. Gary Thomas Allen – Scheduled to die in Oklahoma on May 19
Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry
E-Mail: http://www.governor.state.ok.us/message.php
Phone: (405) 521-2342
Fax: (405) 521-3353

Barring a decision by Governor Brad Henry to adhere to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board’s recommendation of clemency for Garry Thomas Allen, Allen will be executed on May 19, 2005. He was sentenced to death for the November 1986 death of his girlfriend, Lawanna Gail Titsworth, in Oklahoma County.

In the days leading up to Titsworth’s death, Allen had become severely distraught over her recent decision to leave him. On November 21, 1986, a disturbed and heavily intoxicated Allen confronted Titsworth in a parking lot. A verbal altercation ensued; it ended with Allen shooting and killing Titsworth. A police officer soon arrived on the scene. During the arrest attempt, the officer and Allen became involved in a struggle. It ended with the officer’s gun discharging—shooting Allen in the head. A CAT scan conducted on Allen soon thereafter showed that the gunshot wound had caused permanent brain damage.

Allen was subsequently charged with first-degree murder, and two lesser offenses. He was found incompetent to stand trial and sent to a state hospital for psychiatric treatment. He was discharged after four months of treatment despite little evidence that his psychiatric condition had greatly improved.

A competency trial was then held, in which the question of whether or not Allen was competent to stand trial was put before a jury. Allen’s counsel requested access to a neuropsychological examination in order to better ascertain the extent of his brain damage. The court denied the request. At the completion of the trial, the jury, using a now defunct standard of competency, found Allen competent to stand trial.

At the plea proceedings, Allen entered blind pleas of guilty for the charges against him. A blind plea of guilty is “[a] guilty plea made without the promise of a concession from either the judge or the prosecutor.” Even though Allen’s counsel believed that he lacked the competency needed to enter these pleas, she did not object.

By pleading in the aforementioned manner, Allen effectively forfeited his rights to put on a defense and to be sentenced by a jury of his peers. The trial judge accepted the pleas and sentenced Allen to death for Titsworth’s murder.

Had Allen been able to put on a defense, he could have made a compelling argument that he did not act with the requisite intent for the murder to be considered premeditated. Not only was Allen heavily intoxicated at the time of the offense, but also he possessed a well-documented history of mental problems, including severe head trauma and epileptic seizures.

Additionally, there are questions surrounding Allen’s competency to be executed. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Ford v. Wainwright bars the execution of incompetent inmates. Allen’s seizures have significantly worsened since his incarceration and it appears as though this has had severe effects on his mental condition. His IQ and cognitive abilities have precipitously declined. His IQ is now at a level that places him slightly above Oklahoma’s legal threshold for mental retardation. The execution of the mentally retarded was ruled unconstitutional in Atkins v. Virginia.

On April 20, 2005, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, recommended clemency for Allen by a vote of 4-1. A clemency recommendation from the Board is by no means a common occurrence. Only 9 such recommendations have been made since the reinstatement of capital punishment in Oklahoma in 1973.

Please contact Governor Brad Henry and urge him to follow the Pardon and Parole Board’s clemency recommendation for Garry Thomas Allen.

[We would like to thank the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (www.ncadp.org) for the background information provided here.]

We welcome all feedback about how we are doing. Please send any comments or criticism to info@abolishdeathpenalty.org.

The Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
P. O. Box 3045
Seattle, WA 98114
(206) 622-8952
www.abolishdeathpenalty.org

Posted by lois at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)

May 04, 2005

Lacking $2 Bus Fare to Shelter, People Who Are Homeless, Get a Free Ride to Jail

May 4, 2005, NY Times

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

The M35 bus at night is a place of weary faces and empty pockets. It runs from Spanish Harlem to the largest men's homeless shelter in the city. Every night, men file on to get to a place to sleep. Sometimes they pay the $2 fare; sometimes they pay just a penny.

In recent years, other riders have appeared, just as scruffy but with a different goal. These are undercover police officers, aboard to arrest fare-beaters.

The arrests are part of a policy that began in the 1990's, when the New York Police Department took aim at minor crimes, like unlicensed street peddling and fare-beating. Since then, violent crime has fallen sharply, but arrests for minor crimes remain high. Misdemeanor arrests are up by 60 percent from 1990.

Arrests for minor crimes, the city says, lead to people the police are already looking for and deter more serious crimes.

Proof that it works, officials say, is in the vastly improved statistics on serious crime. Defense lawyers argue that the arrests are unfair because those arrested do not have fare money and pose no threat to society.

The M35 bus arrests offer a vivid look at the reality behind the debate. They began several years ago, after a complaint by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that a rowdy group of riders had tried to throw a driver off the bus for challenging them over the fare. Since then, undercover officers have monitored the route.

The bus starts at 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, crosses the Triborough Bridge and reaches the shelters on Wards Island, a small island across the East River, in less than 10 minutes.

Homeless men and the lawyers who defend them say that the city created a Catch-22 when it designated the shelter as the place to sleep but then started arresting people who could not pay for the bus to get there. Even if they wanted to walk to the shelter, the men said, they could not, because the only footbridge from Manhattan is closed in the late fall and winter and at other times closes after 8 p.m.

"You're setting me up," said Shavar Shaver, 21, of Brooklyn, who was arrested with five other people for not paying his fare in January. "They're the easiest victims, the homeless people. Its entrapment. Why don't you go fight some real crime?"

Police and city officials say there is no excuse for fare-beating. One of the shelter operators runs a van service to Manhattan from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, said a spokesman for the city's Department of Homeless Services. Those who can show written proof of appointments in the city are given bus fare.

But the homeless men said the van service was not always reliable. Nicholas Haddon, 53, was arrested last month for fare-beating on the M35 after what he said was a long wait for a van that never arrived.

"I'm frustrated," said Mr. Haddon, who was evicted along with his roommate from a rented room in the Bronx. "There are some of us who are trying to better our lives, and get out of the system, but they're making it harder for us."

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said officers were not harassing homeless men but were simply reacting to complaints from riders and the transportation authority. He said in a telephone interview that it was not unusual for the police to focus on fare-beaters to keep them from committing other crimes, and that the police often found people with warrants out for their arrest. The men are not immune from the law just because they are homeless, Mr. Browne said.

"We're not trying to prevent someone from going to a shelter, but at the same time you can't have large numbers of individuals evading the fare and essentially turning the bus - a public transportation facility - into their own vehicle," he said.

Indeed, that is exactly what M35 drivers interviewed along the route say charge the men are doing.

"They take it for granted that this is their bus," said one driver who asked that his name not be used because he had not been authorized to speak. "You can tell; it doesn't smell so good in here," he added, saying the homeless men often smelled of marijuana and beer.

Still, many drivers expressed sympathy for the men, with one saying he had developed a code to warn riders that the police might be on the bus. All the drivers allowed men who did not pay to board. The drivers say they are not required to force payment from the men.

"It's really sad," another driver said. "I've seen guys deteriorating right before my eyes."

Officers are cleverly disguised. On a night in late March, two men in scruffy clothing sat on the bus. One carried a pizza box. The other had a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. They suddenly stood, flashed badges and arrested a rider for not paying. In another arrest, officers posed as boyfriend and girlfriend, chatting in the back of the bus.

As the cases have made their way into court, they have confounded judges. Some refuse to give any sentence and order the defendants released, once they have pleaded guilty to the typical charge a misdemeanor crime of theft of services.

"I have been seeing these cases over and over, but nobody is telling me exactly what's going on," said Judge Evelyn Laporte of Manhattan Criminal Court.

In interviews, five criminal court judges who spoke on the condition of anonymity questioned the wisdom of the arrests, saying that they wasted judicial resources. A court system spokesman said he could not quantify the cost of arraigning one defendant, a process that involves a judge, a prosecutor, court officers and a court stenographer. Most defendants also spend the night in jail, which costs $163, according to a breakdown by the city.

"I consistently put on the record how outraged I am by the whole thing," said Kathryn E. Freed, an arraignment court judge. "It's a complete waste of the court's time. It takes a lot of person-power to process them, house them and feed them. Meanwhile, the shelter, where they're heading, is set up to do just that."

Perhaps most frustrating, some of the homeless men said, is that even after moving through the legal system, they are in the same predicament they were the day before: They still have to get to the shelter.

"It's going through the system for nothing," said Howard Breely, 49, who was recently released from a drug treatment program at a shelter on Wards Island. "I still have to get back there."

Since its financial troubles last year, the Legal Aid Society, the largest criminal defense organization in the city, no longer gives out subway fare to poor clients.

Many of the fare-beaters have criminal records, which means that judges cannot dismiss the cases. The result is misdemeanor convictions without any further jail time. The men can also lose a shelter bed if they are away overnight, forcing them to be reprocessed.

Even so, the arrests seem to be having the effect desired by the authorities. The drivers say they feel safer with the police present, and payments have shot up.

The banter on the bus also speaks of compliance. One night last month, a gaunt man in a wheelchair, who identified himself only as Smokey, shouted to a friend who was boarding that he was safe from arrest since everyone had seen him pay his fare.

"I ain't getting arrested for no $2," his friend said.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 09:41 PM | Comments (0)

"Helping Neighbors" - selling prisons to rural towns

Here's a little propaganda from the California Department of Corrections, pitching the alleged "benefits" towns who host prisons receive.

Check out the webpage for a few heartwarming photos:

http://www.corr.ca.gov/communicationsoffice/publicsafetyps/helpingneighbors.asp

Helping Neighbors

Prisons make good neighbors. They provide a strong economic base, create
hundreds of jobs, and supply and supervise inmate workers for vital
community service projects. Corrections staff enrich community life; many
actively participate in local organizations and issues.
A Strong Economy

A prison is a clean, stable, recession-proof industry. It provides permanent
employment to 600 to 1,600 people. This translates to an annual payroll of
$20 million to $52 million--money that helps fuel the local economy. Every
year, a prison also buys between $1 million and $4 million in goods and
services from the surrounding area. As local businesses prosper, more job
opportunities develop. In fact, it's estimated that one new job in the
community is created for every two prison jobs.

Community Partnerships

Prisons go out of their way to lend a helping hand to their neighbors.
Prison staff recognized the challenge most local governments face in
maintaining critical community services. The work always exceeds the
available resources. Prisons offer what cities and counties often lack:
people to do that work.

Possibilities for using inmate labor are practically unlimited.

Carefully screened, supervised inmate crews are available to work outside
prison walls. In San Diego, an inmate crew keeps the Tijuana Trolleys clean
and polished. Crews from the Jamestown prison designed, constructed and
maintain a mini-park that includes elaborate masonry work. At Vacaville and
Soledad, inmates built and maintain Little League facilities.

The sight of inmate crews picking up trash along local roadways is familiar
to all communities with prisons.

Inmates confined to the institution still play a valuable role in serving
the community. Many small fire companies owe their shiny, restored fire
engines to prison vehicle refurbishing industries. The Tehachapi prison dry
cleaning shop keeps the local high school band uniforms spotless. The
judge's bench, witness box, spectator seating, and other wood furnishings in
Susanville's new Justice Court were built at the local prison.

During emergencies, Corrections is there. After the 1989 Loma Prieta
earthquake in the Bay Area, Corrections staff helped earthquake victims
apply for federal aid. Inmate kitchen crews fed thousands of victims and
rescue workers. Prisons also respond to mutual aid requests from local law
enforcement agencies. They help with crowd control and search and rescue
operations or assist with other local emergencies.

The partnerships forged between prisons and their neighbors are strong and
long-lasting.


Thanks to their prison neighbors, San Diego's Tijuana Trolleys are always
clean and shiny.


Susanville's new municipal courtroom furniture was designed and built by
inmates at the local prison.


This Vacaville correctional officer helps enrich his community by
volunteering time to youth programs.


Prison crews keep parks in nearby communities clean, bright, and graffiti
free.

Posted by craig at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)

Marie LaPinta---FREE!

In the end it was Marie's son, Anthony, who had become a lawyer because of Marie's case, that freed his mother...not Pataki who would not give clemency!

Newsday:Sons rise to help imprisoned mom

Judge vacates murder conviction of Sayville woman after two-decade campaign by family, friends BY ALFONSO A. CASTILLO STAFF WRITER

May 4, 2005

Marie La Pinta soon will come home to Sayville, 21 years after she was convicted of murder in the death of her husband, after a State Supreme Court justice vacated her conviction.

La Pinta's family members learned yesterday about Justice Robert W. Doyle's ruling, which marks the end of a legal campaign that gained massive support from around the world but often resulted in heartache for the family. Despite her family's depiction of La Pinta, 69, as a tortured wife who only played a passive role in the death of her husband, Michael La Pinta, Gov. George Pataki repeatedly rejected her requests for clemency.

Supporters gathered 19,000 signatures on a petition to free La Pinta and appeared on national television.

"I became so angry at the system, because no way in hell does this woman deserve this sentence," said Pamela Raymond, owner of the Sayville Inn restaurant that served as the campaign's headquarters. "This is such wonderful news."

In the end, it was a legal motion filed last month by her son, Hauppauge defense attorney Anthony La Pinta, and agreed to by the district attorney's office, that persuaded Doyle to overturn the 1984 conviction.

"It's been a labor of love, really," said a "euphoric" Anthony La Pinta, who was inspired by his mother's case to become an attorney. "I never did lose hope, because I really felt that, given the right platform and given the right argument, I can't see any human being feeling that this wasn't a terrible injustice."

The motion argued that Marie La Pinta was denied due process when she was not informed before her murder trial of the possible conflict of interest posed by the fact that she and her brother, co-defendant Leonardo Crociata, were represented by lawyers from the same law firm.

Had she known about the conflict at the time, she might have hired another lawyer, who could have presented a more thorough defense, in part by better explaining her circumstances. La Pinta said she fled her native Italy to get away from her abusive father but ended up in an arranged marriage to a man who beat her and confined her to their home.

Michael La Pinta was shot in a scuffle with Crociata, who recruited his sister to dispose of the body. Both were convicted of second-degree murder. Crociata remains in prison, serving a 25-years-to-life sentence.

Prosecutors noted the conflict of interest then and formally objected, but no one discussed the issue with La Pinta, who did not speak English well.

"She really didn't have the benefit of pure, independent counsel," Anthony La Pinta said. "And if she did, her theory at trial would have been much different than it was."

In his ruling, Doyle noted that La Pinta and Crociata "had pronounced differences in the type and quantum of evidence against them" and that her lawyer, Steven Kimelman, failed to pursue several viable defenses.

Though La Pinta already had served about 22 years of her 25-to-life sentence, Anthony La Pinta said it could have been another 10 years before she was paroled. By all accounts, La Pinta had been an exemplary prisoner.

Doyle's ruling came with the consent of prosecutors, who agreed that La Pinta could have legitimately mounted a "battered wife" defense. Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota said yesterday that he "absolutely" expects to reach a plea deal with La Pinta that would "aid in her freedom."

"Quite frankly, I am happy. I am happy for her and her family," Spota said yesterday. "The time has come that she should be living with her children and grandchildren."

Path to freedom

March 27, 1983: Marie La Pinta's brother Leonardo Crociata fatally shoots her husband, Michael. Crociata and Marie La Pinta are spotted by a guard as they try to dispose of the body in a Babylon dump.

1984: In February, a Suffolk County jury convicts La Pinta and her brother of second-degree murder. Both defendants are sentenced to serve 25 years to life.

December 2000: La Pinta's first request for clemency is denied by Gov. George Pataki.

August 2002: La Pinta's sons, Anthony of West Islip and Lenny of Sayville, mount a second campaign for executive clemency.

December 2002: La Pinta is not included in the group of people granted clemencies, despite a massive media campaign. Family vows to try again next year.

Dec. 24, 2003: Pataki formally rejects La Pinta's request for clemency.

2004: Supporters unable to apply for clemency this year because of formal rejection the previous year.

April 2005: La Pinta's son Anthony, a Hauppauge defense attorney, files legal motion arguing that his mother was denied due process.

May 2005: State Supreme Court Justice Robert W. Doyle overturns La Pinta's murder conviction. Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota said he expects to reach a plea deal with La Pinta that would "aid in her freedom."

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

For 2 sons, 'happy tears'

BY ALFONSO A. CASTILLO AND KEIKO MORRIS
STAFF WRITERS

May 4, 2005

For the past two decades, Anthony and Lenny La Pinta have spent Mother's Day much the same way - making the long trip to an upstate prison to visit their mother, Marie, who is serving 25 years to life for killing their father. They will make the same trip this Sunday, but with a special gift in tow - Marie La Pinta's freedom. "She doesn't know anything about the news," Anthony La Pinta, 38, said. "I want to tell her in person." The two brothers, who were 16 and 20 at the time of their father's slaying, hope the visit will be the last they make before their mother returns home. "All of us will probably be reduced to tears," Lenny La Pinta, 43, said. "We've cried tears of pain for many years, so it will be nice to cry happy tears." The legal victory carries a special significance for Anthony La Pinta, who was inspired by his mother's case to become an attorney. His mother even made and sold jewelry from prison to help him pay for his law books. "We are as close as a family unit now, 21 years later, as we were when this tragedy happened," Anthony La Pinta said. Despite her missing many of the most important events in her sons' lives, the brothers tried to keep her close with regular visits. A day after getting married, Lenny La Pinta had a second ceremony for her. "I think the most important thing is that my mother, brother and I never lost our faith that she would be coming home," Lenny La Pinta said. "We just thought we were too good a people to have it end that way." They garnered support for their cause with their Web site, www.mercyformom.org, which includes the only complete family portrait of Marie La Pinta with her two sons, daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren. "They've never seen her outside the prison walls so that's going to be a very special moment," Lenny La Pinta said.

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

Timeline in the case

May 4, 2005

March 27, 1983: Marie La Pinta's brother Leonardo Crociata fatally shoots her husband, Michael. Crociata and Marie La Pinta are spotted by a guard as they tried to dispose of the body in a Babylon dump.

1984: In February, a Suffolk County jury convicts La Pinta and her brother of second-degree murder. Both defendants are sentenced to serve 25 years to life.

December 2000: La Pinta's first request for clemency is denied by Gov. George Pataki.

August 2002: La Pinta's sons, Anthony of West Islip and Leonard of Sayville, mount a second campaign for executive clemency.

December 2002: La Pinta is not included in the group of people granted clemencies, despite a massive media campaign. Family vows to try again next year.

Dec. 24, 2003: Pataki formally rejects La Pinta's request for clemency.

2004: Supporters unable to apply for clemency this year because of formal rejection the previous year.

April 2005: La Pinta's son Anthony, a Hauppauge defense attorney, files legal motion arguing that his mother was denied due process.

May 2005: State Supreme Court Justice Robert W. Doyle overturns La Pinta's murder conviction. Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota said he expects to reach a plea deal with La Pinta that would "aid in her freedom."

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lifree044244503may04,0,11670
59.story?page=2&coll=ny-top-headlines

Posted by lois at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)

May 03, 2005

Mexican Immigrant Could Face Two Years in Prison for Self-Induced Abortion Under SC Law

A 22-year-old Mexican immigrant who lives in Pelion, S.C., has been charged with performing an abortion on herself, which is illegal in South Carolina, and could face up to two years in prison and a $1,000 fine, the Columbia State reports. Gabriela Flores, a migrant worker who speaks no English and has three children, on Oct. 1, 2004, after discovering she was pregnant took pills sent to her from her sister in Mexico, causing an abortion at four months gestation, according to police reports. Flores said she took five misoprostol pills -- ulcer medication that also is used to cause a medical abortion -- and gave birth to a dead fetus. Flores and a friend then buried the fetus in their backyard, but they failed to notify a coroner of the abortion. Five days later, an acquaintance of Flores notified police, saying that she had heard that the fetus had been born alive. Although police decided against charging Flores with murder because they could not prove that the fetus could have survived on its own, they charged her with illegal abortion and failure to notify a coroner. She was jailed for four months before being released on her own recognizance. According to the South Carolina Office of Court Administration, Flores' case is the only pending case of illegal abortion in the state, although court records show that there have been five similar cases in the state from 2000 to 2004. Some people say that Flores' case "raises questions about how poor Hispanics are treated" by the state judiciary system and about their limited access to health care services, according to the State. Nationwide, Hispanic women have higher rates of abortion than white women, mainly because of correspondingly high rates of unintended pregnancy, according to the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. NLIRH Executive Director Silvia Henriquez said that language and poverty often are barriers for Hispanic women who wish to obtain legal abortions (Brundrett, Columbia State, 5/1).
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=29768 IN THE COURTS

---------------------------
Daily Reproductive Health Report http://www.kaisernetwork.org/reproductiv

Posted by lois at 08:29 PM | Comments (0)

New Report: The War on Marijuana: The Transformation of the War on Drugs in the 1990's.

New report from The Sentencing Project: The War on Marijuana: The Transformation of the War on Drugs in the 1990s. The report documents that since 1990, law enforcement priorities have become heavily skewed toward arresting low-level marijuana offenders as part of the "war on drugs" strategy. Highlights of the report include the following:

82% of the 450,000 increase in drug arrests since 1990 has been for marijuana offenses, and 88% of this rise has been for possession offenses
Marijuana arrests now total 700,000 a year nationally, representing 45% of all drug arrests
Arrests for marijuana offenses rose by 113% from 1990 to 2002, while arrests for all other drug offenses increased by just 10%
Most marijuana arrests are for low-level offenses, with only 1 in 18 resulting in a felony conviction
While African Americans constitute an estimated 14% of regular marijuana users, blacks are 30% of persons arrested for marijuana violations
The full report is on our website at www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/waronmarijuana.pdf.

Posted by lois at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2005

Telephone Justice: MCI Shareholders Mtg in VA 5-16-05

Please spread the word to people in the DC, Virginia and Maryland area to come join us at the MCI Shareholders meeting in Chantilly, VA on Monday, May 16th. A bus will be leaving from New York City the night before, and we are hoping that you can join us outside the meeting to tell MCI that people from all over the country are tired of paying their phone bills! We've been in touch with many people already to spread the word - especially those in Virginia who just had a win and defeated their own MCI contract - but we need your help to make everyone know that this is a national issue. Hope to see you May 16th in Chantilly. Thanks for your support....

Do you know that MCI has a monopoly contract with the New York State Department of Correctional Services (DOCS), and that they charge the families of people in prison 630% more for a phone call than they do to the average customer? Do you that they have similar contracts with 14 other states?

Do you know that MCI treats the family members of people in prison with disrespect and put blocks on their phone without warning?

Would you like to tell MCI and their shareholders that they cannot continue to profit off of the incarceration of our loved ones?
THEN JOIN THE NEW YORK CAMPAIGN FOR TELEPHONE JUSTICE MONDAY, MAY 16TH AS WE TRAVEL TO VIRGINIA TO TELL MCI WE WON'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!

On Monday, May 16th, the NY Campaign for Telephone Justice will be traveling to Chantilly, Virginia to let both MCI shareholders and the public know about MCI's dirty little secret - that they might be keeping families connected, but not in our neighborhoods! Please join us to show MCI that we won't take it anymore - in New York State or in any of the other fifteen states where MCI is making money off of our loved ones incarceration!

Westfield Marriott
14750 Conference Center Drive
Chantilly, VA 20151
Monday, May 16th at 8:30 am

For more information, call 212-614-6459, or email info@telephonejustice.org www.telephonejustice.org the new york campaign for telephone justice is a project of the center for constitutional rights, in partnership with prison families community forum and prison families of new york, inc.

www.telephonejustice.org
www.ccr-ny.org

Posted by lois at 10:05 PM | Comments (0)

Book Review: Invisible Punishment & Imprisoning America

The Prison-Industrial Complex
Source: Commonweal
Publication date: 2005-02-11

The Prison-Industrial Complex
Invisible Punishment The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment Edited by Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind The New Press, $26.95, 355 pp.

Imprisoning America The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration Edited by Mary Pattillo, David Weiman, and Bruce Western Russell Sage Foundation, $39.95, 277 pp.

For the last thirty-five years, America has been on an incarceration binge. In a single generation, we have gone from a society in which imprisonment was a relatively modest facet of our justice and social systems to one in which it is a commonplace, and in some communities even more than that-a virtual rite of passage for many.

We lock up more people for longer time periods than any other democratic nation in the world. And the effects of this mass imprisonment are not limited to the roughly 2 million people who now spend time as inmates in the average year. The effects extend to entire communities, and to American society as a whole.

These two volumes, collections of essays by academics of various stripes and advocates in the field of corrections, attempt to document and describe those effects-social, political, economic, racial, and other. By far the more readable of the two is Invisible Punishment, edited by Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project, a well- regarded Washington-based advocacy group, and Meda Chesney-Lind, a professor of women's studies at the University of Hawaii and a former vice president of the American Society of Criminology.

A few telling citations from the introduction to their volume give a sense of the deforming power of America's love affair with incarceration:

* "More than three quarters of a million black men are now behind bars, and nearly 2 million are under some form of correctional supervision, including probation and parole. For black males ages twenty-five to thirty-four, at a time in life when they would otherwise be starting families and careers, one of every eight is in prison or jail on any given day."

* "The collective portrait of prisoners is very telling. Three- quarters have a history of drug or alcohol abuse, one-sixth a history of mental illness, and more than half the women inmates a history of sexual or physical abuse. Most prisoners are from poor or working-class communities, and two-thirds are racial and ethnic minorities."

* "For African-American children overall, the family experience of imprisonment is now almost commonplace, with one out of every fourteen having a parent in prison."

* "Legislators have increasingly adopted ever more punitive measures against those who have been convicted of a drug offense....[T]his has led to the bizarre situation whereby a convicted armed robber or a rapist can apply for higher education or welfare benefits, but a drug offender cannot."

As these citations suggest, America's minority communities- especially the black community-have taken the brunt of the impact of mass incarceration. They have taken it in very practical, physical ways, like the removal of a huge percentage of young black men from the pool of potential workers and marriage partners. They have taken it in more subtle ways as well, such as the disqualification from voting, and thus from citizenship, of thousands of black ex- convicts (see presidential election, Florida, 2000), and the removal of imprisoned men and women from the rolls of the unemployed-a practice that makes the nation's jobless statistics look better than they otherwise would.

But the distorting effects are not limited to African Americans or to issues of personal freedom, citizenship, and loss of liberty. In an essay titled "Building a Prison Economy in Rural America," Tracy Huling, a filmmaker who produced a well-received public- television documentary on a rural prison town, describes how "prisons have become a 'growth industry' in rural America." "Since 1980," Huling writes, "the majority of new prisons built to accommodate the expanding U.S. prison population have been placed in nonmetropolitan areas, with the result that the majority of prisoners are now housed in rural America."

This means, most obviously, that inmate populations, which are largely black, Hispanic, and urban, are overseen and regulated by guards and administrators who are mostly white and unfamiliar with minority cultures, and who, in fact, have been encouraged to think of the bad fortune of the inmate groups as their economic salvation. Indeed, Huling captures this pernicious reality perfectly in the quotation of a retired prison guard in Coxsackie, New York:

We struggled, myself and a brother, two sisters, my mother...to keep the farm in the family and keep it going. And we barely made a living. So that's what made me appreciate the [prison] job so much, that it was a lot easier and the money was secure. Before I even started the job, they was always telling me, the worse things get out in the world, the better things get in jail. You'll always have a job.

Not for nothing does Jesse Jackson call the results of mass incarceration the "prison-industrial complex." Like the interlocking, mutually supporting interests of the military- industrial complex against which Dwight Eisenhower warned so presciently in the 1950s, the interests at play in the
prison- industrial complex virtually assure that, whether crime goes up or down, there will be a steady supply of inmates to fill the prisons we have built at great expense. Too many jobs and fortunes depend on it.

Imprisoning America is more academically dense than the Mauer- Chesney-Lind volume, and a harder read. Much of it repeats the findings of the other book and, indeed, there is some overlap among the authors. But of particular value are the essays in part 1 on the effects of mass incarceration on the family life of those imprisoned and their children. One hopes that state and federal legislators will read these findings and be guided by them as they make prison policy for the future.

Together, these two volumes focus long-overdue attention on the reverberations created by the outcries of the last three decades: "Three strikes and you're out." "Do the crime and you do the time." "Lock 'em up and throw away the key."

If only the whole business were so easy, so pat. Unfortunately, in our feverish attempts to solve one problem-what we thought of as out-of-control crime-we have given rise to several others. And they may prove every bit as dangerous and expensive as the original problem.

Don Wycliff is public editor of the Chicago Tribune.

Copyright Commonweal Foundation Feb 11, 2005

Posted by lois at 09:36 PM | Comments (0)

Amnesty report slams Taser, cites 103 related deaths

Posted 4/1/2005 7:41 AM

PHOENIX (AP) — There were 103 Taser stun gun-related deaths in the United States and Canada between June 2001 and March 2005, according to an Amnesty International report released Friday.
In the first three months of this year, there were 13 Taser-related deaths — compared with six during the same period last year, the report said.

The stun guns have been touted as less lethal than other ways of subduing combative people in high-risk situations, but Tasers have come under increasing scrutiny as a number of deaths have been blamed, at least partially, on the devices.

"No confrontation is risk free. The Taser is the safest way to end violent confrontations for law enforcement," Taser International Inc. President Tom Smith said Thursday.

The report challenged Taser's claims that the stun guns have saved more than 6,000 lives.

"Taser International wildly exaggerates the number of incidents in which the use of a Taser resulted in a life saved," the report says.

Smith contended that the company's statistics are conservative and based on fact.

"This is just a further example of how out of touch this organization (Amnesty International) is with the law enforcement community," Smith said.

Stun guns produced by Scottsdale-based Taser are used by more than 6,000 law enforcement agencies worldwide.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
USA Today

Posted by lois at 09:27 PM | Comments (0)