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June 30, 2005

Two Groups Charge Abuse of Witness Law

June 27, 2005

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, June 26 - Two leading civil rights groups charge in a new study that the Bush administration has twisted the American system of due process "beyond recognition" in jailing at least 70 terror suspects as "material witnesses" since the Sept. 11 attacks, and the groups are calling on Congress to impose tougher safeguards.

The report, which is to be released on Monday by the groups, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, found that the 70 suspects, about a quarter of them American citizens and all but one Muslim men, were jailed - often for weeks or months - in American facilities without being charged with a crime. Ultimately, only seven men were formally accused of supporting terrorism, the report said.

The report, paid for in part by the Open Society Institute, founded by the financier George Soros, charges that many of the men held as material witnesses were "thrust into a Kafkaesque world of indefinite detention without charges, secret evidence and baseless accusations."

With Congress locked in a dispute over the government's powers under the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, the report reflects an effort by civil rights groups to expand the debate to other legal tools the Bush administration is using against terrorism. The groups recommended a number of new restrictions on the law's use, and aides to Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said he would introduce legislation to limit the government's ability to detain a material witness indefinitely.

The material witness law, enacted in 1984, allows federal authorities to hold a person indefinitely if they suspect that the person has information about a crime and might flee or be unwilling to cooperate.

The law has been used for many years to compel the testimony of thousands of illegal immigrants in smuggling investigations and other cases. But since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has significantly expanded the use of the law in terrorism inquiries.

Justice Department officials have defended their view of the law in interviews and Congressional testimony, saying they have sought to use it sparingly and have tried to follow legal safeguards, including allowing those who are jailed to contact lawyers and challenge their detention.

The only appellate court to rule on the law since the Sept. 11 attacks upheld its use in the case of a permanent resident from Jordan who had contact with a Sept. 11 hijacker while a student in San Diego.

"Critics of law enforcement fail to recognize that material witness statutes are designed with judicial oversight safeguards and are critical to aiding criminal investigations ranging from organized crime rackets to human trafficking," said Kevin Madden, a spokesman for the Justice Department.

But in the new report, Human Rights Watch and the A.C.L.U. charge that the Justice Department has abused the law to detain people whom it does not have enough evidence to charge with terrorism.

"The Justice Department has essentially succeeded in setting a precedent for lowering the standard they have to meet to jail someone," said Anjana Malhotra, the author of the report.

The department has not given a public accounting of jailed material witnesses since early 2003, when it told Congress that it had detained fewer than 50 people.

The new study sought to catalog and quantify the treatment of the witnesses, and it found that a third of them were jailed for at least two months. The study found that there might have been more than 70 material witnesses, but secrecy provisions prevented a definitive tally.

Of the 70 who were identified, the report found that 42 were released without charges being filed; 20 were charged with offenses unrelated to terrorism, like bank or credit card fraud; 4 were convicted of supporting terrorism; and 3 others are awaiting trial on terrorism charges. The report did not account for the remaining one. More than a third were ultimately deported, and none are known to still be held as witnesses.

Few of the material witnesses made national headlines. Among the notable exceptions were Zacarias Moussaoui, who recently pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks; Jose Padilla, who was later declared an enemy combatant after the authorities accused him of plotting to build a nuclear "dirty bomb"; and Brandon Mayfield, a Muslim lawyer in Portland, Ore., who was jailed in connection with the Madrid train bombings of 2004 after the F.B.I. mistakenly matched a fingerprint of his to the scene.

Government officials apologized to Mr. Mayfield and at least a dozen other material witnesses who they admitted were wrongfully detained, the report said. "But," it added, "apologies are poor compensation for loss of liberty, as well as the emotional toll that incarceration has had on the detainees and their families."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 09:16 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Spend Cash on Schools, Not on Building Prisons by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Los Angeles Daily News
By Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Guest Columnist

Thursday, June 30, 2005 - At the beginning of the month, California opened its 33rd prison, a behemoth whose costs include $700 million for the mortgage plus $110 million annually for operations. Meanwhile, the state's educators are fighting to ensure adequate spending on K-12 students. One teacher's sign at a recent rally wisely declared, "Education cuts never heal."

Where are our priorities?

California best illustrates National Education Association President Reg Weaver's sentiments expressed in a 2003 address: "Does it rile you up that our nation would rather incarcerate than educate?"

While statewide polls show California voters consistently prioritize education, decision-makers continue to prioritize punishment to the detriment of our children's futures. And not just at the state level. For example, Fresno County has a youth jail in the works that will not open until 2040, which means the county has planned a jail for kids whose parents have not yet been born.

In the last four years, California schools have suffered more than $9.8 billion in cuts. These cuts have translated into school closures, increases in class size, layoffs of teachers and support staff and a devastating shortage of librarians, counselors and nurses. By contrast, the number of people in prison has not grown since 1999, but prison overspending has gone off the charts.

Many of our schools lack basic supplies and instructional materials. Schools are cutting art and music. Extracurricular activities are no longer affordable, and after-school programs have been decimated.

It is no wonder that wealthy California is one of the lowest-performing states in terms of education, next to historically poor Mississippi. We spend $600 less per pupil than the national average and rank near the bottom in all objective measures of success, according to a December 2004 Rand study.

Meanwhile, California imprisons more people than any state but Texas. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2005-06 budget includes a 31.9 percent increase in corrections spending compared with two years ago, while education spending is cut.

Study after study shows that investing in education pays huge dividends, while paying to imprison is an ongoing cost. Consider this: While the Schwarzenegger administration has requested money to build three new prisons -- and bailed out corrections for nearly $1 billion in overspending during the past 36 months -- the governor reneged on a promise to restore $2 billion taken from schools last year.

Some people advocate a double moratorium: Stop education cuts and stop all prison and jail expansion. But that's not enough. Former Gov. George Deukmejian, who, as the "Iron Duke," presided over prison expansion in the 1980s, now advocates reducing the number of people in prison. Any fiscal expert knows that the only way to cut costs is to reduce the number of people in prison.

The money saved should be directed to education, education, education -- for pre-kindergarten kids through grown women and men who need skills adequate for a rapidly changing economy. Included among the children and adults are those locked up now and those who have gone or will go home.

Education underfunding and education discrimination will always be a costly error for the Golden State. We boast the world's sixth or seventh-largest economy as a result of decades of public investment. What we do best is innovate, and it takes know-how to make something new.

When California invested in all residents, through the innovative 1959 master plan, concrete and steel went into building schools and roads -- not prisons and jails. Is it a coincidence that the state's economic well-being has gone askew at the same time education is under attack and prisons and jails under construction?

We need to shift public priorities by taking on a key question of our
times: Education or incarceration?

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a professor at the University of Southern California. She is a keynote speaker at today's "Education or Incarceration" conference in Los Angeles, organized by the Education Not Incarceration Coalition ( www.ednotinc.org ).

Posted by lois at 02:05 PM | Comments (0)

Alston/Bannerman Fellowships for U.S. Activists of Color

Alston/Bannerman Fellowships for U.S. Activists of Color
The Alston/Bannerman Fellowship Program is committed to advancing progressive social change by helping to sustain long-time activists of color. The program gives activists financial support and freedom to "take a break and recharge."
Fellows receive $15,000 to take sabbaticals of three months or more. To qualify for an Alston/Bannerman Fellowship, an applicant must be a person of color; have more than ten years of community organizing experience; be committed to continuing to work for social change; and live in the United States or its territories.
The application deadline is December 1, 2005.
http://www.alstonbannerman.org/generalinformation.html

Posted by lois at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)

June 29, 2005

USA World's Biggest Prison

The USA: World's Biggest Prison
The Associated Press
Tuesday 28 June 2005

According to a report published on Monday from King's College, London, the United States continues to have the highest incarceration rate in the world.With 714 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, the United States remains the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, ahead of Russia and Belarus, according to figures published by the London University King's College International Centre for Prison Studies.

The United States has held first place in this ranking since 2000.

"In 200 years, the United States has succeeded in creating two million prisoners," frets researcher Anton Shelupanov. "It's a very worrying rate of growth."

Of nine million people imprisoned in the whole world, more than two million (22% of the total) are behind American bars.

Russia Is First in Europe
Russia has the highest incarceration rate in Europe, with 550 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, ahead of Belarus (532/100,000) and Ukraine (416/100,000). The rate is 91/100,000 in metropolitan France, between Belgium (88/100,000) and Germany (96/100,000).

South Africa has the highest incarceration rate on the African continent (413/100,000) and Surinam the highest in South America (437/100,000).

The International Centre for Prison Studies gathers data from various
sources, notably the prison administrations of each country.

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

June 27, 2005

Helping Inmates Kick Drugs (and the Prison Habit)

June 26, 2005
By KATE ZERNIKE
CHICAGO, June 23- Andre Willis started selling cocaine and heroin when he was 14, and by 25 had been sent to prison four times. Each time he got out he vowed to look for an honest job. But employers did not want to hire an ex-convict, so he would give up after two months and go back to selling drugs and smoking marijuana.

The fourth time the state offered a different kind of sentence: a year at a new state prison dedicated solely to drug treatment, where Mr. Willis was given job training and addiction counseling that has continued into his parole.

When he got out of prison in late 2004, his parole officer and treatment counselor helped him find a halfway house to live in, away from the patterns of his old neighborhood. And they watched as he went door-to-door for three months until he found a job at a food market. "It's not the job I want," says Mr. Willis, who turns 27 next month, "but it's a job."

Faced with a record 40,000 inmates coming out of prison this year, as well as record rates of recidivism, Illinois has put the new prison - the Sheridan Correctional Center - at the center of a plan, closely watched by other states, to prevent repeat offenders from returning.

Opened 18 months ago in a previously shuttered prison in Sheridan, Ill., 70 miles southwest of here, the facility will soon be the nation's largest prison dedicated to drug treatment, a recognition by the state that drug addiction is a major reason inmates are ending up back behind bars. Sixty-nine percent of all inmates are in prison on drug-related crimes.

Across the country, more than 600,000 prisoners are released each year, and about two-thirds return to prison within three years, according to the Justice Department. About 70 percent have drug or alcohol problems, and about 40 percent return to prison because of drug violations.

With prison costs rising and budgets tightening, even states that had
embraced tough law-and-order approaches are now trying to smooth re-entry to break the cycle of repeat offenses. Illinois officials say even small declines in the recidivism rate would save them money in the long term because right now, statewide, 55 percent of all prisoners return within three years, and 80 percent are rearrested.

The Sheridan program, a project of Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, who campaigned in 2002 on a promise to reduce recidivism, costs about $35 million a year to run. With new construction, it is expected to grow to 1,300 beds,serving about 1,700 prisoners each year.

Promising early results at Sheridan have made it something of a model. Corrections officials from Kentucky and Louisiana have visited. And here in the Midwest, where a surge in methamphetamine use has officials desperate for any possible remedy, Nebraska and Iowa are studying whether to dedicate facilities to drug treatment.

About a dozen drug treatment prisons exist across the country, but most focus on first-time offenders. Sheridan is rare because it is a
medium-security prison where most of the inmates are repeat offenders
convicted of serious crimes. It is also unusual for the services it offers after release.

The state has added 100 parole agents, for a total of 440, to allow agents to work more closely with former felons, and has also assigned drug treatment counselors to all Sheridan parolees, to help them find jobs and housing, and to obtain ID like a driver's license - services often not available to former felons.

Illinois has opened seven re-entry centers across the state where some parolees check in daily for drug testing and others come for job and treatment support.

And for the first time, state officials have formally worked with local groups in Chicago that have set up drug addiction support groups and bought buildings that are being rehabilitated to provide housing for former offenders. One group even took two busloads of local residents to visit Sheridan to remind them that its inmates were their once and future neighbors.

"These people are coming home; they're going to be behind you in line at the Wal-Mart," said the warden at Sheridan, Michael Rothwell. "Not to help them is folly."

The state screens inmates to determine whom to send to Sheridan; prisoners must be serving terms of 6 to 24 months and have to volunteer for the program. Murderers, sex offenders and those with severe mental illness are not allowed.

The average inmate at Sheridan has been arrested 16 times, convicted 5 times and sent to prison 3 times. The prisoners divide about evenly between users of heroin, cocaine, marijuana and alcohol, and 52 percent said they had taken more than one drug daily. About half had not been employed before prison, and more than half had no high school diploma.

Prison officials say Sheridan inmates begin preparing to leave the day they arrive at the prison, set on 270 acres surrounded by cornfields. Inmates spend their time in group therapy, drug counseling, and classes or job training, which is mandatory.

Mr. Rothwell, the warden, arranged for the National Association of Home Builders to teach construction trades. The Illinois Manufacturers' Association, facing a wave of retirement among workers who make spring wires, asked to set up a program as well and has hired hundreds of graduates, said John Bitowt, who trains the prisoners.

Ordinarily, Mr. Bitowt said, the metal instruments the men work with might be seen as potential weapons. "I feel I can trust them," he said. "They've earned it." The men are searched and tested for drugs, and sent back to a regular prison if found to be involved in gang recruitment or violence; 800 have completed Sheridan, and about 250 have been expelled.

The prison tries to build trust, responsibility and some measure of
independence. The inmates move in small groups without guards to escort them, although cameras track their movements. As a result, Sheridan looks more like the boys' reform school it once was than a prison.

Most prisons release inmates with a small amount of money and sometimes clean clothes; at Sheridan, inmates meet with parole officers 30 days before they leave and are assigned a drug counselor to work with them after release.

Among the first 150 graduates of Sheridan, said David E. Olson, a professor at Loyola University Chicago who has tracked the program, 27 percent were arrested within nine months of release, compared with 46 percent of a group of inmates of other institutions with similar backgrounds and drug use. Ten percent of the Sheridan graduates returned to prison within that time, compared with 27 percent of the other sample.

Officials in more rural Midwestern states say that as methamphetamine
continues to devastate families and small towns, public support is shifting toward treatment.

"I cannot go to a restaurant or a department store without running into someone whose niece or daughter or friend is on meth," said Marvin Van Haaften, the drug policy adviser to Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa. "Suddenly people are a little more open. They realize these aren't child molesters, they are sons and daughters who have gotten hooked on meth." Mr. Van Haaften is considering proposals to turn a state jail into a treatment center.

Some Sheridan parolees have resented the follow-up, but success depends largely on motivation. Reginald Banks, 38, had been through drug treatment in his previous prison stays when he arrived at Sheridan in January 2004.

"When I got out I'd just get myself a bag," Mr. Banks said. "I knew it wasn't going to work." That changed after his last arrest for dealing drugs, when his 5-year-old son told him, "That's all you do, is stay in trouble."

At Sheridan, Mr. Banks said, he learned "there are more important things than being on the corner."

"What's important to me," he said, "is being home with my son, rather than just having him accept my phone calls."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/26/national/26prison.html?hp&ex=1119758400&en=28d3c56daefd9219&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Posted by lois at 09:22 PM | Comments (0)

Indiana: DOC Drops Prison Health Services for New Contractor

By KEN KUSMER
Associated Press Writer

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- A St. Louis-based company serving 300 prisons nationwide is the Indiana Department of Correction's choice to take over health care services at 31 state prisons after the agency decided to drop the contractor that has provided them for eight years.

The DOC wants Correctional Medical Services Inc. to begin providing health care services beginning Sept. 1, DOC spokeswoman Java Ahmed said Saturday.

"A contract has not yet been signed. It is currently in negotiation," she said.

Ahmed declined to provide any details of the contract being negotiated, but she said the choice of Correctional Medical to provide health care to the approximately 21,000 male and female, adult and juvenile state prisoners would save he department money.

Brentwood, Tenn.-based America Service Group Inc., announced late Thursday that the DOC had informed its Prison Health Services Inc. subsidiary that the agency would not renew a contract expiring Aug. 31 and worth $35 million per year. America Service said it had expected to earn $15.8 million from the Indiana contract over the final four months of the year.

Correctional Medical officials would not comment on any talks with Indiana but said it had won recently discontinued America Service contracts from Maryland and Idaho.

The St. Louis company provides health care services to more than 225,000 inmates in 27 states. Of the 300 prisons it serves, 202 currently have accreditation from independent reviewing organizations - more than any other correctional health care provider in the country, according to the company's web site.

Its typical prison medical unit includes an ambulatory care center, administrative offices, examination rooms, a nurses' station, dental clinics and an infirmary, it said.

Prison Health Services was the first private health care provider selected by the DOC in 1997, and it was awarded a second four-year contract in competitive bidding in 2001.

America Service, the parent company, said a DOC analysis showed Prison Health had saved Indiana more than $62.5 million in health care costs over eight years. It also obtained systemwide accreditation by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care of the more than 30 prison sites for the first time in the DOC's history.

However, its relationship with the DOC was rocky in the early years. In 1999, the administration of late Gov. Frank O'Bannon required Prison Health to make improvements to the mental health care in the state's prisons. Some prison superintendents had complained about poor communication, a lack of adequate psychiatric coverage and high turnover among mental health professionals.

---

On the Net:

Indiana Department of Correction: www.in.gov/indcorrection/

Correctional Medical Services: www.cmsstl.com/

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

Posted by lois at 07:42 PM | Comments (0)

June 24, 2005

Gonzales is Seeking to Stem "Light" Sentences

June 22, 2005, NY Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, June 21 - Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said Tuesday that a Supreme Court decision in January easing sentencing guidelines had led to greater leniency for some criminals, and he urged Congress to fix the problem.

"More and more frequently, judges are exercising their discretion to impose sentences that depart from the carefully considered ranges developed by the U.S. Sentencing Commission," Mr. Gonzales said in a speech to a crime victims' group.

"In the process, we risk losing a sentencing system that requires serious sentences for serious offenders and helps prevent disparate sentences for equally serious crimes," he said.

At a time when judicial discretion has become a hotly debated topic in Congress, aides to Mr. Gonzales said his remarks were intended to reflect the Justice Department's deep concerns over recent sentencing trends and to "jump-start" the Congressional and public debate.

The Supreme Court, in a decision that has had a ripple effect in lower courts, struck down as unconstitutional a mandatory sentencing system put in place by Congress 21 years ago in an effort to make sentences more uniform. The court said judges were free to treat the guidelines as merely advisory.

As evidence of what he called "a drift toward lesser sentences" since that decision, Mr. Gonzales pointed to the contrasting treatments of two child pornography defendants recently sentenced in New York and New Jersey. Both defendants faced maximum sentences of about three years, but the New York defendant received probation and psychological counseling, while the New Jersey defendant was given about three and a half years, he said.

In another case, in South Carolina, that the Justice Department is now appealing, the attorney general said that a man who faced up to 27 years in prison on weapons and drug trafficking charges was sentenced instead to 10 years.

Justice Department officials said that since the Supreme Court decision the number of "downward departures" approved by judges who ordered lower-than-recommended sentences rose 12.7 percent from 7.5 percent in 2003.

Mr. Gonzales, who is frequently mentioned as a possible candidate for the Supreme Court, said one idea worth "serious consideration" was constructing mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines while allowing the maximum sentences to remain advisory.

Posted by lois at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)

Homies Unidos: Solidarity in rejecting Newt Gingrich's anti-immigrant agenda

Friends,

Please read the following. Gingrich pretends to speak on not only the personal but national threat that gangs like MS pose, but I hope we all realize given his anti-immigrant record that he is using gangs to further his anti-immigrant agenda.

Homies Unidos is calling for a press conference on Tuesday morning at 11am in the Homies Unidos office. We hope that members of the enforcement coalition will stand in solidarity with us in rejecting Newt Gingrich's attempt to further his anti immigrant agenda.

We are planning to watch the one hour special and then giving the Spanish television station an exclusive on Tuesday evening our response. We hope to put together a panel to discuss our reactions to whatever Gingrich says.

Please let us know if it is ok to put your name on the press release and if you will join us on Monday.
Thank you!
Rocio Santacruz
email Rocio Santacruz at rsantacruz@homiesunidos.org
Homies Unidos

Newt Gingrich Hosts 'American Gangs - Ties To Terror?'
To: National Desk
Contact: Rick Tyler of Gingrich Communications,
WSAHINGTON, June 21 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Former Speaker of the
House Newt Gingrich hosts a Fox News Special "American Gangs -
Ties to Terror?" this Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern Time and re-
broadcast at 11 p.m. ET on the Fox News Channel. The one-hour
special report will focus on how international gangs such as Mara
Salvatrucha -- or MS 13 -- pose not just a risk to our personal
security, but our national security as well.
"Fueled by the global nature of the drug trade, gangs are
increasingly international operations," said Speaker Gingrich.
"With the infrastructure in place to move and distribute drugs
across the border, the danger exists that they will use their
network to, for the right price, traffic terrorists and weapons
into the country."

"After all, why wouldn't two groups -- one driven by greed and
the other by hatred -- collaborate to further their goals,"
Gingrich added.
The special will also explore the difficulties law enforcement
faces in challenging and prosecuting gangs in America, including
the prison system, border control and immigration laws.
"Gang members have become adept at using their legal
protections to their advantage," said Gingrich. "For instance,
sanctuary laws make it difficult for local police to act against
illegal aliens who may be in gangs."

Newt Gingrich is former Speaker of the House of Representatives and a Senior Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
The Fox News Channel is the most watched cable news channel in America.----Unfortunately!

Posted by lois at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)

June 23, 2005

ACLU Sues CMS over health care of people incarcerated in Mississippi

SHELIA BYRD, Associated Press
Posted on Wed, Jun. 22, 2005 http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/11958260.htm

JACKSON, Miss. - The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the St. Louis-based health care provider for inmates at Mississippi's Parchman prison, alleging prisoners have been misdiagnosed and received inadequate treatment.

The federal lawsuit against Correctional Medical Services, Inc., one of the nation's largest for-profit medical providers for prisoners, was filed Wednesday on behalf of 1,000 inmates at Parchman's Unit 32.

Other defendants are Chris Epps, the commissioner of the Mississippi
Department of Corrections, deputy commissioner Emmitt Sparkman and other agency officials. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Greenville.

"We're hoping that the lawsuit is going to make a big difference in
conditions in Unit 32, which we really do think are so grossly inhumane as to amount to torture," said Margaret Winter, associate director of the National Prison Project of the ACLU.

Ken Fields, a spokesman for CMS, said the company, which holds contracts in 24 states, is still reviewing the complaint.

"A review of the facts will show that the quality of care provided to
inmate patients in Mississippi prisons is excellent. The care inmates
receive meets the standards of care in society," Fields said Wednesday.

Leonard Vincent, an attorney with MDOC, said the agency was expecting
the lawsuit and would fight it. "We feel like they're absolutely
incorrect in what they say," Vincent said.

Since 2003, CMS has provided medical, dental and mental health care to prisoners at the Mississippi Delta prison. The lawsuit, which gives only ne side of the legal argument, alleges CMS employees routinely ignore inmates' health complaints.

"Many prisoners who have been requesting medical attention for weeks
wind up being taken away from Unit 32 by ambulance, after their
condition has become so urgent and life-threatening that it can no
longer be ignored by prison staff," the lawsuit states.

Winter said Mississippi should have monitored the work of CMS doctors.

"They're responsible for knowing what CMS is doing and taking the
contract away if they don't do right," Winter said.

The lawsuit gives several examples of alleged neglect. The ACLU said a misdiagnosis of Jeffery Presley, 24, resulted in him losing a section of his leg. Presley had contracted a serious "staph" infection while in Unit 32, but a CMS doctor diagnosed it as a spider bite.

Other conditions in Unit 32 include isolation, pervasive filth,
malfunctioning plumbing, exposure to human excrement, extreme heat and uncontrolled infestations of mosquitoes, spiders and other insects, the ACLU said in the complaint.

The prison unit is housed adjacent to Parchman's death row.

Last year, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court
ruling that conditions on death row were unconstitutional. Winter said that ruling affected 60 inmates, and the same conditions apply to the 1,000 in the latest lawsuit .

"No one would sentence a prisoner to conditions like that, no matter
what their crime," Winter said.

Posted by lois at 10:12 PM | Comments (0)

June 22, 2005

NY Times Editorial: "Extending Democracy to Ex-Offenders"

June 22, 2005
The laws that strip ex-offenders of the right to vote across the United States are the shame of the democratic world. Of an estimated five million Americans who were barred from voting in the last presidential election, a majority would have been able to vote if they had been citizens of countries like Britain, France, Germany or Australia. Many nations take the franchise so seriously that they arrange for people to cast ballots while being held in prison. In the United States, by contrast, inmates can vote only in two states, Maine and Vermont.

This distinctly American bias - which extends to jobs, housing and education - keeps even law- abiding ex-offenders confined to the margins of society, where they have a notoriously difficult time building successful lives. A few states, at least, are beginning to grasp this point. Some are reconsidering postprison sanctions, including laws that bar ex-offenders from the polls.

The Nebraska Legislature, for example, recently replaced a lifetime voting ban for convicted felons with a system in which ex-offenders would have their rights automatically returned after a two-year waiting period. Iowa, which also bars former prisoners from voting for life, took a similar step forward last week when Gov. Tom Vilsack announced his intention to sign an executive order that would restore voting rights to felons after they complete their sentence.

Governor Vilsack's decision is particularly important, given that Iowa has some of the most severe postprison sanctions in the country. The other four states with similar laws are in the South, where disenfranchisement was created about a century ago, partly to keep black Americans from exercising their right to vote.

The Iowa and Nebraska cases reflect a growing awareness in some of the states that these laws offend the basic principles of democracy. They also stigmatize millions of Americans, many of whom have paid their debts to society and want nothing more than to rejoin the mainstream. The more the United States embraces this view, the healthier we will be as a nation.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2005

Census Treatment of People Incarcerated with Felony Convictions Unfairly Dilutes voting Strength in Non-Prison Communiteis

CENSUS TREATMENT OF INCARCERATED FELONS UNFAIRLY DILUTES VOTING STRENGTH OF NON-PRISON COMMUNITIES

Today, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is hearing arguments in two cases alleging that New York's felon disenfranchisement laws violate the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution (Muntaqim v. Coombe and Hayden v. Pataki). The National Voting Rights Institute and the Prison Policy Initiative have filed an amicus brief with the Court arguing that the Court should consider the redistricting implications of disenfranchisement as part of the "totality of circumstances" which must be examined under the Voting Rights Act. The brief highlights the New York State legislature's racially discriminatory redistricting practice of crediting rural white counties with additional population based on the presence of disenfranchised prisoners in upstate prisons.

New York State is majority White (62%), but its prison population is majority Black and Latino (82%), so disenfranchising prisoners and parolees results in a disproportionate bar to Black and Latino political participation. In their brief, the National Voting Rights Institute and the Prison Policy Initiative provide new information to the court showing how New York State's disenfranchisement practices combine with its redistricting practices to diminish the voting strength of non-incarcerated persons of color in the prisoners' home communities.

In drawing state legislative districts, New York uses Census Bureau data that counts the state's mostly urban and minority prisoners as residents of the mostly white and rural prison counties rather than as residents of the home communities where they resided prior to incarceration, where they are deemed legal residents for most other legal purposes. Several upstate legislative districts lack sufficient population to meet accepted one-person, one-vote standards without counting disenfranchised prisoners as part of their population base. At the same time, heavily minority districts in New York City would in all likelihood be entitled to additional representation if prisoners were counted as residents of their home communities for purposes of redistricting.

The brief argues that New York's practice has an historical parallel that the Court should be disinclined to follow. "The practice bears a striking resemblance to the original 'Three-Fifths' clause of the United States Constitution, which allowed the South to obtain enhanced representation in Congress by counting disenfranchised slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of congressional apportionment," says Prison Policy Initiative Assistant Director Peter Wagner.

Brenda Wright, managing attorney of the National Voting Rights Institute and the author of the brief, says: "New York's decision to credit disenfranchised prisoners to largely white counties, rather than their home communities, is a critical example of racial discrimination the court should consider."

In the two cases, the Second Circuit has taken the unusual step of granting in banc review by all active judges on the Court. The lower courts initially ruled against the plaintiffs and held that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not permit a challenge to prisoner disenfranchisement. The amicus brief of NVRI and the Prison Policy Institute, filed on January 28, 2005, is available on NVRI's website
at: http://www.nvri.org/about/new_york_state_policies.shtml and in hypertext on the PPI site at http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/muntaqim.shtml.

The National Voting Rights Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan legal center. Through litigation and public education, NVRI seeks to make real the promise of American democracy that meaningful political participation and power should be accessible to all regardless of economic or social status. The Prison Policy Initiative conducts research and advocacy on incarceration policy. Among its publications are a report, Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in New York (http://www.prisonpolicy.org/importing ), which documents how the transfer of a large, non-voting population to upstate prisons, where it is counted as part of the population base for redistricting, artificially enhances the representation afforded to predominantly white, upstate legislative districts.

The Second Circuit will hear the cases at 2pm on Wednesday, June 22nd, on the 17th floor of 40 Foley Square. The courthouse can be reached via the 4,5,6 to Brooklyn Bridge or the 1,2,3,9 to Chambers Street).

-30-
JUNE 22, 2005
CONTACT:
Brenda Wright, National Voting Rights Institute bw@nvri.org
Peter Wagner, Prison Policy Initiative -pwagner@prisonpolicy.org

Posted by lois at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)

MA10 men wrongfully convicted still wait for compensation

Reilly accused of funds delay for ex-inmates
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | June 21, 2005

Six months after Massachusetts agreed to compensate wrongly convicted felons, 10 former inmates who have applied for money have not received a dime, prompting their advocates to accuse Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly of putting up roadblocks.

The former prisoners -- two of whom spent about 19 years each behind bars for crimes they did not commit -- have filed claims dating back to January under a law that provides a maximum of $500,000 for erroneous convictions. However, Reilly, who represents the state in such claims, appears to be adopting an adversarial approach, according to lawyers for the former inmates and lawmakers.

The law, which went into effect Dec. 30, set up a system for wrongly convicted felons to seek compensation at civil trials. The former inmates' lawyers and sponsors of the bill said they expected the attorney general would simply approve claims filed by defendants later found not guilty through incontrovertible evidence like DNA rather than litigate them. But, the lawyers said, Reilly has gone so far as to ask the Superior Court to slow the process in the case of at least one defendant cleared by prosecutors.

''Instead of accelerating the process so that these individuals could be properly compensated, the Commonwealth has attempted to move these cases onto a slower track," said Robert Feldman, a lawyer for two men who filed claims and cofounder of the New England Innocence Project. ''These individuals have lost five, 10, 20 years of their lives and are released from prison with nothing, absolutely nothing."

Corey Welford, a spokesman for Reilly, defended the attorney general's handling of the claims. He said Reilly has to verify that each individual was wrongly convicted, run criminal background checks, and comply with a requirement that the former inmate committed no other crimes in the cases that sent them to prison.

''These are very sensitive cases, and everyone can understand why the plaintiffs would want the decision immediately," Welford said. ''But we also have a job to do, and our job is to gather the information to make sure the plaintiffs meet the requirements laid forth in the statute."

At least 23 people in prison have had their convictions overturned in Massachusetts over the past 23 years, according to the New England Innocence Project. Of the 10 people who have filed claims, six were Suffolk County cases. The rest were from Middlesex, Hampden, and Plymouth counties.

For six years, civil liberties groups and advocates for wrongly convicted prisoners lobbied lawmakers to provide compensation to people who lost years of their lives behind bars. But it was not until last December that the Legislature, spurred by several high-profile exonerations, passed a law that Governor Mitt Romney signed. Massachusetts is among 20 states with such laws.

To qualify for compensation under the new law, individuals must establish through ''clear and convincing evidence," either through a court order overturning the conviction or a governor's pardon, that they were wrongly convicted and did not commit the crimes that sent them to jail.

The civil trials would take place in superior court, where those filing claims would have an option of a jury or bench trial. The former prisoners can seek up to $500,000 from the court, which is to take into account lost income, prison conditions, and other factors.

By mid-February, six wrongly convicted men had filed claims. All sought $500,000, except for Dennis Maher, who was wrongly convicted of two rapes and a sexual assault and filed three claims totaling $1.5 million. Maher spent more than 19 years in prison until he was freed in 2003 after being cleared by DNA evidence.

Maher, 44, who lives in Tewksbury and works as a late-shift mechanic for a trash company, said he would use the money to buy a house to live in with his 5 1/2-month-old son and his fiancée, who is pregnant with their second child.

He said he cannot understand why nothing appears to have happened with his claim and questioned whether the political ambitions of Reilly, a Democrat considered a likely gubernatorial candidate, could be a factor.

''He's running for governor," Maher said. ''Would [agreeing to an award] make it like he's being easy and giving away money?"

Welford, Reilly's spokesman, said the suggestion his boss was playing politics was ''ridiculous."

Maher is being represented by Feldman, who also filed a claim for Stephan Cowans, a Roxbury man freed from prison last year after Suffolk prosecutors acknowledged the fingerprint used to convict him of shooting a Boston police officer seven years earlier was not his.

He said he was stunned when Reilly filed a motion in March to transfer Cowans's claim to a slower track in the court to obtain more information.

Feldman filed court papers pointing out that Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley issued a public apology to Cowans after he was freed from prison and that Reilly was quoted in the Globe as calling Cowans's case ''just a terrible tragedy [that] never should have happened."

The judge rejected Reilly's motion to slow the process as ''inappropriate." Last month, Feldman filed a motion asking the court to grant Cowans's claim as a matter of law. Reilly filed a response in which he agreed that Cowans was entitled to an award but reserved the right to contest the amount.

Feldman said Cowans desperately needs money so he can finish his training as a barber, a pursuit he took up behind bars.

Barry Scheck, a founder of the Innocence Project based at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, said he is puzzled that none of the former prisoners in Massachusetts has received any money.

The systems for compensating the wrongly convicted vary across the country, he said, but in Texas people sometimes receive awards in a month or two.

Two Massachusetts lawmakers who crafted the law, Representative Patricia Jehlen and Senator Dianne Wilkerson, said they were also surprised and concerned.

Wilkerson said she might understand Reilly scrutinizing a case involving a defendant who was wrongly convicted because of, say, a flawed police investigation. But most of those who filed claims under the new law were exonerated because of airtight DNA evidence. ''It's been established: These people are innocent," she said.

Posted by lois at 09:57 PM | Comments (0)

June 20, 2005

"Progress"?: New Prisons for Women who are Incarcerated

Rethinking Treatment of Female Prisoners

They live in a world designed for violent men. Advocates for change say privacy, dignity and closer family ties are needed.
By Jenifer Warren
LA Times Staff Writer

June 19, 2005

LIVE OAK, Calif. — Nine months after her belly began to swell, Martha Sierra arrived at that moment of deliverance every pregnant woman craves and fears.

But as she writhed in pain at a Riverside hospital, laboring to push her baby into the world, Sierra faced a challenge not covered in the childbirth books: Her wrists were shackled to the bed.

Unable to roll onto her side or even sit straight up, Sierra managed as best she could. The reward was fleeting. Denied the new mom's customary cuddle, she watched as her daughter, hollering and flapping her arms, was taken from the room.

Sierra, 28, is an inmate at a California state prison north of Sacramento. She has trouble speaking of the birth, ashamed that her mistakes meant her child was born to an incarcerated mother. She also remains distressed and puzzled by her treatment: "Did they think I was going to get up and run away?"

Criminologists say Sierra's experience symbolizes a disturbing truth about correctional systems in California and beyond. With males vastly outnumbering females behind bars, prisons are typically designed and managed for violent men.

As a result, women prisoners, most of them serving less than two years for drug offenses and other nonviolent crimes, are thrust into a one-size-fits-all world. Inside, they are governed by rules and practices that ignore their distinctive pathways into crime and do little to help them mend their tattered lives.

That may be starting to change. In a national movement gathering steam in California, growing numbers of scholars, activists, wardens and lawmakers are pushing to reshape prisons to reflect differences between the sexes.

At a minimum, advocates want more female guards, to protect women's privacy and dignity; more food for pregnant inmates; easier access to sanitary products; and regulations for visits that enhance, rather than discourage, the preservation of close family ties.

More ambitiously, some criminologists envision shifting most women out of the remote maximum-security penitentiaries typical in California and some other states. Instead, they say, many female convicts would do better — and save taxpayers money — in neighborhood centers laden with rehabilitative services, from job training to drug treatment.

The female population in the nation's state and federal prisons is at an all-time high — about 103,000 — and the rate of incarceration is growing at nearly twice that of men, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reports. In the last 10 years alone, the number of women behind bars jumped 51%.

The increase does not reflect a rise in crimes committed by women. Rather, longer sentences — especially for drug offenses and repeat felons — and restrictions on the ability of inmates to get out earlier with good behavior are largely responsible. Women also are far more likely today to go to prison for public order violations, including prostitution, driving under the influence and begging.

"Women are typically arrested for survival crimes: dealing drugs, selling sex for drugs, bad checks, welfare fraud, credit card abuse," said Phyllis Modley, program manager for the National Institute of Corrections in Washington. "They do not commit the predatory crimes that men do at nearly the same rate. Yet they are sent to a correctional system that doesn't distinguish."

During the 1990s, new research created a more detailed picture of how female convicts differed from males, Modley said. Now, corrections officials in states as politically dissimilar as Indiana, Missouri and Minnesota are concluding that "gender matters," according to Barbara Owen, a prison sociologist at Cal State Fresno.

"No state does everything well" in managing female inmates, said Owen, recently hired as an advisor to the California Department of Corrections. But isolated programs show results, she said.

Indiana's main women's prison ensures that convicts stay heavily involved in their children's lives, for instance, while Missouri emphasizes inmates' transition to parole. Minnesota offers a rich array of alternatives to traditional prison, close to women's homes.

Katrina Bishop, a fair-skinned, ponytailed mother of two from Salinas, embodies California's typical female offender.

Raised by an alcoholic mother and a stepfather addicted to methamphetamine, she was kicked out of high school at 15, she said. Disowned by her mother and molested by a ranch hand where she lived, she took shelter in garages, cars, on the streets. Told she would never amount to anything, Bishop said, she set about fulfilling that prediction, engaging in continual "self-sabotage."

At 19, she had her first child, who landed in foster care because Bishop was "too strung out on drugs and had no money for food and diapers." A few years later, Bishop wound up in the hands of the Corrections Department, arrested for possession of methamphetamine and for cashing phony payroll checks she created on a computer. Her trip to state prison followed three county jail terms for writing fictitious checks.

By August 2004, Bishop had a second daughter in foster care and was in trouble again. She was caught with stolen checks and also convicted of violating parole by leaving her county without permission.

"I relapsed after doing a [drug treatment] program and got sucked right back into the old lifestyle," she said.

Bishop went to Valley State Prison for Women in the San Joaquin Valley town of Chowchilla. There, she shared an eight-woman cell with convicted murderers imprisoned for life with no possibility of parole, a blend of roommates not typical in men's prisons.

"You're mixed in with lifers who have no concern in the world," said Bishop, 28. "They're trying to fight, trying to run the room. They … threaten you."

The California Legislative Women's Caucus has made incarcerated women its top priority this year. In an unusual April fact-finding mission, four lawmakers visited Valley State, and two of them spent the night.

They went through processing as inmates do, minus the strip search, receiving bedrolls and cell assignments. They ate in the dining hall, slept on the thin mattresses and asked women about their problems and personal stories.

Some complaints mirrored those in men's prison: Many inmates said they were hungry all the time and could not land spots in academic or job-training classes. What differed were complaints about medical care and concerns about children.

Measured on a per-inmate basis, the Corrections Department spends 60% more on healthcare for women than for men. Reproductive issues are cited as one reason, but women also arrive in prison with a greater incidence of HIV and AIDS and have more mental health needs. Some inmates told the legislators that they had not had a mammogram or Pap smear in years.

More disturbing, the lawmakers said, were the inmates' deep worries about their children. Two-thirds of women behind bars in California have children younger than 18, half of whom never visit because of the distance. Telephone contact is possible through collect calls, but most prisoners' families cannot afford it.

Carla Fortier, 43, has three sons who live with relatives in Los Angeles. Two of them were born behind bars.

"I've missed all the graduations, the first words, the first steps, all of that special stuff," said Fortier, whose inability to shake a crack addiction has made her an off-and-on resident of state prisons for the last 19 years. "Once, my youngest called me Mom. But when I went to prison and came home again, he was back to calling me Carla."

The legislators who visited Valley State returned to Sacramento with one overriding conclusion.

"The model for women in prison in California is wrongheaded," said state Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough), who was joined on the sleepover by Assemblywoman Carol Liu (D-La Cañada Flintridge). "Most of the inmates we spoke to were in for DUIs and drug offenses…. Why are we spending billions upon billions to house these people in such a high-security environment?"

Leaders in California's corrections hierarchy have begun to ask themselves similar questions. In February, they formed a commission of wardens, community activists, researchers and others to redesign prison rules, programs and practices to reflect gender differences.

The state has also hired as advisors two nationally known researchers — Owen and Barbara Bloom, a Sonoma State professor — who are experts on female offenders. And Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's reorganization of California corrections, which is to take effect July 1 and is to focus on inmate rehabilitation, includes a first-ever deputy director for women's programs.

Officials say most of the changes behind prison walls should not cost money. They are trumpeting one victory already. After years of protest from female inmates and their families, male guards may no longer conduct pat searches of women.

Dawn Davison, who runs one of the four California lockups housing women, called that a key achievement. Because more than half of female inmates have been physically or sexually abused, she said, they were traumatized anew when pat-searched by men. But the new policy, she added, is only a start.

"For years people apparently felt that an inmate was an inmate was an inmate," said Davison, warden at the California Institution for Women in Chino. "What makes us think that when a woman comes to prison and becomes an inmate, she becomes the same as a man?"

Women are less violent than men, not only in the crimes they commit but also in their behavior behind bars.

Statistics from 2004 show that 29% of California's female prisoners were serving sentences for crimes against people. For men, the figure was 52%.

As for their conduct once imprisoned, officials could find no record of a female prisoner in California killing another. By contrast, 14 male prisoners were killed by fellow convicts last year.

And although assaults and even small-scale riots are common in men's prisons, fights among women are usually "nothing more than a lovers' quarrel and a little slapping around," Davison said. Attacks on staff by women, she added, rarely go beyond a kick delivered by an inmate resisting an order.

Yet the state's two biggest lockups for women — Valley State and the Central California Women's Facility, also in Chowchilla, with a combined population of 6,700 — operate under rules like those at prisons housing Charles Manson and other notoriously violent males.

Leaders of the union representing prison guards are wary of a rose-colored view of female offenders. Although they support safer penitentiaries that better prepare all inmates for their return to society, union officials say many women who end up in state prison have run afoul of the law numerous times before.

"They may be nonviolent offenders, but a lot of them have five felony convictions before they ever see any prison time," said Lance Corcoran, executive vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. "Sometimes the clanging of the door is the wake-up call that's needed to push an individual to do something positive in their lives."

Others question the fairness of handling female convicts differently from men. The criminal justice arena has long been dominated by the concept of equality, with the same treatment owed to all. But criminologists say equal should not necessarily mean identical. There are reasons, they say, why female offenders deserve unique consideration.

Topping that list is their role as mothers. In California, more than half the female prisoners are single parents, and their family obligations create challenges less prevalent among men, particularly as they make the transition from cell to street. Although all parolees struggle to find work and avoid doing the things that sent them to prison, it falls to women in particular to simultaneously reconnect with children, line up child care and cope with other family needs.

Those convicted of drug crimes — about one in three female offenders — are barred by federal rules from receiving most welfare benefits and, in many cases, do not qualify for public housing.

Some activists believe that California's tendency to manage all inmates as a homogenous group is reflected most strikingly in the treatment of pregnant women.

Since 2001, more than 1,100 state inmates have delivered babies. Most arrive pregnant, but a small number conceive during overnight family visits on prison grounds.

Typically, incarcerated women give birth in a locked community hospital ward guarded by several correctional officers. Despite such security, department regulations require the use of wrist or ankle restraints during labor. Although the restraints are not specified during delivery, Davison, the warden at the Chino prison, acknowledged that reality did not always match the printed rules.

"There is no woman in the throes of labor who is going to jump up and try to escape," she said. Her goal: to ensure that no California inmate is shackled during labor or childbirth.

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber (D-Mountain View) wants to accomplish the same thing and has introduced a bill she hopes will do so. The legislation won approval in the Assembly last month and awaits action in the Senate.

The Times recently interviewed inmate mothers at the Leo Chesney Center in Live Oak, between Sacramento and Chico. The private prison houses minimum-security convicts under contract with the state. The women, all of whom gave birth while imprisoned at the state's larger lockups in Chino or Chowchilla, called delivering babies behind bars an experience they had tried to forget.

Some, like Sierra, who went through it, start to finish, with one or both hands strapped to the bed. Others were cuffed by a wrist or ankle throughout labor but had the restraints removed at the moment of the birth.

After delivery, a few women qualified for one of 70 spots in a community-based program that allows mothers and children to live together. But most had to surrender their babies within a day or two to relatives or foster care. Then the women were shipped back to prison.

Jessica Foster is waiting and hoping to occupy one of those coveted 70 spots.

Foster, 22, went to prison after cashing a stolen check. Initially, she had been placed on probation. But after three violations — for being drunk at a nightclub, failing to turn in a probation report and possessing a marijuana pipe — she was sent to Valley State.

Arriving 7 1/2 months pregnant, she worried constantly about her baby's health. She said she received iron pills and prenatal check-ups but always left the chow hall "starving." The servings, she said, were too meager for someone eating for two.

Most upsetting, Foster recalled, was "the total lack of privacy from men," who make up 75% of the correctional officers at Valley State.

Male guards were able to look down on women in the showers from a control room, she said, and mingled near the inmate reception area while female officers conducted strip searches, in which hand mirrors are used to search incoming inmates' private parts for contraband. That was most humiliating, she said, for women who were menstruating.

"It's all run by men. The doctors, the officers. There are men everywhere," said Foster, of Redding. "You just feel violated all the time."

In January, she gave birth at Madera Community Hospital. She was not handcuffed during her labor or delivery. But she said a male officer was in the room, just on the other side of a curtain, the entire time.

Afterward, with an ankle fastened to the bed, she was allowed to spend a few days in the hospital bonding with her daughter, Olivia. Then it was back to the cellblock, where the pain of separation was enhanced by pain from breasts engorged with milk.

The prison, Foster said, crying as the memories washed over her, did not provide a pump.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)Women in prison

A growing number of critics say female inmates, most of them incarcerated for drug and property crimes, are ill-served by a prison system designed for violent men. The California Department of Corrections plans to change some regulations and practices to reflect differences between the sexes.

Inmate facts

California prison population:

Men: 93%

Women: 7%

Female inmates:

* Number in California prisons: 10,800

* Average time served: 14 months

* Serving time for a nonviolent crime: more than 66%

* Have been physically or sexually abused: 57%

* Average age: 36

* With minor children: 64%

* Babies born to inmates each year: about 300

Sources: California Department of Corrections, Little Hoover Commissioon

Posted by lois at 03:51 PM | Comments (0)

June 19, 2005

Halliburton Is Given Prison Contract at Guantanamo

June 19, 2005
Halliburton Is Given New Prison Contract
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, June 18 (AP) - A subsidiary of Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root Services, has been awarded $30 million to build a 220-bed prison for terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the Pentagon announced Friday.

The prison is to include day rooms, exercise areas and medical bays, air-conditioning and a security control room, the Pentagon said. It is to be completed by July 2006.

The prison "is designed to be safer for the long-term detention of detainees and the guards," said a statement provided by a Pentagon spokesman. "It is also expected to require less manpower to operate."

The job is part of a larger contract that could be worth up to $500 million through 2010, the Pentagon said.

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, criticized the deal, calling Halliburton the "scandal-plagued former employer of Vice President Cheney."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)

June 18, 2005

Iowa Governor Will Give Those with Felony Convictions the Right to Vote

June 18, 2005
Iowa Governor Will Give Felons the Right to Vote
By KATE ZERNIKE
Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa announced yesterday that he would restore voting rights for all felons who have completed their sentences, ending what advocates for voting rights had called one of the most restrictive disenfranchisement laws in the country.

The governor's order, which he plans to sign on July 4, will make an estimated 80,000 ex-felons eligible to vote. Advocates hope that the order, which comes after a similar restoration of voting rights in Nebraska, will encourage other states with similarly restrictive laws to broaden voting privileges for ex-felons.

Nationally, about 4.7 million people are ineligible to vote because of felony convictions, about 500,000 of them war veterans, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that promotes alternatives to incarceration. About 1.4 million are black men.

President Bush and other politicians have emphasized the importance of smoothing prisoners' re-entry into society, and advocates say granting ex-felons the right to vote is an important part of encouraging them to be law-abiding citizens.

Mr. Vilsack, a Democrat who has been called a dark-horse presidential candidate for the 2008 election, pointed to research showing that ex-prisoners who vote are less likely to end up back in prison.

"When you've paid your debt to society, you need to be reconnected and re-engaged to society," Mr. Vilsack said yesterday at a news conference, where he was joined by Democratic and Republican legislators who had pushed for the change.

Every state but Maine and Vermont prohibits felons from voting for some period after their convictions, but the states vary in how and when they restore voting privileges.

According to the Right to Vote Campaign, which works to reverse laws preventing felons from voting, 14 states automatically restore voting rights to felons after they are released from prison; four states restore rights after ex-felons complete parole; and 18 states do so after they complete their prison sentence, parole and probation.

Iowa is one of five states - the others are Kentucky, Alabama, Florida and Virginia - that deny a vote to anyone convicted of a felony or an aggravated misdemeanor.

Felons wanting to vote in Iowa have had to petition the governor's office, which then forwards the application to the State Division of Criminal Investigation, which in turn sends it to the parole board for a recommendation, typically up to a six-month procedure.

Mr. Vilsack said that about 600 ex-felons petitioned for voting rights last year, and after he signs the executive order, about that many will be restored to the voting rolls each month. The department of corrections will be responsible for submitting to the governor's office each month's list of eligible ex-felons: people who have completed their sentences, probation and parole.

The law in Iowa has disproportionately affected minority voters; 19 percent of those denied the vote are black, even though blacks make up only 2 percent of the state's population.

"This is a huge victory for voting rights and for civil rights," said Catherine Weiss, associate counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, which has sued to overturn Florida's ban on voting by ex-felons.

Nebraska and Iowa, Ms. Weiss noted, were the last two states outside the South to overturn their bans. "Once Nebraska went, the pressure on Iowa increased dramatically," she said.

Across the country, advocates have filed lawsuits to expand voting rights; next week, Ms. Weiss said, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will consider whether New York's law, which denies the vote to felons on parole, violates the Voting Rights Act because it disproportionately affects blacks and Hispanics.

Ryan King, a research associate at the Sentencing Project, said that about one million ex-felons, including 600,000 in Florida alone, would be eligible to vote if the four states with laws similar to Iowa's granted voting rights to ex-felons.

"The governor's choice of doing this on July 4 is very symbolic," Mr. King said. "It's a celebration of democracy."

Iowa has a significant role in the presidential primary season. But Debra Breuklander, an ex-felon who appeared with the governor at his press conference, said that Mr. Vilsack's action went beyond politics.

"I have children that are still in school; I have a grandson that will be going to school," said Ms. Breuklander, 46, who was released from prison in June 2003 after serving time on a conviction for conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and who now works as a nurse at a drug treatment center. "Not even to be able to have a say-so in what goes on in the schools was driving me crazy."

She added, "If nobody hires you and you don't feel like you're a part of anything, all you will do is feel like you may as well go back to what you know, which is the drugs."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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June 17, 2005

No Surprise! Race a Factor in Job Offers for African American Men who have been incarcerated

June 17, 2005
Race a Factor in Job Offers for Ex-Convicts
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
White men with prison records receive far more offers for entry-level jobs in New York City than black men with identical records, and are offered jobs just as often - if not more so - than black men who have never been arrested, according to a new study by two Princeton professors.

The study, the first to assess the effect of race on job searches by ex-convicts, also found that black men who had never been in trouble with the law were about half as likely as whites with similar backgrounds to get a job offer or a callback.

Black men whose job applications stated that they had spent time in prison were only about one-third as likely as white men with similar applications to get a positive response.

For every 10 white men without convictions who got a job offer or callback, more than 7 white men with prison records also did, the study found. But the difference grew far larger for black applicants: For every 10 black men without criminal convictions, only about 3 with records got offers or callbacks.

"It takes a black ex-offender three times as long to receive a callback or a job offer," said Devah Pager, an assistant professor of sociology and one of the study's two authors.

More than 630,000 people nationwide leave prison each year, including 27,000 in New York State, most of whom are from New York City, said Jeremy Travis, the president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which announced the results of the study yesterday. Nationwide, one in three black men with only a high school diploma will go to prison before turning 40, Professor Pager said.

Beginning in February 2004, Professor Pager and the study's other author, Bruce Western, also a sociology professor, sent 13 white, black and Latino men posing as ex-convicts to more than 3,500 job interviews throughout the city, most of them in Manhattan. (The study did not form any conclusions about Latino ex-convicts.) Saying they had completed only high school, they applied for a broad spectrum of jobs, from couriers to cashiers, deli clerks to telemarketers.

The study's authors said they took pains to minimize all applicants' nonracial differences - in personality, interpersonal skills, education levels, work history and the neighborhoods where they said they lived.

Applicants told prospective employers that they had spent 18 months in prison on a drug conviction, and listed a parole officer as a reference, the study said. The city's correction commissioner, Martin F. Horn, said he hoped the study would persuade elected officials to do more to integrate former prisoners back into society. "The world continues to be a very hard place for ex-offenders to succeed in," he said in an interview, "and it's clear that it's harder still if you're a black ex-offender."

Because ex-convicts with jobs are far less likely to commit further crimes, r, the ability to find work "is every bit as important as putting more police officers on the street," Mr. Horn said.

The chairwoman of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, Patricia L. Gatling, said that beginning next year, her office would invite employers willing to hire people who have been in prison to informal discussions about how to break down the racial disparities in hiring found by the Princeton study.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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June 16, 2005

August 13, 2005 March of Families and Friends of Two MIllion Imprisoned

August 13, 2005, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM; Lafayette Park, Washington, DCFamily Members and Friends of People Incarcerated March on DCOver Two Million Imprisoned -- Too Many! Listen to the Public Sevice Announcement; (mP3 Format) from Drug Truth Network

Family Members and Friends of People Incarcerated, an organization based in Montgomery, Alabama is calling for individuals and organizations to travel from their respective communities. Come to Washington, DC on Saturday, August 13th, in record numbers!

Dear Fellow Citizens of the World:

The United States imprisons its citizens at rates three to ten times higher than other democratic societies. Rigid sentencing laws and 'get tough' policies have made prisons crowded, dangerous and don't make us safer. The impact of continued punishment after a person's release from prison adds to despair that keeps our communities weak.

The March on August 13th and associated events will send a message to our leaders, and is an opportunity for the world to support our demands. We must stop relying on incarceration, give people an education and rehabilitate our communities. People who pay their debt to society should be able to participate in society again.

Millions of citizens can no longer vote. Laws that partially or permanently discourage good citizenship from formerly incarcerated people cannot be supported by evidence and is bad policy.

Please support the call of Family Members and Friends of People Incarcerated, marking August 13th, 2005 a historical day. We will no longer be silent victims of criminal justice policies that target the most vulnerable citizens. We are meeting in Washington, DC to make a unified demand for justice.

The United States is the world's leading jailer, and our march on August 13th, 2005 is a long overdue event.

Abuse flourishes in US prisons, and punishment has become an industry dependent on tax dollars.

Punitive drug laws enacted in the 1980s, and to present day, have resulted in 25% of all incarcerated people in the United States serving time for a drug law violation. In the federal system, these people make up about 55% of the prison population.

In 1987, Congress abolished parole in the federal system. People were given long, mandatory, fixed sentences, leaving the incarcerated and their loved ones hopeless. State governments rushed to punish, fill prisons and build still more. We can no longer afford the injustice, in human costs or the financial burden.

Many of us work on a local level and do a fantastic job, but this march will bring family members, friends, activists, formerly incarcerated persons, and organizations together on another level.

This is a day for us to meet each other, and show our leaders that we demand justice.

Individuals and groups will begin meeting on Friday evening, August 12th. On Saturday morning, August 13th, people will assemble at Lafayette Park (north side of the White House). Programming will begin at 9am and conclude at noon.

Please make plans to be there, and support a march for family members and friends of people incarcerated in all the ways that you can.

If you would like to be an organizer and bring a group to march in Washington on August 13th, please register here online or write:

Roberta Franklin at
firstladytms©aol.com

Family Members and Friends of People Incarcerated
Roberta Franklin, Director
2243 Ajax Street
Montgomery, Alabama 36108
Phone: 334-220-4670; 334-834-9592

Posted by lois at 01:11 PM | Comments (0)

Going Into the Battle with Fear

by Kay Lee

I've been told that nobody cares about prisoners, that trying to reform the system is like pushing sh*t up a hill with a pointy stick. Well, with an average of 4 friends and family members per each of our 2 1/2 million prisoners, I know that a lot of people DO care. I reckon I'll just keep pushing that poop because it's good for my soul. So, August 13th, 2005, will find me standing in the hot DC sun. I will be wearing black to mourn the loss of justice and the spirit of human decency in the USA. The nation's capitol will be under my watchful gaze as I visualize peaceful reform. Why?

Because I know much of the truth, enough to know it would be shameful, indeed impossible, for me as an American dedicated to justice, as a human being dedicated to the spirit, as a grandmother whose babies could be sucked into the horrible existence of a prisoner or his keeper, to comfortably sit in my home with a clear conscience.

I go there because non-violent people like Mr. Gary Brooks Waid, traded by the Feds like a slave on an auction block, had to live in Florida's miserable, disgusting excuse for a state "Correctional" system. I've dealt with the bureaucratic apathy in Florida and I've seen it mirrored in police stations, courtrooms, prisons and jails all over this country.

I go for all inmates who have experienced things I pray I will never witness, and I go for the prison workers, many of them barely past childhood, who have in their hands the responsibility of keeping the nation's prisoners in an environment that breeds cruelty and corruption. I weep for the damage we do.

I'll be there because of the Murder by Errant Guards of Mr. Frank Valdes (July 17th, 1999). I want the memory of the horror of Mr. Valdes' autopsy report to remain in the mind of the public and for them to remember that the murderers in uniform never owned their crime.

I stand now because cruelty and lack of justice has happened in nearly every prison in every state in this union. I go there to remind the families that it could happen to their loved ones if change isn't imminent, and to urge the public to get involved in restoring dignity, professionalism and responsibility to those offices, agencies, and individuals who represent The Law..

Because Mr. Valdes' death began my prison vigils, and his death is the reason for the MAKING THE WALLS TRANSPARENT project (http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/starke), his death has become an intricate part of my personal Journey for Justice. If Mr. Valdes' death has a hand in the emergence of the truth, then his life was not in vain.

I'll be there simply because it's the right thing to do...
TWO and a half MILLION FAMILIES, TOO LITTLE RESISTANCE

As August 13th, the day for the prison reform march in Washington DC draws nigh (details at www.journeyforjustice.org), I am sensing the age old desire to retreat from the struggle in fear. Many of those who know there is a reason to be in Layfayette Park are getting weak knees, making excuses, not trying their best to be there. Believe me, I know enough about the system to understand the emotion. I feel it too, but I've learned to control it so that it does not immobilize me.

You cannot win a war for justice if you go into battle for truth waving the flag of surrender. If you retreat the minute the enemy turns it's ugly head in your direction, it is almost worse than if you had never stood at all. It gives those who minister to the lies a sense of security that is dangerous to those things your common sense should tell you to care about; for our nation is being judged by the world by how we treat others as well as our own.

Every false start will only make the real start harder. The boy who cried wolf wasn't believed when it was the real thing. The suicide who threatens to take his life isn't believed until he is dead. The guards, the prison officials, the DOC nor BOP, none of them are going to believe the real battle has begun when we've threatened to do battle for prison reform, have every reason to do battle for the human rights and rehabilitation of prisoners, but back off when the front line reaches them. Then when the abuse has gone too far and we HAVE to make the stand, our struggle might have to be done without even a pointy stick to aid our efforts.

The attitude of fear pervading this prison situation reminds me of Winston Churchill's statement:

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed;
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly;
You may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.
There may be even a worse fate:
You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

As one of the Florida inmates, Stuart Pomerantz, agreed, "Procrastination is my enemy!" We've already made it harder by waiting so long. How much longer are we willing to wait? An inmate's fair question, "How much worse does it have to get before it's time?" must be answered.

THE BATTLEGROUND

You may do what you want, run when you want, but I hope you will stand with me. We must refuse to lose the ground we've worked so hard to take. This madness must be stopped and the time is now!

I am part of a peaceful stand, as I'm sure most of you are. But peaceful does NOT mean weak, apathetic, cowardly, meek, or bending to threats, lies, and intimidation. Peaceful means to resist with everything inside you what you know is wrong. Now hand me another pointy stick.

I will be praying for the courage that I know resides in all of you.
With great faith in the power of truth, and in you.
~Kay Lee

INFORMATION:

Prison Reform March in Dc August 13, 2005
http://www.journeyforjustice.org

PLANNING COMMITTEE
Roberta Franklin firstladytms@aol.com
Soros Justice Fellow
Project Coordinator for the march on Washington
Nora Callahan nora@november.org
Leonna Abraham-Brandao ramjole@juno.com
Carol Leonard carolleo864@yahoo.com

PSAs for DC MARCH FOR PRISON REFORM
Created by Dean' Becker for Pacifica Radio
http://www.drugtruth.net/MP3/march081305x1.mp3
http://www.drugtruth.net/MP3/DCMarch-PSA2.mp3

Shared by Kay Lee
kaylee1@charter.net
2683 Rockcliff Road S.E.
Atlanta, GA 30316-4013
404-212-0690
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Making The Walls Transparent
http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/starke

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

June 14, 2005

Supreme Court Rules Prisoners Guaranteed Due Process Review Before SuperMAX Confinement

Court Unanimously Holds that Prisoners are Entitled to Notice of Basis for Placement, Opportunity to Respond to Claims and Documentation of Reasons for Placement
From the Center for Constitutional Rights

Synopsis

In Washington, D.C, on June13, 2005, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that prison officials cannot confine inmates in long term solitary confinement in a supermaximum prison without first giving them the opportunity to challenge their placement.

Ruling in Wilkinson v. Austin, a class action case brought on behalf of inmates of the Ohio supermax prison, Justice Kennedy held that prisoners have a liberty interest in not being sent into the extreme isolation of long term supermax confinement.

The Court held that prisoners are entitled to the notice of the factual basis of the reasons for their placement in the supermax, an opportunity to respond, and notice of the decision which provided the reasons for their placement.

Attorneys expressed disappointment, however, that the Court reversed the district court’s procedural protections, which they thought were both appropriate and important. The Court held, for example, that prisoners are not entitled to call witnesses to dispute their placement at the supermax.

“Today’s decision represents a victory for thousands of prisoners,” said Center for Constitutional Rights co-operating attorney Jules Lobel, who argued the case in the Supreme Court. “By recognizing that prisoners have a liberty interest in not being confined in a supermax, the court makes it possible for prisoners to challenge arbitrary placements in a supermax in federal court.”

“This ruling will benefit not only prisoners being held in Ohio but has the potential to effect prisoners across the country in jeopardy of being confined in a supermax facility,” said Stavghvon Lynd, co-operating attorney, Ohio, ACLU.

The ruling, which will affect 400 prisoners in Ohio and potentially tens of thousand of inmates across the country stems from a case originally brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Ohio ACLU. First filed in January 2001, the class-action lawsuit charged officials of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitations and Corrections with treatment of inmates at OSP that was cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Posted by lois at 07:25 PM | Comments (0)

Minor Offences Shouldn't Be A Barrier to Health Career

Published June 10, 2005
Miriam Aukerman: Background rules are too stringent
No one wants dangerous criminals working in nursing homes. But the problem with Attorney General Mike Cox's new report on the issue is that it assumes that anyone who has ever been convicted of anything is dangerous.

And that is simply not true.

Take my client Sarah who, when she was 15, played a practical joke on a two-timing boyfriend by sneaking into his house. She ended up with a juvenile record for breaking and entering, and now, 14 years later, can't get work in a nursing home.

Then there's Lisa, who's been struggling to get off welfare by becoming a nurse's aide, but can't because of a misdemeanor from when she was 17. Her crime? Getting in a fight with a parent who had been physically abusing her for years.

Or there's Carrie, a single mother of four who can't find work in a nursing home despite glowing recommendations and a decade of experience. Ten years ago when she was receiving welfare she was a couple of days late reporting a part-time job, and ended up with a conviction for welfare fraud.

Thirty percent of adult Americans have criminal records for a substantial portion of their lives. Some of them shouldn't be working in nursing homes. But many of them have minor records or have turned their lives around.

The key is figuring out who's dangerous and who's not. We can't afford to exclude excellent caregivers just because they have old or petty convictions, especially when there aren't enough workers to fill available nurse's aide jobs.

Moreover, because health care is one of the few sectors of the economy where it is possible for low-skill workers to find jobs, if we exclude everyone with a record, we'll end up paying welfare to people who can and want to work.

The answer is to set up a process that lets nurse's aides who would otherwise be excluded because of their records prove they'd make good employees. Doctors and nurses already get an appeal process if they are denied the right to work because of a criminal conviction. Nurse's aides should, too.

States like Florida and Illinois, which already have processes to allow nurse's aides to petition for an exemption, have found that only a tiny fraction of the exemptions granted ever need to be revoked. These examples show that it is possible to protect nursing home residents without abandoning our commitment to moving welfare recipients, including those with criminal records, into the work force.

If we really want to make sure that our grandparents get the best possible care, we shouldn't automatically deprive them of caregivers like Sarah, Lisa and Carrie. Instead, we should give Sarah, Lisa and Carrie the chance to show that, despite the mistakes they've made in the past, they'd be the excellent caregivers that Michigan seniors deserve.

Miriam Aukerman of Grand Rapids is a Soros justice fellow with Western Michigan Legal Services.
Copyright 2005 Lansing State Journal

Posted by lois at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)

June 10, 2005

The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition in the U.S.

The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States
http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/mironreport.html
From press release: "Enforcing state and federal marijuana laws costs taxpayers an estimated $7.7 billion annually, according to a report released this week by visiting Harvard University economics professor, Jeffrey Miron, and endorsed by more than 500 economists."

Posted by lois at 07:06 PM | Comments (0)

Toxic Sentences: E-Waste, Prisons and Economic and Environmental Justice

http://svtc.igc.org/cleancc/pubs/prisonfactsheet_305.pdf
"Over 80% of electronic waste either ends up in landfills, is dumped on poorer countries without proper health and environmental oversight, or is managed improperly in facilities such as the Federal Prison Industries, Inc. (UNICOR) recycling
This article can also be found at www.realcostofprisons.org under Papers.

Posted by lois at 07:01 PM | Comments (0)

June 07, 2005

NY Times Editorial: Barred from the Long Haul

June 6, 2005
Barred From the Long Haul
The Patriot Act, passed by Congress after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has come under fire for broad issues involving civil liberties. But there are very specific and narrow problems with the act as well. One is a provision that was intended to prevent potential terrorists from being certified as truck drivers who could transport hazardous materials.

Requiring drivers to have background checks before receiving hazardous material certifications makes perfect sense. But the law, as interpreted by the Transportation Security Administration, singles out law-abiding ex-offenders whose criminal records have nothing to do with terrorism or national security. The new rules, which went into effect at the end of May, could potentially worsen a national trucking shortage and kill off valuable training programs that bring former convicts back into the work force by teaching them to drive trucks and helping them obtain the necessary licenses.

Almost everyone agrees that people who have been convicted of crimes should be screened out of jobs that are clearly related to their offenses. Sex offenders should be barred from working in public schools or day care centers. People who have been convicted of terrorism, espionage - or just using explosives to commit a crime - could certainly be excluded from driving tanker trucks filled with gasoline. But the government has stretched the list of disqualifying crimes to include sweeping and vague offenses. The list suggests that someone who committed insurance fraud or passed bad checks and then paid his debt to society would be barred from driving trucks.

The hazardous materials that former offenders would be banned from hauling include common substances like nail polish and paint. The thousands of chemicals on the list are so pervasive in the trucking stream that losing the ability to transport them would be tantamount to losing the trucking license itself. Those disqualified have a right to appeal, but when it comes to national security issues, authorities have generally been extremely conservative about granting exceptions to the rules. Unless changes are made, it seems inevitable that law-abiding ex-offenders will be barred from one of the few professions that have historically been open to them.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

Juveniles in Juvenile "justice" system suffer 4 x the number of violent deaths

Juvenile offenders at risk to die early
Study finds high mortality rate
By Meg McSherry Breslin
Tribune staff reporter, Chicago Tribune
June 6, 2005

Young people who enter the juvenile justice system are four times more likely to suffer an early violent death than youths in the general population, says a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

The study's lead author said the statistics her team uncovered on youth in the Cook County juvenile detention system are a sad statement on the violence many poor and minority children confront.

"We need to get away from the stereotype that delinquent youths are just bad kids," said Linda Teplin, a professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University. "They are a group of young people who are especially vulnerable to early and violent deaths."

One alarming finding is that delinquent girls are eight times more likely to die than girls in the general population.

Teplin's team has been conducting a large-scale study of juvenile delinquents since 1995 and didn't plan to analyze death rates initially. But when so many youths they were following died, the team quickly took notice.

"Our first death occurred within the first year of the study, and people were shocked," Teplin said. "But as the deaths rose, I realized there was a story to be told here because no one studies these kids. ... They study recidivism in delinquent kids, but very few people look at the health needs of these high-risk kids."

Researchers followed 1,829 youths who were randomly sampled after passing through the intake department of the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. Some youths were followed for as long as eight years; some had as few as one juvenile charge.

The majority of the study's subjects are minorities: 55 percent African-American and 28 percent Hispanic. Roughly 16 percent are white.

The ongoing study is funded by a range of federal agencies and foundations, including the National Institute of Mental Health and the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. It is the most comprehensive attempt in more than 60 years to pinpoint death rates among juvenile delinquents, Teplin said.

Leaders in violence prevention say the study is a wakeup call to the needs of a wide swath of poor and minority youths. Delinquent African-American males in the study had the highest mortality figures. Of the 65 youths who died in the follow-up period, 23 were African-American males. The next highest rate was for Hispanic males, with 21 deaths. The mortality rates for delinquent youths were compared with youths in the general Cook County population who were similar in gender, age, and race or ethnicity.

"This should be recognized and used as a red flag not to body-slam these [delinquent] kids but to give them some services and some protective factors," said Carl Bell, a child psychiatrist and president of the Chicago Community Mental Health Council.

Ninety percent of the youths who died were victims of homicide, mostly gunshot wounds, a fact that caught the attention of Dr. Katherine Kaufer Christoffel, a Children's Memorial Hospital research professor who has led physician efforts against gun violence.

"There's such a high percentage of minority children who wind up in criminal justice," she said. "And we tend to think of other people being vulnerable to them. But the fact that they are so vulnerable themselves has not been sufficiently emphasized."

Judge Patricia Martin Bishop, presiding judge of Cook County Circuit Court's Child Protection Division, said Teplin's research should force some discussions among court officials. "This surprises me tremendously, and it's also depressing," she said.

----------

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0506060208jun06,1,343509.story?coll=chi-newslocal-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

mbreslin@tribune.com

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

Posted by lois at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

Ct: Governor's Veto Means Justice Denied--Crack vs. Cocaine

By Charles B. Rangel
June 6 2005

Gov. M. Jodi Rell has vetoed what its supporters had called the Racial Justice Bill. This important piece of legislation would have addressed the extreme racial disparity in Connecticut's prisons by equalizing the penalties for crack and powder cocaine.

A person convicted of possessing or selling just a half-gram of crack cocaine now faces at least five to 20 years in jail - the same sentence as someone who possesses or sells a much greater amount of pure cocaine.

Crack and powder cocaine are two forms of the same drug. The effects from use of crack and powder cocaine are relatively the same, according to researchers in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1996. The real differences between crack and powder cocaine are in how they are ingested and who is perceived to be the primary user of each drug.

Crack cocaine is smoked; powder cocaine can be smoked, snorted, eaten or injected. Not much of a cause for disparity there. But crack cocaine is largely associated with African Americans in cities; powder cocaine is largely associated with white professionals. The numbers are telling: The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that, nationally, 93 percent of those sentenced to prison on crack cocaine-related offenses were African American and Latino, but only 6 percent were white. More Caucasians use crack cocaine, but the law enforcement is targeted disproportionately at inner-city black communities.

In the late 1980s, Connecticut, like the federal government and other states, created harsh sentencing laws for crack cocaine. Crack was new to communities across America, and getting tough on this drug became a top priority, given the exaggerated publicity surrounding it.

This short-sighted approach did little to solve the problem of crack addiction in urban communities, but it created a pervasive problem in racial disparity in Connecticut's criminal justice system. A study conducted by the Connecticut Office of Legislative Research in 1999 found that whites account for 62 percent of the state population and nearly 50 percent of drug arrests, but they account for just 11 percent of drug convictions. African Americans make up just 8 percent of the population, but 38 percent of drug arrests and 58 percent of drug convictions.

Law enforcement has been hammering poor minority individuals for possessing small amounts of crack cocaine, rather than arresting big-time drug dealers. As long as the drug problem is seen as a problem of the black community, little will be done to attack high-end dealers and distributors that target white suburbia as well as inner-city black communities.

Many Connecticut legislators, including members of the black and Latino caucus, saw the impact of racial disparities in sentencing in their communities. They articulated the need for an effective drug policy. Their testimony on the Connecticut House and Senate floor spoke to the urgency of this issue, as well as to their determination to undo mistakes of the past. They succeeded in helping the bill pass both the Senate and the House of Representatives. On Thursday, the governor vetoed the bill.

The governor does not stand for racial justice.

Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Copyright 2005, Hartford Courant

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-rangel0606.artjun06,0,7093117.story

Posted by lois at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

CA: Bills Affecting Prop 36 in limbo

San Bernardino County Sun
Bills affecting Proposition 36 in limbo
By L.C. Greene
Staff Writer

Sunday, June 05, 2005 - In what some call a classic case of cops versus docs, two controversial state Senate bills could affect how tough California courts are on drug addicts.

The two measures, one supported by law enforcement and the other by the medical community, would make key changes to Proposition 36, the law giving nonviolent drug offenders the option of going into treatment instead of jail.

Senate Bill 803 would give judges more authority to track and discipline nonviolent drug offenders participating in Proposition 36 treatment programs.

The measure supported by drug-court judges, prosecutors and law enforcement easily passed the state Senate by the necessary two-thirds majority on Wednesday, despite strong opposition from the medical community.

Despite its passage, the measure hangs in limbo because its companion measure, state Senate Bill 556, must also pass for either bill to move on to the Assembly.

The second bill has fallen several votes short of approval. On the verge of failing, the bill was amended with an urgency clause on Thursday, giving its author another week to drum up support.

Submitted by state Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, state Senate Bill 556 would require counties to devote at least 88percent of Proposition 36 money to treatment, not administrative costs, thus steering more money toward directly helping addicts.

"Frankly, the treatment ... has been found to be lacking,' said Migden, who favors providing more treatment over incarceration.

She said 85percent of addicts are treated as outpatients because of a lack of inpatient beds.

State Senate Bill 803, written by state Sen. Denise Moreno Duchney, D-San Diego, would permit judges handling Proposition 36 cases to intensify drug and alcohol treatment or impose brief jail stays, so-called "flash incarcerations,' on those who violate probation or relapse on drugs.

Those supporting state Senate Bill 803 cite studies that found 30percent of those in Proposition 36-driven programs failed to show up for treatment.

However, that percentage is not out of line with statistics from other programs, said Doug Longshore, who heads the state-sponsored team from UCLA evaluating Proposition 36.

"Some people may be disappointed, but it's about what you get when you refer offenders to treatment programs,' he said.

However, the numbers could be higher if judges had more leeway, said Ronald Gilbert, a drug-court commissioner at West Valley Superior Court in Rancho Cucamonga.

"Prop. 36 does lack the teeth,' he said.

Drug-court judges, who generally handle serious offenders, can apply a carrot-and-stick approach, quickly jailing those who relapse or otherwise violate probation.

"It really does work,' Gilbert said.

Those representing the medical and drug and alcohol treatment communities disagree.

According to the best research, jailing addicts simply doesn't work, said Dr. Donald Kurth, chief of Addiction Medicine at Loma Linda University and president of the California Society of Addiction Medicine. Addicts need treatment, he said.

"The drug-court judges want to play doctor,' he said.

Drug and alcohol addiction is a public health problem that should be treated as such, Kurth said. "It's the greatest public health problem of our time.'

Additionally, despite what law enforcement contends, initial studies indicate Proposition 36 has been working, he said.

Proposition 36 has been saving California taxpayers about $150 million a year, said Glenn Backes with the Drug Policy Alliance.

The number of drug offenders in prisons has dropped by 36percent since Proposition 36 was implemented, according to an Alliance report.

Housing a drug offender in prison costs about $31,000 a year, while treatment and its associated costs run $3,330 a year, the report said.

About 35,000 drug offenders a year have passed through Proposition 36 programs, many of them going into treatment for the first time, Backes said.

A UCLA study published in 2003 found that about 70 percent of participants in Proposition 36 programs actually entered treatment.

Half of the participants reported methamphetamine as their primary drug. About 15 percent listed crack cocaine as their drug of choice.

Marijuana came in next at 12 percent, followed by heroin use, affecting 11 percent.

The majority of Proposition 36 program participants, 86 percent, were referred to outpatient treatment, according to the study.

Of those, the study found, more than 80 percent completed 30 days of treatment.

Posted by lois at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)

June 04, 2005

Using Art to Build Pride; project for adolescent girls

June 1, 2005
Using Art to Build Pride
By HILARIE M. SHEETS, NY Times
MIAMI - On a recent evening at the Village, a drug rehabilitation center for adolescent girls here, a work by the artist Lorna Simpson was projected on a cinderblock wall in the dining room. Side-by-side photographs on a wooden accordion screen depicted a girl with a toy boat on her lap and the same girl with clasped hands, along with the words, "Marie said she was from Montreal/ although/ she was from Haiti."

Like every other piece that had been projected in the previous hour, the artwork, "Screen No. 1" (1986), elicited a burst of responses from the 12 girls in the room.

"A lot of times when you come to a different country you are ashamed of the way people observe you and talk about you - so you say you're from somewhere else," a girl named Ashley commented.

"Why Montreal instead of Haiti?" asked the instructor, Jillian Hernandez, an educator from the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami.

"Montreal and Haiti are both based on the French language, and maybe Montreal seemed more high-class," offered another girl, Brittany.

"How does the imagery go along with the text?" Ms. Hernandez asked. "Why is there a boat in that picture?"

"They actually call Haitians 'boats,' " Ashley reported.

"I didn't know that - there you go!" Ms. Hernandez said. "I know that some kids who come for MOCA's after-school programs don't say they're Haitian because they get teased in school. So here the artist is talking about the shame that some people have about their own heritage and how they lie to protect themselves."

That a Lorna Simpson work dealing with complex issues of personal identity might be immediately accessible to girls from difficult backgrounds makes perfect sense to Ms. Hernandez. It was her idea to use contemporary artists who are women as therapeutic examples for such girls in such workshops, which got under way in Miami-Dade County last year.

The outreach program, called Women on the Rise!, has been introduced by the Museum of Contemporary Art at six centers for teenage girls coping with juvenile detention, drug abuse, sexual and physical violence or emotional disorders.

Among the artists covered are Louise Bourgeois, Ellen Gallagher, Ana Mendieta, Shirin Neshat and Carrie Mae Weems, whose art explores the emotional terrain of female sexuality, body image and ethnicity that these teenagers negotiate every day.

"A lot of girls I work with are into the segment of hip-hop culture that's very misogynist and violent," Ms. Hernandez said. "You have more girls in gangs, which I think gives them a false sense of empowerment."

Reflecting a nationwide trend, the number of girls entering Florida's juvenile justice system for committing violent crimes rose by 24 percent between 1993 and 2003 - compared with a 2 percent increase for boys in the same period, according to the state's Department of Juvenile Justice.

"When they learn about these women artists, who have had blows dealt to them and have struggled just to be able to practice art, it provides them with unexpected role models," Ms. Hernandez said.

"They identify heavily with Ana Mendieta, for instance, who was told by her high school art teacher she was no good and yet she continued on." (Ms. Mendieta was exiled from Cuba to the United States without her parents in 1961, at age 12.)

"A lot of them have been through the foster care system," Ms. Hernandez said of the workshop participants. "A lot of them have immigrant families. They understand the difficulty of coming to the United States and not knowing the language."

When educators at the Museum of Contemporary Art first contacted juvenile centers to gauge interest, they found that nothing remotely like the program existed. If the centers had any art programs at all, they were of the craft variety - quilting, knitting, making macaroni necklaces.

So Adrienne von Lates, the museum's curator of education, and Ms. Hernandez put together a curriculum of four two-hour workshops that could easily be offered at each center. To date, the program has served some 400 girls.

Appearing scarcely older than a teenager herself, Ms. Hernandez, 25, is quick to establish a rapport with each group, a relationship somewhere between mentor and big sister. The first hour is like a college-level art history class: she gives an overview of the artists being discussed, shows slides and opens the room to discussion. The language in the reading material on the artists is sophisticated; as the girls read it aloud, and Ms. Hernandez reviews any words or ideas that are difficult.

"A lot of these girls suffer from low expectations," she said. "I really come at them expecting a lot, and very often they will meet me at that level."

In the second hour, the teenagers work on an art project inspired by an artist they have just studied and that usually involves photography or collage. At the Village, one of the Lorna Simpson pieces, "Stereo Styles" (1988), consisted of 10 photographs of African-American women depicted from behind in identical dress, with only the hair styled differently. Running along the bottom of the serially mounted photos was the text: "Daring, Sensible, Severe, Long & Silky, Boyish, Ageless, Silly, Magnetic, Country Fresh, Sweet."

The girls then each found a partner so they could photograph each other's hair from behind. "It's this idea of what hair says about you," Ms. Hernandez told the girls, many of whom had been playing with each other's hair before the workshop began and greeted the project with enthusiasm.

One girl was concerned that her hair fell under the "boyish" category. "I think Lorna Simpson's talking about labels, and I think she's criticizing those labels," Ms. Hernandez said. Another chose to focus on the wildly curly tips of her subject's brown hair; another zoomed in so closely on a bun it seemed abstract.

A popular art project in the program is based on a series of collages in which the Kenya-born artist Wangechi Mutu cobbled together pieces of advertisements from beauty magazines and assembled them to create disfigured women as a way of questioning cultural ideals of perfection.

As part of "Women on the Rise!," all the groups except those at the Miami-Dade Juvenile Detention center visit the Museum of Contemporary Art. For most of them, it is the first time they have ever been to a museum.

This spring, groups took in shows by Ms. Gallagher and Ms. Bourgeois, whom they had previously studied in workshops. "I wasn't sure that they would relate to someone who was so different from them in terms of background, but they loved Louise Bourgeois," Ms. Hernandez said. (Many works by Ms. Bourgeois, now 93, who was born into an upper-middle class family in Paris, were inspired by her troubled relationship with her father.)

"One of her sculptures is of a woman's body that looks like it could be pregnant and there's a knife hovering over it," Ms. Hernandez said. "The girls suggested all these stories like, 'Maybe this woman's pregnant and she doesn't want the baby.' Or, 'Maybe this woman was raped or maybe this woman wants to kill herself.' They can deal with something that may have to do with them personally but without making themselves vulnerable."

When Ms. Hernandez leads the workshop on Ms. Mendieta, she always has the girls read this quotation from the artist: "I know if I had not discovered art, I would have been a criminal."

"I ask them what they think about that," she said. "They may say, 'I can see how if I'm feeling really angry about something, maybe I can write in a journal or draw instead of acting on something that may hurt me later.' "

"That's the lesson that gets through," she continued. "I don't know if it will change anything they do, but at least they have tools to come at it differently."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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NJ: Federal detainees, county headaches

Jersey jails' troubles increasing
Friday, June 03, 2005

BY BRIAN DONOHUE AND TOM FEENEY
Star-Ledger Staff

It looks like easy money. Hudson County raised $10.4 million last year.
Middlesex picked up $5 million. And Bergen County got $4 million.

A growing number of counties across the nation are renting space in their
jails to the U.S. government to house foreigners arrested for immigration
violations.

The "revenue population," as one official called the detainees, can help
counties defray the cost of running jails and even lower property taxes.

What county officials did not expect was being thrown into the roiling
debate over federal immigration policy or the suddenly rising costs of
inmate care and legal fees to defend against lawsuits.

Taken together, the changes have several officials rethinking what for many
was a much-needed budget Band-Aid.

The controversy has been fueled by incidents in which detainees and their
advocates claim mistreatment. In the past six months:

* The Department of Homeland Security banned all its contract facilities
from using dogs after a Cuban detainee in Passaic was hospitalized following
an attack by a guard dog.

* One officer was suspended and 11 officers at the Hudson County
Correctional Facility face disciplinary charges for allegedly beating a
detainee. The incident, along with the alleged dog attack, has sparked an
investigation by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector
General into the treatment of detainees at six facilities nationwide,
including Hudson and Passaic.

* In Monmouth County, the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee, an
advocacy group, submitted to county officials written statements from 28
detainees complaining of overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. In two
complaints, detainees describe an incident in which guards beat a Vietnamese
detainee so badly that he defecated on himself.

Officials in all three counties say their jails meet federal guidelines and
treat detainees humanely. They argue that they are being unfairly criticized
by immigrant advocates for their role in carrying out federal immigration
policies over which they have no control.

"It's frustrating that anger over national policy is being conflated with
their dealings with these local facilities," said James Kennelly, spokesman
for Hudson County. "Hudson County isn't picking people up off the streets
with some minor offense trying to deport them. It's the federal government
doing that. But people who hate the policy want to smear our jail and it's
not fair."

MORALS CLAUSE
The boom in immigration detention can be traced to a 1996 law requiring the
deportation of any foreigner who commits a crime of "moral turpitude."

Federal immigration agents interpreted the law broadly, arresting foreigners
with years-old convictions for everything from rape and murder to possession
of a few marijuana joints.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks sparked a new wave of crackdowns, the
latest targeting more than 400,000 immigration fugitives -- people who had
been ordered deported but who never left the United States. Last year, an
average of 22,814 immigrants were being detained nationwide on any given
day, up from 6,785 in 1994, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Passaic County, which has long held federal detainees, is now the main
holding area for immigrants arrested in New York City. Hudson is building a
new dormitory so it can hold more.

Over the past few years, Monmouth, Middlesex, Bergen, Mercer and Sussex
counties all agreed to rent jails as immigration lockups.

Members of human rights groups say many of the jails were designed to hold
criminal suspects awaiting trial and are unfit for detainees -- many of them
non-criminals -- who often are held for months or even years.

The exact number of immigrants held in New Jersey jails is unclear.

In early April, Ernestine Fobbs, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and
Immigration Enforcement, said there were 702 detainees housed in New Jersey.
But numbers provided the same week by county officials in Passaic,
Middlesex, Bergen and Hudson counties alone totaled 944.

Officials in Bergen County said they are re-examining the decision by former
sheriff Joel Trella to house immigration detainees, saying it may not be
worth the money -- or the headaches.

While the county receives $85 per day to house each detainee, it costs at
least $60 to guard and care for them, County Administrator Tim Dacey said.
And officials are increasingly concerned over potential liability issues,
especially in areas like providing medical care.

"It probably isn't costing us, but we're not making money like he sold it,"
Dacey said.

Thom Ammirato, a former spokesman for Trella, disputed Dacey's argument,
saying the current administration's own audit showed the program was making
money.

"By far it's worth it," he said.

DENTAL WORRIES
Antoni Rumierz, a detainee currently held in Middlesex County, is the kind
of person Dacey worries about.

Since his arrest for possession of stolen property in Massachusetts in 1995,
Rumierz, a former green card holder, has spent 10 years bouncing among seven
county jails in four states as he fights deportation to Poland, according to
court papers.

Seated at a visitors booth inside the jail, he grimaces to reveal eight
missing teeth, the result, he says, of the lack of dental care while being
held at the Passaic and Hudson county jails.

When he asked to see a dentist, Rumierz said jail officials told him,
"You're going to be deported soon, so we're not going to (fix your teeth)."

Rumierz was moved to Middlesex last year. He is suing the counties of
Passaic and Hudson for the loss of his teeth and vows not to settle for less
than $100,000.

"You try to make a profit out of warehousing people and you're going to
fail," said Rumierz's attorney, Regis Fernandez of Newark. "It's not a
money-making situation unless you cut corners and you have this situation
where people's teeth