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July 24, 2005

LA: Tallulah Campaigns for College

The News Star
Monroe, LA Saturday, July 23, 2005
By Jordan Blum
jblum@thenewsstar.com
Tallulah residents are proving they're serious about establishing a community college.

Instead of just talking about the idea of transforming the new Steve Hoyle Rehabilitation Center into a community college, a coalition actively seeks to make it happen through multiple awareness campaigns and political lobbying efforts.

The Tallulah-based Louisiana Delta Coalition for Education and Economic Development aims to put the past ills of the infamous Swanson Correction Center for Youth ‹ now Steve Hoyle ‹ by emphasizing education over incarceration, said Moses Williams, coalition spokesman.

The coalition has already used cartoon television commercials depicting the transformation from prison to community college. Now, they are organizing the Tallulah Kids' Project to demonstrate through art what the youth of Tallulah want in their community, including more educational opportunities.

McCall Senior High School student DaShinta Dense, 16, is participating in the art project, in which students ‹ they are mostly of elementary age ‹ are creating 20-foot-long banners with pictures of what they would like to see in Tallulah and at the proposed college. Eventually, the banners will completely wrap around a portable, steel building, which will be shown at news conferences in Tallulah and Baton Rouge, intended to create awareness to their cause. The art is currently on display at the Tallulah Community Center.

"I really wanted to help get this project done and make a mark in history," Dense said. "Most people here want the college because it'll bring a positive vibe to Tallulah.

"Everybody knows the prison ‹ SCCY or whatever they're calling it ‹ but I want Tallulah to be known for a college and not a prison."

A community college in Tallulah would mark the most rural setting for a community college in Louisiana. Coalition members estimate total conversion costs at about $10 million. Since the facility was designed as a school for juvenile offenders, it is an ideal fit, Williams said.

The rehabilitation center officially opened in April for long-term, intensive substance abuse treatment. SCCY, notorious for its violence against juvenile inmates, closed in June 2004 before the state took control and converted it. The rehab center employs 153 people full time and is at about 95 percent of its 260-person capacity, said Assistant Warden Robert Rachal.

Last week, Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law a bill amending 2004 legislation authorizing a local government, not the state, to own the rehab center for the purpose of a learning center. The hope is the law will help resolve a complicated cooperative endeavor agreement between the state and the former owners requiring the state to pay $3.4 million in debt service each year for a facility it does not own.

State Sen. Charles Jones, D-Monroe, helped procure $25,000 for a feasibility study during the legislative session that coalition officials hope will lead to a plan to create a community college, Williams said.

"What we have now is a shell of a prison," said Williams, arguing the facility lowers property values in Tallulah. "If we develop the long-term solution of education, then people can earn better jobs, and we won't need a big prison."

In defense of the rehab center, Rachal said he is working with the city and local civic organizations to promote community involvement. There are already cleanup crews helping with beautification for the region.

The first group of inmates successfully completed their 12-month intensive treatment program last week, he said.

Originally published July 23, 2005
http://www.thenewsstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050723/NEWS01/507230
314/1002

Posted by lois at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

Drug Policy Interview with WONPR founders

DRCNet Interview: Cher Ford-McCullough and Jean Marlowe of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform 7/22/05

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/396/wonpr.shtml

Formed in 1929, the original Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform (WONPR) played a crucial role in bringing about the end of alcohol Prohibition. Now, three-quarters of a century later, a new generation of women activists have resurrected the organization and its mission to undo the damage wrought on children, families, and communities by the failed war on drugs. To see what is going on with this relatively new organization, Drug War Chronicle spoke last week with two of the group's co-founders, WONPR president Cher Ford-McCullough and executive director Jean Marlowe.

Drug War Chronicle: What prompted you to form the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform?

Cher Ford-McCullough: It was the Goose Creek raid in South Carolina, when those police burst into that school with guns drawn and terrified those kids. That was when we realized just how bad things had gotten. It was time for women to stand up; we just couldn't have this anymore. We needed to make clear to those police and school administrators that they are not going to do this to our children without being held accountable. We didn't have to reinvent the wheel because we had a model in the original WONPR. Those women succeeded in ending Prohibition, and we applied the same principles they did. Shortly after that raid, Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow/Push Coalition put on a protest in Charleston, and we went down to that. After that, Jean, Florida-based prison activist Kay Lee, and I got together at the hotel and decided to resurrect this group. It was the atrocity at Goose Creek that got us going.

Jean Marlowe: I have two granddaughters, with the oldest just starting first grade. Their mother grew up with this drug war, knowing the police could come and take her children away. I don't want my granddaughters to have to endure that when they grow up. When I saw those police at Goose Creek taking their loaded weapons with the safeties off and pointing them at those children, I took it as seriously as if that had been one of my own children. I was just outraged that they would treat children like that. Our position is that every child in America is red, white, and blue, and they all deserve their rights.

Chronicle: Your organization is named after the original WONPR, which was founded to combat alcohol Prohibition. Why did you resurrect that name?

Ford-McCullough: As we looked at things, we saw that the original WONPR were successful in ending alcohol Prohibition in their time, but we felt that their work wasn't done. While they legalized alcohol again, they didn't end prohibition. We feel that women work together differently and constructively, and we thought we should come together for the common goal of protecting families and children in the war on drugs. We seek to address the issues faced by children whose parents are incarcerated, especially single mothers, but also kids whose fathers are in prison. So many women are affected, and so many of them are from single-parent households. With no fathers around, those women are literally the last line of defense for those children. In nature, the most dangerous animal is the mother protecting her cubs. It seemed very natural for us to pick up the banner to protect the children.

Chronicle: Given your orientation toward women, children, and the family, what issues to you concentrate on?

Marlowe: We really concentrate on how the drug war negatively impacts women and their families, on all the ways it does. The National Organization for Women just passed a resolution opposing the drug war and asking for policies based on compassion, health, and human rights. Part of that resolution explains that they are using pregnant women to write drug laws that have a terrible impact on women and their children. We are really concerned with women who face being sent to prison or losing their children forever because of laws like the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which allows the state to seize children and take permanent custody with the mothers, grandparents, and siblings forbidden from having any contact with that child ever again. This kind of thing is un-American at best and fascist at worst. Any law that allows the state to take away a woman's child when she may not even be guilty of a crime is intolerable.

Women are the fastest growing segment of the prison population, and much of it has little to do with their actual personal responsibility. A lot of them are charged on conspiracy charges and told things will go easy if they cooperate, if they give up names, but they don't know anything. They have no ability to rat someone out, so they get long mandatory minimum prison sentences, they lose their children, they lose their health, they lose everything. These are women in peripheral roles, women who may be dependent on the men or may be abused by them and afraid to go to their authorities.

Right now, we're explaining to the state legislature here in North Carolina that they are incarcerating their tax base. Across the country, there are over two million children who have a parent or guardian in prison, and most of those kids are in some form of state-funded social service program -- Medicaid, free lunch, food stamps, foster care. That's why so many of our state budgets are in the red. When you have millions of children whose parents are in prison, it's not too hard to figure out the taxpayers are going to be left with the tab.

Chronicle: I'm sure this didn't just happen out of the blue. What sorts of histories of activism do you have?

Ford-McCullough: I started out with the Florida Journey for Justice in 2000. We had a friend named Eddie Smith with AIDS who has since died, and we took him down there in our motor home. The next year, I went on the Texas Journey for Justice. I'm also the Kentucky state director for the American Alliance for Medical Cannabis and have been working with long-time marijuana activist and occasional political candidate Gatewood Galbraith since 1999. We went up to Rainbow Farm in Michigan after they shot Rollie Rohm and Tom Crosslin, and we were probably the only activists on the ground giving out information to counteract the lies they were printing in the newspapers.

Marlowe: I got started back in 1995, when Barney Frank introduced the first medical marijuana research bill. I had been talking with Donald Abrams and knew he had permission to do a study with AIDS patients, but NIDA wouldn't give him any and the DEA wouldn't let him import any. So we held the first demonstration in Polk County, North Carolina, history to raise awareness of that bill. We started off with the local newspapers and had stories like "Jean smokes marijuana every day." That prompted a bout with the local cops, which led to more rallies. In 1997, a judge basically accepted that I had no choice but to use marijuana, and ordered the sheriff to return my grow lights and leave me alone.

A group of women called Sisters for Safer Medicine then paid my way to go to Switzerland to a medical marijuana farm. There, you could buy it over the counter. They sent me a package by mail, Customs found it and prosecuted me, and I was put on probation. I asked permission to attend the 2000 Journey for Justice, but they wouldn't let me go, and when my probation officer found out I was sending video clips of the march to Florida legislators, he had me in court two weeks later. The prosecutor told the judge I was an in-your-face activist and needed to be locked up. They violated me because my THC levels were too high, even though I had a federal magistrate's recommendation to go to California to participate in a study on liver disorders. They sent me to federal prison, the women's camp at Alderson, West Virginia -- the one where Martha Stewart did her sentence. Martha made a few promises there, and now she's ready to get off parole and house arrest. I was interviewed by a bunch of media when she got sent in -- CNN, Fox, Newsweek, People -- and some of those folks said I had interesting things to say about the drug war and they would get back to me to do a story. With the National Organization for Women just passing their anti-drug war resolution, it's time for those stories to start happening.

Chronicle: You mentioned talking to the state legislature. How else do you seek to inform and influence public policy?

Marlowe: We do educational forums and workshops. Right now, we're going to different NOW chapters -- we'll do the North Carolina NOW state conference in September, and we'll be doing a presentation at Bennett College in Greensboro. We're also doing a presentation to the state General Assembly women's caucus. That is happening partly because of our issues and partly because we did a lobby day with the legislature. Now, the women's caucus wants us to address them. We've also been working with the National African-American Drug Policy Coalition (NAADPC) since they started. We're trying to reach out across lines of race, social standing, party, or gender. We've even been reaching out to farmers, explaining how prohibition is costing them their farms when they could be growing hemp. We're educating the voting base in this county. The drug war affects us all, and people are starting to realize it's their job to bring about common sense and change.

Chronicle: With the emergence of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, with NOW passing an anti-drug resolution, with WONPR, are we seeing the emergence of a woman- and family-centered segment of the drug policy reform movement, a "womanist" drug reform movement?

Marlowe: Of course you are. Women have an overall view of how negatively the drug war affects everyone, and I think it's fair to say women are more concerned about its impact on children. We did a workshop at NOW, and women drug reformers like Deborah Small from Breaking the Chains, Scarlett Swerdlow from SSDP, Wyndi Anderson from National Advocates for Pregnant Women, Angelyn Frazier from FAMM, and Anjuli Verma from the ACLU Women's Rights and Women's Prison Project were all there. Deborah and Scarlett were instrumental in getting NOW to pass that resolution, but we were all part of that workshop.

WONPR has now received its very first grant, from the Ms. Foundation for Women, and we are thrilled. Our first grant is coming from a mainstream women's organization. Not only are we seeing women's perspective in drug reform, we are seeing the broader women's movement take an interest in the subject.

Chronicle: Are women around the country responding to WONPR?

Marlowe: We have chapters in five states now, and our goal is to have chapters in at least 38 states by 2008.

Chronicle: That's an odd number. The only thing that really jumps out about it is that it is the number of states required to ratify a constitutional amendment.

Marlowe: Funny, isn't it? Anyway, we are seeking to create good, functional chapters, and our membership is growing rapidly.

Chronicle: You've also signed on to the August march on Washington to protest the mass imprisonment of Americans. Why is supporting that march important?

Marlowe: Those people in prison on drug charges deserve to have someone out there marching for them. Our position is that drug abuse and addiction should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue. Both of us will be there giving speeches. We hope it does some good. We hope our leaders will start to pay attention to this feminine energy. When I was in the prison camp at Alderson, I promised those women I would become a voice for them and their children. This is part of it.

Posted by lois at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)

New Study:Review of State & Federal Law relating to Collateral Conscequences

The Sentencing Project (www.sentencingproject.org) has posted a new study by Margaret Colgate Love entitled Relief from the Collateral Consequences of a Criminal Conviction: A State-by- State Resource Guide. This is the first comprehensive review of state and federal laws and practices relating to restoration of rights and obtaining relief from the collateral consequences of a criminal conviction. The study illustrates the extraordinary variety and complexity of state and federal laws that impose continuing burdens on convicted persons long after their court- imposed sentences have been fully discharged. It is an important resource for policymakers interested in offender reentry and reintegration, for practitioners at all levels of the criminal justice system, and for people with a criminal record who are seeking to put their past behind them. The Sentencing Project has been given permission to make available key portions of the study by its publisher, William S. Hein & Co., including an executive summary of the findings and conclusions, 54 detailed state/jurisdictional profiles, and eight tables that provide an overview of national patterns.

Posted by lois at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

CT: Gov. Signs Law to Help Correct Racial Injustice in Sentencing

Thursday, July 14, 2005

This week Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell signed a compromise bill to revise the sentencing guidelines for crack and powder cocaine in Connecticut. Though it was not the bill originally proposed by the Alliance, it is a significant step in the right direction.

The original bill, which Governor Rell vetoed, would have set the amount of crack or powder cocaine that triggers a mandatory minimum sentence at 28 grams. The compromise bill that finally passed sets the trigger for both at 14 grams. Though this is not ideal, it is a drastic improvement over the previous law that could put someone with only half a gram of crack cocaine in prison for as long as someone who possessed 28 grams of the powder form. “While it’s a shame that Governor Rell vetoed the original bill, this new law takes three or four steps forward and only one backward,” said Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Alliance.

Disparate cocaine sentencing laws unfairly target minorities and those living in urban areas, who are more likely to use crack cocaine. In Connecticut, for example, black men make up less than 3 percent of Connecticut's population but account for 47 percent of the state's inmates. We were able to make real progress in correcting this injustice thanks to community organizing by groups like the Alliance Connecticut, a coalition of which the Drug Policy Alliance is a member, and individuals in Connecticut who contacted their legislators and the governor to demand fairness in sentencing.

This victory will serve as a springboard for crucial further reform. Robert Rooks of the Alliance Connecticut said, "This compromise bill is an important first step, but the war on drugs continues to devastate communities of color. We will not stop. The momentum of this win will be carried into next year's battle against systemically racist policies, including mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses.”

The momentum will also carry over to a fight at the federal level, where similar sentencing disparities exist. The federal government treats small amounts (5 grams) of crack cocaine in the same way as they do large amounts (500 grams) of powder cocaine. Representative Charles Rangel, (D-NY), along with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, has re-introduced into Congress the Crack-Cocaine Equitable Sentencing Act of 2005 (HR 2456). His bill would treat the two forms of cocaine equally in federal sentencing.

Posted by lois at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2005

National Organization for Women: Takes Stand Against War on Drugs

WOMEN'S RIGHTS - ANOTHER CASUALTY OF THE "WAR ON DRUGS"

2005

WHEREAS, the incarceration rate of women convicted of low-level drug-related offenses has increased dramatically in the past decade as a result of our nation's relentless "War on Drugs," and poor women and women of color have been disproportionately targeted for drug law enforcement and receive long mandatory prison sentences that have little relationship to their actions or culpability; and

WHEREAS, two thirds of women in prison have at least two children who are displaced as a result of their incarceration, often forced to live in the care of family, friends, or state-sponsored foster care where they may be at increased risk of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse; and

WHEREAS, women's unique patterns of drug abuse and addiction and special treatment needs are inadequately addressed, as women often turn to drugs to cope with undiagnosed or untreated mental illness, and/or the trauma of physical or sexual abuse or other stresses particular to women; and

WHEREAS, the intersection of substance use and pregnancy are increasingly the focus of drug law enforcement; and

WHEREAS, violence against women and other circumstances specific to women's involvement in drug-related activities are often overlooked or ignored in sentencing, such as situations in which women who have been emotionally, physically, or sexually abused by partners involved in drug operations are dependent on them and unlikely to turn to the authorities; and

WHEREAS, after incarceration, women continue to bear the stigma and burden of post-conviction sanctions that constitute collateral consequences of incarceration impeding their reintegration into society, including denial of access to public housing, public assistance and food stamps, higher education aid and civic participation, effectively rendering them second-class citizens;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the National Organization for Women (NOW) iterate its opposition to the "War on Drugs" and in its stead support an approach to drug use and addiction that promotes compassion, public health and human rights; and

THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that NOW educate its membership about the harms the "War on Drugs" inflicts on women, using the NOW web site, NOW materials and literature and regular NOW legislative updates including pending legislation that would negatively impact women; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that an ad-hoc committee be created to research current drug policy that has a particular impact on women and report back to the leadership and membership at the next national conference on a potential action plan to be implemented locally and nationally in conjunction with other organizations currently working toward the same objectives.

Posted by lois at 04:20 PM | Comments (0)

NY Times Editorial: Fighting AIDS Behind Bars

Fighting AIDS Behind Bars

Published: July 22, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/22/opinion/22fri3.html?th&emc=th

The United States has done relatively little to curtail the AIDS
epidemic that rages within the prison system, where the H.I.V. infection rates are many times as high as in the world outside. Strategies for fighting disease behind bars are better developed in Europe, where the World Health Organization is 10 years into a public discussion project aimed at slowing the spread of H.I.V. and other deadly infections in the prison population. The Europeans seem to have grasped the idea that infections contracted behind bars end up back in the broader society when infected inmates get out.

The World Health Organization's most recent update consolidates what the Europeans have learned over the last 10 years and should be required reading for public health and prison officials in this country. The emerging consensus is that prison has become the perfect environment for the transmission of dangerous diseases like tuberculosis, hepatitis C and AIDS because of crowding, unprotected widespread needle-sharing for intravenous drug use.

The rising infection rates among addicts in general show clearly that
merely declaring sex and drug use illegal has not worked. The prison
systems that have managed to slow the spread of AIDS have employed drug treatment and "harm reduction" strategies - like offering methadone maintenance and distributing condoms.

Many nations, including the United States, are hampered in the fight
against AIDS by a pervasive denial of drug use and sex behind bars.
Politicians often argue that harm-reduction strategies can seem to
promote illicit behavior.

It's understandable that some prison systems may reject the idea of
providing needles to people who use drugs behind bars, even though
needle exchanges have proved to be a cheap and effective way to slow the spread of disease in the outside world. But it seems inexcusable that prisons don't pursue other strategies - like testing inmates and
educating them about disease - while making condoms readily available to those who want them.

It's not necessary to condone behavior that spreads AIDS. But it is
critical to acknowledge that such behavior persists in prisons. The aim must be to slow the spread of disease so as few people as possible get out with infections that endanger society.

Posted by lois at 03:39 PM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2005

Bob Herbert- "Education's Collateral Damage"

July 21, 2005
Education's Collateral Damage
By BOB HERBERT
Stop the presses! Within just a few days we've had a scandal involving a world-class presidential guru bumped off the front pages by a prime-time presidential announcement of a nominee to the Supreme Court.

No one would argue that these aren't big stories. But an issue that is even more important to the long-term future of the U.S. gets very short shrift from the media. In an era when a college education is virtually a prerequisite for maintaining a middle-class lifestyle, an extraordinary number of American teenagers continue to head toward adulthood without even a high school diploma.

This is not a sexy issue, and certainly not as titillating for journalists as the political witchcraft that Karl Rove has used to enchant George W. Bush. But consider the following from the book "Dropouts in America: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis," a collection of essays edited by Gary Orfield, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education:

"Nationally, only about two-thirds of all students - and only half of all blacks, Latinos and Native Americans - who enter ninth grade graduate with regular diplomas four years later."

In much of the nation, especially in urban and rural areas, the picture is even more dismal. In New York City, just 18 percent of all students graduate with a Regents diploma, which is the diploma generally required for admission to a four-year college. Only 9.4 percent of African-American students get a Regents diploma.

Over all, the United States has one of the highest high school dropout rates in the industrialized world, which can't be comforting news in the ferociously competitive environment of an increasingly globalized economy.

"It's terrifying to know that half of the kids of color in the United States drop out of high school, and that only one in five is prepared for college," said Tom Vander Ark of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is making a big effort to boost high school graduation rates and the number of graduates who are prepared for college.

Why is the education of America's young people so important?

"It may sound like hyperbole," said Mr. Vander Ark, "but this is the economic development issue for our society, and it is the social justice issue of our times. It is the most important long-term issue for the civic health of the republic.

"In the aggregate, we need more young people educated at higher levels: more finishing high school, more finishing community college, more finishing four-year degrees. And secondly, I think it's very important that we close the racial and socioeconomic gaps in educational attainment.

"We're seeing a scary level of income stratification that is the result of educational stratification. And it's becoming important not just for the economy but for our society that we help low-income [students], and especially kids of color, achieve high levels of education so that they can participate in the economy and in our society."

Citing statistics from a variety of sources, officials at the Gates Foundation have noted that:

High school dropouts, on average, earn $9,245 less per year than high school graduates.

The poverty rate for families headed by dropouts is more than twice that for families headed by high school graduates.

Dropouts are much more likely to be unemployed, less likely to vote and more likely to be imprisoned than high school graduates.

For those concerned about the state of leadership in America, and who wonder where the next generation of leaders will come from, I can tell you it's not likely to emerge from the millions upon millions of dropouts we're setting loose in the land.

And whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, if you'd like to see a wiser, more creative and more effective approach to such crucial problems as war and peace, terror, international relations, employment, energy consumption and so on, you'll need to rely on a much better-educated and better-informed population than the United States has now.

I don't think Mr. Vander Ark was engaging in hyperbole. The public needs to understand the extent of the high school dropout crisis, and its implications for the long-term future of the U.S. It will most likely have more of an impact on the lives of your children and grandchildren than George W. Bush's appointments to the Supreme Court.

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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

Black Commentator: The Abomination of Mass Incarceration

http://www.blackcommentator.com/147/147_cover_incarceration.html>

Issue 147 - July 21 2005
³A great force of suffering accumulated between the basement of heaven and
the roof of hell...²

Zora Neale Hurston wrote those words almost seventy years ago at the
beginning of her great allegorical work on black America, Moses, Man of the Mountain. She could have been speaking about African America today. As black activists ponder how best to build a mass movement to transform America, a mass movement that must start in but not be confined to our communities, one single low-hanging fruit of organizing opportunity is hard to miss. That
opportunity lies in the manifest unfairness and hypocrisy of America¹s
system of racially selective policing, prosecution and mass imprisonment.

These awful public policies are inviting targets for electoral and other
mobilizations in black communities and beyond.
The fact that America does implement a public policy of racially selective
mass imprisonment is well documented and beyond dispute. With under 5
percent of the world¹s people, the US accounts for 25 percent of the
planet¹s prisoners. More than half its 2.2 million prisoners come from the
one eighth of its population which is black. Today, an astounding 3 percent
of all African Americans languish in prisons and jails, and nearly as many
more are on probation, parole, bail, house arrest or court supervision.
Tens of thousands of jobless, skill-less, often anti-socialized inmates are
released into black communities each month in which jobs, medical care,
educational opportunities and family or official support are almost
completely absent. Unsurprisingly, many are back behind the walls in a
matter of months. Right now, the shadow of prison squats at the corners of,
and often at the center of nearly every black family¹s life in this nation.
Since 1970, the US prison population has multiplied more than six times.
The explosive growth of America's incarceration and crime control industries
have occurred despite essentially level crime rates over the last four
decades. This has only been possible because the public policies which
enable and support locking up more people longer and for less have until now
been exempt from analyses of their human, economic and social costs or any
reckoning of the relationships of spiraling imprisonment to actual crime
rates or public safety. Most tellingly, while public discussions of these
policies are deracialized, their racially disparate impacts are a seldom
discussed but widely known fact. Thus even though the damning numbers are
widely reported and well known, mass incarceration is practically invisible
as a political issue, even in those heavily black communities which suffer
most from its implementation.
Making mass incarceration a political issue
In the absence of an independent, adversarial press, which might be willing
to raise issues on its own and educate the public, US political discourse is
limited to what officeholders and candidates say and what the media chooses
to report about what they say. As long as no candidate or official can be
heard calling for a moratorium on the prosecution of juveniles as adults, it
is a non-issue. If no candidate or official is cited in the media
advocating the extension of health care, job and educational opportunities
or the rights of citizenship to the prisoner class such proposals are
absolutely off the table. And unless some candidates or officials somehow
get ink or air time publicly questioning the economic and social effects of
mass incarceration on children, on families, on whole communities, these
concerns remain politically invisible.
The fact that sizeable chunks of the population, including likely majorities
in constituencies with large numbers of African Americans might support
radical reforms of America¹s racially skewed policing, prosecutorial and
sentencing practices, if anybody would ask them, is irrelevant. The
establishment political consensus and media lockdown assure that no section
of the public will ever be asked such questions, and hence will never know
how widely shared their own views on the clear injustice of these policies
are.
If we are to build a mass movement in opposition to America¹s crime control
and prison industries, we must succeed in putting the facts of racially
selective mass incarceration, impoverishment and criminalization, first, in
front of our African American communities, and then before the whole of
America, and do so effectively, persuasively, consistently and persistently.
America must be forced to publicly unpack and examine the myths that have
justified its incarceration binge. An indispensable tactic in this struggle
must be the mounting of competent, effective campaigns for elected office
which directly question the unfairness, along with the social and human
costs of these policies, political campaigns which propose radical and
understandable measures to shrink the ³crime control² and prison industries
rather than expand them, and to ameliorate some of the harm already done to
families and communities.
A short list of such down-to-earth public policy proposals might include,
but not be limited to the following:
A moratorium on the prosecution of juveniles as adults, and the confinement
of juveniles in facilities with adult inmates.
A moratorium on all privatization of prisons and jails, including piecemeal
privatizations of such services as inmate feeding, medical care and
probation.
Repeal or sunset of all ³two-strikes², ³three strikes² and indeterminate
sentencing legislation.
The imposition of mandatory ethnic and racial impact statements for all
future prison construction and sentencing legislation, with a period set for
mandatory review comparing the statement at outset with the results no less
than four years out.
Elimination of sentencing disparities between powdered cocaine and crack.
End felony disenfranchisement in those states where it exists, perhaps with
a constitutional amendment guaranteeing voting as a right.
Repeal of legislation banning Pell Grants to convicted felons and inmates,
and require states to offer college credit courses to inmates who have
completed their GED or the equivalent.
Refocus parole systems upon the re-entry and productive reintegration of
former prisoners into society rather than re-imprisonment.
Civilian review boards with teeth to oversee police and prosecutorial
practices.
Explicit commitments to reduce and eliminate disparities in prosecution and
imprisonment.
Over the next several months we should refine and expand the list of policy
positions that campaigns must incorporate if they expect the support of a
mass movement to end the nation¹s policy of racially selective imprisonment.
Organic connections between electoral campaigns and mass movements
In BC¹s June 30, 2005 issue we described some of the essential
characteristics of mass movements, progressive and otherwise:
³Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform
societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass
movements drag the courts, laws and officeholders all in their wake.
Progressive and even partially successful mass movements can alter the
political calculus for decades to come, thus improving the lives of
millionsŠ.
²Mass movements exist outside electoral politics, and outside the law, or
they don¹t exist at all. Mass movements are never respecters of law and
order. How can they be? A mass movement is an assertion of popular
leadership by the people themselves. A mass movement aims to persuade
courts, politicians and other actors to tail behind it, not the other way
around. ²
There are already many serious people in our communities involved in
churches and voluntary organizations that try their best to offer services
to the families of inmates, that lobby and agitate against drug and
incarceration policies, that attempt to offer counseling and re-entry
services to those emerging from our state and federal gulag. An electoral
campaign and a mass movement is an unparalleled opportunity for grandmothers
in church-sponsored re-entry programs to work with unchurched young people
who know that they, their siblings and classmates are destined to be fodder
for the imprisonment industry if things don¹t turn around. If that isn¹t a
formula that can feed a mass movement, no such thing exists. Electoral
campaigns conducted against the crime control industry are an indispensable
tool in extending a movement¹s outreach.
Still, we must not allow ourselves to become confused about the differences
between a mass movement to change America's policy of selective policing and
racist incarceration, and an electoral campaign, even ones that succeed in
putting the issue of mass imprisonment at its center. Unlike a mass
movement, a political campaign is a decorous, time-limited legal exercise.
We must know that political campaigns have often heralded the demobilization
of a mass movement, even when that movement¹s objectives have not been met.
Being able to use electoral campaigns to advance the agenda of a mass
movement demands prior preparation and steadfast resolve, lest the candidate
before or after election stray from within the bright lines of opposing the
incarceration of juveniles as adults, or demanding racial and ethnic impact
statements and evaluation for sentencing legislation, to use two of several
possible examples.
The culture of campaigns and officialdom as practiced in America today makes
officeholders unaccountable to anyone except corporate cash and corporate
media. Hence it is suicidal for the leaders of local movements to wait for
candidates to emerge and then decide which if any to support. Candidates
that surface without the help of a movement against mass incarceration will
have intended all along to run whether such a movement existed or not, and
should hence be shunned. Local ³movement leaders,² forced to choose among
such a crop, will inevitably choose the ³least worst² candidate, who will
offer only tepid support to a movement¹s ³bright line² issues and will not
advance the cause of de-legitimizing our nation¹s racially skewed crime
control industry at all.
To guarantee that political campaigns endorsed by the movement do indeed
advance the cause, over the individual fortunes and pressures to which
candidates are prey, we must set up local, statewide and even regional
screening committees to recruit and interview suitable candidates for
office, and to facilitate the channeling of funds and campaign expertise to
those who pledge to stay within the bright lines and place the issue of mass
incarceration squarely at the center of their campaigns. A national PAC
whose sole purpose is funding movement-vetted candidates running against
mass imprisonment ­ and other ³bright line issues ­ should be one of the
outcomes of our next national dialogue, now commonly referred to as ³going
back to Gary.² The gathering will occur in the first quarter of next year.
Candidates who run against the crime control industry and racist mass
imprisonment will certainly need all the help they can get. Although they
are likely to receive surprising support and attract tons of youthful talent
and enthusiasm in our base communities, they will face formidable odds
getting their message out through an indifferent or hostile media.
Time-tested best practices like accountable voter registration drives,
accurate phone and door to door canvasses in base areas, and competent
Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) practices will have to be combined with newer
innovations to circumvent the monopoly that corporate media have on access
to the American public, including the black public. BC will explore the
impact of some of these new media tactics and tools in an upcoming article.
Targeting local prosecutors and sheriffs
Federal prosecutors are presidential appointees. But the state level
gatekeepers for the prison industry¹s stream of human raw material are local
prosecutors ­ elected officials who must run for office at the level of
counties, cities and judicial circuits. A number of these jurisdictions
have black majorities. The local politicians with responsibility for
housing pre-trial inmates are usually elected county officials too:
sheriffs.
The table below, which arranges the list of US counties to show those with
the top 130 black populations, shows a target-rich environment, with fully
37 jurisdictions having African American population percentages of 30% or
greater. Every major city in the state of Georgia, for instance, is on the
list, including 3 of the 4 largest counties in metro Atlanta. And you don¹t
need a black majority to run against mass imprisonment and win. A black
prosecutor ran against the Rockefeller drug laws in Albany NY, where African
Americans are a distinct minority ­ and won.
Counties by Black Population
County NameStateTotal County PopulationTotal Black PopulationPercent
Cook CountyIL5,376,7411,405,36126.1
Los Angeles CountyCA9,519,338930,9579.8
Kings CountyNY2,465,326898,35036.4
Wayne CountyMI2,061,162868,99242.2
Philadelphia CountyPA1,517,550655,82443.2
Harris CountyTX3,400,578628,61918.5
Prince George's CountyMD801,515502,55062.7
Bronx CountyNY1,332,650475,00735.6
Miami-Dade CountyFL2,253,362457,21420.3
Dallas CountyTX2,218,899450,55720.3
Queens CountyNY2,229,379446,18920
Shelby CountyTN897,472435,82448.6
Baltimore cityMD651,154418,95164.3
Cuyahoga CountyOH1,393,978382,63427.4
Fulton County GA816,006363,65644.6
DeKalb CountyGA665,865361,11154.2
District of ColumbiaDC572,059343,31260
Broward CountyFL1,623,018333,30420.5
Essex CountyNJ793,633327,32441.2
Orleans ParishLA484,674325,94767.3
New York County NY1,537,195267,30217.4
Jefferson CountyAL662,047260,60839.4
Milwaukee CountyWI940,164231,15724.6
Duval CountyFL778,879216,78027.8
Alameda CountyCA1,443,741215,59814.9
Marion CountyIN860,454207,96424.2
Hamilton CountyOH845,303198,06123.4
Mecklenburg CountyNC695,454193,83827.9
St. Louis CountyMO1,016,315193,30619
Franklin CountyOH1,068,978191,19617.9
Tarrant CountyTX1,446,219185,14312.8
St. Louis cityMO348,189178,26651.2
East Baton Rouge ParishLA412,852165,52640.1
Orange CountyFL896,344162,89918.2
San Diego CountyCA2,813,833161,4805.7
Allegheny CountyPA1,281,666159,05812.4
Palm Beach CountyFL1,131,184156,05513.8
San Bernardino CountyCA1,709,434155,3489.1
Suffolk CountyMA689,807153,41822.2
Hinds CountyMS250,800153,29761.1
Jackson CountyMO654,880152,39123.3
Baltimore CountyMD754,292151,60020.1
Hillsborough CountyFL998,948149,42315
Davidson CountyTN569,891147,69625.9
Richland CountySC320,677144,80945.2
Nassau CountyNY1,334,544134,67310.1
Mobile CountyAL399,843133,46533.4
Montgomery CountyMD873,341132,25615.1
Westchester CountyNY923,459131,13214.2
Jefferson CountyKY693,604130,92818.9
Clark CountyNV1,375,765124,8859.1
Wake CountyNC627,846123,82019.7
Erie CountyNY950,265123,52913
Guilford CountyNC421,048123,25329.3
Lake CountyIN484,564122,72325.3
Clayton CountyGA236,517121,92751.6
Sacramento CountyCA1,223,499121,80410
Oakland CountyMI1,194,156120,72010.1
Pulaski CountyAR361,474115,19731.9
Maricopa CountyAZ3,072,149114,5513.7
Cobb CountyGA607,751114,23318.8
Richmond cityVA197,790113,10857.2
Caddo ParishLA252,161112,48344.6
Montgomery CountyOH559,062111,03019.9
Union CountyNJ522,541108,59320.8
Montgomery CountyAL223,510108,58348.6
Charleston CountySC309,969106,91834.5
Cumberland CountyNC302,963105,73134.9
Jefferson ParishLA455,466104,12122.9
Norfolk cityVA234,403103,38744.1
New Castle CountyDE500,265101,16720.2
Monroe CountyNY735,343101,07813.7
Bexar CountyTX1,392,931100,0257.2
Hennepin CountyMN1,116,20099,9439
Hartford CountyCT857,18399,93611.7
Richmond CountyGA199,77599,39149.8
Oklahoma CountyOK660,44899,24115
Suffolk CountyNY1,419,36998,5536.9
Riverside CountyCA1,545,38796,4216.2
Chatham CountyGA232,04893,97140.5
King CountyWA1,737,03493,8755.4
New Haven CountyCT824,00893,23911.3
Camden CountyNJ508,93292,05918.1
Genesee CountyMI436,14188,84320.4
Contra Costa CountyCA948,81688,8139.4
Fairfield CountyCT882,56788,36210
Durham CountyNC223,31488,10939.5
Jefferson CountyTX252,05185,04633.7
Fairfax CountyVA969,74983,0988.6
Pinellas CountyFL921,48282,5569
Hudson CountyNJ608,97582,09813.5
Muscogee CountyGA186,29181,48843.7
Virginia Beach cityVA425,25780,59319
Delaware CountyPA550,86479,98114.5
Forsyth CountyNC306,06778,38825.6
Gwinnett CountyGA588,44878,22413.3
Lucas CountyOH455,05477,26817
Travis CountyTX812,28075,2479.3
St. Clair CountyIL256,08273,66628.8
Bibb CountyGA153,88772,81847.3
Summit CountyOH542,89971,60813.2
Newport News cityVA180,15070,38839.1
Fort Bend CountyTX354,45270,35619.8
Leon CountyFL239,45269,70429.1
Mercer CountyNJ350,76169,50219.8
Greenville CountySC379,61669,45518.3
Middlesex CountyNJ750,16268,4679.1
Anne Arundel CountyMD489,65666,42813.6
Polk CountyFL483,92465,54513.5
Hampton cityVA146,43765,42844.7
Henrico CountyVA262,30064,80524.7
Passaic CountyNJ489,04964,64713.2
Burlington CountyNJ423,39464,07115.1
Madison CountyAL276,70063,02522.8
Escambia CountyFL294,41063,01021.4
Hamilton CountyTN307,89662,00520.1
Tulsa CountyOK563,29961,65610.9
Denver CountyCO554,63661,64911.1
San Francisco CountyCA776,73360,5157.8
Solano CountyCA394,54258,82714.9
Dougherty CountyGA96,06557,76260.1
Chesapeake cityVA199,18456,82328.5
Montgomery CountyPA750,09755,9697.5
Orangeburg CountySC91,58255,73660.9
Douglas CountyNE463,58553,33011.5
Spartanburg CountySC253,79152,77520.8
Prince William CountyVA280,81352,69118.8
Will CountyIL502,26652,50910.5
Kent CountyMI574,33551,2878.9
Portsmouth cityVA100,56550,89950.6

Unpacking the myths around the crime control industry
Crime control policies on every level in the U.S. are based upon racist
myths. Myths are powerful because they are never questioned, never
examined, never unpacked. Nobody disputes that Justice Department data
going back decades shows rates of drug use among blacks and whites to be
about the same. A combination of white racism and a willingness to ignore
unpleasant facts largely account for white indifference at the disparity
between white and black rates of arrest and prosecution for offenses created
with equal frequency by both groups. But black support for an industry and
for public policies that criminalize a third of all young black men, which
disrupt and retard the formation of strong families, and cripple workforce
and educational opportunities for such a broad cross section of us, is at
best ambivalent and at worst paper-thin, even among African Americans
working in the industry, based as it is upon a tenuous mass acceptance that
this is all somehow part of the normal balance of society.
³It¹s hot in the summer,² we tell ourselves, ³it¹s cold in the winter, and a
third of all young black men are in and out of jail.² Or we say ³It¹s a
trap! It was out there waitin¹ for them and they fell in it!² Both these
positions are understandable as mental adjustments much like those that some
of our forbears thought they had to make to get along in the world of
triumphant Jim Crow and white terror eighty or a hundred years ago. Such
views are uncomfortable for the black people that hold them, and unstable.
We must engage them by depicting mass incarceration not as the way normal
societies behave, but as a failed experiment that punishes our entire
community, a malevolent social policy that can be challenged and must be
changed.
Our language must be carefully constructed to aid in the process of
demythologizing crime and crime control policies. We need new terminology,
new language that better enables people to grasp the issues around mass
imprisonment and the criminal justice industry as malevolent social policies
which can be changed, rather than unalterable facts like cold in the winter
and heat in the summer. For example, the terms ³criminal justice system²
and ³corrections² ought to be replaced in all our dialogue with terms like
³crime control industry², or ³imprisonment industry.² A ³system² is a very
generalized term that does not tell us much, while an ³industry² is a very
specific kind of system. To call it an ³industry² instead raises powerful
questions of profit and accountability which are obscured when we call it
anything else.
White establishment pundits and politicians of a generation ago warned us.
They predicted the coming of what they called a ³white backlash.² This was
their name for a predicted white racist response to the just demands of
African America for equality of opportunity and economic justice advanced by
the movement of the 1960s, a response some feared would entrench racial
inequality and privilege deeper than ever before. They were right.
Beginning in the 1970s the selective mass imprisonment of African Americans
helped to swell the six or sevenfold expansion of the prison population.
And while the rhetoric and official policies that enabled this were
ostensibly race-neutral, the results were an open secret. Around the same
time, Dr. King was saying that the movement which would save the nation¹s
soul would have to emerge from black America. He was right too.
The struggle to de-legitimize the racist crime control and prison industries
are at the heart of this generation's struggle to de-legitimize racism
itself. America¹s policies of racially selective policing, prosecution and
imprisonment are the first target for a mass movement which must emerge from
our communities, but which must not be confined to them. Laying the
intelligent groundwork for such a movement remains the task before us, when
we go back to Gary.

Posted by lois at 02:04 PM | Comments (0)

July 18, 2005

Justice Policy Institute: Fact Sheet: Ganging Up on Crime

FACT SHEET: Ganging Up on Crime

April 11th, 2005


JPI FACT SHEET

Ganging Up on Crime?
Putting Gang/Crime Statistics in Context

“Gangs have declared war on our nation. They are ravaging our communities like cancer-urban, rural, rich and poor – and they are metastasizing from one community to the next as they grow”-Congressman J. Randy Forbes, Fourth District of Virginia (April 5, 2005)
---In the state of Virginia between 2003 and 1993 violent crime dropped by 25% declining from 24,160 to 18,115[i].

“One-third of individuals under the age of 18 are now members of gangs, according to the Department of Justice.” --Bush Declares War on Rising Youth Gang Violence (April 7, 2005), Brandee J. Tecson, MTV.Com
---If this were correct then 24,211,474[ii] youth aged 18 and younger would be in gangs, a figure not substantiated by crime data or what we know about gang crime.

Crime, and Cuts in Context: Some neighborhoods in the United States continue to experience unacceptable rates of violent crime. While Congressional sponsors caution “gangs are an ever-present and growing problem,” the leading indicators of crime in the United States show that the historic crime drop witnessed in the 1990s continues in most parts of the country. Both adult crime and youth crime fell throughout 2003, and mid-year 2004 — the latest years of consistent and available data from the justice department. But while most gang experts call for an appropriate social service response to youth development and neighborhoods in distress, this administration and Congress support huge cuts to programs that serve youth. These cuts and punitive provisions in the HR. 1279 The Gang Deterrence and Community Protection Act are likely to do more to destabilize communities and aggravate crime than promote public safety.

The leading national indicators suggest that crime is far from growing or surging.

Serious adult crime has fallen. The latest crime survey from the FBI’s Uniform Crime reporting program examines the first six months of 2004. Compared to the first six months of 2003, violent crime fell 2% in 2004, and the number of homicides fell by 5.7%. The drop in violent crime and homicides over the one-year period was the biggest drop recorded since 2001, which came after the historic drop in crime of the 1990s.[iii] Violent crime, adult and juvenile, fell by 28% from 1993 to 2003; 1,926,017 and 1,381259 respectively.[iv] Homicides declined at similar rate of 33% from 1993 to 2003; 24,536 and 16,503 respectively. [v] In recent years from 2001 to 2003, during the so-called surge in gang violence, youth homicides declined by 3%

Serious youth crime has fallen. The latest crime survey from the FBI’s Uniform Crime reporting program breaks down the age of people arrested for serious offenses in 2003. The number of people under 18 arrested for homicide declined 30%. Between 1993-2003, youth homicide arrests declined by 75%.[vi] Youth violent crime fell by 46% from 1993 to 2003.[vii]

Serious Gang Crime in Context: While many communities do experience unacceptable levels of serious crime, including gang crime, our measures of serious gang violence do not tell us that the problem is “ravaging” all our communities. In 2002, gang homicides represented 7% of the known circumstances in which homicides occurred. Four times as many homicide victims were killed in relation to an “argument” than a gang.[viii]
“It is easy to underestimate the grip that gangs have on some of our cities. But the sad reality is that their grip on urban life is lethal.”

—United States Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Northern District of Illinois-Chicago Area (April 5, 2005)

Serious crime has fallen in most cities. Even in cities where law enforcement says there are “super-gangs,” the latest federal surveys show crime on the decline. Compared to the first six months in 2003[ix], the number of homicide arrests fell by 25% in Chicago in 2004, robbery arrests fell by 7%, and property crime fell by 4%.

This administration proposes cuts to programs that serve young people and communities in distress.

Juvenile prevention programs, such as the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant (JABG), will be zeroed out in this administration’s budget.
Child and Family Services, which include Head Start and services for Abused and Neglected Children, will be cut by 3.3 billion dollars in the next four years under President Bush’s budget.[x]
Elementary and Secondary education will be cut by upwards of 11 billion dollars in the four years.[xi]
Vocational and Adult education will be cut by 5.8 billion in the next four years.[xii]
FACT: Imprisoning more young people as adults, increases crime.
HR 1279 proposes to change the federal juvenile justice system to authorize prosecution of 16 and 17 year old gang members who commit violent crimes. Research[xiii] conclusively shows that prosecuting young people as adults does not reduce youth crime. Research shows that young people prosecuted as adults, in comparison to youth held in juvenile facilities, are more likely to:
commit a greater number of crimes upon release
commit violent crimes upon release
commit crimes sooner upon release.
FACT: Punitive rhetoric distracts from real problems.

· Inciting fears and promising to crack down on mythical threats does not serve the public. Gangs are a symptom of social distress and HR 1279 is ill equipped to address the underpinnings of crime in a productive manner.



JPI

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[i] Uniform crime Report, 2003; 1999 http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#cius
[ii] United States Census Bureau General Demographic Characteristics:2003
[iii] Preliminary figures comparing the first six months of 2004 to the first six months of 2003, from the Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#cius)
[iv] Uniform Crime Reports, 2003, http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#cius
[v] Uniform Crime Reports, 2003, http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#cius
[vi] Uniform Crime Reports, 2003; 2002, http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#cius
[vii] Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Juvenile Arrest Rates by Offense, Sex, and Race (1980-2003).
[viii] Supplemental Homicide Reports, by Circumstances, http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/circumsttab.htm
[ix] Preliminary figures comparing the first six months of 2004 to the first six months of 2003, from the Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#cius)
[x] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Where would the cuts be made under President’s Budget? State Data (February 22, 2005)
[xi] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Where would the cuts be made under President’s Budget? State Data (February 22, 2005)
[xii] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Where would the cuts be made under President’s Budget? State Data (February 22, 2005)
[xiii] Research by Donna Bishop of Northeastern University and Jeff Fagan of Columbia University concerning the impact of trying and incarcerating young people in adult facilities on re-offending summarized in ‘The Florida Experiment: An Analysis of the Impact of Granting Prosecutors Discretion to try Juveniles as Adults,” www.justicepolicy.org

Posted by lois at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Judget Henderson's prison health care takeover most radical in US history

by Judy Greenspan

Years of protests may finally pay off.
Branding California’s infamous prison system “terribly broken,” U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson announced June 30 that he would appoint an independent authority to oversee health care in this state’s prisons. According to Alison Hardy, an attorney with the Prison Law Office, “The judge has clearly recognized the ongoing risk of death and harm to patients is unconstitutional.”

Henderson’s decision, after hearing two weeks of testimony and scathing reports of prison visits in the class action suit Plata v. Schwarzenegger, represents the most radical and complete takeover of a prison health-care system in U.S. history.

Henderson, who began his legal career as the first African American lawyer in the U.S. Justice Department who investigated civil rights cases, has taken bold action in other class-action lawsuits involving prisons and civil rights in this state. In 1995, Henderson ruled in favor of Security Housing Unit (SHU) lockdown prisoners in Pelican Bay State Prison.

Henderson also tried to block implementation of Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative action initiative in this state. Unfortunately, his ruling was later overturned by a higher court.

Prisons stuffed with poor

Medical neglect and abuse are no strangers to the California prison system. For the past 20 years, civil rights attorneys, prisoner activists, human rights advocates and family members have pointed the finger at the California Department of Corrections for its inhumane treatment of prisoners.

California, with a prison population of nearly 165,000, has set a national trend in the building of mega-prisons. With the cooperation of racist sentencing laws, it has packed its prisons to double and triple capacity with poor people of color.

Ten years ago, the legal and public spotlight was on the abysmal care and medical neglect in this state’s women’s prisons. A class-action lawsuit called Shumate v. Wilson exposed needless deaths and torture of women prisoners. An unprecedented legislative hearing inside one of the women’s prisons brought forth heartrending testimony from women prisoners about their poor care.

According to Cassie Pierson, staff attorney with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and one of the litigators of the Shumate case, “Judge Henderson’s decision validates what women prisoners have been telling us for many years and may give them hope. In 2000, women prisoners voiced their concerns before the legislature and nothing happened. Right after the hearings, eight women died and women have continued to die unnecessarily.”

Women prisoners inside the Central California Women’s Facility have told this reporter that, if anything, medical care is worse than ever.

Yvonne Hamdiyah Cooks, executive director of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, worries that women prisoners, who are often “invisible” within the predominantly male prison population, will continue to have their health care needs overlooked, even by a federal monitor.

Prisoners’ rights advocates, community activists and family members see Henderson’s decision as an important step forward. However, many emphasize that the appointment of a federal receiver is only one of several measures that should be taken to change this brutal prison system.

So much more needed

Corey Weinstein, M.D., a founder of California Prison Focus, a statewide organization fighting for the human rights of prisoners, points to the massive and unnecessary incarceration of poor people in this state, along with a legacy of prison guard brutality and murder, as equally serious problems to address.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his newly anointed California Department

of Corrections and Rehabilitation have used the excuse of prison overcrowding

to prepare the public for the building of more prisons. However, groups like Critical Resistance and the Prison Moratorium Project have made a strong case for releasing large numbers of prisoners convicted of drug-related and nonviolent crimes into community programs and treatment centers.

Battered women’s groups and Families to End California’s Three Strikes laws are calling for the expedited release of lifers who have been held years beyond their expected release dates.

Mark Smith, a recently released lifer with serious medical problems, stated, “I am thrilled with Judge Henderson’s decision to tackle this terribly troubled system. If, however, the guards’ union is allowed any influence in this much overdue undertaking, like all else they get their hands on, then we can expect a watered-down version with little long-term benefit.”

In California, prison guards with a nursing assistant license are able to dispense medications and decide whether prisoners can see a doctor. This conflict of roles for these medical technical assistants (MTAs) has had deadly consequences for prisoners with chronic and serious illnesses.

According to prisoners’ rights activists, trying to access care from an MTA is like having to go to the state police for your yearly physical. The California Correctional Peace Officers’ Association (CCPOA) is a wealthy political action committee that “contributes” to the campaign funds of most state legislators.

Geppetto Launer, formerly incarcerated in California’s Corcoran prison, is “hopeful and cynical” about the effect of the federal takeover. Living with HIV while inside prison, Launer had a great deal of experience fighting to get proper medical care. Launer fears that state and prison interference with the receiver will lead to stonewalling. “I wish the governor and other state officials were forced to spend one week in any of our state’s prisons — they would quickly change their tune!” Launer added.

This story was first published at www.workers.org, Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011. Email ww@workers.org.

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Posted by lois at 08:37 PM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2005

Understanding Collateral Sanctions and Barriers to Re-entry

Understanding Collateral Sanctions and Barriers to Re-entry
By Michelle Gaseau, Managing Editor
Corrections.Com

Few would deny the logic of restricting an ex-offender convicted of child molestation from ever working in a day care center. The potential harm avoided far outweighs the limitation on an individual's freedom.

But when collateral sanctions are applied indiscriminately and block an ex-offender's ability to re-enter society as a law-abiding citizen, then the grounds for these restrictions come into question.

Disqualifications for ex-offenders vary from state to state and range from the loss of voting rights to ineligibility for pubic housing.

"It's huge problem. Most people who have criminal justice records are low income [residents] and private housing is very expensive in this country. If you have a criminal record you can be barred from public housing [but] if you don't have a stable residence it's hard to get your life back together," said Jamie Fellner, Director of the U.S. Division for Human Rights Watch.

No Second Chance, a Human Rights Watch report published last year chronicles the experiences of many ex-offenders who have been denied public housing because of draconian regulations imposed by both the federal and local governments around public housing eligibility

The report's authors identified one story of an ex-offender in Pennsylvania who was denied public housing for herself and her two children because of a previous shoplifting conviction in which she stole a tube of ChapStick from the local drug store.

Fellner said the injustice in the application of these rules and regulations is glaring.

"The federal regulations give the local housing authorities [the ability] to create their own. Unfortunately, many have created sweeping exclusions in the type [of crime] and length of time [they apply] and, in some cases, even if they are arrested and never prosecuted," she said. "You can be excluded from public housing because you forged a check. We're not talking about just excluding people for violent conduct."

Fellner said these restrictions, which many offenders don't even know about until after they are released, not only impact the ex-offender's ability to get back on their feet, but also their ability to take care of their children.

"Many ex-offenders are women with children and if they are denied public housing, then where are they supposed to go? There are ripple effects for society and it's not necessary," she added.

Joan Petersilia, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at University of California, Irvine and an advisor to the California Youth and Adult Corrections Agency, has written about re-entry issues and says that collateral sanctions can be problematic in many ways, but housing and employment are areas that are critical for ex-offenders.

"The restrictions have been increasing and increasing. There are fewer jobs for which they are eligible," said Petersilia.

She added that licensing requirements in many states have changed to exclude certain offenders from the types of jobs that they would typically access.

"These are jobs that, in the past, they could qualify for -- a nail technician, carpenter, trades jobs and many of the requirements exclude as a blanket policy those with conviction records," she said.

Because of the unfairness of many of these sanctions, several efforts have emerged to increase the dialogue about these disqualifications and how to implement change so that true re-entry and reduced recidivism can be achieved.

Standards and Model Statutes

The American Bar Association over the last several years has paid special attention to collateral sanctions both in its Justice Kennedy Commission Report, which was issued in 2004, and in the creation of standards about collateral sanctions, which were approved in 2003.

According to attorney Margaret Love, Chair of the ABA's Criminal Justice Standards Committee's Task Force on Collateral Sanctions, member of the Justice Kennedy Commission and a former U.S. Pardon Attorney for the Department of Justice, many in the criminal justice system are starting to realize that collateral sanctions are a problem.

"These disqualifications, what we really call sanctions - it's a new way of looking at it. It has long been thought of as civil disability, but if something happens to you automatically, then your legal status has changed. That is part of the sanction of the crime and, as a result, you have to be notified; that's only fair," said Love.

As a legal matter, Love said that the legal system could be impacted if offenders pleading guilty are not notified about the sanctions they may face in the future.

"If someone pleads guilty in ignorance of a standard - and would have fought the charges otherwise -- then you let them withdraw the plea. Judges are worried about this," she said.

Beyond these legal issues, the ABA felt the need to attempt to reform these regulations so that they are fairly applied to those who pose a specific and related public safety risk and so that offenders clearly understand the challenges they will face after release.

The standards that have been created by the ABA address the fact that collateral sanctions are not typically collected on one single system, that they should be accounted for in sentencing and that they should be applied based on a substantial relationship between a person's conduct and the specific duty or benefit in question. In addition, the standards were written to focus attention on the impact collateral sanctions have on a person's ability to re-enter society and resume normal, every-day activities.

Examples of restrictions that the ABA states are not justified under the standards are denial of student aid, loss of a driver's license upon conviction of a drug offense and absolute barriers to employment or licensure.

"There are also a lot of states that have always required criminal records checks and you can't qualify for education, child care, elder care professions - but those are very good entry level jobs. Also there are a lot of transportation jobs that are controlled by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) -- truck driving, airport employees -- that have new regulations that require criminal records checks," said Love.

Included in the ABA's standards is a suggestion that legislatures collect, set out or reference all collateral sanctions in one chapter of the criminal code and identify with "particularity" the type, severity and duration of the sanctions and to what offenses they apply. The standards also state that a legislature should only impose a sanction if it can justify that the sanction matches the conduct of that offense; that the court should ensure that the defendant has been informed of collateral sanctions before accepting a plea; that the legislature should authorize the sentencing court to take into account applicable collateral sanctions in determining the overall sentence; and that the legislature establish a process by which a convicted person may obtain review or an order of relief from any discretionary disqualification.

Although states are under no obligation to follow the ABA's standards, they are considered a general standard of practice and specific ABA standards have been referred to recently by the U.S. Supreme Court as such areas as adequate assistance of counsel and death penalty representation.

In addition, last year the ABA's Justice Kennedy Commission report urged states and the federal government to remove unwarranted legal barriers to re-entry and suggested many of the same reforms as the new ABA standards.

In its report, the Commission recommended that jurisdictions "should identify the legal barriers to re-entry, including both collateral sanctions imposed upon conviction and discretionary disqualification of convicted persons from otherwise generally available opportunities and benefits." In eliminating these barriers, the commission suggested that educational programs be developed not only for public officials and employers, but also for the private sector.

The ABA's standards and recommendations were also considered as part of a proposed "Act" that will soon be considered by the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws at its annual meeting this summer. It is possible that out of the NCCUSL conference discussion about collateral sanctions some new model code or statute would be created for states to follow.

In the interim, state officials, including corrections agencies, should become educated about these barriers to re-entry, Love said.

"They have to become familiar with these. There are some states that require the DOC to notify people about how to get their licenses back. Parole and probation are the ones that it's really important for. They are ones that are guiding re-entry [in many cases]. But everyone in the system, the prosecutors, the defense, prison people and community supervision [need to be involved]," Love said.

In Ohio, corrections officials are paying attention to the effect of collateral sanctions and hope that in the near future some of them will be changed.

Ohio Considers Changes

A corrections re-entry program can only do so much to prepare offenders a smooth return to the community if state collateral sanctions serve as a roadblock for those who want to turn their lives around.

Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Director Reginald Wilkinson would like to see many of these barriers lifted and is making an effort to push in that direction.

"In some cases they are warranted. [But] in other cases there is no nexus between the reason for incarceration and their future employment. It's a travesty and an embarrassment," said Wilkinson.

Wilkinson said in many ways collateral sanctions are a hypocrisy because states urge offenders to work hard and keep their noses clean after release, but then it offers hurdles rather than open doors.

"I do believe corrections agencies ought to be advocates to make public officials aware about the impact. It can be a part of re-entry [but] it's a bigger issue with public officials. The inmates can't do anything about it. We tell them what they are eligible for. If someone has ambitions to do something where there is a barrier, we'll let them know that," he said.

Wilkinson advocates for states to allow for discretionary disqualifications rather than blanket prohibitions about the types of jobs ex-offenders can hold, the kinds of housing they are eligible for and assistance they can receive from the government.

He said some states, such as Delaware, have enacted laws that prohibit the outright disqualification of all ex-offenders from certain types of employment. Ohio corrections officials believe this is legislation worth exploring further.

"In Ohio we're trying to review the range of collateral sanctions and look carefully at what is the sensible balance that we need to have defined in statute that mitigates [unfair exclusions]. If here is a reasonable nexus - such as a convicted sex offender and employment in a day care center -- but if it is a barrier without a nexus, that's what we are concerned with," said Ed Ryan, Deputy Director, Office of Policy and Offender Reentry for the Ohio DRC.

Ryan said corrections officials are examining the practices of others states to compare where Ohio sits in terms of disqualifications and potentially make recommendations to the legislature about changes to the laws in Ohio.

"Ohio is fairly moderate in terms of the range of collateral sanctions relative to other states; some states are much more onerous than Ohio," Ryan said.

Offenders in Ohio, for example, regain their ability to vote after release while in some states, offenders do not.

But, other collateral sanctions such as denial of student loans to certain drug offenders are controlled on the federal level.

Some federal legislators have realized this. In fact, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank introduced legislation earlier this spring to repeal those restrictions and the bill is now in committee.

"The dilemma folks have is often when you enter a plea of guilty, you don't know that there is a wide range of sanctions that may be imposed on you," said Ryan.

Beyond the legal limitations for ex-offenders are the unspoken wage penalties that ex-offenders experience when landing a job and the general stigma society places on ex-offenders.

What it will take to rectify this situation for ex-offenders and create a climate that welcomes success after release, according to Fellner of HRW, is for the federal, state and local legislators - as well as society -- to truly embrace the idea of re-entry.

"A lot of this has been promoted and fostered not just by a general tough-on-crime philosophy but more specifically on the drug war," sad Fellner. "The U.S. is still talking out of two sides of its mouth. On the one hand, it talks about rehabilitation and on the other hand, there are these barriers."

But as more research is conducted and the barriers are made more visible, advocates hope that change will follow.

Resources:

HRW - http://www.hrw.org

ABA CJ Section - http://www.abanet.org/crimjust/home.html

Open Society After Prison Initiative - http://www.soros.org/initiatives/justice/focus_areas/after_prison

Joan Petersilia - http://www.seweb.uci.edu/users/joan/

Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett By Jennifer Gonnerman
Life on the Outside tells the story of Elaine Bartlett, who spent sixteen years behind bars for selling cocaine - a first offense - under New York's controversial Rockefeller drug laws. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bookSearch/isbnInquiry.asp?r=1&isbn=0374186871

When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry (Studies in Crime and Public Policy) By Joan Petersilia
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/019516086X/qid%3D1044985345/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/002-8436846-2618428

Posted by lois at 10:53 PM | Comments (0)

"Gang Violence" Declined 73% from 1994-2005

July 15th, 2005
‘Gang Violence’ Declined 73% from 1994-2003
Study shows ‘Gang-related’ violence accounted for 7%
of all homicide. High unemployment and low-income
strongest factors in ‘gang-related’ homicides

Washington, DC---According to a new report from the
Justice Policy Institute, despite a rash of
sensationalized cases surrounding gang violence, the
phenomenon actually decreased over 70 percent from
1994-2003.

In Ganging Up on Communities, researchers put many of
the current concerns about rising gang crime into
context, and analyze the need, and the impact of
additional federal laws to address the problem.
Currently, several new pieces of federal legislation
are being advanced to address the “gang crisis,”
federalizing law enforcement efforts that have
historically been the jurisdiction of the states, and
proposing laws to try more youth as adults. According
to the data from the policy brief, some of the
policies being proposed may exacerbate the country’s
crime problem, and steers resources away from local
and state groups that have shown success.

“While some communities still experience unacceptable
levels of crime, including youth crime and gang crime,
the data just doesn’t support elevating gangs to the
level of a “national crisis,”” said Jason Ziedenberg,
executive director of the Justice Policy Institute and co-author of the report. “We don’t need an additional layer of federal laws on top of the state laws to address this issue. We need to invest the resources in groups that have been proven successful in working with youth and gangs.”

In this policy brief, researchers highlight the
several legislative proposals call for new federal
powers to prosecute 16 and 17-year-old youth as adults
for gang-related violent crime. According to the FBI
Uniform Crime Reports, the number of people nationwide
reported to be arrested in 2003 for either a
“gangland” or “juvenile gang homicide” totaled 1,111—approximately 7% of the 16,503 homicide arrests that year. Of those, only 111 were reported to be under 18 years-of-age.

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) reports
that, between 1994 and 2003, the rate of reported
violent victimizations by perceived gang members fell
from 5.2 per 1,000 to 1.4 per 1,000—a decline of 73%.
According to the NCVS, “violent crimes for which
victims identified the offender to be a gang member
peaked in 1996 at 10% of all violent crime and
decreased until 1998 to about 6%, not significantly
changing since.”

“Federalizing the gang issue by increasing criminal
penalties and loosening the criteria for deporting
youth is not the answer to the gang problem -- it has
the likely outcome of victimizing youth not involved
in criminal activity,” said Mai Fernandez, Chief
Operating Officer of the DC-based Latin American Youth
Center.

“In those communities where there is a gang problem, specialized law enforcement strategies paired with specially tailored employment and social services programs can make a huge difference in decreasing gang violence,” she added.

According to one study based on Los Angeles and
published in the Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection
and Critical Care, the strongest correlations with
gang violence were employment and income. In
communities where unemployment rates were between 14%
and 16%, there were 15 times as many gang homicides as
in neighborhoods where the unemployment rate was 4% to
7%.

Justice Policy Institute

Posted by lois at 05:53 PM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2005

Ten Worst Places to be Black

Ten Worst Places to be Black

by Bruce Dixon, BC Associate Editor

http://www.blackcommentator.com/146/146_cover_dixon_ten_worst.html

For all charts and tables go to link above.

The pervasive corporate media bubble, which grossly distorts the views most Americans have of the world beyond their shores, and of life in America's black one-eighth, operates to fool African Americans, too. While a fortunate few of us are doing very well indeed, and many more are hanging on as best we can, the conditions of life for a substantial chunk of black America are not substantially improving, and appear to be getting much worse. This is a truth which can't be found anywhere in the corporate media, but it is nevertheless one with which we must familiarize ourselves in preparation for the upcoming national black dialogue. It is high time to begin constructing useful indices with which to measure the quality of life, not just for a fortunate few, but for the broad masses of our people in America's black one-eighth.

Measuring the quality of life in black America
Painting an accurate picture is not difficult. Useful measures of family income and cohesiveness, of home ownership, life expectancy, education levels, of unemployment and underemployment abound. But among all the relevant data on the state of black America today one factor stands out: the growth of America's public policy of racially selective policing, prosecution, and mass imprisonment of its black citizens over the past 30 years. The operation of the crime control industry has left a distinctive, multidimensional and devastating mark on the lives of millions of black families and on the economic and social fabric of the communities in which they live.

About half the nation's 2.2 million prisoners are black. With only 36 million of us, that's an astounding 3% of African Americans, counting all ages and both sexes, languishing behind bars, with a roughly equal number on probation, parole, house arrest or other court supervision. Almost one in three 18-year-old black males across the board is likely to catch a felony conviction, and in some communities nearly half the black male workforce under 40 have criminal records. A felony conviction in America is a stunningly accurate predictor of a life of insecure employment at poverty-level wages and no health care, of fragile family ties, of low educational attainment and limited or no civic participation, and a strong likelihood of re-imprisonment. Each month, tens of thousands of jobless, skill-less, stigmatized and often anti-socialized ex-prisoners are released back into communities that lack job and educational opportunities, where intact families are more the exception than the rule, and where upward social mobility is a myth.

Clearly, more than any other single public policy, the day to day operation of America's crime control industry magnifies and exacerbates racial inequality, deepens black poverty, and wreaks widespread destabilization on black families and communities. Among the many scholars and researchers who have persuasively argued and extensively documented these conditions is Dr. Paul Street of the Chicago Urban League in "The Vicious Circle: Race, Prison, Jobs and Community in Chicago, Illinois and the Nation."

So if you want to know where black families fare the worst, where the lowest wages and life expectancy are, where to find the highest unemployment and the greatest number of single parent households among African Americans, you don't need an online survey. You certainly don't count the black businesses or the black elected officials. You count the black prisoners, and the former prisoners, and the ruined communities they come from and are discharged into. That's what BC did, and here are the results.

The Ten Worst States in the US to be Black

Wisconsin leads the nation in the percentage of its black inhabitants under lock and key. Just over four percent of black Wisconsin, including the very old and the very young of both sexes, are behind bars. Most of the state's African Americans reside in the Milwaukee area, and most of its black prisoners are drawn from just a handful of poor and economically deprived black communities where jobs, intact families and educational opportunities are the most scarce, and paroled back into those same neighborhoods. So Wisconsin, and in particular the Milwaukee area justly merit the invidious distinction of the Worst Place in the Nation to be Black.

Iowa, with only a small black population, is not far behind. The crime control industries in Wisconsin and Iowa seem to have learned to make the most efficient use of the preferred human material available to them, locking up the few black inhabitants of those states at a rate 11.6 times higher than whites.

Texas, the nation's second largest state, is the third worst place to be black in America, and is in a class by itself, first because its extraordinary rate of black incarceration affects such a large population. Only New York has more African Americans than Texas, and only the two relatively small states previously mentioned lock up a higher percentage of their black citizens. Though California has 50 percent more people, Texas has a slightly larger prison population and only a 5 to 1 ratio between its black and white rates of imprisonment. We may safely assume that since very few of its wealthy Texans are behind bars, Texas is just a very bad place to be poor, whether you're black or not.

A total of 900,000 African Americans live in Oklahoma, Arizona, Delaware, Nevada, Oregon and Colorado, and another 2 million-plus in California, where the proportion of prisoners among total African Americans hovers just under 3 percent.

How Much Better is Better? How Much Worse is Worst?

The answer in both cases is, unfortunately: not much. Only one hundredth of a percentage point separates Iowa's 3.30% rate of black incarceration from that of Texas, with 3.29%. Twenty-seven more states manage to lock up between 2 and 3% of their African American inhabitants, and only Maine, Hawaii and North Dakota fail to incarcerate more than 1.55% of blacks. For whites, the national average ratio of prisoners to the general population is less than 4 tenths of one percent.

The damning truth laid bare once again by this fact, is that America's policy of racially selective policing, prosecuting and imprisonment of its black one-eighth is a truly consistent and national one, even though it is implemented with arbitrary severity by countless state and local authorities.

Dishonorable Mentions
This distinction goes to New Jersey, Connecticut, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and New York.

BC's Dishonorable Mention is reserved for those states not already enumerated which have the highest disparity between black and white incarceration rates. Wisconsin and Iowa belong here too, with disparity rates between 11 and 12 to one, but they have already been mentioned. This dismal category is especially significant because black populations in three of the states with extraordinary disparity rates fall largely within the New York City Metropolitan Statistical area, the largest concentration of black people in North America. Suffice it to say that for practical purposes, New York City and its environs are not that much better a place to be black than Texas.

STATE...........BLACK-WHITE DISPARITY

New Jersey............13.15 to one

Connecticut...........12.77 to one

Minnesota.............12.63 to one

Pennsylvania..........10.53 to one

New York.............. 9.47 to one

The second largest concentration of African Americans in New Jersey lies within the Philadelphia Metropolitan Statistical Area. Note Pennsylvania's fourth place ranking on the Dishonorable list.

The "enlightened" state of Minnesota has two more peculiar distinctions. First, it commits one of the nation's largest percentages of offenders to community corrections, the generic name for "non-prison" sentencing alternatives. With one of the nation's highest rates of disparity between its black and white inhabitants, it appears that Minnesota's white offenders are disproportionately funneled into alternative sentencing situations, but we have no data to support such a conclusion. Secondly, according to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, which together with the US Census Department is the source for all numerical data in this article, Minnesota had the fastest growing prison population in the country as of mid-year 2004, the latest date for which stats are publicly available.

What About the South?

Alert readers may have noticed that except for Delaware and Texas, not a single southern state made BC's Ten Worst or its Dishonorable Mention, even though Louisiana is well known to have the nation' highest per capita rate of incarceration for its whole population. How is this possible?

The answer is that our ranking is based solely on the percentage of a state's black population behind state and local prison walls. The following table sorts the top 13 states in order of their relative black populations, from Mississippi with 36% to Illinois with 15%. This statistical approach catches all the states of the old South except Texas and Florida, and reveals an interesting pattern.

All eleven southern states in this table lock up noticeably higher per capita numbers of their whole populations, black, white and otherwise, than do New York and Illinois. But southern rates of disparity between black and white imprisonment do not approach those of Illinois at 7.5 to one or New York's 9.5 to one. Like Texas, nine of these eleven Southern states achieve their overall high imprisonment rates by confining white people to prison twice as often as New York and Illinois. Furthermore, the five states with the highest black percentage of their total populations have rates of black imprisonment closer to those of Illinois and New York than to Texas. Like Texas, the Old South is just not a good place to be poor, whether one is black or white.

Federal Prisoners: Another Texas and then some

Finally, discerning readers have probably noticed that near the beginning of this article the proportion of all African Americans in the nation's prisons and jails was given as about 3%, but the numbers quoted for only three states reached or exceeded that figure. How did we get three percent?

The missing incarcerated, who did not figure in BC's calculations for the Dishonorable Mentions and Ten Worst list because BC was unable to sort out their states of origin, race or region, are those in federal prisons and jails. The federal gulag held about 170,000 people as of mid-year 2004, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, slightly more than the Texas prison system, and growing much faster. We have not yet obtained racial breakdown data for federal prisons, but if and when it becomes available it may show racial disparities as severe as those in Illinois, which would suffice to make almost half of federal inmates African American.

Better Lives, Better Families, Better Communities

The work of reclaiming lives, families and communities shredded by America's incarceration binge must take place in hundreds of cities and towns and in several arenas. Thousands of churches and local organizations are trying with scant resources to provide re-entry services to former prisoners. While their efforts deserve praise and support, BC believes that problems created by bad public policies demand solutions that include changing those destructive policies. In fact, it is misleading and foolish to portray the problem of racially selective mass imprisonment as one addressable by a million individual solutions, by several hundred thousand family solutions, or by ten thousand black church and small business solutions.

The problem is that public policy in America only moves in the direction of addressing human needs when under the insistent pressure of mass movements. Where will the mass movement come from to change America's racially selective policy of mass incarceration? What will be its first tasks, and what will it look like? These are among the key questions before black activists between now and the time we "Go back to Gary."

For chart of states go to link listed above.

Your comments are always welcome.

or Click here to send e-Mail to
Publisher@BlackCommentator.com

Posted by lois at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2005

CA: Prop 36: Advocates Urge Preservation of Drug Treatment Not Incarceration

Jul 12, 2005, By BETH FOUHY
Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A state program that directs nonviolent drug offenders into treatment rather than jail has been effective and must be allowed to continue without new legislative restrictions, a group of drug treatment advocates said.

"It's rare in public life to enact something that makes a great deal of common sense and moral sense. That's what this program does," said the Rev. Peter Laarman of the Los Angeles-based Progressive Christians Uniting and a supporter of the program. The teleconference Monday was organized by the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit group that drafted the measure.

Proposition 36 - the so-called Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act passed by voters in 2000 - allocates $120 million per year for first- and second-time offenders to evade incarceration and enroll in drug treatment programs instead.

The law has won praise among many treatment advocates, who say it has helped thousands of drug users kick their addiction and saved taxpayers roughly $250 million in incarceration costs annually. But law enforcement officials complain the program lacks accountability and that offenders are not sufficiently punished for lapses.

A 2004 UCLA study tracking the effectiveness of Proposition 36 found that about 34 percent of offenders who were sentenced under the law and had showed up for treatment, had successfully completed their treatment. Supporters of the law called the figures encouraging, noting the difficulty of treating addiction.

But opponents pointed out that the UCLA study also found that 31 percent of offenders treated under the measure were re-arrested, compared with an 18 percent rate for other programs.

"Proposition 36 has been a treatment failure," said John Lovell of the California Narcotics Officers Association.

With funding for Proposition 36 set to expire in 2006, several lawmakers have authored legislation to renew the funding while applying certain restrictions. A bill that would allow a short-term jail option for certain offenders sponsored by state Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, overwhelmingly passed the Senate last month and is now making its way through the Assembly.

In an interview, Ducheny said the bill was designed to improve offenders' rate of compliance, while at the same time boosting the number of people eligible for the program and extending the length of time a person could be eligible for treatment.

"We're not saying in any way that folks should be incarcerated for the drug conviction," Ducheny said. "What we're saying is there needs to be a way to put you back in the program if you fall out."

In a conference call with reporters to commemorate the four-year anniversary of the passage of Proposition 36, several supporters warned Ducheny's bill would allow courts, not doctors, to make key medical decisions for drug offenders.

"Chemical dependency is a medical and public health problem that demands an appropriate solution," said Lisa Folberg of the California Medical Association. "Under this bill, judges would be making decisions about appropriate addiction treatment. We think they need to be made by people who understand treatment."

Paul Colbert, a Sacramento resident who said he was addicted to methamphetamine for 22 years before going through treatment under Proposition. 36, said the program had succeeded for him while several stints behind bars had not.

"I see people I used to do drugs with and they say they can't believe I got clean," Colbert said, adding that he'd been drug free for 3 1/2 years.
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Posted by lois at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)

Drum Major Institute Finds Schools Targeted by Impact Schools Are Among the Most-Overcrowded & Underfunded

DRUM MAJOR INSTITUTE REPORT FINDS SCHOOLS TARGETED BY IMPACT SCHOOLS SAFETY INITIATIVE ARE AMONG THE MOST OVERCROWDED AND UNDER-FUNDED IN THE CITY
New York City, June 9, 2005 - Today, the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy (DMI) released A Look At The Impact Schools, a profile of the middle and high schools targeted by City Hall¹s "Impact Schools" safety initiative. This report finds that high levels of crime and disorder aren¹t the only characteristics that distinguish the Impact Schools from their peers in the New York City public school system.

Schools targeted for inclusion in the Impact Schools initiative were selected by the NYPD and the DOE for their higher than average number of criminal incidents, transfers of students due to safety violations, and what the DOE terms "early warning problems" such as low school attendance and disorderly behavior. The Impact Schools initiative currently stations two hundred armed police officers, security cameras and metal detectors in twenty two of New York City¹s "high crime" public schools.

Based on an analysis of the 2003-2004 Annual School Reports released by the Department of Education, this report concludes that, as a group, the Impact Schools were more overcrowded than the average city high school, were far larger than most city high schools, received less funding per student for direct services, had more students overage for their grade, and served a student body that was disproportionately comprised of poor and black students as compared to the average New York City public high school.

"Our report finds Impact Schools suffering, with less support for added challenges. It raises the question of whether our children and their teachers will truly ever be safe until we address these profound inequities,² said Andrea Batista Schlesinger, DMI Executive Director.

According to the report, prior to the initiative¹s instatement, Impact Schools were more overcrowded and less adequately funded than their counterparts. Spending for individual students in New York schools rose $1,217 from 2002-2003 while students in Impact Schools received a mere $609 increase in student spending.

Additionally, while the average city high school operated at 105.9% capacity during the 2003-2004 school year the average Impact School was at 111% capacity. Schools like Christopher Columbus HS and Walton HS were at more than 180% capacity.

The report also shows that poor students of color comprised a disproportionately higher percentage of the student body at the 22 Impact Schools than at other schools. More than sixty percent of students at the 22 Impact Schools are living in or near poverty, compared to 53.9% of city high school students in other New York schools. As well, the number of entering 9th and 10th graders that are overage for their grade at the 22 Impact Schools is 44% higher than at other New York City schools. Nearly forty percent of entering 9th and 10th graders at the city's 22 Impact Schools are overage for their grade, compared to just 27.5% of entering 9th and 10th graders citywide.

³The Impact Schools initiative has invited an unprecedented expansion of the criminal justice system into our schools,² said Kate Kyung Ji Rhee, DMI fellow and director of the Prison Moratorium Project. ³By the time they reach high school, many of these students have already experienced difficult academic obstacles which require additional educational resources; we should not use criminal justice strategies to solve an educational problem.²

DMI is a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to challenging the tired orthodoxies of both the right and the left. The goal: public policy for social and economic fairness. DMI¹s approach is unwavering: We seek to change policy by conducting research into overlooked, but important issues, by leveraging our strategic relationships to engage policymakers and opinion leaders in our work, and by offering platforms to amplify the ideas of those who work for social and economic fairness. For more information, visit www.drummajorinstitute.org

Links for more info:

* HYPERLINK
"http://www.drummajorinstitute.org/plugin/template/dmi/*/3197"Read A Look At The Impact Schools in its entirety

Posted by lois at 05:29 PM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2005

Race, Place and the Perils of Prisonomics

Z Magazine Online
July/August 2005 Volume 18 Number 7/8
Special Report

Race, Place, and the Perils of Prisonomics
Beyond the big-stick, low-road, and zero-sum mass incarceration con

By Paul Street
It’s the silences that speak the loudest in dominant media’s coverage of current events. Consider, for example, a Detroit News story that appeared in mid -uly 2001 under the curious title “Ionia Finds Stability in Prisons.” This article told the enlightening tale of how the semi-rural Michigan town of Ionia, located halfway between Lansing and Grand Rapids, had recently become one of the state’s fastest growing and “most improved” communities thanks to its five thriving penitentiaries together employing 1,584 workers who collectively made $102 million a year. “The state’s urban centers dump their felons,” the Detroit News reported, “in prison towns and forget about them. Suburbs balk at housing felons, envisioning escapees trampling through their gardens and hiding out in their tool sheds.” But “Ionia,” the paper noted, “sees things from the other end of the spectrum. The prisons bring, of all things, security.” According to Detroit News reporter Francis Donnelly, Ionia’s “penitentiaries, five veritable Great Lakes of cash, provide sustenance to every sector of [Ionia’s] once-dry economy: jobs for residents, customers for stores, revenue for the city government,” including “nearly $1.2 million of the city’s $3.8 million budget.”

A bigger, nationally focused story on the same topic appeared two weeks later on page one of the New York Times, under the title “Rural Towns Turn to Prisons to Re-ignite Their Economies.” By Times reporter Peter Kilborn’s account, “prisons have been helping to revive large stretches of rural America. More than a Wal-Mart or a meatpacking plant, state, federal, and private prisons, typically housing 1,000 inmates and providing 300 jobs, can put a town on solid economic footing. As communities become more and more familiar with the benefits that prisons bring, they are also becoming increasingly adept at maximizing their windfall through collecting taxes and healthy public service fees.”

Kilborn quoted the city manager of Sayre, Okla- homa, which had just opened a prized new maximum- security lockdown. “There’s no more recession-proof form of economic development,” this local official told Kilborn, than incarceration because “nothing’s going to stop crime.” Thanks to money brought in through taxes on prisoners’ telephone calls, sales taxes paid by prisoners and prison staff, and to water, sewer, and landfill fees, Killborn added, Sayre’s city budget increased from $755,000 in 1996 to $1,250,000 in 2001, permitting the town to set aside 15 percent of its revenues for capital improvements. No such savings or investments were possible before prison construction began, when Sayre “was surviving largely on federal crop support payments to its dwindling farm population” in the wake of the collapse of the state’s oil and gas industry during the 1980s.

The extent of some rural communities’ sense of dependence on the prison industry was poignantly suggested in a Chicago Tribune article that appeared six months later, when then-Illinois Governor George Ryan closed his state’s rural Vienna Correctional Center. A page one Tribune story on resulting local union protests noted, “At a time when other industry in Illinois’ southern end is weak, Vienna and other prisons dotting the [state’s] farm fields are considered a force as much for economic development as for public safety.” As southern Illinois coal mines closed during the 1970s, the paper observed, workers in that region turned to the Vienna and later the Shawnee correctional facilities for jobs.

According to the Tribune: “When their children graduated from high school, parents encouraged them to start a career in what appeared to be a dependable industry. ‘That was the only thing going on when I was coming up, that and the mines and the rock quarries,’ said Larry Flynn, who went to work at Vienna in 1985. ‘It ain’t bad work and there are good benefits, if you can handle the stress.’ The pay is good too. A correctional officer can make about $40,000 a year, not bad in a place where new homes sell for less than $100,000.”

“Over time,” the Tribune added, “the local economy has grown up around the prison like a vine.”

Each of these newspaper articles did an excellent job telling an important story about a striking and relevant contemporary issue. In a land partly founded on an agrarian ideal, prisoners actually outnumber farmers. Most of the United States’ “correctional” facilities are found in rural areas. Two and a half decades of globally unparalleled prison expansion has combined with the rural economic fallout of corporate globalization in the U.S. to turn the mass confinement of mostly urban “offenders” into a leading, often desperately pursued “growth industry” for non-metropolitan jurisdictions that have become less able to make good livings in farming, logging, mining, and manufacturing.

During the 1990s, 245 prisons were built in 212 of the nation’s 2,290 rural counties. As Tracy Huling has noted, “The acquisition of prisons as a conscious economic development strategy for depressed rural communities and small towns in the United States has become widespread. Along with gambling casinos and huge animal confinement units for raising or processing hogs and poultry,” Huling reports, “prisons have become one of the three leading rural economic enterprises as states and localities seek industries that provide large-scale and quick opportunities.”

Caucasian Country Keepers

By the time each of the newspaper articles quoted above were written, the most striking aspect of the U.S. correctional boom, beyond its sheer magnitude—the U.S. emerged as the world’s leading incarceration state by far during the 1990s—was its heavily racialized nature. Between 1980 and 2000, the number of black men in jail or prison grew fivefold, to the point where, as the Justice Policy Institute reported in 2002, there were actually more black men behind bars than enrolled in colleges or universities in the United States. On any given day, U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics Director Jan Chaiken reported in 2000, 30 percent of African-American males ages 20 to 29 were under correctional supervision—either in jail or prison or on probation or parole. The nation’s disproportionately urban black populace comprised 12.3 percent of the U.S. population, but blacks made up nearly half of the roughly 2 million Americans behind bars by the turn of the millennium. The incarceration rate for African Americans was 1,815 per 100,000 compared to 609 per 100,000 for Latino Americans, 99 for Asian Americans, and 235 for white America. For black adult males the incarceration rate was a remarkable 4,484 per 100,000, compared to 1,668 per 100,000 for Latino males and 1,318 for white males. Reflecting astonishing racial disparities in the waging of America’s domestic “War on Drugs,” roughly one in ten of the world’s prisoners was an African-American male by the turn of the millennium.

In 15 percent black Illinois, 64 percent of the state’s prisoners were African Americans. The state’s incarceration rate for blacks was 1,550, compared to 127 for whites, per 100,000. There were nearly 20,000 more black males in the Illinois prison system than the number of black males enrolled in the state’s public universities. Reflecting the strong correlation between blackness and urban residence in a still highly segregated state and nation, 70 percent of the state’s prisoners came from the Chicago metropolitan area, home to 83 percent of the state’s African Americans.

The color of Illinois’ non-metropolitan “downstate” prison keepers was an entirely different matter. Eighteen of the twenty adult correctional facilities constructed between 1980 and 2000 in Illinois were located in rural counties that are disproportionately white for the state. Just four of the state’s twenty new (post-1980) prison towns had black municipal populations above the state average, and in three of these cases this was only because the census authorities count prisoners as residents of the towns in which they are involuntarily warehoused, not their communities of pre-incarceration residence.

Things were much the same in other states where the nation’s disproportionately urban black population supplies most of the correctional sector’s raw material. In New York, prison and census researchers Peter Wagner and Rose Hyer note, three-fourths of the state’s prisoners come from the New York City metropolitan area; 80 percent of the state’s inmates are black or Latino and 91 percent are kept in predominantly white “upstate” sections of New York. Those sections host all of the 38 New York state prisons constructed between 1982 and 2000.

The U.S. is dotted with a large number of non-metropolitan jurisdictions that are much more officially black than they appear in their commercial and residential districts. New York is home to 11 rural counties where black prisoners make up 64 percent or more of the total black population. Across the nation, Wagner and Heyer find, there were 173 counties with more than half of their black populations behind bars in 2000. One such jurisdiction is Ionia County in Michigan, officially home to 2,867 black Americans, all but 165 of whom were warehoused in Ionia prison.

A Massive Transfer of Value

According to criminologist Todd Clear, the “economic relocation of resources” from black to white communities that results from racial disparities and related spatial patterns in mass incarceration are considerable. “Each prisoner represents an economic asset that has been removed from that community and placed elsewhere.... The removal may represent a loss of economic value to the home community, but it is a boon to the prison community.” By Clear’s estimation in the late 1990s, “Each prisoner represents as much as $25,000 in income for the community in which the prison is located, not to mention the value of constructing the prison facility in the first place. This can be a massive transfer of value: A young male worth a few thousand dollars of support to children and local purchases is transformed into a $25,000 financial asset to a rural prison community. The economy of the rural community is artificially amplified, the local city economy artificially deflated.”

Generally quite poor, prisoners deflate the income profiles of downstate communities, making prison towns eligible for extra poverty-directed public dollars. The prisoners do not benefit, however, from the rural roads, schools, and bridges built with public funds tied to prison development. At the same time, prisoners put relatively minimal strain on local infrastructure beyond occasional trips to court and the use of prison shower and toilet facilities. They do not benefit from the enhanced political power that prisons bring to rural jurisdictions. Politically disenfranchised prisoners (inmates can vote in only two U.S. states, both in predominantly white New England) count towards the representation of the electoral districts in which they are incarcerated, not the districts from which they came and to which most of them return.

The third thing missing from the journalistic accounts quoted at the beginning of this article is the terrible effect of racially disparate mass incarceration on the labor market experience and related economic and life chances of the disproportionately black inmates who provide the critical raw material for the nation’s prison boom. The story of mass incarceration’s role in transferring wealth out of urban and black communities is incomplete without factoring in the significant negative impact felony records and prison histories have on future earnings and employment for those who serve as captive developmental resources for rural prison towns. If the U.S. prison construction boom creates some measure of economic stability and security—just how much is a matter of increasing skepticism and debate (as we shall see below)—for non-metropolitan communities, it exacerbates economic chaos and instability for the disadvantaged and segregated inner-city communities that provide so disproportionately large a portion of the correctional complex’s “raw material.”

According to one social-scientific survey of more than 3,000 employers nationwide, more than 60 percent of employers would not knowingly hire an ex-offender. By comparison, 92 percent of employers would likely hire a current or former welfare recipient and 83 percent would hire someone who had been unemployed for a year. Reflecting this employer bias and a host of related barriers, the best social science research finds that incarceration carries a 10 to 20 percent “wage penalty.” Ex- prisoners on average experience no real wage increases in their 20s and 30s, when young men who have never been incarcerated tend to experience rapid wage-growth. Prison time serves to channel individuals away from skilled occupations and into job sectors characterized by low wages, limited job stability, and fewer opportunities for advancement. It significantly disrupts the career-building process as ex-offenders are left to “start back at square one,” in sociologist Devah Pager’s words, “with respect to gaining a foothold in a particular occupation.”

Since incarceration rates are especially high among those with the least power in the labor market—young and unskilled minority, particularly African American, men—mass U.S. imprisonment and felony marking tends to exacerbates racial inequality. Thanks to its racially disparate labor market and related (under-) developmental consequences, the prison industrial complex has become a significant form of racially regressive and highly regulatory state intervention in the U.S. labor market and economy. Sociologists Bruce Western and Katherine Beckett find that “the penal system has a pervasive influence on the life chances of disadvantaged minorities. “Although typically the preserve of criminology,” Western observes, “incarceration appears to shape aspects of inequality that are of traditional interest to stratification researchers. It seems likely that status attainment, school-to-work transitions, and family structure are all influenced, perhaps even routinely, by the penal system in the current period of high incarceration. From this perspective, the usual list of institutional influences on social stratification—schools, families, and social policy—should be expanded to consider the coercive redistribution of life chances through incarceration.”

It doesn’t help, of course, that inmate education and rehabilitation have been systematically de-legitimized and de-funded at the same time that the U.S. has built and operated a record number of new prisons in a spirit of what leading national prisoner “reentry” expert Jeremy Travis calls “robust retributivism.”

Limits of Prison-Based Rural Growth

The fourth silence has to do with the limits of prison-based economic development in the rural U.S. As a number of investigators begin to critically and systematically investigate the impact of prisons on rural economies, we are discovering that mass incarceration’s “boon” and “windfall” for non-metropolitan areas may be much less impressive than advertised. Thanks to state and union seniority rules, professional certification requirements, and fierce competition for livable wage jobs in depressed rural areas, Huling and other researchers report, many rural correctional positions do not go to people living in prison-hosting towns. According to a 1998 dissertation study of a prison-hosting county in Missouri, 68 percent of the jurisdiction’s correctional jobs were filled by people living outside the county. Similar patterns have been found in California and Washington state. At the same time, as Ryan S. King, Huling, and Marc Mauer have recently noted, “Prison construction jobs impose a variety of requirements that local applicants may not meet,” including the possession of job-specific skills and correctional guard union membership. “In the high-stakes competition between towns to host a prison,” these writers add, “negotiators for the locality are often unwilling to impose any demands on the state, such as a local hiring quota.”

How powerful is the local “multiplier effect” of a rural prison? Purchasing most of their supplies from distant corporations that enjoy cost-cutting economies of scale that are not available to most local rural businesses, prisons “generate few linkages” to local and regional prison-hosting economies and “fail to attract significant numbers of associated industries.” By Huling’s analysis, a prison is no substitute for, say an automobile plant, which “might spark the development of delivery companies, radio assemblers, and electronic harness makers.” Since newly built prisons tend to attract large-scale national chain stores like McDonalds and Wal-Mart, moreover, they tend to encourage the demise of locally controlled enterprises and the loss of locally generated revenues to distant corporate coffers. To make matters worse, prisons often tend “to discourage other industries from locating in [a] town that might, for all other purposes, be perfectly suitable.” The perception that prisons are often seen as “undesirable neighbors”—the reasons include fear of escapes, concerns over prisons’ environmental practices (dumping), and the persistent societal stigma that still accompanies incarceration—tends “to ensure that a prison community will never be anything else, economically speaking.”

It doesn’t help that prison work is often dangerous and stressful, contributing to elevated rates of substance abuse, divorce, domestic violence, suicide, and health problems. Kilborn’s Times article contained an interesting observation in this regard: “Residents initial concern for their safety,” Kilborn noted, “has subsided. No prisoner has escaped. But about 20 guards, residents of Sayre and surrounding communities, have been injured in fights and assaults. As many as 70 percent of all guards quit within a year…and the prison is now 19 guards short.”

Also meriting attention, captive prisoners sometimes displace lesser skilled free workers in local “public service” and “community development” tasks. By Kilborn’s account of Sayre, Oklahoma, “the city has torn down the old high school and salvaged the bricks and stone for a new City Hall. The bricks,” Kilborn noted, “stand in stacks in the prison yard where for no charge to the city, the inmates are cleaning them.” In a similar vein, Donnelly’s Detroit News piece on Ionia reported, “It’s not uncommon to come across an inmate in his prison blues pruning bushes at police headquarters or, during the winter, shoveling snow for seniors.” Prior to 1990, Donnelly noted, “The city never used inmates to work on city projects.” But “now, they’re all over the place—cleaning, weeding, trimming, fixing, painting, planting, sweeping, raking, or mowing,” sometimes even performing tasks reserved for skilled tradesmen. In their rush to press with the arresting story that prisons were underpinning economic security in rural communities, neither Kilborn nor Donnelly thought to wonder if free (for the city, not the state taxpayer or the inmate-worker) prison labor was displacing and/or otherwise closing off employment opportunities for less skilled waged labor in Ionia, where 5 percent of the civilian labor force was officially unemployed in 1999, or Sayre, which had an unemployment rate of 7.4 percent.

Consistent with these reflections, King, Mauer, and Huling have determined that prison construction and operation have exercised no positive effect on local economic development in rural New York during the last two decades. Examining detailed economic data from 14 rural New York counties, they find “no significant difference or discernible pattern of economic trends between the seven rural counties that hosted [one or more] prison and seven counties that did not host prisons.”

It is not true, finally, that mass incarceration lacks “boom and bust” rhythms. Prison construction and operation develops in uneven accord with policy and budget cycles, changing public fiscal capacities, and politicians’ shifting commitment to incarceration as the “solution” to crime and drug abuse. As Kilborn noted at the end of his article, “The nation may be on the verge of a prison glut, bad news for towns that have come to rely on them. Only 11 prisons have opened or are scheduled to open this year, compared with 38 in 1998, the peak building year.”

Non-Material Costs

Prison-hosting carries significant non-economic costs that deserve to be “factored-in” alongside material “dollars and cents” considerations. Beyond the often dangerous and stressful nature of correctional work, it seems likely that many people employed in prisons pay a certain spiritual price for relying for their daily bread on the dehumanizing imposition of mass incarceration. At the same time, the highly racialized nature of the U.S.’s increasingly bucolic “prison nation” certainly has a negative impact on the country’s race relations. In the typical “downstate” Illinois or “upstate” New York (or Michigan) prison, the only black Americans that many of the predominantly white guards and other prison staff tend to have contact with are the angriest, most violent and dangerous products of the nation’s urban ghettos. Along with the stress and negativity associated with the work of imposing repressive, explicitly “retributivist” state punishment on those mostly male and very disparately poor black Americans, this selective exposure to the black community certainly tends to reinforce and expand racist sentiments in rural white America. Meanwhile, captive nonwhite prisoners chafe, their bitterness and alienation often growing under the constant oppressive eyes, batons, mace-cans, electronic tasers, cameras, and guns of their Caucasian overseers. The U.S. prison system’s rejection of its initially rehabilitative mission only deepens the disaffection of currently and formerly incarcerated “offenders.” This is a formula for the exacerbation of racial hatred. It is very different from placing blacks and whites alongside each other in situations requiring roughly equal interdependence, as for example in the deep coal mines that used to be more common in southern Illinois and much of the South.

To make matters worse, anti-black racism is useful for many white prison staff and communities who might be uncomfortable about their economic dependence on other human beings’ bondage in “the land of freedom.” By degrading inmates’ humanity, racist sentiments can make that potentially painful contradiction seem less glaring for whites who work (in however subordinate a fashion) in the prison industrial complex. In the modern mass incarceration setting, as in other contexts past and present, anti-black racism grants lower and working-class whites what W.E.B. DuBois called a “public and psychological wage”—a false and dysfunctional measure of status and privilege that was used “to make up for alienating and exploitative class relationships.” White workers in the U.S. have long tended, as David Roediger has noted, to “define and accept their [subordinate] class position by fashioning identities as ‘not slaves’ and ‘not blacks.’” Today we might add, “and not prisoners.”

Whatever the precise socioeconomic and related social-psychological dynamics at work, it’s hardly surprising to learn that white-supremacist values and affiliations are relatively widespread among those entrusted with the control of the nation’s mostly nonwhite prisoners.

Getting What You Want

Given the significant limits of the rural prison “boon,” why are so many non-metropolitan communities eager to get a new prison or, alternately, upset at the prospect of losing an existing local “correctional” facility? Part of the answer is found in the development-promising sales pitches made by correctional officials and by “law and order” politicians looking to boost their election profiles (and their electoral head counts) by bringing large-scale public works projects (which just happen in the case of prisons to rely on securing a regular supply of captive human beings) to their jurisdictions. Leading capitalist enterprises and unions that benefit from prison construction and maintenance certainly invest in developmental prison-building propaganda.

Another part of the explanation is found in University of Iowa economist Thomas Pogue’s observation that rural “prisons are being located where people don’t have much of a choice.” As Sayre’s mayor told Kilborn, sending mixed messages on the real extent of the prison “windfall,” “The prison is a super-positive for us. But it’s a life raft, an inner-tube. We’re still on the ocean. We’re not going down, but we’re not really going up either.” In the nation’s disproportionately impoverished rural areas, as well as in its disadvantaged urban ghettoes, an inferior development path is preferable to no path at all. Like many ordinary poor and modest-income people and communities in the U.S. living under the rule of exceptionally top-heavy, management-intensive, inequitable, and low-wage corporate political economy, rural prison towns probably do not so much get what they want as want what they get. “Beggars can’t be choosers” under the “zero- sum” rules of an ever-more regressive, wealth- concentrating, and poverty-generating capitalism that had made the U.S. the most unequal nation in the industrialized world.

The interesting and potentially progressive thing here is that people and communities on both sides of the spatially and racially loaded mass incarceration coin need very similar social and political changes. Both groups require and deserve decent, good-paying, and soul-nourishing jobs, the reconstruction and expansion of basic social-contractual safety nets, and significant public investments in things like public education, job-training, substance abuse treatment, universal health insurance, child care, and public transportation—to mention just some of the unmet program needs. They both need the U.S. to shift from a low-road to a high-road of balanced, high-wage, and worker- (instead of management and supervision-) centered development. They both need the U.S. to shift public resources from regressive, repressive, and well-funded (in the U.S.) “right hand of the state” to the more egalitarian, social, democratic, and less well-funded “left hand” of the state. They both need and deserve a greater share of the nation’s wealth, which tends to concentrate in the nation’s affluent white metropolitan suburbs and upscale urban neighborhoods. They both need and deserve a greater say in local, regional, and national socioeconomic planning and management and in the allotment of globalization’s costs and benefits. They both need and deserve meaningful development choices beyond the confines of an authoritarian, racist, zero-sum political economy that has generated the most unequal distribution of wealth in the industrialized world and given rise to an intimately related, dangerously proto-fascistic and racist “prison nation.”

Alongside the encouraging fact that most people in the U.S. actually oppose the vicious circle of racially disparate mass incarceration and that there are few policy mysteries on how to break that circle, these and other commonalities of interest between the prison-fed and the prison-feeding communities provide some basis for optimism regarding the prospects for rolling back racially disparate mass incarceration in the U.S.

Paul Street is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Paradigm Publishers, 2004); Still Separate, Unequal: Race, Place, Policy, and the State of Black Chicago (the Chicago Urban League, 2005); and Segregated Schools: Class, Race, and Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (forthcoming from Routledge).

Posted by lois at 09:14 PM | Comments (0)

Two Million is Too Many--Grassroots March Against Mass Incarceration in DC

They are coming from Alabama and Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. They are coming from Massachusetts and New York and Connecticut. They are coming from Texas and Colorado and as far west as California and Washington state. They are friends and family members of the more than two million people imprisoned in the United States. They are black, white, and brown. They are small-town activists, nationwide networks, and members of the grassroots sprouting up from the cracks in the prison walls. And they are all heading for Washington, DC, on August 13 as part of a nationwide "Journey for Justice" for America's prisoners and their loved ones.

Energized by opposition to the mindless grinding of the US criminal justice machine, which leads the world in putting its citizens behind bars, march organizers say it will demand an end to mass incarceration as social policy, the return of the vote to people who have done their time, an end to the physical abuse and neglect that is endemic even though hidden by high walls of official silence. They are also demanding an end to the war on drugs, under which nearly half a million Americans now rot for years in prison for "crimes" that had no victim.

The notion that the time is right for a national march to demand redress for the crimes committed against individuals and communities -- most often poor and minority -- by the criminal justice system had its genesis in the homegrown activism of Montgomery, Alabama, radio personality Roberta Franklin, herself a former prisoner. Responding to her own experiences as well as the voices of her listeners, who complained bitterly about the Alabama criminal justice system and the state's notorious prison conditions, Franklin formed a local group, Family and Friends of People Incarcerated (FFPI). When 3,000 people marching under the FFPI banner took to the streets of Montgomery last year, the idea of replicating that protest in the nation's capital took root.

"I'm from Montgomery, the home of the grassroots social justice movement," said Franklin. "This is where Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus, and this is where we start saying no more to all these harsh prison sentences. After that march here in Montgomery, I thought it was time for a national march. I mortgaged my house, and other people are making sacrifices, too. We don't have any grant money, but we do have more people coming on board all the time, and we're raising money however we can. We've got women doing fish fries," she told DRCNet.

The November Coalition, an organization devoted to freeing the prisoners of the drug war, is one group that heeded the call. "We're going to be there," said Coalition head Nora Callahan, from the group's offices across the country in Colville, Washington. "I wouldn't miss it for the world. There are lots of grassroots groups coming together on this -- more people than the drug reform movement ever brought together -- and these are people and groups who have been working on state and local issues, but who are ready to go to Washington because they understand that if they want their states to change, they need the federal government to stop being so threatening," she told DRCNet.

"There is a deep sense that the problem lies at the top of the national political structure, and that means Washington," Callahan continued. "In the states, where legislators are accountable and have to hold to their budgets, they are finding it impossible to continue down this path of mass incarceration, but in Washington, it is as if budget constraints don't exist. Who is holding back change? It's the feds. When the Supreme Court threw out the sentencing guidelines in the Blakely and Booker cases, that resounded with thousands of people all over the country. Now Congress is responding with crummy legislation, and that is mobilizing a lot of people who want to march on Washington."

Critical Resistance, a national group devoted to abolishing the prison-industrial complex, was also quick to endorse the march. "We have long been involved in supporting the work led by the people most affected by our nation's prison policies," said Zein El-Amine of the group's DC chapter. "In this case, the people leading the march are actually families and friends of prisoners. I don't remember any time in recent history when there has been a mobilization like this in the nation's capital. This is a real grassroots movement," he told DRCNet.

For Critical Resistance, the war on drugs is a key part of the broader resort to mass incarceration. "Everyone knows the war on drugs is a failure," said El-Amine. "We have had mandatory minimums, we have had three-strike sentences, we have half a million drug offenders behind bars. But every time the American people are given the chance to vote, they have chosen drug treatment over the dead end of incarceration. We have seen that in California, Arizona, and other places, including right here in DC, where a measure to divert drug users into treatment instead of prison passed with 78% of the vote. But our mayor, Anthony Williams, has it tied up in court. The war on drugs is a really important issue to DC, and the people voted one way and the officials are resisting these progressive measures."

Critical Resistance DC is doing what it can to pump up attendance, said El-Amine. "We are mainly going to events where we think people will be open to the march and setting up tables and passing out flyers. Our resources are very limited, but we're doing the best we can and will be working with the march's DC host committee."

"I'll be there, and everyone who can go should be there," said Loretta Nall of the US Marijuana Party, herself an Alabama activist who worked with Franklin on last year's Montgomery march. "We marched in Montgomery because Alabama's prisons are at 214% of capacity, the guards are overworked and underpaid, and the health care is nonexistent, and the state responds by creating a new prison task force -- although they've already done that two or three times. We know what the answers are. If you don't change the drug laws, you'll just keep those prisons full."

Again, it's personal. "I have friends and family members in prison," Nall told DRCNet. "It's inhumane to lock people in cages with violent criminals for smoking a joint. It's just insane. That's one reason I'm going to Washington, DC."

Nall is emblematic of the nascent and tentative relationship between the drug reform movement, and its marijuana component in particular, and the broader, largely minority-based local, grassroots movements to ease the nation's harsh criminal justice policies. The large national marijuana advocacy groups, such as the Marijuana Policy Project and the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, have been silent on the August march. But that may be because no one has asked them about it. Representatives of both groups told DRCNet this week they had not been approached by march organizers.

For many marijuana activists, said Nall, it is a learning curve. "When people first become involved with us, it's about marijuana," she said. "But then they start to focus on what the drug laws do and most people realize it's much broader than just pot; it's a whole system that needs to be destroyed and rebuilt."

Not all drug reform organizations are staying away from the march. Students for Sensible Policy, while mainly focused on campus-related drug policy issues, has signed on as a march endorser. "Students are tired of attending mediocre schools that could be improved with the valuable public resources that are instead being used to construct more and more prisons to lock up more and more nonviolent drug offenders," said SSDP national affairs director Tom Angell. "The government should prioritize education over incarceration," he told DRCNet.

The Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform is another reform group that has picked up the gauntlet. "Women are the fastest growing, least violent segment of the prison population. Women are losing their children and families and communities are being destroyed by these harsh drug laws that make people responsible for drug crimes and conspiracies when they aren't really responsible at all," said Jean Marlowe, the group's cofounder and executive director. "We are marching for the 6.5 million children in this country who have a parent in prison in jail or on parole or probation. That's why we think this march is important," she told DRCNet. "When children are abused in the name of war on drugs, when they are taken from their homes and ripped from their families to grow up with no sense of security, it's time for women to step up and say these policies will change."

For WONPR's Marlowe, who did time herself in the federal prison system, her activism is a promise kept. "When I left the Alderson prison camp, I promised those girls I would give them and their children a voice, I promised them that I would let people know how outrageous these drugs laws are. I wish I could have brought them all home with me, but all I can give them is my word, so here I am."

"Not all wisdom resides in Washington, and grassroots leadership around the country deserves to be encouraged," said Eric Sterling, head of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, who will address the march in Washington. "I am completely sympathetic to the issues that Roberta and others are organizing around and I'm looking forward to the march on August 13. I'm encouraging everyone to come and bring their colleagues," he told DRCNet.

Jennifer Williamson of Rice, Texas, knows the agony of having a family member behind bars, too, and as is the case many others involved, it is that personal experience with the criminal justice system that is fueling her activism. Her mentally disturbed 20-year-old son is in prison in Florida, where both his mental and his physical problems go untreated, she told DRCNet. "I went to see him in jail there, and you wouldn't believe it. He's got a broken bone sticking up out of his shoulder and they don't fix it. He needs mental health treatment, but they don't even want to acknowledge he has a problem. I couldn't do anything but cry when I saw him," she said.

"They are not doing prisoners right throughout the country," Williamson said. "Something has to change. You keep forcing air into a balloon, and it pops. You keep kicking a dog and he will eventually bite. I wrote letters to my senators and representatives, but nobody wrote me back. I wrote to Gov. Bush, and his office said he would look into it, but nothing has happened. I'm going to Washington, DC, even if I have to go alone," said the small-town Texas mother.

Like others involved in the march, Williamson is doing what she can to ensure that she is not alone. "When I went to see my son, I took 150 flyers for the march and plastered them on gas stations and conveniences stores along I-10 from Texas to Florida," she said.

In a low-budget, grassroots campaign like the Journey for Justice, what Williamson did needs to be multiplied a thousand times. We will know on August 13 whether it succeeded.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/394/dcmarch.shtml

Posted by lois at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)

SC hounds women but doesn't help- criminalizing pregnant women

SUE VEER & LETITIA JOHNSON
(Members of the South Carolina Women’s Health Coalition)

With the so-called Right to Life Act, the S.C. General Assembly is sending a clear message that women, particularly pregnant women, should not expect consideration from the majority of the state's leaders.

This bill, already passed in the House and soon to be considered in the Senate, establishes that the right to due process and equal protection of the law vests at fertilization. Supporters have made clear that its purpose is to lay the groundwork for outlawing abortion.

SUE VEER & LETITIA JOHNSON
(Members of the South Carolina Women’s Health Coalition)

With the so-called Right to Life Act, the S.C. General Assembly is sending a clear message that women, particularly pregnant women, should not expect consideration from the majority of the state's leaders.

This bill, already passed in the House and soon to be considered in the Senate, establishes that the right to due process and equal protection of the law vests at fertilization. Supporters have made clear that its purpose is to lay the groundwork for outlawing abortion.

It would be a terrible mistake, however, to think this legislation is only about abortion. It also appears to ban popular forms of contraception and would significantly extend the state's power to police and punish pregnant women.

Many supporters of this law believe (incorrectly) that emergency contraception and the birth control pill end a pregnancy. Although both prevent a pregnancy from occurring, an amendment that would permit only rape victims to use emergency contraception suggests that this bill is intended to prevent all other women from using these contraceptive methods. The result would be more unwanted pregnancies, more abortions.

The bill, S. 111, also creates the legal foundation for policing pregnancy and punishing women who seek to carry their pregnancies to term. Under existing judicially created law, South Carolina already views viable fetuses as persons. The impact of this existing law has not resulted in the protection of fetuses but rather the punishment and arrest of pregnant women and new mothers.

The primary targets of the state's already extensive fetal-protection laws are pregnant women and new mothers who need drug treatment and mental health services. As a result, scores of women in South Carolina who could benefit from treatment and who have no intention of harm have been arrested, some escorted from hospitals in chains and shackles. This punitive and extraordinarily expensive approach has deterred pregnant women from seeking necessary prenatal care. Today, South Carolina has one of the highest infant-mortality rates in the country.

With current fetal-protection laws, one solicitor warned: "Even if a legal substance is used, if we can determine you are medically responsible for a child's demise, we will file charges." Under the bill, the pregnant woman who "allows" herself to be battered, who smokes a cigarette, misses prenatal care appointments or engages in sports activities is now vulnerable to prosecution for murder should something go wrong, even at the earliest stages of pregnancy.

S.C. Rep. John Graham Altman, R-Charleston, has suggested only "liberals" would challenge this law. Altman might be surprised to also find opposition from South Carolinians who, like John and Amber Marlowe, oppose abortion on religious grounds.

As this Pennsylvania couple learned last year, the fetal rights that would be established by the bill can be used to force a pregnant woman to submit to unnecessary surgery that poses increased risk to both the pregnant woman and the fetus. Amber Marlowe fled a hospital that was about to force her to have a Caesarean section she knew she did not need. She delivered a healthy baby naturally.

In another case, Nikki S., a South Carolinian, attempted suicide because she was desperate and hopeless. She survived but lost her pregnancy. Did the state of South Carolina offer support? No, she was arrested as a murder suspect. The bill would make a woman who miscarried her first day of pregnancy a criminal suspect. A pregnant woman who loses a pregnancy should get medical and emotional support, not a police interrogation.

While the legislature distracts our attention with this controversial abortion bill, South Carolina's women suffer and die from appalling rates of heart disease, breast cancer and cervical cancer. Rather than passing the bill, the General Assembly should focus on the real health and family needs of the women who bear and raise South Carolina's children.
The writers are in the S.C. Women's Health Coalition.

© 2005 The Sun News and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com

Posted by lois at 04:20 PM | Comments (0)

Michigan among top states in prisons & their costs

Monday, July 11, 2005
By Sarah Kellogg

Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- With gloomy economic forecasts at every turn, there's one industry in Michigan that is meeting if not exceeding the performance in other states -- prisons.

Michigan is No. 6 nationally in prison population (48,591 as of June 30, 2004), No. 4 in its prison budget ($1.8 billion in 2003) and No. 3 in the percentage of state spending earmarked for corrections (4.7 percent in 2003), according to a new report.

``Michigan remains one of the few northern states with a lock-them-up policy,'' said Marcia Howard, the author of State Policy Reports, a Washington newsletter affiliated with the National Governors' Association, which compiled the numbers. ``The state really sends a lot of people off to prison, and it's costing a lot of money.''

Michigan's incarceration rate of 489 prisoners for every 100,000 residents also pushed the state to No. 11 nationally in that category in 2003, the report found. It followed nine southern states and Delaware (No. 10).

Given the size of the Michigan system, it's no wonder Gov. Jennifer Granholm and lawmakers have been struggling with how to best finance prisons without bankrupting the state budget.

In the last month, negotiations on the 2006 Corrections Department budget have focused mainly on dueling proposals that would solve the budget problems by closing facilities in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

Granholm wants to end the state contract with a privately run youth prison in Lake County, which would save an estimated $7.5 million next year. GOP leaders want to close the Newberry Corrections Facility and nearby Camp Manistique in the Upper Peninsula. Those closures would save about $12 million annually out of a proposed $1.7 billion corrections budget.

A state House and Senate conference committee will decide which prison to close in the coming weeks, but Granholm has vowed to use her veto power to fight the closure of Newberry.

Observers say if lawmakers and the governor are looking to save money, they should consider shrinking the prison population by releasing more individuals who are eligible for parole.

``Michigan is very punitive compared to other states,'' said Barbara Levine, executive director of the Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending, a Lansing group that lobbies against prison expansion. ``We think a lot of this is because of Michigan's parole rates. They remain fairly low. Commitment rates have actually stayed down for the last several years, but the parole rates haven't moved at all even though there are thousands of people eligible for parole who never leave.''

In fiscal year 2003, the 10-member Michigan Parole Board granted parole to 12,788 or 51.8 percent of eligible prisoners. That is up slightly from the 48.4 percent approval rate in 2002, but far below 1990's 68 percent.

Michigan's parole approvals have dropped significantly over the last decade as the board tightened its standards in response to high-profile cases in the early-1990s where paroled felons committed violent crimes after leaving prison.

While huge, the state's prison population has reached a plateau. Between 2002 and 2003, Michigan saw a 2.4 percent decline in the number of prisoners sentenced.

Nationally there was a 1.6 percent increase in the number of individuals sentenced to state prisons between 2002 and 2003. Only New York (-2.8 percent), Rhode Island (-3 percent) and Connecticut (-3.5 percent) saw bigger drops in prisoner numbers than Michigan.

Michigan officials say the declining prison population is good news considering that the state's prisons are nearly full.

``Our population is close to capacity, but I think that's how a corrections system should run,'' said Russ Marlan, a Corrections Department spokesman. ``The fact that 2003 was our first prison population decline in 20 years, and then we saw it go down again in 2004, shows we're making great strides in controlling the prison population.''

Observers say the mammoth size of the Michigan system is a direct result of the prison buildups of the 1990s and tougher judicial sentencing in response to political pressure to get tough on crime. While the building has stopped, the other factors remain.

``It's pretty crowded,'' said Mel Grieshaber, executive director of the Michigan Corrections Organization, the corrections officers' union. ``When we built all those tents and pole barns to handle the overcrowding, they were supposed to have a shelf life of five to eight years, and 15 years later we're still using them. Nobody likes crowding, but that's where we're at.''

Posted by lois at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)

Creating Meth Hysteria

July 11, 2005
A Drug Scourge Creates Its Own Form of Orphan
By KATE ZERNIKE
TULSA, Okla., July 8 - The Laura Dester Shelter here is licensed for 38 children, but at times in the past months it has housed 90, forcing siblings to double up in cots. It is supposed to be a 24-hour stopping point between troubled homes and foster care, but with foster homes backed up, children are staying weeks and sometimes months, making it more orphanage than shelter, a cacophony of need.

In a rocking chair, a volunteer uses one arm to feed a 5-day-old boy taken from his mother at birth, the other to placate a toddler who is wandering from adult to adult begging, "Bottle?" A 3-year-old who arrived at dawn shrieks as salve is rubbed on her to kill the lice.

This is a problem methamphetamine has made, a scene increasingly familiar across the country as the number of foster children rises rapidly in states hit hard by the drug, the overwhelming number of them, officials say, taken from parents who were using or making methamphetamine.

Oklahoma last year became the first state to ban over-the-counter sales of cold medicines that contain the crucial ingredient needed to make methamphetamine. Even so, the number of foster children in the state is up 16 percent from a year ago. In Kentucky, the numbers are up 12 percent, or 753 children, with only seven new homes.

In Oregon, 5,515 children entered the system in 2004, up from 4,946 the year before, and officials there say the caseload would be half what it is now if the methamphetamine problem suddenly went away. In Tennessee, state officials recently began tracking the number of children brought in because of methamphetamine, and it rose to 700 in 2004 from 400 in 2003.

While foster populations in cities rose because of so-called crack babies in the 1990's, methamphetamine is mostly a rural phenomenon, and it has created virtual orphans in areas without social service networks to support them. in Muskogee, an hour's drive south of here, a group is raising money to convert an old church into a shelter because there are none.

Officials say methamphetamine's particularly potent and destructive nature and the way it is often made in the home conspire against child welfare unlike any other drug.

It has become harder to attract and keep foster parents because the children of methamphetamine arrive with so many behavioral problems; they may not get into their beds at night because they are so used to sleeping on the floor, and they may resist toilet training because they are used to wearing dirty diapers.

"We used to think, you give these kids a good home and lots of love and they'll be O.K.," said Esther Rider-Salem, the manager of Child Protective Services programs for the State of Oklahoma. "This goes above and beyond anything we've seen."

Although the methamphetamine problem has existed for years, state officials here and elsewhere say the number of foster children created by it has spiked in the last year or two as growing awareness of the drug problem has prompted more lab raids, and more citizens reporting suspected methamphetamine use.

Nationwide, the Drug Enforcement Administration says that over the last five years 15,000 children were found at laboratories where methamphetamine was made. But that number vastly understates the problem, federal officials say, because it does not include children whose parents use methamphetamine but do not make it and because it relies on state reporting, which can be spotty.

On July 5, the National Association of Counties reported that 40 percent of child welfare officials surveyed nationwide said that methamphetamine had caused a rise in the number of children removed from homes.

The percentage was far higher on the West Coast and in rural areas, where the drug has hit the hardest. Seventy-one percent of counties in California, 70 percent in Colorado and 69 percent in Minnesota reported an increase in the number of children removed from homes because of methamphetamine.

In North Dakota, 54 percent of counties reported a methamphetamine-related increase. At what was billed as a "community meeting on meth" in Fargo this year, the state attorney general, Wayne Stenehjem, exhorted the hundreds of people packed into an auditorium: "People always ask, what can they do about meth? The most important thing you can do is become a foster parent, because we're just seeing so many kids being taken from these homes."

Officials also say methamphetamine has made it harder to reunite families once the child is taken; 59 percent of those surveyed in the national counties study agreed.

The federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, enacted as babies born to crack users were crowding foster care, requires states to begin terminating parental rights if a child has spent 15 out of 22 months in foster care. It was intended to keep children from languishing in foster homes. But rehabilitation for methamphetamine often takes longer than other drugs, and parents fall behind the clock.

"Termination of parental rights almost becomes the regular piece," said Jerry Foxhoven, the administrator of the Child Advocacy Board in Iowa. "We know pretty early that these families are not going to get back together."

The drug - smoked, ingested or injected - is synthetic, cheap and easy to make in home labs using pseudoephedrine, the ingredient in many cold medicines, and common fertilizers, solvents or battery acid. The materials are dangerous, and highly explosive.

"Meth adds this element of parents who think they are rocket scientists and want to cook these chemicals in the kitchen," said Yvonne Glick, a lawyer at the Department of Human Services in Oklahoma who works with the state's alliance for drug endangered children. "They're on the couch watching their stuff cook, and the kids are on the floor watching them."

The drug also produces a tremendous and long-lasting rush, with intense sexual desire. As a result of the sexual binges, some child welfare officials say, methamphetamine users are having more children. More young children are entering the foster system, often as newborns suffering from the effects of their mother's use of the drug.

Oklahoma was recently chosen to participate in a federally financed study of the effects of methamphetamine on babies born to addicted mothers. Doctors who work with them have already found that the babies are born with trouble suckling or bonding with their parents, who often abuse the children out of frustration.

But the biggest problem, doctors who work with children say, is not with those born under the effects of the drug but with the children who grow up surrounded by methamphetamine and its attendant problems. Because users are so highly sexualized, the children are often exposed to pornography or sexual abuse, or watch their mothers prostitute themselves, the welfare workers say.

The drug binges tend to last for days or weeks, and the crash is tremendous, leaving children unwashed and unfed for days as parents fall into a deep sleep.

"The oldest kid becomes the parent, and the oldest kid may be 4 or 5 years old," said Dr. Mike Stratton, a pediatrician in Muskogee, Okla., who is involved with a state program for children exposed to drugs that is run in conjunction with the Justice Department. "The parents are basically worthless, when they're not stoned they're sleeping it off, when they're not sleeping they don't eat, and it's not in their regimen to feed the kids."

Ms. Glick recalls a group of siblings found eating plaster at a home filled with methamphetamine. The oldest, age 6, was given a hamburger when they arrived at the Laura Dester Shelter; he broke it apart and handed out bits to his siblings before taking a bite himself.

Jay Wurscher, director of alcohol and drug services for the children and families division of the Oregon Department of Human Services, said, "In every way, shape and form, this is the worst drug ever for child welfare."

Child welfare workers say they used to remove children as a last resort, first trying to help with services in the home.

But everywhere there are reminders of the dangers of leaving children in homes with methamphetamine. In one recent case here, an 18-month-old child fell onto a heating unit on the floor and died while the parents slept; a 3-year-old sibling had tried to rouse them.

The police who raid methamphetamine labs say they try to leave the children with relatives, particularly in rural areas, where there are few other options.

But it has become increasingly clear, they say, that often the relatives, too, are cooking or using methamphetamine. And because the problem has hit areas where there are so few shelters, children are often placed far from their parents. Caseworkers have to drive children long distances to where parents are living or imprisoned for visits; Leslie Beyer, a caseworker at Laura Dester, logged 3,600 miles on her car one month.

The drain of the cases is forcing foster families to leave the system, or caseworkers to quit. In some counties in Oklahoma, Ms. Rider-Salem said, half the caseworkers now leave within two years.

After the ban on over-the-counter pseudoephedrine was enacted - a law other states are trying to emulate - the number of children taken out of methamphetamine labs and into the foster care system in Oklahoma declined by about 15 percent, Ms. Glick said. But she said the number of children found not in the labs but with parents who were using the drug had more than compensated for any decline.

The state's only other children's shelter, in Oklahoma City, was so crowded recently that the fire marshal threatened to shut it down, forcing the state to send children to foster families in far-flung counties.

At Laura Dester, three new children arrived on one recent morning, the 3-year-old being treated for lice and two siblings, found playing in an abandoned house while their mother was passed out at home. The girl now wanders with a plastic bag over her hair to keep the lice salve from leaking. She hugs her little brother, then grabs a plastic toy phone out of his hand, leaving him wailing.

"Who's on the phone?" asks Kay Saunders, the assistant director at the shelter, gently trying to intervene.

"My mom," the girl says, then turns to her little brother. "It's ringing!"

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 08:57 AM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2005

Texas Prisonns Overflowing, Now What?

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Okay, Governor, now what?

The SA Express News reports today that the Texas prison system is full as of June 30. But Governor Rick Perry's veto of HB 2193, which would have strengthened Texas' probation system, ensures the prison system will exceed capacity indefinitely into the future. Recent growth in the size of Texas' prison system has been staggering, and increasingly costly:

A quarter-century ago, Texas prisons could accommodate fewer than 27,000 inmates.

Today, with room for more than 155,000 inmates, the Texas prison system is, by design, the nation's largest. California prisons house more inmates — nearly 164,000 at last count — but they were intended for half that number.

Texas prison administrators dislike exceeding 97.5 percent of their available capacity — about 151,400 inmates — for safety reasons. As of June 30, Texas prisons housed 151,553.

The next day, the state began moving 600 inmates to rented space in the Bowie and Jefferson county jails. ...

Prison building, too, is a costly endeavor. A new 2,250-bed unit with a building for administrative-segregation offenders would cost just under $200 million, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

After a prison is built, each inmate it houses costs the state more than $14,600 annually.

"The state can't afford a prison," [Houston state Senator John] Whitmire said, "and I don't think we need it for public-safety purposes."

He's right -- we don't need more prisons for public safety purposes. Governor Perry's veto, however, could make greater prison spending necessary for purely political purposes. Pandering to a few extremist prosecutors (just a handful of district attorneys, mostly from rural counties, opposed the bill), Governor Perry's decision to keep our weak probation system ensures prisons will continue to fill up.

If nothing else, proposals to strengthen probation this spring expanded the terms of debate in Texas leadership circles about what priorities should govern the criminal justice system. For the first time in my memory, prominent lawmakers now openly discuss whether society can incarcerate its way out of its problems:

[L]awmakers are looking for other ways to ease prison crowding. [House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry] Madden wondered whether there's room for change in the state's criminal code.

Each legislative session, there's a flurry of bills seeking to establish new crimes or stiffen penalties for existing ones. The state has outlawed dozens of activities in the past decade, including installing a tracking device on someone else's car, soliciting a child to join a street gang and filing a false missing-person report.

"Some of the stuff that we criminalize, maybe we shouldn't," said Madden, R-Richardson, although he is not yet targeting any specific offense.
With nearly 2,000 different activities labeled felonies on the books today in Texas, Madden's certainly right that many punishments just don't fit the crime. What an amazing turn of events, though, to have a Republican committee chairman making the arguments. It's a tribute to how egregiously broken the current system has become that conservative leaders would take such a stance. It's about time. It's also particularly gratifying to know there are Texas legislators who care more about responsibly governing the state than making politicized "tough on crime" pronouncements.

At the end of the day, responsibility for Texas' overincarceration crisis rests squarely with the Governor. In addition to vetoing stronger probation, Perry also line-item vetoed part of the money designated for leasing space from county jails. Given current trends, Texas may not have until the 80th Legislature begins in 2007 to resolve its overincarceration crisis before running out of money.
posted by Gritsforbreakfast at 7:20 AM 0 comments
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2005/07/texas-prisons-overflowing-now-what.html

Posted by lois at 08:43 PM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2005

CO: "Private" Prisons: Portion of $53 Million

“Private” Prisons: Portion of $53 Million

So-called “private prisons” are those managed by independent corporations paid by tax dollars. However, using the term “private” to describe entities that collect all their money from taxes (though indirectly) and perform an essential governmental function according to politically defined rules is misleading. A more accurate term for them is “contract prisons.”

A June 14, 2005, article by The Denver Post reports, “Privately owned prisons in Colorado fall far short of minimum safety and medical standards, possibly resulting in the deaths of two inmates and the early release of a sex offender, according to an audit released [June 13]. Part of the problem, the report from the state auditor’s office said, is lax state oversight of the private prisons, which collected $53 million to house 2,800 inmates in 2004.The audit’s key findings: Nine inmates died between January 2001 and September 2004. Two of those deaths may have been caused by physicians who changed medications without physically examining the inmates. A sexual offender was released from prison three months early because officials awarded him credits for treatment sessions he didn’t attend. None of the five private prisons in Colorado have licensed medical clinics. Four private-prison employees had previous convictions for motor-vehicle theft, assault, criminal mischief and harassment. Staffing levels are lower at private prisons than at state institutions, with the worst ratio at the Crowley County prison, where inmates rioted last year.” The auditor’s report details numerous other problems, ranging from lack of adequate treatment for mental illness to violations of Colorado law regarding the types of inmates that can be transferred to private prisons. The audit finds, “The Department [of Corrections] does not use a competitive bidding process to procure private correctional services...” In September, 2002, paper published by the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, Stephen Raher cast doubt on the notion that contract prisons save the state money. He pointed to hidden costs. Given the latest, audit, it appears the legislature is not getting good value for its money when it comes to contract prisons. Perhaps before the legislature asks for more tax money to fund additional projects, it should adequately manage essential programs already on its plate.

Sources: Mark P. Couch, “Private prisons in Colo. remiss: Safety, medical shortfalls found,” Denver Post, June 14, 2005. Report of the State Auditor, Private Prisons, Department of Corrections, Performance Audit, April, 2005, http://www.leg.state.co.us/OSA/coauditor1.nsf/All/FC4A43C259BADC498725701B00755584/$FILE/1676%20Private%20Prisons%20Perf%20April%202005.pdf. Stephen Raher, “Private Prisons and Public Money: Hidden Costs Borne by Colorado’s Taxpayers,”Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, September, 2002, http://www.ccjrc.org/pdf/CostDataReport2002.pdf.

piglet.pdf
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Posted by lois at 10:48 PM | Comments (0)

July 06, 2005

National Commission to Hold Hearing on Prison Abuse and Safely --7-19 in Newark

COMMISSION ON SAFETY AND ABUSE
in America’s Prisons
www.prisoncommission.org

NATIONAL COMMISSION TO HOLD HEARING IN NEWARK, JULY 19-20
ON OVERCROWDING, ISOLATION, AND HEALTH CARE IN PRISON

The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons will hold its second hearing on July 19th and 20th in Newark, New Jersey. The hearing offers the public an opportunity to hear firsthand about institutional policies and practices that can create unsafe and abusive environments for those who are incarcerated, and for the women and men who work in U.S. prisons and jails.

What: A two-day hearing on:
• The rate of incarceration
• Overcrowded systems and facilities
• The use of isolation and rise of the supermax prison
• Medical and mental health care failures that endanger individual prisoners and officers, and the public health
• How corrections leaders can prevent the worst dangers and abuses

Who: Staff and former prisoners will talk about the impact of these issues on their daily lives. State corrections commissioners, doctors, advocates, and other experts will testify about the problems nationally and how to solve them.

When: Tuesday, July 19th 8:45 am – 3:30 pm & Wednesday, July 20th 8:45 am – 5:00 pm

Where: Mary Burch Theater, Essex County College (303 University Avenue), at the intersection of MLK and West Market streets. From Penn Station, you can take the Newark City Subway to the second stop which is Washington Street OR walk approximately 10 blocks down Market Street. Follow signs for the main entrance. The theater is located inside the main building. For detailed driving instructions and a map of the campus, go to http://www.essex.edu/aboutecc/nwk_dir.html.

Note: Only invited witnesses will have an opportunity to address the Commissioners during the proceedings. Direct any questions about the hearing to the Commission’s Coordinator, Jenni Trovillion, by calling 202-637-6355 or e-mailing jtrovillion@vera.org.

Agenda:

Tuesday, July 19

Overcrowded Facilities and the Uses and Effects of Isolation

8:45 – 9:15 Opening Statements and Welcoming Remarks
9:15 – 9:45 Prison Population: Size and Demographics, Trends and Context
10:00 – 11:00 Personal Accounts
11:15 – 12:45 Expert Testimony on Overcrowding
12:45 – 2:00 Lunch Break
2:00 – 3:30 Expert Testimony on Isolation

Wednesday, July 20

Physical and Mental Health Care and Related Issues

8:45 – 9:00 Opening Statements
9:00 – 10:00 Personal Accounts
10:15 – 11:45 Expert Testimony on the Quality of Medical Care
11:45 – 1:15 Lunch Break
1:15 – 2:45 Expert Testimony on the Public Health Implications of Health Care in Facilities
3:15 – 4:45 Expert Testimony on Caring for the Mentally Ill
4:45 – 5:00 Closing Statements

About the Commission: The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons is a diverse, 21-member, non-partisan panel that formed in March 2005 and will work for one year to explore the most serious problems inside U.S. correctional facilities and their impact on the incarcerated, the men and women who staff facilities, and society at large.

The Commission is co-chaired by former U.S. Attorney General Nicholas de B. Katzenbach and the Hon. John J. Gibbons, former Chief Judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. It is staffed by and funded through the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit organization that has worked closely with leaders in government and civil society for more than 40 years to improve the administration of justice.

To learn more about the Commission, register to receive e-mail updates, and submit personal accounts of life in prison, go to www.prisoncommission.org.

Posted by lois at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

MA: More on Racial Profiling

Police report adds context to road stops
By Michael Levenson, Globe Correspondent | July 5, 2005
After a statewide review showed racial disparities in traffic citations issued by police in nearly 250 communities, the state has launched an initiative to determine whether racial bias is to blame for the disproportionate number of minority drivers stopped on the state's roadways.

Two hundred forty-seven police departments -- from Boston and Lowell to tiny Spencer and Upton -- have been urged to participate in the program, featuring a more extensive report that officers are being asked to fill out every time they make a stop.

While police were previously required only to record the race and gender of drivers, now officers are being asked to note the duration and reason for the stop, what type of road it happened on, whether the car was searched, and what was found. In addition, instead of recording the data only when they issue warnings or tickets, police are now being asked to provide the information every time they stop a car.

The state says the move will shed light on whether stops of minority drivers are warranted or the result of racial profiling. The form has proven controversial among police departments, and while most communities have agreed to take part, 57 have chosen not to use it, opting instead to record only the race and gender of the drivers and the reason for the stop, the minimum required by law.

Katie Ford, spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Public Safety, said the expanded form takes 30 to 50 seconds to complete and could help departments build confidence in the fairness of their policing.

''Our goal here was to turn something that's a very painful and loaded subject for police departments and their communities into an opportunity for police chiefs to really seize control of their own traffic data . . . and explain whatever discrepancies there may be," Ford said.

For example, she said, if police in a community were accused of stopping a high number of Hispanic women, they could turn to the data to show how the stops might have been justifiable.

''You could have a spike in stops of Hispanic females, in a given time frame, that could be connected to a car theft with a prime suspect of a Hispanic female seen driving a certain car," Ford said. ''These forms were designed to provide that kind of context."
In 2000, a bill written by Senator Dianne Wilkerson, the state's highest-ranking African-American elected official, cleared the Legislature, with support from local police departments. The law required officers to record the race and gender of every driver issued a ticket or warning and for the state to compile that data.

The state initially undertook its first attempt to analyze traffic stops in 2001, after years in which minorities had complained that they were singled out on the roads.
Last year, after reviewing 1.6 million traffic citations issued between April 1, 2001, and June 30, 2003, the state released its findings. The results showed that in three-fourths of 341 departments, the percent of citations issued to minorities was significantly higher than the percent of minorities living in the community and estimated to be driving on the roads.
The list included the State Police, the Boston police, and most of the state's larger cities and towns.

Milton, just south of Boston, had the widest gap in ticketing. The study found that minorities received 58 percent of the traffic tickets in Milton while an estimated 16 percent of the drivers are minorities. In Boston, minorities received 50 percent of the tickets, but make up an estimated 33 percent of the drivers.

The findings were the subject of heated debate. Police chiefs faulted some of the study's methodology, and also said the stops might suggest a positivetrend: They were responding to requests for more policing in minority neighborhoods. Mostly, police felt they had been ''thrown under the bus," said Chief Edward M. Merrick Jr. of Plainville, past president of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association.
Though state officials hope all departments will eventually use the longer, more detailed form, some police chiefs call it a hassle, especially when police departments are struggling with budget cuts.

''I think it puts an undue burden on the patrol officers," said Paul Nolan, deputy police chief in Milton, which is using its own shorter form. ''It can be counterproductive to enforcing motor-vehicle laws. But the forms we will be filling out are 100 percent in compliance with the state mandate."
Police in Marblehead, which also had a racial gap in its citations, are still deciding whether to record traffic stops using their own reports or with the forms provided by the state, Chief James R. Carney said. ''There's only so much paperwork you can do in a day," Carney said.

Other departments have chosen to embrace the new approach. Plainville, near the Rhode Island border, will give its officers the form, even though it can legally ignore the entire program. Plainville is exempt because it is among the communities in 2004 that was found to have not disproportionately cited minority drivers.

''I don't want my community thinking that racial profiling is an acceptable practice," Merrick said. ''We have to clean up that perception."

State officials are pleased that 190 communities agreed to use the form, after months of negotiations and training. Massachusetts has a long history of local control, with communities and their police departments generally allowed to operate independently of the state.

''Getting a voluntary consensus among that number of police departments was actually pretty extraordinary," said Susan Prosnitz, general counsel at the Executive Office of Public Safety.
But some activists who helped push to establish the program are not as pleased. ''If departments choose not to use the form, they're going to be shortsighted, and they're going to reduce their ability to understand whether racial profiling actually exists in their community," said Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties of Massachusetts. ''They should want to measure what's going on in their departments."

The Plainville police chief agrees. ''The benefit is going to be able to look the ACLU in the eye and say, 'It ain't happening, kids,' " Merrick said.
The Rev. William E. Dickerson III, pastor of Greater Love Tabernacle in Dorchester, praised the new initiative. He said he had spoken with members of his church who felt police had stopped them because of their race.
''Racial profiling is an issue that exists throughout the country and it's not just any one geographic area," Dickerson said. ''We can't sweep it under the rug and act like it doesn't exist."
C Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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

July 05, 2005

CA: Hard Time: CA's Prisons in Crisis

Sunday, July 3, 2005 (SF Chronicle)
HARD TIME/California's Prisons in Crisis/High price of broken prisons/Tough sentencing creates overcrowding that endangers inmates, haunts taxpayers James Sterngold, Mark Martin, Chronicle Staff Writers

Nearly three decades after California cracked down on rising crime rates with tougher sentencing laws, the bill is coming due for what experts say has been one of the most ill-planned and flawed prison expansions in the country.
At the heart of the problem is a simple but overpowering mismatch -- lawmakers and prosecutors sent far more criminals to prison than Californians, ultimately, were willing to pay for. The result has been such acute overcrowding that critical prison programs and services are breaking down and require enormously expensive fixes.
On Thursday, a federal judge expressed shock at what he called the neglect and "depravity" in parts of the prison health care system, and ordered that a receiver take control. Court-ordered improvements could send costs soaring in a program that already spends $1.1 billion a year.

Just weeks before, the Corrections Department opened Kern Valley State Prison, built at a cost of $716 million and hailed as the last of 22 new prisons in a $4.5 billion construction program. But days later, the head of the agency, Roderick Q. Hickman, told The Chronicle that Kern Valley could not possibly be the last prison, because the system holds twice the number of inmates it was designed for and is still adding more.
Hickman said taxpayers will also have to pay many millions of dollars to upgrade older prisons and to comply with court orders demanding the correction of conditions so abysmal that they violate inmates' constitutional rights. With some of the highest costs per inmate, the most violence, the highest rate of parolees going back to prison and the worst crowding, California's corrections system is unlike any other system in the United States.
"There's California and then there's the rest of the country," said Michael Jacobson, the director of the Vera Institute of Justice in New York and the former head of New York City's jail system. The costs of the failures are now becoming clear:
-- A major cause of overcrowding is a parole system that sends far more released inmates back to prison than other states. Decisions by corrections officials and politicians to de-emphasize rehabilitation programs, lengthen parole periods and send violators back to prison instead of giving them treatment have produced a return rate of about 60 percent, the nation's highest.
-- The health care system is so neglected that up to 30 percent of its physician jobs are vacant and some examination rooms don't even have sinks. Once the federal court appoints a receiver, taxpayers will have to pay the bill for hiring new staff and renovating facilities. Meanwhile, longer sentences are producing an aging inmate population with much more expensive medical needs.
-- In a system that moves people in and out of prisons hundreds of thousands of times a year, management is hobbled by an obsolete information technology system. Officials say a modern computer network that would cut costs, reduce errors and streamline management is years away, and could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
California's problems are particularly striking because they run counter to a broad national trend that is saving other states millions of dollars while making citizens safer. If it could fix its dysfunctional programs, experts say, a department that is projected to spend $7.3 billion this fiscal year could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Even strict law-and-order states such as Mississippi and Louisiana have embraced new models that involve elements like shorter sentences, improved rehabilitation programs and more alternatives to prison. Texas, which has a higher crime rate than California and houses nearly as many inmates, puts only a fraction as many parole violators back in prison.
"California has used policies that show no evidence of effectiveness; all they show is high cost," said Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. "The state is the poster child for corrections policies that have no benefit to public safety."
Hickman, in an interview, said of the parole system: "California, quite frankly, is aberrant compared with anywhere else in the country."
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Hickman on his first day in office to be secretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, which operates the adult prisons and the much smaller juvenile system. Hickman leaped into motion, declaring that he was determined to overhaul the parole system because its problems were so central to prisons being overstuffed with some 164,000 inmates.
This Friday, 20 months later, he reached a landmark when his agency took the name Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as part of the reorganization.
But some critics express deep disappointment that so little has been accomplished. While they call for urgency, Hickman said that it could take an additional 18 to 24 months to institute major new policies in the areas suffering the gravest problems.
"My emphasis with adult corrections right now is evaluating the prisons, evaluating the safety of the prisons, and then reconfiguring the prisons within the mission we now have," he said.
The foundation of the current problems was laid in the late 1970s, when Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, and Republican officials toughened the state's criminal-justice policy.
As rising crime rates fed a law-and-order mood, Brown signed legislation requiring judges to impose fixed sentences. Other laws provided longer sentences for drug crimes, sex crimes and for habitual offenders, reaching a peak with "three strikes" in 1994, which mandated life sentences for some repeat offenders.
There were warnings that the state was unprepared. In 1979 the head of the Corrections Department, Jiro Enomoto, warned that the prison population could shoot out of control, to 27,000 by 1986 from about 20,000. By 1986 there were 54,000, and the state never caught up.
Today the prisons hold nearly twice the number of inmates they were designed for, many having converted gyms and other areas into large dormitories. The crowding has raised racial and other tensions, made prisons more difficult to control, and hindered the limited treatment and education programs that are provided.
"People are consistently coming out worse than they're going in," said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in Oakland. He served on a blue-ribbon commission 15 years ago that examined the prisons and recommended major reforms, most of which were ignored.
"It's getting worse," said Krisberg, "and it is harming public safety because these people are going back in their communities."
Parole
Overcrowding is at the root of many of the system's failures, and parole is at the root of the overcrowding. Experts blame the state's policy of keeping most released inmates on parole for far longer periods than other states and sending most of those who violate parole back to prison, even for relatively minor offenses such as missing meetings or failing drug tests.
So many parole violators are returned to prison that they make up more than one third of all inmates. The Little Hoover Commission, an independent state research body that provides policy recommendations, estimated 18 months ago that the prisons spend about $1.5 billion a year on parole violators and parolees who commit new crimes.
When inmates do make it back home, they are ill-prepared, either by their stay in prison or parole programs, to hold down jobs or stay out of trouble. The Little Hoover Commission found that 10 percent are homeless, half are illiterate, as many as 80 percent are unemployed. Eighty percent are drug users.
Experts say that spending money on treating or training parole violators is more effective than sending them back to prison for typical stays of 90 to 120 days.
Among parolees who met drug treatment goals at intensive residential centers, only 15.5 percent returned to prison within a year of being released, compared with more than 40 percent for all offenders, said Sheldon Zhang, a professor of sociology at Cal State San Marcos.
But the Schwarzenegger administration has cut funding for some programs and poorly planned others. One drug treatment program in a prison, for example, performed poorly because it did not isolate the inmates who were in treatment from the general prison population, where they had access to drugs.
Two years ago, the state said new parole programs emphasizing treatment and alternatives to prison for violators would cut the prison population by 15, 000 inmates. But they were poorly designed, in some cases sending drug violators to halfway houses with no drug programs, and never even implemented properly. In April the state stopped sending parole violators to these programs.
Parole violation cases have risen sharply this year, one of the reasons the Corrections Department had to ask for an additional $207 million for a larger inmate base.
Health care
California already spends $1.1 billion a year on health care for inmates
-- a doubling in costs in just seven years -- but the level of care is so poor that U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson has said it violates inmates' constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment. Henderson, based in San Francisco, ruled Thursday that a receiver would be appointed to order improvements.
No budget figures were discussed, but most expect costs to soar, perhaps for years, because of the system's desperate needs. In a separate area, mental health, a department consultant has estimated it could cost $1.4 billion to meet the needs of the growing number of mentally ill inmates.
Last year the department asked if the University of California, with its big, highly regarded medical system, could take over management of the prison health care programs. The university said no almost immediately.
"We just were not able to take on something of that scale," said Jeff Hall, director of policy for the university's Division of Health Affairs.
High vacancy rates for doctors, nurses, psychiatrists and pharmacists who must work under difficult conditions will require heavy spending for recruitment, as well as bonuses and other incentives to attract qualified people to some remote prison locations.
The department has also agreed to hire a new level of supervisors and regional managers to oversee care, putting even more pressure on the budget.
Many doctors are furious, saying they are being unfairly blamed for the problems when they have to work in deplorable conditions and are badly overworked.
"The prisons were designed to incarcerate inmates," said Dr. Charles Hooper, who works at the California State Prison, Sacramento. "They were not designed to be the Mayo Clinic. They are essentially dungeons."
Hooper said that as many as half the inmates he sees for treatment show up without charts. The frequent lockdowns at the prison, often a result of tensions due to crowding, also disrupt proper treatment.
"It can be a fiasco at times," he said.
Health costs could also soar because of the rapidly rising number of geriatric inmates. According to an internal Corrections Department report, the total cost of an elderly inmate is three times that of a younger one. New facilities for them could also require major renovations.
The number of inmates 60 and over, among the most expensive to care for, nearly doubled in only six years, to 3,358 in 2004 from 1,781 in 1998, according to the department.
Health costs are also affected by the high level of violence in the prisons. California's prisons have roughly twice the number of violent incidents reported in Texas prisons and almost three times the number in federal prisons, both of which have similar numbers of inmates, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office.
Technology
Some people complain that the system seems immune to even the smallest changes.
David Warren, a volunteer chaplain and member of the Family Council, which works with prison officials on behalf of inmate families, tells of a prison dentist who was concerned that the toothbrushes he was supplied were so hard that they were actually causing dental problems. He sought to have the state order softer brushes. He succeeded -- after 18 months.
"There is a mind-set that you have to see to understand," Warren said.
On a much broader level, the department's technology experts say it will be years before the prisons have computer networks that will enable them to keep track of the movements and needs of the inmates and a staff of about 54, 000.
Only recently have prison officials been able to communicate through the same e-mail system. Jeff Baldo, the head of the department's information technology division, said state-of-the-art optic fibers were installed in some prisons a decade ago, then left unused.
He said the department has one information technology specialist for every 1,000 employees; typically, a state agency of its size would need one technology expert for every 6 to 10 employees.
"I've never been in a place where you see this," Baldo said.
As a result, transferring large volumes of data from one prison to another is nearly impossible, the department's experts said. Most medical records are on paper, and when inmates are moved, their records sometimes fail to catch up. Thus prison officials often have to make decisions without complete data on inmates' records, medical conditions and special needs.
The officials said that building an adequate computer system could cost well over $100 million and take at least five more years.
"It could be less, but it also could be triple that amount," said Robert Horel, the corrections agency's chief of fiscal programs. "It doesn't take a very long term for the problems to grow when you're in the dark as much as we are."

E-mail the writers at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com and markmartin@sfchronicle.com. Inmate population
The state's prisons held fewer than 21,000 inmates as late as 1978, when the governor and Legislature began a 16-year push for tougher sentencing laws. By the time the first of 22 new prisons opened in 1984, the population had already increased to 43,328.
1984: 43,328
2005: 163,717

Parole
California returns a higher percentage of parolees to prison than any other state, often for violating a condition of parole such as staying within a specified area.

1984 2003
Inmates released to parole 24,711 115,424
Parolees returned to prison 11,409 78,053
Returned for violating conditions 7,421 62,377
Returned for new conviction 3,988 15,676

Source: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

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California prisons opened since 1984

Designed Current
capacity population
California State Prison, Solano, Aug. '84 2,610 5,848
California State Prison, Sacramento, Oct. '86 2,008 2,967
Avenal State Prison, Jan. '87 (6 converted gyms) 2,320 7,062
Mule Creek State Prison, June '87 1,700 3,614
Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, July '87 2,200 4,386
California State Prison, Corcoran, Feb. '88 2,916 4,867
Chuckawalla Valley State Prison, Dec. '88 1,738 3,700
Pelican Bay State Prison, Dec. '89 2,550 3,301
Central California Women's Facility, Oct. '90 2,004 3,109
Wasco State Prison, Feb. '91 3,104 6,034
Calipatria State Prison, Jan. '92 2,208 4,151
California State Prison, Los Angeles County, Feb. '93 1,200 4,185
North Kern State Prison, Delano, April '93 2,892 5,028
Centinela State Prison, Oct. '93 2,208 4,472
Ironwood State Prison, Feb. '94 2,200 4,624
Pleasant Valley State Prison, Nov. '94 2,616 5,188
Valley State Prison for Women, April '95 1,980 3,570
High Desert State Prison, Aug. '95 2,096 3,988
Salinas Valley State Prison, May '96 2,224 4,200
Substance Abuse Treatment Facility, Aug. '97 3,324 6,239
Kern Valley State Prison, opened June 5 5,000
Totals 46,098 90,533
Source: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
The Chronicle

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Copyright 2005 SF Chronicle

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TL

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Gores Tech Invests in Phones in Pisons

“This is a great niche market, which represents one of the last domestic hard-line pay phone businesses that will continue to grow”

Gores Tech Invests About $120 Million In Prison Phone Provider

Tuesday July 5, 3:13 PM EDT

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Gores Technology Group has made another bet on the business of providing phone services for prison inmates, acquiring pay-phone operator National Public Markets from AT&T Corp. (T) (T) for less than $120 million.

Gores, Los Angeles, closed the transaction last month and has folded the acquired business into Global TelLink Corp., or GTL, a platform company purchased last year that does the same thing, said Ryan Wald, a Gores principal.

Wald declined to disclose terms of the transaction. But according to a May release from Moody's Investors Service, GTL raised credit facilities totaling $ 97.5 million, which went to finance the acquisition of National Public Markets as well as to pay down debt. Gores put in an additional $22 million of equity, Moody's said.

With trailing 12-months revenue of around $250 million, the combined business accounts for over 10% of the inmate pay phone market, according to Wald.

National Public Markets, Bedminster, N.J., generates 95% of its revenue from operating pay phones at prisons, Wald said. It also runs pay phones at airports, train stations, hotels and conference centers.

The company was a "homegrown" business of AT&T (T) and part of the telecom giant's business services unit, said Gary Morgenstern, an AT&T (T) spokesman. Last July, AT& T (T) said it would shift away from consumer services and focus on business markets and emerging technologies, such as voice over Internet Protocol. Though National Public Markets is part of AT&T's (T) business unit, its users - passengers, hotel guests, conference participants, prison inmates - weren't a focus for AT&T (T), Morgenstern said.

AT&T (T) put the business up for sale and ran an "internal auction" without hiring an investment bank, Wald said. Gores learned of the opportunity through its business development team, which maintains contact with large telecom corporations.

"We believed it's a good fit for GTL," Wald said. Both companies serve state and local prisons and other correctional facilities.

"This is a great niche market, which represents one of the last domestic hard- line pay phone businesses that will continue to grow," Wald said. Pay-phone providers at other venues - airports, train stations, hotels and the like - face competition from cell phone carriers. There is less competition, however, in prisons. "Correctional facilities aren't going to let inmates use cell phones in the near future," Wald said.

This is Gores' first add-on acquisition for GTL, Mobile, Ala., which was acquired last year from Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB) (SLB) for $7.5 million in equity, according to Moody's. The total value of that transaction wasn't disclosed.

GTL is expected to integrate National Public Markets over the next three to six months.

07-05-05 1512ET

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© 2005 Dow Jones & Company
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It's Time to Build A Mass Movement

It's Time to Build a Mass Movement
by Bruce Dixon
The Black Commentator
Issue 144 June 30,2005
http://www.blackcommentator.com/144/144_cover_movement_pf.html

"Democracy... does not come from the government, from on high, it comes from people getting together and struggling for justice." - Howard Zinn, Spelman College commencement address, Atlanta, 2005.

Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass movements drag the courts, laws and officeholders all in their wake. Progressive and even partially successful mass movements can alter the political calculus for decades to come, thus improving the lives of millions. Social Security, the New Deal, and employer-provided medical care didn't come from the pen of FDR. The end of "separate but equal" didn't come from the lips of any judge, and voting rights were not simply granted by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All these were hard-won outcomes of protracted struggle by progressive mass movements, every one of which operated outside the law and none of which looked to elected officials or the corporate media of those days for blessings or legitimacy. It's time to re-learn those lessons and build a new progressive mass movement in the United States.

Mass movements are against the law

Mass movements exist outside electoral politics, and outside the law, or they don't exist at all. Mass movements are never respecters of law and order. How can they be? A mass movement is an assertion of popular leadership by the people themselves. A mass movement aims to persuade courts, politicians and other actors to tail behind it, not the other way around. Mass movements accomplish this through appeals to shared sets of deep and widely held convictions among the people they aim to mobilize, along with acts or credible threats of sustained and popular civil disobedience.

Not all mass movements are progressive. The legal strategy of "massive resistance" to desegregation on the part of southern whites, in which local governments across the south threw up thickets of lawsuits, evasions and new statutes, closing whole school systems in some areas rather than integrate, was implemented in response to and backed up by the historically credible and ever-present threat of armed, lawless white mobs long accustomed to dishing out violence to their black neighbors and any white allies with impunity. They operated in a context of popular belief in white superiority and black inferiority that was widespread among whites of that region and time. Undeniable proof of the existence of a violent, white supremacist mass movement was broadcast around the world when thousands of local white citizens showed up to trade blows, insults, and gunfire with federal marshals in places like Little Rock, Arkansas in '57 and Oxford, Mississippi in '62.

Likewise, courts and public officials who enforced desegregation orders were under relentless pressure from a civilly disobedient mass movement for equality and justice. 89 leaders of the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott could not have been surprised when they earned conspiracy indictments for their trouble. Tens of thousands of mostly southern, mostly black citizens defied unjust laws and were jailed in the waves of mostly illegal sit-ins, marches, freedom rides and other mostly illegal actions that swept the South for more than a decade. This movement in turn relied on the deep convictions of all African Americans and growing numbers of whites that segregation and white supremacy were evils that had to be fought, regardless of personal costs. For many, those costs were very high. Some are still paying.

Mass movements are politically aggressive

Mass movements are kindled into existence by unique combinations of outraged public opinion in the movement's core constituency, political opportunity and aggressive leadership. The absence of any of these can prevent a mass movement from materializing. In a January 20, 2005 BC article occasioned by the death of visionary James Foreman, one of the masterminds of the mid-century movement for civil and human rights, which contains many useful insights on the characteristics of mass movements, David Swanson recalled a recent lost opportunity in the wake of the 2000 presidential election: "Various small groups did act, and Rev. Jesse Jackson became a leading spokesman for those objecting to a stolen election. The coalition cobbled together was surprisingly successful in moving Congress Members and Senators to at least give lip service to the matter. The seeds of something may have been sown. But a mass movement was not organized. Civil disobedience was not used."

Democratic party leaders instructed Jesse and the crew to go home and await the results of court decisions. The black leadership acquiesced, and a chance to galvanize a civilly disobedient mass movement around issues of voting rights was missed.

Mass movements are based on widely held beliefs, reinforced by dense communications networks. Mass movements are nurtured and sustained not just by vertical communication, between leaders and constituents, but by lots of horizontal communication

among the movement's constituency. This horizontal communication serves to reinforce the constituency's and the movement's core values. It emboldens ordinarily non-political people to engage in personally risky behavior in support of the movement's core demands, and builds support for this kind of risk-taking on the part of those who may not be ready to do it themselves.

Forty and fifty years ago, African American print media like the Chicago Defender, the California Eagle, Baltimore Afro-American and the Pittsburg Courier carried news of resistance to Jim Crow to millions of black readers. Like white communities of that era, black neighborhoods supported and were supported by a dense network of voluntary and social organizations. Large numbers belonged to fraternal societies such as Masons and the Eastern Star, and many more blacks than today belonged to labor unions. Within these networks, the freedom struggle was on everyone's lips as far down the chain as youngsters at Boy Scout meetings in church basements on the south side of Chicago in 1964. It was in places where these networks were weakest, or where institutional gatekeepers like pastors could not be persuaded to take part that the mass movement was slowest to take hold, as this passage from the January 20, 2005 Cover

Story of BC (Black Commentator) illustrates: "Contrary to current mythology, the Black church was never a great fountain of social activism. More often, suspicious and small-minded clergy shut their doors against the winds of change... In the years following the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, church doors were slammed shut in King's face throughout the South. As a preacher-led organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) required a local church base in order to set up operations. The same problems of Jim

Crow and brutality existed in every southern city, yet in town after town, King could not find a single church that would open its doors to the SCLC. The 'movement' was sputtering. Rather than mounting a grand sweep through the region, King found himself hemmed in by
the endemic fear and even hostility of Black clergymen."

The current environment presents a different set of challenges to those who would build the dense horizontal communications networks needed support a mass movement. Far fewer Americans belong to social, civic and voluntary organizations now than 50 years ago. Sprawl forces us to live further from and travel more hours getting to and from work, school and shopping than ever before. To lift a revealing quote from www.bowlingalone.com, the web site of Robert Putnam's highly recommended book of the same name, "...we sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations that meet, know our neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often. We're even bowling alone. More Americans are bowling than ever before, but they are not bowling in leagues."

If a progressive mass movement is to be built in this era of sprawl and locked down media monopolies, organizers must develop and deploy alternative communications strategies to get and keep the movement’s message into a sufficient number of ears to sustain its influence and momentum.

No mass without masses and no movement without youth

Mass movements don't happen without masses. A mass movement whose organizers cannot fill rooms and streets, and sometimes jails on short notice with ordinarily non-political people in support of political demands is no mass movement at all. Organizers and those who judge the work of organizers must learn to count.

A progressive mass movement is inconceivable without a prominent place for the energy and creativity of youth. The finest young people of every generation have the least patience with injustice. SNCC was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, after all, and included high school and college students across the South. The average age of rank and file members of the Black Panther Party was 17 to 19. SCLC's leading ministers in the early 60s were mostly under 30. The 1960s movement for civil and human rights was spearheaded, and often led by young people. Neither Martin Luther King nor Malcolm X lived to be forty. Fred Hampton was only 21.

Any mass movement aiming at social transformation must capture the enthusiasm and energy of youth, including the willingness of young people to engage impersonally risky behavior.

What is a mass movement?

Mass movements are creations of the political moment, rooted in the shared values of their core constituencies, nurtured by dense communications networks among a supportive population. They are sustained by aggressive leadership, and youthful

enthusiasm. Mass movements inevitably employ civil disobedience, and the civilly disobedient components of mass movements must be carefully calculated in such a way as to maintain support from broad sectors of the population it aims to mobilize, and to increase support if they are violently repressed.

To enumerate some of the typical qualities of mass movements:

Mass movements have political demands anchored in the deeply shared values of their core constituencies.

Mass movements look to themselves and their shared values for legitimacy, not to courts, laws or elected officials. A mass movement consciously aims to lead politicians, not to be led by them.

Mass movements are civilly disobedient, and continually maintain the credible threat of civil disobedience.

Mass movements are supported by lots of vertical and horizontal communication which reinforces the core values of the constituency and emboldens large numbers of ordinarily nonpolitical souls to engage in personally risky behavior in support of the movement's political demands.

Mass movements capture the energy, enthusiasm and risk taking spirit of youth. Nobody ever heard of a mass movement of old or even middle aged people.

In the absence of any of these characteristics, no mass movement can be said to exist.

Applying the mass movement yardstick to real-life cases

Reparations? The reparations movement undoubtedly speaks to widespread beliefs among African Americans. But the last big reparations demonstration in Washington, DC might not have drawn ten thousand souls. A mass movement should be able to fill rooms in neighborhoods, not just in whole cities. With no broad masses in motion over reparations, no civil disobedience, and not much traction among black youth, it's safe to say that there is no mass movement for reparations.

The anti-war movement? With the ability to put hundreds of thousands in the streets several times a year in

New York City, in DC, and the Bay Area, one to twenty thousands in scores of other US cities and towns, and hundreds more vigils, demos and meetings still happening each week the antiwar movement passes the numbers test. But in contrast to a generation ago, today's antiwar movement has so little respect for itself and so much reverence for the two-party system that it practically shut down months before the presidential election to allow most of its leading lights to actively campaign for a pro-war candidate. There is not much evidence of broadly popular antiwar civil disobedience yet, either.

When the antiwar movement loses its reverence for judges and elected officials, and discovers some creative and popular ways to break the law, it will be a mass movement.

The Million Man March and the Millions More Movement?

While certainly big enough, the 1995 MMM was only a single day's event. Although the still-existing policy of selective mass incarceration of black men was in full swing, the MMM made absolutely no demands for the transformation of society. It was, its leader said, all about "atonement." There was no civil disobedience, and no intent to sustain any militant action. Organizers of the MMM remembered to collect money, but somehow neglected to pass around a signup sheet, something even the most amateurish organizer knows must be done. What an organizing tool a million man mailing list might have been!

The organizers of the 1995 affair who are driving the bus again this year, haven't criticized themselves for not taking attendance, or for coming to Washington to ignore political issues like health care, voting rights and mass incarceration, or for excluding gays and women. What kind of mass movement excludes women? Neither version of the MMM looks like a mass movement.

Labor? Union rights, pensions, Social Security and health benefits were won by a struggle with all the hallmarks of a mass movement. But that was two or three generations ago. Today's labor movement isn't capturing youth, doesn't do civil disobedience, is unsure of what its core values are, and collects dues to give to the "least worst" politician instead of trying to make politicians follow its lead. Whateverelse it is, labor is not a mass movement any more.

The women's movement, pre-Roe v. Wade

Both in 1970 and a hundred years ago, this had all the characteristics of a mass movement. Political demands, big numbers, leaders not afraid to call politicians to account, and a fair amount of public, popular civil disobedience. They eventually forced courts and politicians to follow them rather than the other way around, and with some of their key demands met, creative civil disobedience ceased, replaced by reliance on courts, elected officials and corporate sponsorship. Right now, there is no mass movement for the full equality of women. A new Supreme Court, if it overthrows Roe v. Wade will make the re-emergence of such a movement much more likely.

The religious right

The religious right possesses a mass base, along with ambitious and profoundly scary leaders. With corporate support it has been successful in building its own communications networks and influencing or seizing outright control over many civilian and
military institutions. The religious right does not follow politicians. Politicians pander to it. Whenever the religious right starts being civillydisobedient, we will see a mass movement with the
potential to take us far down the road toward fascism.

The Black Consensus, the next progressive mass movement, and Gary

There is only one place America's next progressive mass movement can come from. There is only one identifiable constituency with a bedrock majority of its citizens in long term historical opposition to our nation's imperial adventures overseas. This is America's black one-eighth. While majorities of all Americans do believe in universal health care, the right to organize unions, high quality public education, a living wage, and that retirement security available to everyone ought to be government policy, and many even believe America is locking up too many people for too long, support for these propositions is virtually unanimous among African Americans.

More than two years ago, Black Commentator named this phenomenon the "Black Consensus":
"African Americans remain in remarkable, consistent agreement on political issues, a shared commonality of views that holds strongly across lines of income, gender and age. The Black Commentator's analysis of biannual data from the Joint Center for Political and

Economic Studies confirms the vitality of a broad Black Consensus. Most importantly, the data show that Black political behavior has not deviated from recent historical patterns, nor is any significant Black demographic group likely to diverge from these patterns in the immediate future.

"In newspaper terms, there is no "split" among African Americans on core political issues..."

The original article, from which the above paragraph is lifted, is well worth reviewing in its entirety. Itis the statistical persistence of the Black Consensus over decades of polling data and across classes,generations and regions which marks out America's black one-eighth as the likely origin, and the first indispensable core constituency of any progressive mass movement to transform American society. If such a mass movement is to succeed, it must not allow itself to be contained within the black community. But that's where it has to begin, around the core political demands of the Black Consensus.

Hence African American elected officials and candidates for office on every level, from the CongressionalBlack Caucus to local sheriffs and prosecutors must be forced to address themselves to the Black Consensus.

They must be summarily judged for their positions on such issues as racially selective mass incarceration,the unjust war in Iraq, American complicity in the apartheid-like policies of Israel, universal health care, equality of educational opportunity, and voting rights, and these judgments made to stick. Mass movements do not and cannot follow political office holders. A mass movement is an assertion of popular leadership by the people themselves. It makes politicians into followers.The Black Consensus, and the cohesive communities of color from which it arises must give birth to America's next progressive mass movement. Laying the intelligent groundwork for such a movement will be the task before us in our next historic meeting - "Going Back to Gary."

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

July 04, 2005

GA: Prison Expansion Project Stopped

Prison expansion project is halted
CHARLES YOO The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 06/30/05

The state Department of Corrections announced Wednesday that it was dropping plans for expansion of a south Fulton County prison that had drawn strong opposition from nearby homeowners.

Corrections Commissioner James Donald reversed repeated claims he made last year that the expansion of the 200-bed Larmore Probation Detention Center was badly needed due to the number of probationers - more than 10,000 - living in Fulton County.

Homeowners living near Larmore enlisted the aid of their elected officials, many of whom campaigned on their behalf, to fight the expansion. Donald now says the $11 million, 500-bed expansion of Larmore is not needed.

"A thorough examination of the numbers revealed that there was simply no need for this new center in Fulton County," Donald said in the statement. "We must continue to be good stewards of the public's resources and we could not justify continuing this expansion when we have six additional facilities that could take on this mission."

Neighbors were glad to hear about the prison system's plans to stop the expansion of the prison off Stonewall Tell Road near Union City. They had formed a group opposing the expansion and filed a lawsuit to try to stop it.

But Wednesday, they wondered whether the once-heavily-wooded property had been irreversibly damaged. The department clear-cut and leveled the 25-acre property, and an environmental group filed a lawsuit against Corrections in April, claiming sloppy construction at the site was ruining wetlands, small lakes and a Chattahoochee River tributary. In its release, the Department of Corrections said it would return the property to "its natural state," but did not offer details of its plans.

"I really don't know the extent of the actual damage," said Patricia Phillips of the Valley Lakes subdivision, which abuts the Larmore site. "The density of trees we had back there and the topography of the land, all of that has changed."

AnJeanne James, another Valley Lakes resident, said the department needs to clean up the mess it made before withdrawing. But she was glad to hear the the long battle against the expansion appeared to be over.

"I am just elated," James said. "If that's true, I'm totally elated. It's been a long road."

Posted by lois at 01:38 PM | Comments (0)

July 03, 2005

Russell Shoatz- Black Liberation Army leader incarcerated in PA has prostate cancer

http://www.freerussellshoatz.com/urgentaction.htm
Russell Shoats, incarcerated in Waynesburg PA has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. His family and supporters are organizing to have the state move him closer to his family for better treatment.
The Philadelphia Human Rights Coalition and Families and Communities United are leading the organizing. Info at the website above and at www.HRCcoalition.com
and Russell Shoatz can be reached at:
Russell Shoats AF3855
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370

Posted by lois at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)

Increae in the Number of Documents Classified by the Government

July 3, 2005
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, July 1 - Driven in part by fears of terrorism, government secrecy has reached a historic high by several measures, with federal departments classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like "sensitive security information."

A record 15.6 million documents were classified last year, nearly double the number in 2001, according to the federal Information Security Oversight Office. Meanwhile, the declassification process, which made millions of historical documents available annually in the 1990's, has slowed to a relative crawl, from a high of 204 million pages in 1997 to just 28 million pages last year.

The increasing secrecy - and its rising cost to taxpayers, estimated by the office at $7.2 billion last year - is drawing protests from a growing array of politicians and activists, including Republican members of Congress, leaders of the independent commission that studied the Sept. 11 attacks and even the top federal official who oversees classification.

The acceleration of secrecy began after the 2001 attacks, as officials sought to curtail access to information that might tip off Al Qaeda about America's vulnerabilities. Such worries have not faded; just this week the Department of Health and Human Services sought unsuccessfully to prevent publication of a scientific paper about the threat of a poisoned milk supply on the ground that it was "a road map for terrorists."

But across the political spectrum there is concern that the hoarding of information could backfire. Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the Sept. 11 commission and a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said the failure to prevent the 2001 attacks was rooted not in leaks of sensitive information but in the barriers to sharing information between agencies and with the public.

"You'd just be amazed at the kind of information that's classified - everyday information, things we all know from the newspaper," Mr. Kean said. "We're better off with openness. The best ally we have in protecting ourselves against terrorism is an informed public."

Mr. Kean said he could not legally disclose examples he discovered of unnecessary classification. But others cite cases of what they call secrecy running amok: the Central Intelligence Agency's court fight this year to withhold its budgets from the 1950's and 60's; the Defense Intelligence Agency's deletion of the fact that the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was interested in "fencing, boxing and horseback riding"; and the Justice Department's insistence on blacking out a four-line quotation of a published Supreme Court decision.

Secrecy has long been denounced by liberal watchdog groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. But more conservatives are emerging as skeptics, including Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, whose bill to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act passed the Senate last week. The bill, cosponsored by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, requires that any legislation creating new exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act explicitly disclose them. It is only part of overhaul efforts proposed by the two.

Mr. Cornyn, a former state attorney general, said he had been trying to persuade his colleagues that freedom of information was not just a concern of the news media. "The people should get the information they need to see if government is doing what they want," he said.

He gets no argument from J. William Leonard, who in his three years as director of the Information Security Oversight Office has waged a lonely battle against overclassification. "I've seen information that was classified that I've also seen published in third-grade textbooks," Mr. Leonard said.

Such missteps may come in part from inexperience. Since 2001, President Bush has extended the power to classify documents to the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture. At the Agriculture Department, where officials are concerned about agroterrorism, employees can visit the agency's Web site and easily print out a bright-yellow "sensitive security information" cover sheet.

Such labels for unclassified information deemed sensitive have multiplied in recent years, going beyond the traditional "for official use only" to "law enforcement sensitive," "homeland security sensitive" and other vague tags.

"We find there's such a proliferation of these bogus categories," which lack clear rules or definitions, said Lawrence J. Halloran, an aide to Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican who held a hearing on excessive secrecy in March.

The secrecy wave has reached obscure outposts of federal power. Wes Addington, a lawyer in Prestonsburg, Ky., who represents mine workers filing safety complaints, said the Mine Safety and Health Administration now denied him documents under the Freedom of Information Act that a few years ago were routinely provided.

"Honestly, I don't understand the reason," Mr. Addington said. "I don't see how releasing this stuff would hurt the government."

A spokeswoman for the safety agency, Suzanne Bohnert, said it began withholding inspectors' notes because their release could "harm ongoing enforcement matters."

Some opponents of secrecy say the Bush administration has created an atmosphere that discourages disclosure. Vice President Dick Cheney won a court battle to keep secret the records of his energy task force. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memorandum in October 2001 urging officials to be careful to protect sensitive information.

Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, said the administration viewed public access to information as encroaching on executive power.

But a spokesman for the National Security Council, Frederick L. Jones II, said the effect of the Ashcroft memorandum had been "greatly exaggerated" by critics. Mr. Jones blamed the increasing use of e-mail for the rapid rise in classified documents. He added that the president had nominated members for a planned Public Interest Declassification Board that would guard against excessive secrecy.

"The administration is proud of its record of openness," Mr. Jones said.

Mr. Blanton's group, which files hundreds of Freedom of Information requests each year, occasionally gets a glimpse of the arbitrariness of bureaucrats' decisions. In 1999, the Defense Intelligence Agency released its two-page Pinochet biography without deletions. Three years later, it released the same document with half the text deleted, including such comments as "Gen. Pinochet is conservative in his political thinking."

In a recent battle, Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, sought C.I.A. budgets for 1947 to 1970. A judge gave him only the 1963 budget, because it had already been released.

"I don't know any intelligence professional who says, 'I'll stake my integrity on the need to protect the 1962 intelligence budget,' " Mr. Aftergood said.

But a C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, said that releasing even old budgets could prove a slippery slope. "The budget remains classified to prevent America's adversaries from piecing together the national security priorities set for the C.I.A.," he said. "This is not secrecy for secrecy's sake."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2005

MD: Juvenile Facility to Close Gov. Discloses Deal with U.S.

The Washington Post
By Christian Davenport
Friday, July 1, 2005; Page B01

PARKVILLE, Md., June 30 -- Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said Thursday that the state would close the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School, the state's beleaguered juvenile detention facility in Baltimore County, as part of what he called a "new day" for the juvenile justice system.

During a news conference outside the school's barbed wire-topped fences, Ehrlich (R) also announced a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had been investigating conditions at Hickey and the Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George's County.

In a report released last year after a nearly two-year probe, the Justice Department found a "deeply disturbing degree of physical abuse" by staff members at the facilities, instances in which staff members did not intervene in fights, and a lack of suicide-prevention, medical and mental health services.

Conditions at the facilities violated the residents' constitutional rights, the report found.

Under Ehrlich's plan, the 130-bed residential portion of the Hickey School would be shuttered by Nov. 30. The residents would be placed in privately run community-based programs, which would offer more intimate and individualized care, Ehrlich said.

The governor's plan also calls for the higher-security, 72-bed detention center on Hickey's 200-acre campus to be replaced by a facility that would house juvenile offenders from throughout the Baltimore region. The cost and timing of that project were not announced.

Ehrlich, who pledged to reform juvenile services during his campaign for governor, said the state has made substantial progress in fixing a "dysfunctional" system he had inherited from previous administrations. Chief among the improvements, he said, was the elimination of crowding at Cheltenham, where the average daily population has dropped from 235 to 80.

Despite those steps, Ehrlich said, conditions at Hickey were "intolerable." Community settings are better than institutions for helping troubled youths, he said.

"You talk about a violation of constitutional rights," he said of Hickey. "It was a living model of what a system should not become."

Under the settlement with the Justice Department, the state is required to meet bench marks on improving suicide prevention, mental health care and special education services for juveniles in its care. A team of monitors to be selected by the state and the Justice Department will begin monitoring the troubled facilities and issue reports every six months.

If after three years conditions have not improved, the Justice Department could renew its complaint in U.S. District Court. Bradley J. Schlozman, acting U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights, said closing the Hickey school and the other improvements the state has made demonstrates its "commitment to reforming these institutions and safeguarding the rights of incarcerated youth."

"The problems clearly had existed for many years, and they cried out for institutional reform," he said.

He added that the federal government will continue to have "very active supervision and oversight" and that the "work is just beginning."

Sharon Rubinstein, spokeswoman for Advocates for Children and Youth, a Baltimore nonprofit group, said to "step away from institutional care is both sensible and necessary. It's absolutely the right way to turn, and it's something advocates have been crying out for consistently."

Cameron Miles, community outreach director of the Maryland Juvenile Justice Coalition, said he is "encouraged but guarded. It's one thing to say something, but then comes the follow-through."

Del. Robert A. Zirkin (D-Baltimore County), who submitted a bill in the last legislative session calling for Hickey to be broken up into smaller residential treatment programs, applauded the closing of the school. But he said sending more troubled juveniles into community settings would be a "public safety nightmare. We don't have the capacity in the community. It's not even close. How can we put more kids in that system?"

He said there are problems with oversight and a "complete lack of standards" for privately run group homes.

Kenneth C. Montague Jr., state secretary of juvenile services, disagreed with Zirkin, saying there is more than enough capacity and oversight. Children who could threaten public safety would be kept in secure facilities, he said.

"They are equipped to deal with the more difficult children," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/30/AR2005063001
740.html

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

FL: Ruling Backs Prison Health Services

By MIKE HOYEM, MHOYEM@NEWS-PRESS.COM

A federal judge in Fort Myers has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the
family of an Estero paramedic who died in 2002 about 10 hours after
being released from the Lee County Jail.

Roger H. Barnhart's family sued the Lee County Sheriff's Office and
Prison Health Services in June 2004, claiming negligent medical care led to Barnhart's April 28, 2002, death.

Prison Health Services is a company the county pays to provide health
care at the jail and county stockade. Also named in the suit were nurses Kevin Flickinger and Evelyn McGraw.

Barnhart, 42, who was a paramedic with the Estero Fire District, was
arrested on April 27, 2002, and accused of driving under the influence.
Though Barnhart's blood-alcohol level was far below the point required to break the law, the arresting officer attributed his erratic driving to a mixture of alcohol and prescription drugs.

In a 16-page opinion and order signed June 13, U.S. District Judge John E. Steele wrote that there was no evidence of negligent health care.

Steele wrote that evidence in the case showed Barnhart told nurses when he was processed into the jail that he was taking six types of
medication, including some that were prescribed for bipolar disorder.

But when an autopsy was conducted, none of those drugs was found in
Barnhart's body while several other prescription drugs were.

Steele wrote that a doctor who served as an expert witness in the case "was greatly concerned by the combination of drugs found in the
toxicology report, because they all had sedating effects and the
combination could lead to respiratory depression and death."

Steele added there was no evidence the jail medical staff failed to
adequately monitor Barnhart, who was put on a drug "withdrawal protocol" when he entered the jail.Attorney Michael R.N. McDonnell of Naples represents the Barnhart family.

"The judge made his ruling and we'll live with it," McDonnell said.

Attorney Robert M. Stoler, of Tampa, represents the sheriff's office
while attorney Gregg A. Toomey of Fort Lauderdale represents Prison
Health Services and its nurses.

Neither Stoler nor Toomey had any comment Thursday.

Article published Jul 1, 2005
http://www.news- press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050701/NEWS01/507010410/1002&template=
printart

Posted by lois at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)

CA: US to Seize State Prison System & Name a Reciever

A federal judge, citing experts' reports of fatal incompetence and neglect, will name a receiver for the $1.1-billion program.

By Jenifer Warren, Times Staff Writer
July 1, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge said Thursday that he would seize control of prison healthcare from the state and place it under a receiver, declaring that "extreme measures" were needed to fix a system that kills one inmate each week through medical incompetence or neglect.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson said that despite repeated warnings from his court and the "good intentions" of some state officials, the Department of Corrections continues to allow sick prisoners to die "for no acceptable reason." The judge said he would soon issue a written order outlining details of the receivership and begin discussing potential receivers with lawyers in the case.

Attorneys on both sides called the decision historic, saying they believed it marks the first time in the nation that a government operation the size of California's prison medical care system is to be placed under a federal receiver.

In 1995 the District of Columbia's jails were assigned to a receiver for five years. That system has 1,700 inmates. The California Department of Corrections' healthcare network serves more than 163,000 prisoners, employs 6,000 workers and has an annual budget of $1.1 billion.

Henderson, in a quietly passionate 25-minute speech from the bench, said "horrifying details" presented in a series of hearings he convened over the last month had filled him with a sense of urgency.

He said he believed "nothing short of a receiver" could halt the deaths and other harm inflicted on California convicts who fall ill.

The judge said he was especially alarmed by the "uncontested statistic," provided by a court-appointed expert, "that a prisoner needlessly dies an average of roughly once a week."

Henderson said that anyone "would have to be shocked, as I certainly was," by that fact.
By putting the system in receivership, Henderson effectively shifts power for all decisions related to inmate care — from how many nurses should work a given shift to when a cancer patient receives treatment at a community hospital — to the federal court.

The receiver, who will report directly to the judge, will be empowered to order fixes now delayed or thwarted by Civil Service rules, collective bargaining agreements and bureaucratic red tape, lawyers said.

Attorneys said they could not speculate how long the receivership might last or what it would cost. Henderson said it would certainly be a "multiyear effort."

Bruce Slavin, who as general counsel for the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency is the top lawyer for the state's $7-billion correctional system, said "it will not be cheap." But he expressed hope that under a receiver, there would be better management of healthcare spending.

Margita Thompson, spokeswoman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said the administration would cooperate with a receiver.

"We look forward to working with the receiver to create a sustainable healthcare system," she said.

Adult prisons are not the only piece of California's correctional system receiving outside oversight. The California Youth Authority, which houses about 3,000 of the state's most troubled juvenile offenders, is under the supervision of a special master, who monitors compliance with court-ordered improvements in inmate medical care, mental healthcare, education and other areas.

State Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), chairwoman of an oversight committee on corrections, attended the hearing and applauded the judge's decision.

"This is the right thing to do, the only thing to do," Romero said.

"We invest $1.1 billion in this [healthcare] system every year," she added, "and it's incredible to me that we don't get better results."

An attorney for the inmate plaintiffs, who claimed in a 2001 class-action lawsuit that prison healthcare amounted to unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment, called Henderson's ruling "everything we asked for" and a beacon of hope for his clients.

"As the judge said … the magnitude of the suffering could not be ignored," said Donald Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, a nonprofit firm taking the lead role in the case.

Corrections officials did not oppose appointing a receiver, though they described it in legal briefs as "a highly intrusive remedy" that should be a last resort. Slavin said Thursday that the department had recently made progress in firing incompetent doctors, hiring nurses and addressing other woes.

"The question of fixing healthcare is not one of whether but when," he said. "The administration has always been committed to getting it fixed. This [receivership] speeds it up."

Henderson's ruling was based on testimony from court-appointed experts who have been inspecting prison medical facilities as part of the lawsuit.

The case was settled in 2002, when the state agreed to overhaul inmate healthcare and phase in improvements by 2008.

Among the changes mandated by the settlement were the creation of a triage system to identify the sickest inmates and ensure they did not wait long to see a doctor and a program allowing prisoners with chronic conditions to be more carefully monitored.

The experts found few signs of progress and provided the court with chilling examples illustrating filthy conditions, ill-trained and neglectful doctors and a pattern of preventable deaths that one expert called "macabre" and unlike anything he had ever seen before.

The expert, correctional healthcare authority Dr. Michael Puisis, said medical treatment amounted to "almost anarchy" at some prisons, where disorganized or missing patient records mean that "medical providers are reduced to guessing or repeating tests and treatment already done."

Puisis, editor of a textbook on medical care in prisons, said inmates needing diagnostic tests faced extreme delays that imperiled their lives. Such delays could be caused by transportation snafus, scheduling errors, prison emergencies and a variety of other circumstances.

In one instance, a patient at Pleasant Valley State Prison near Bakersfield who needed a colonoscopy waited nearly a year and then could not undergo the test because his "mass was so large, the scope could not be passed through," according to a written summary of Puisis' testimony.

He also cited the case of an inmate at Salinas Valley State Prison who had suffered a neck injury in a fight and could not move his legs. After sticking needles in his legs, "the doctor said the patient was faking and moved his head from side to side."

The inmate is now paralyzed, and it is unclear whether the paralysis resulted from the fight or the doctor's inappropriate actions, according to a summary of Puisis' testimony in a legal brief.

In appointing a receiver, Henderson acknowledged that he was taking "perhaps the most extreme measure available" to him.

But, he added, "this court has tried to use lesser measures, and all agree that those lesser measures have failed."

A receiver still must be selected — someone with a blend of financial, correctional and medical experience suitable for the massive job.

The judge underscored this point by remarking that the perfect candidate would be someone who has operated Kaiser Permanente and "also has an MBA from Stanford or Cal and is a former warden."

Specter has asked the judge to name a temporary receiver while a search is made for a permanent one. State officials oppose an interim receiver, saying the right person can be hired within a few months.

Henderson said he is inclined to appoint a temporary receiver, because lives are at stake.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prisons1jul01,0,6279030,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Posted by lois at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)

Marie La Pinta: Her First Night at a Night Club

Long Island Press

July 1, 2005
Her First Night In A Club
Ed Lowe 06/30/2005

One of the cardinal rules, or warnings, pursuant to attending the annual, riotous, one-of-a-kind, all-Long Island, rock 'n' roll musical insurrection known (far and wide, and yet, not so) as "The Paper Bag" is the admonition on every ticket, brochure and song list: "We strongly urge you to take the next day off."

I would have, and probably should have, but here, on the afternoon following the 10 a.m. to 4 a.m. event at Mulcahy's in Wantagh, I feel incapable of any useful efforts, save possibly to share such joy as The Bag's madness inspires.

It was the 28th annual Paper Bag, where the world's only band with 60-plus rock 'n' rollers plays virtually unrehearsed music for six hours at a time, and my 15th visit as a guest of Michael Guido, its sire, its symbol, its heart and soul, and its despotic leader (when he is not standing otherwise unnoticed in the midst of a local band for whom he might be playing either flute, piccolo, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, French horn, baritone horn, trombone, tuba, drums, bass or bass guitar, or serving as the sound engineer).

I was standing in the foyer Tuesday night, chatting with Guido siblings and members of the security staff, when a "Whoop" erupted at the doorway. I looked to my left, and there appeared the broadly smiling face of saxophonist/clarinetist/music teacher Lenny La Pinta, of Sayville. He was holding hands with both the source of and the template for his wider-than-ever smile, his mother, Marie La Pinta.

The crowd went berserk wherever they appeared. All night.

Back story: In 1999, Lenny La Pinta revealed to me that during the mid- to late 1980s, when I saw and heard him jamming weekly with the Jim Small Band at the long-gone Dakota Rose in Amityville, he was using music to stave off what anger, disappointment and sadness so constantly had pursued him since his mother was sentenced in 1984 to 25 years to life for her participation in the murder of his father, Michael.

I was rocked. Lenny did not want me to write the story‹not yet. Following family tradition, Lenny had not talked about it for several years, until he finally confided in two members of the Jim Small Band. He and his brother, Anthony, who was attending law school with the intent of one day rescuing their mother, still disagreed on taking "family business" public, but Lenny was beginning to think that public support might be the only way.

He told me about years of beatings that took place in front of the boys, and fits of rage that even extended out into the front yard. He said his father made it clear that there would be "hell to pay" if he or Anthony were to talk about it to anyone.

The arranged marriage collapsing fast by 1984, and Michael La Pinta already planning to move to Florida, Lenny invited Marie's brother, Leonardo Crociata, the only member of her family in this country, to West Islip to "settle a few debts." Michael La Pinta had forbidden Marie to talk to or see any member of her family. Crociata arrived. A fight ensued. Michael at some point brandished his gun, the weapon that killed him during the struggle. Marie and her brother subsequently were seen trying to dispose of the body at a local landfill. Both were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life.

In 2002, Lenny and Anthony went public with the story, through me, a new web page (mercyformom.org), and a deftly produced videotape. They soon had garnered support from thousands, worldwide, who pleaded repeatedly, officially and unsuccessfully, for executive clemency from Gov. George Pataki.

Finally, last month, Anthony's efforts in court drew a victory for Marie from Justice Robert W. Doyle, who overturned the 1984 conviction on the grounds that Marie and her brother had been represented by the same lawyer. Her battered spouse status had never made it into the courtroom. She pleaded to a lesser charge and was freed.

In the meantime, during those years, Lenny had badgered his friend Guido, encouraging and finally persuading him to go for his bachelor's and then master's degree in music education and become a middle school music teacher. With all that was on his mind at the time, Lenny convinced Guido that he would be one of the best music teachers and would love the work. Guido, an 11-year veteran middle school music teacher now working in the Island Trees School District, is one of the best music teachers and loves the work.

In his Paper Bag brochure, Guido wrote, "...I have never been happier about an event in my life as I was the day I saw Marie's kind, smiling face on the cover of the newspaper with the headline indicating that my friend's mom was coming home."

I gave Marie La Pinta two extra earplugs I had in my pocket, saying, "You're going to remember me for days for this; trust me."

Lenny took me aside and said, "My mother is in another dimension. This is her first night, ever, in a club, and there's 70 musicians on stage and 1,400 people in the audience. You should see her at the house. She stays at my house during the week and at the West Islip house with my brother on weekends. She has to walk slowly down the stairs, because she hasn't walked on carpeting for 22 years, and she's afraid she's going to trip on it.

"I took her out to Tanger Mall," Lenny said. "I spent about $1,000 on clothes. It's the most clothes she's ever had in her life."

At the band member meeting in a restricted area outside the club, just before the 10 p.m. opening of the show, a clownishly tuxedoed Guido mounted a makeshift stage and introduced a "rookie" Bag member. The crowd roared.

On the back of her official Bag Band Member T-shirt was her official Bag Member nickname: "Free at Last."

Contact Ed Lowe at Edlowe@longislandpress.com

http://www.longislandpress.com/?cp=154&show=article&a_id=4616

Posted by lois at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)