The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog: September 2005 Archives

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September 30, 2005

Denied A Voice--FL disenfranchisement of 600,000 people

The U.S. Supreme Court should review two lower court decisions upholding Florida's lifetime disenfranchisement of ex-felons.
A Times Editorial: St. Petersburg Times
Published September 29, 2005

Under questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the next chief justice of the United States described the right to vote as "preservative ... of all the other rights" Americans cherish. "Without access to the ballot box," he said, "people are not in the position to protect any other rights that are important to them."

That was well said. How sincerely Judge John G. Roberts Jr. meant what he said will be tested in one of the first decisions awaiting him at the Supreme Court.

The issue: the shameful fact that Florida denies some 600,000 citizens their right to vote.

The question: whether to review two lower court decisions that upheld Florida's severe, lifetime disenfranchisement of anyone ever convicted of a felony, no matter how old or nonviolent the crime.

Most states suspend felons' voting rights, but Florida is one of only 13 that refuse to restore them automatically on the completion of a prison term, parole or probation. In Florida, it takes approval by the governor and consent of at least two Cabinet members to restore someone's lost civil rights. Without them, ex-felons also are barred from most jobs and professions that the state licenses.

Despite some recent simplification, the clemency process remains needlessly bureaucratic and expensive. Too many offenses, including drug sales, require personal appearance before the clemency board.

The unsurprising results: Most never apply and thousands more wait years for their cases to be called. With a backlog of some 9,000 applications, the board has been clearing barely 400 a year. Parole Commission processing is the holdup; it could be expedited for a fraction of the money that the Legislature spends trying to purge the voter rolls of improperly registered felons who, it is feared, would vote Democratic.

There is debate over whether Florida tightened its constitutional ban on voting by ex-felons as part of a post-Civil War scheme to suppress blacks politically and economically. But there is no denying the present-day discriminatory effect, which is due in large part to racial biases in the law - crack cocaine, for example, is punished more severely than powder - and to the process of selecting who was convicted and who was not. But the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals glossed this over in a decision of stunning sophistry that turned altogether too much on the ban having been re-enacted in the Constitution of 1968.

The flaw in that analysis is that Florida in 1968 had not yet come to terms with its racist past. School desegregation was spotty. Only one black served in the Legislature. The governor was indifferent, at best, to civil rights. There was no political incentive to confront the racial implications of lifetime disenfranchisement.

The Voting Rights Act applies, in any case, to racially discriminatory effect as well as to intent. That was the issue under discussion when Roberts pledged his faith in voting rights. To keep that faith will require him to vote to review the Florida case.

Posted by lois at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2005

Hurricane Katrina: Fear Exceeded Crime's Reality In New Orleans

September 29, 2005
Fear Exceeded Crime's Reality in New Orleans
By JIM DWYER and CHRISTOPHER DREW
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 25 - After the storm came the siege. In the days after Hurricane Katrina, terror from crimes seen and unseen, real and rumored, gripped New Orleans. The fears changed troop deployments, delayed medical evacuations, drove police officers to quit, grounded helicopters. Edwin P. Compass III, the police superintendent, said that tourists - the core of the city's economy - were being robbed and raped on streets that had slid into anarchy.

The mass misery in the city's two unlit and uncooled primary shelters, the convention center and the Superdome, was compounded, officials said, by gangs that were raping women and children.

A month later, a review of the available evidence now shows that some, though not all, of the most alarming stories that coursed through the city appear to be little more than figments of frightened imaginations, the product of chaotic circumstances that included no reliable communications, and perhaps the residue of the longstanding raw relations between some police officers and members of the public.

Beyond doubt, the sense of menace had been ignited by genuine disorder and violence that week. Looting began at the moment the storm passed over New Orleans, and it ranged from base thievery to foraging for the necessities of life.

Police officers said shots were fired for at least two nights at a police station on the edge of the French Quarter. The manager of a hotel on Bourbon Street said he saw people running through the streets with guns. At least one person was killed by a gunshot at the convention center, and a second at the Superdome. A police officer was shot in Algiers during a confrontation with a looter.

It is still impossible to say if the city experienced a wave of murder because autopsies have been performed on slightly more than 10 percent of the 885 dead.

[On Wednesday, however, Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state's medical incident commander for Hurricane Katrina victims, said that only six or seven deaths appear to have been the result of homicides. He also said that people returning to homes in the damaged region have begun finding the bodies of relatives.

[Superintendent Compass, one of the few seemingly authoritative sources during the days after the storm, resigned Tuesday for reasons that remain unclear. His departure came just as he was coming under criticism from The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which had questioned many of his public accounts of extreme violence.]

In an interview last week with The New York Times, Superintendent Compass said that some of his most shocking statements turned out to be untrue. Asked about reports of rapes and murders, he said: "We have no official reports to document any murder. Not one official report of rape or sexual assault."

On Sept. 4, however, he was quoted in The Times about conditions at the convention center, saying: "The tourists are walking around there, and as soon as these individuals see them, they're being preyed upon. They are beating, they are raping them in the streets."

Those comments, Superintendent Compass now says, were based on secondhand reports. The tourists "were walking with their suitcases, and they would have their clothes and things taken," he said last week. "No rapes that we can quantify."

Rumors Affected Response

A full chronicle of the week's crimes, actual and reported, may never be possible because so many basic functions of government ceased early in the week, including most public safety record-keeping. The city's 911 operators left their phones when water began to rise around their building.

To assemble a picture of crime, both real and perceived, The New York Times interviewed dozens of evacuees in four cities, police officers, medical workers and city officials. Though many provided concrete, firsthand accounts, others passed along secondhand information or rumor that after multiple tellings had ossified into what became accepted as fact.

What became clear is that the rumor of crime, as much as the reality of the public disorder, often played a powerful role in the emergency response. A team of paramedics was barred from entering Slidell, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, for nearly 10 hours based on a state trooper's report that a mob of armed, marauding people had commandeered boats. It turned out to be two men escaping from their flooded streets, said Farol Champlin, a paramedic with the Acadian Ambulance Company.

On another occasion, the company's ambulances were locked down after word came that a firehouse in Covington had been looted by armed robbers of all its water - a report that proved totally untrue, said Aaron Labatt, another paramedic.

A contingent of National Guard troops was sent to rescue a St. Bernard Parish deputy sheriff who radioed for help, saying he was pinned down by a sniper. Accompanied by a SWAT team, the troops surrounded the area. The shots turned out to be the relief valve on a gas tank that popped open every few minutes, said Maj. Gen. Ron Mason of the 35th Infantry Division of the Kansas National Guard.

"It's part of human nature," General Mason said. "When you get one or two reports, it echoes around the community."

Faced with reports that 400 to 500 armed looters were advancing on the town of Westwego, two police officers quit on the spot. The looters never appeared, said the Westwego police chief, Dwayne Munch.

"Rumors could tear down an entire army," Chief Munch said.

During six days when the Superdome was used as a shelter, the head of the New Orleans Police Department's sex crimes unit, Lt. David Benelli, said he and his officers lived inside the dome and ran down every rumor of rape or atrocity. In the end, they made two arrests for attempted sexual assault, and concluded that the other attacks had not happened.

"I think it was urban myth," said Lieutenant Benelli, who also heads the police union. "Any time you put 25,000 people under one roof, with no running water, no electricity and no information, stories get told."

Crimes of Opportunity

The actual, serious crime began, in the recollection of many, before the catastrophic failure of the levees flooded the city, and much of it consisted of crimes of opportunity rather than assault. On the morning of Monday, Aug. 29, in the half hour or so that the eye of Hurricane Katrina fell on the city - an illusory moment of drawn breath, sunshine and fair breezes - the looters struck, said Capt. Anthony W. Canatella, the police commander in the Sixth District.

Using a chain hitched to a car, they tore open the steel doors at the back of a pawn shop called Cash America on Claiborne Avenue. "Payday Advances to 350," read a sign where the marquee would have been.

"There was nothing in there you could sustain your life with," Captain Canatella said. "There's nothing in there but guns and power tools."

The Sixth District - like most of New Orleans, a checkerboard of wealth and poverty - was the scene of heavy looting, with much of the stealing confined to the lower-income neighborhoods. A particular target was a Wal-Mart store on Tchoupitoulas Street, bordering the city's elegant Garden District and built on the site of a housing project that had been torn down.

The looters told a reporter from The Times that they followed police officers into the store after they broke it open, and police commanders said their officers had been given permission to take what they needed from the store to survive. A reporter from The Times-Picayune said he saw police officers grabbing DVD's.

A frenzy of stealing began, and the fruits of it could be seen last week in three containers parked outside the Sixth District police station. Inside were goods recovered from stashes placed by looters in homes throughout the neighborhood, said Captain Canatella, most but not all still bearing Wal-Mart stickers.

"Not one piece of educational material was taken - the best-selling books are all sitting right where they were left," Captain Canatella said. "But every $9 watch in the store is gone."

One of the officers who went to the Wal-Mart said the police did not try to stop people from taking food and water. "People sitting outside the Wal-Mart with groceries waiting for a ride, I just let them sit there," said Sgt. Dan Anderson of the Sixth District. "If they had electronics, I just threw it back in there."

Three auto parts stores were also looted. In a house on Clara Street, Sergeant Anderson picked his way through a soggy living room, where car parts, still in their boxes, were strewn about. On the wall above a couch, someone had written "Looters" with spray paint.

"The nation's realizing what kind of criminals we have here," Sergeant Anderson said.

Among the evacuees, there was gratitude for efforts by the police and others to help them get out of town, but it was clear that some members of the public did not have a high opinion of the New Orleans Police Department, with numerous people citing cases of corruption and violence a decade ago.

"Don't get me wrong, there was bad stuff going on in the streets, but the police is dirty," said Michael Young, who had worked as a waiter in the Riverwalk development.

French Quarter Is Spared

As the storm winds died down that Monday, small groups that had evacuated from poor neighborhoods as far away as the Lower Ninth Ward passed through the historic French Quarter, heading for shelter at the convention center.

"Some were pushing little carts with their belongings and holding onto their kids," said Capt. Kevin B. Anderson, the French Quarter's police commander. He said his officers gave food, water and rides. "That also served another purpose," he said. "That when they came through, they didn't cause any problems."

The jewelry and antique shops in the French Quarter were basically left untouched, though squatters moved into a few of the hotels. Only a small grocery store and drugstores at the edge of the quarter were hit by looters, he said. From behind the locked doors of the Royal Sonesta hotel on Bourbon Street, Hans Wandfluh, the general manager, said he had watched passers-by who seemed to be up to no good. "We heard gunshots fired," Mr. Wandfluh said. "We saw people running with guns."

At dusk on Aug. 29, looters broke windows along Canal Street and swarmed into drugstores, shoe stores and electronics shops, Captain Anderson said. Some tried, without success, to break into banks, and others sought to take money from A.T.M.'s.

The convention center, without water, air-conditioning, light or any authority figures, was recalled by many as a place of great suffering. Many heard rumors of crime, and saw sinister behavior, but few had firsthand knowledge of violence, which they often said they believed had taken place in another part of the half-mile-long center.

"I saw Coke machines being torn up - each and every one of them was busted on the second floor," said Percy McCormick, a security guard who spent four nights in the convention center and was interviewed in Austin, Tex.

Capt. Jeffrey Winn, the commander of the SWAT team, said its members rushed into the convention center to chase muzzle flashes from weapons to root out groups of men who had taken over some of the halls. No guns were recovered.

State officials have said that 10 people died at the Superdome and 24 died around the convention center - 4 inside and 20 nearby. While autopsies have not been completed, so far only one person appears to have died from gunshot wounds at each facility.

In another incident, Captain Winn and Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann, the assistant SWAT commander, said they both shot and wounded a man brandishing a gun near people who had taken refuge on an Interstate highway. Captain Winn said the SWAT team also exchanged gunfire with looters on Tchoupitoulas Street.

The violence that seemed hardest to explain were the reports of shots being fired at rescue and repair workers, including police officers and firefighters, construction and utility workers.

Cellphone repair workers had to abandon work after shots from the Fischer housing project in Algiers, Captain Winn said. His team swept the area three times. On one sweep, federal agents found an AK-47 semiautomatic rifle, Captain Winn said.

For military officials, who flew rescue missions around the city, the reports that people were shooting at helicopters turned out to be mistaken. "We investigated one incident and it turned out to have been shooting on the ground, not at the helicopter," said Maj. Mike Young of the Air Force.

Nathan Levy contributed reporting from Austin, Tex., for this article.

Posted by lois at 06:29 PM | Comments (0)

Hurricane Katrina: Inquiry Opens on Whether New Olreans Police Looted

September 29, 2005

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The police department said Thursday it is investigating about a dozen officers suspected of looting during the lawlessness that engulfed the city after Hurricane Katrina.

News reports in the aftermath of the storm put officers at the scene of some of the heaviest looting, at the Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District. Some witnesses, including a Times-Picayune reporter, said police were taking items from shelves.

''Out of 1,750 officers, we're looking into the possibility that maybe 12 officers were involved in misconduct,'' police spokesman Marlon Defillo said.

He rejected the use of the term ''looting,'' and said authorities were investigating ''the possibility of appropriation of nonessential items during the height of Katrina, from businesses.''

Earlier this week, the city's police superintendent, Eddie Compass, resigned after weeks of criticism about the department's conduct during Katrina and its aftermath. On the same day, the department said about 250 police officers could face discipline for leaving their posts without permission during the crisis.

Meanwhile, business owners started streaming back into newly reopened sections of the city Thursday morning at Mayor Ray Nagin's invitation, some vowing to rebuild, some saying they were pulling out.

The areas thrown open to business owners were: the French Quarter; the central business district; and the Uptown section, which includes the Garden District, a leafy neighborhood of antebellum and Victorian mansions. The neighborhoods escaped major flooding during Katrina.

Under the mayor's plan, residents of those neighborhoods will be allowed to return on Friday, a move that could bring back about one-third of the city's half-million inhabitants.

At Igor's, a pub and coin laundry in the Garden District, owner Halina Margan returned after Katrina and never left, despite Hurricane Rita's threat last week. She was ready to open for business on Thursday.

''It's lonely here. We need people,'' she said.

Blues music poured out the door of Slim Goodies diner, where by 10 a.m., owner Kappa Horn had already served pancakes, bacon and eggs over easy on plastic plates to more than 100 people.

''This is the first hot meal I've had in a month,'' said George Wichser, a Tulane University police officer who rode out the storm on campus.

Mary Russo parked her car in front of Shanty Too, her niece's boarded-up boutique on chic Magazine Street, and started to cry. Her niece could not bear to come, so Russo and other relatives were there to close the shop for good and bring anything salvageable to her other store closer to Baton Rouge.

''I just can't believe this has happened to the city,'' Russo said. ''So much of this could have been avoided.''

The mayor is pushing aggressively to reopen the city despite concerns raised by state and federal officials.

Serious health hazards remain because of bacteria-laden floodwaters, a lack of drinkable water and a sewage system that still does not work, said Stephen L. Johnson, chief of the Environmental Protection Agency.

''There are a whole lot of factors that need to be weighing on the mayor's mind,'' Johnson said.

He said the EPA was not taking a position on Nagin's plan. But he refused to answer when asked if he would allow his own family to return to New Orleans.

Federal officials said it would take at least another year to clean up all the hurricane debris in Louisiana.

Katrina's death toll in Louisiana rose to 923 on Thursday, up from 896 the day before, the state health department said.

------

Associated Press writers Julia Silverman and Amy Forliti in New Orleans, and Doug Simpson in Baton Rouge contributed to this report.

Posted by lois at 06:26 PM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2005

"And the Answer is...Prisons! What was the Question?" An Interview ith Judy Greene

Published by Western Prison Project (http://westernprisonproject.org)

Created Aug 31 2005 - 2:18pm
We took some time to talk about “special prisons” with Judy Greene. Judy Greene is a principal researcher with Justice Strategies, based in New York. Judy has 35 years of experience researching crime and the corrections industry. She agreed to talk with us by phone from her office in New York about prison expansion around the country, and how these new “special prisons” fit in.

Justice Matters: One of the reasons we wanted to speak with you is your knowledge about how privatization has affected corrections policy. Private prisons are of course, disturbing, but privatization has changed the way prisons operate, period. Is there a connection between privatization and this move to promote new “special prisons?”

J Greene: Well, one of the ways that private prisons have damaged this country is that now there is an entrepreneurial spirit – a marketing culture – connected to prison management where there was not before. So now even public prison managers are running their prisons with a for-profit model, comparing themselves to private companies. They’re asking questions like: Who can run this the cheapest? What’s the next market need? What problem is there that prison can solve? How can we sell our correctional services?

JM: And so we see situations like in Montana right now, where the Department of Corrections is accepting bids for “a special prison” [1] with everything up for grabs – including who will be confined there, how many people, and what will make it “special.”

J Greene: Yes, in Montana, the process they’re using is like the way you play that game show, Jeopardy. Someone gives you the answer and you say what the question is. They’re saying, “Well, the answer is prison. Tell us what the problem is.” Another strategy is to identify a crisis and then present prison as the solution, which is more common.

JM: Right, in Montana, we don’t know for sure what kind of proposals they’re going to get, but it’s possible that methamphetamine will figure in. Meth isn’t new, but it’s being presented as a crisis… And drug addiction is a real problem. So, is a “special meth prison” preferable to community-based treatment? Can we argue for one over the other?

J Greene: Well, there is not enough research being done to compare treatment in prison with addiction treatment provided in the community. There are various types of treatment that work, we know that. And there is research showing that treatment in prison therapeutic communities here in New York has been effective. But the research on effectiveness goes on as if these two situations are not related. Now, there are ways the treatment picture is brighter on the outside…

A major aspect of drug treatment is the behavioral changes that people are making. People learn how to better manage the things that trigger their addiction in the real world. And they can practice that more effectively in the community. Drugs aren’t available in prison in the same way they are on the outside. Not to mention that in a security-oriented environment like prison, some interventions are not available or appropriate. We know that treatment in the community makes more sense.

But, one of the reasons that judges still sentence people with addictions to prison is the idea that it’s the only place to get them into treatment. We’ve done some research in Wisconsin in which we asked judges what they were seeing and doing. Some said that they were sentencing people to longer prison terms because – with long waiting lists for prison programs – they believed it was the best way to make sure that they would get treatment. They overestimate how much addiction treatment is available in prison. But they were supportive of wrap-around services that can be offered in the community, and they emphasized that people need to be prepared for gainful employment.

JM: Here at WPP we support community-based options: solving problems in the community instead of just making people disappear by sending them to prison. Is the call for special prisons showing that people are so used to prisons now they want every “flavor” imaginable, or this is a way to make prison construction seem like it’s something new because there’s a fatigue with plain-old prisons?

J Greene: Yes, it really does seem that a lot of people are tired of the idea ‘we need more prisons because the problem is crime.’ After all, they can see that there is still crime, or that their neighbors in the next state have seen the same changes in crime without prison expansion.

Prison expansion takes on a life of its own… including political pressures. It’s not just the Corrections Departments pushing. People say ‘well, that county got one – what about us?’ because prisons offer the lure of jobs. You’ve got governors who want to throw a prison at every county they can find and promote it as an economic boom.

Once you build the prison machine the wheels keep turning… what’s turning the wheels of prison expansion are financial interests. Before the corrections officers’ union is even thinking about more members, (which means more dues), you’ve got bankers, bond lawyers, architects, construction companies and their subcontractors. And all the services you can “outsource” to vendors once a prison is operating: companies that sell medical services, sell the food, supply the canteen products.

JM: Speaking of financial interests, for years the financial crisis in many states was part of the call to slow down prison expansion. As fewer states are in a budget crisis, are we going to hear more about these special prisons? Where do you think prison expansion is headed?

J Greene: Well, yes, there are some states that are now in less of a budget crisis. Florida, for example, which is experiencing a home construction boom and steady state revenue from all those construction workers paying taxes. Florida has authorized thousands of new prison beds, both public and private, and has even funded a private sex offender facility (another type of ‘special prison’) to keep people locked up after their prison sentences have been served.

Even once a budget crisis has passed, if you’re spending on new prisons, something else is taking a cut. All these years, during the crises, other parts of state budgets had to take deep cuts…. there’s a big question about whether we’re ever going to undo the damage done by budget cuts. I mean, who really needs the money? If we spend it on prisons, who’s not going to be getting it who needs it?

And we also need to come back to some of the basic problems with prisons – the racial injustice of the system. In Connecticut there’s a growing statewide army of grassroots people opposed to prison expansion, and they’re picking up speed. With Connecticut ranked number one for racial disparity in state incarceration rates, state officials have begun to see that sentencing policy reform is a critical issue for those working for racial justice. And it’s working: a state that was at the top of the prison population growth list just three years ago is now “downsizing,” with thousands fewer people in prison.

The state budget crisis has caused a lot of people around the country to question the idea that we can just keep on expanding the prison system. The most important work now is to challenge the notion that prisons are the answer to all our social and economic problems.

You can read and download Justice Strategies’ reports on criminal justice and immigrant detention at www.justicestrategies.org
Judy Greene is the author of the Oregon Crime Reduction Report [2], comparing the crime reduction in Oregon that happened in the late 90’s with New York City and other jurisdictions that achieved similar crime reductions without new mandatory minimums. That report was produced at the request of Western Prison Project. She was interviewed by Justice Matters editor Kathleen Pequeño for the Summer 2005 isuue.

Source URL: http://westernprisonproject.org/info/nation/story/736

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

U.S. Crime Rate Holds at 30 year low.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's crime rate was unchanged last year, holding at the lowest levels since the government began surveying crime victims in 1973, the Justice Department reported Sunday.
Since 1993, violent crime as measured by victim surveys has fallen by 57% and property crime by 50%. That has included a 9% drop in violent crime from 2001-2002 to 2003-2004.

The 2004 violent crime rate — assault, sexual assault and armed robbery — was 21.4 victims for every 1,000 people age 12 and older. That amounts to about one violent crime victim for every 47 U.S. residents.

By comparison, there were 22.6 violent crime victims per 1,000 people in 2003. The Bureau of Justice Statistics said the difference between the rates in 2003 and 2004 was statistically insignificant.

Murder is not counted because the bureau's study is based on statements by crime victims. In a separate report based on preliminary police data, the FBI found a 3.6% drop between 2003 and 2004 — from 16,500 to 15,910. Chicago was largely responsible for the decrease.

The survey put the rate for property crimes of burglary, theft and motor vehicle theft in 2004 at 161 for every 1,000 people, compared with 163 the year before.

Many explanations have been advanced for decline in violent crime, including the record prison population of more than 2 million people, the addition of 100,000 police officers since the mid-1990s and even a deterrent effect that terrorism might have had on street crime.

"Success has 1,000 fathers," said Mark A.R. Kleiman, an expert on crime control policy who teaches at UCLA.

Kleiman said the victim survey probably does not take sufficient account of a growing problem with gang violence that has been widely reported across the country. The leveling off of the crime rate also should be viewed as disappointing, he said.

"My sense is that complacency is not justified. This rate means we're down to about twice the level of crime when I was growing up in the 1950s," he said.

The Justice Policy Institute, which advocates alternatives to incarceration, said the report offered good news and further reason to "begin investing in community-based policing and local organizations that succeed in increasing public safety."

The National Crime Victimization Survey is based on annual interviews by Census Bureau personnel with about 150,000 people at least 12 years old. The FBI does a separate crime study based on reports it receives from thousands of law enforcement agencies nationwide.

Other highlights of the Justice Department report:

•Blacks, men (except in cases of sexual assaults) and young people were victimized most often.

•Nearly two-thirds of women knew their attackers, while men were just as likely to be attacked by strangers.

•In 2004, just under one-quarter of all violent crimes were committed by an offender armed with a gun, knife or other weapon.

•The rates of rapes and robberies have dropped by nearly two-thirds since 1993.

•The West had the highest property crime rate in 2004 (204 crimes per 1,000 households), while renters were victims more often than homeowners (201 crimes vs. 143 crimes per 1,000). City-dwellers were far more likely to be victims of property crimes (215 crimes per 1,000) than suburban or rural residents (143 and 134 per 1,000, respectively).

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

Katrina: Left to Die in a New Orleans Jail

Left to Die in a New Orleans Prison
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on September 28, 2005, Printed on September 28, 2005 http://www.alternet.org/story/26073/
Editor's Note: The following is a transcript of an interview between Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, and members of the group Human Rights Watch. Amy Goodman: It has been nearly one month since Hurricane Katrina ripped through the southern coast of the United States, decimating communities in Mississippi and Louisiana. These past weeks, we have reported on the horrors faced by people in New Orleans, in particular as they struggled to survive. One story we have looked at is the fate of those held in prison as the hurricane hit the city. Weeks later, there are still serious questions about what happened inside facilities like the Orleans Parish Prison. The group Human Rights Watch has just issued one of the first independent analyses investigating what happened in the jails. The group alleges that in one facility the sheriff's department abandoned hundreds of prisoners.The group also says that there are some 517 prisoners unaccounted for and is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct an investigation into the Orleans Sheriff's Department. We're joined now by Corinne Carey. She's a researcher for Human Rights Watch. Welcome to Democracy Now! Corrine Carey: Thanks. It's great to be here.

Goodman: Well, you've just recently returned from Louisiana. Tell us what you found?
Carey: We went down to investigate claims that we had been hearing that prisoners were abandoned in one of the facilities -- Templeman III is the name of the building -- and that some inmates had seen inmates left in their cells while they were on their way out, when they were finally evacuated Thursday and Friday of the week after the storm.
So the first thing that we did was [ask] for a list of prisoners that were held at Orleans Parish Prison prior to the storm hitting, and then we also obtained a list from the Department of Corrections of all offenders that had been evacuated from New Orleans. We went through that list and came up with 517 people who were still unaccounted for.
We're certainly not saying that those people drowned in the facility, but there are credible reports from inmates of being left in that facility in locked cells. And so we'd like to know from the Orleans Sheriff and from the Department of Corrections what happened to those 517 people.
Goodman: What are some of the stories that you have heard in your questioning?
Carey: It's clear to us from talking to inmates in that facility -- and other lawyers in Louisiana have talked to well over 1,000 prisoners at this point -- that by Monday when the storm hit, guards were no longer in the facility. The inmates were left to fend for themselves during the storm.
The most disturbing thing is that the water began to rise in many of the buildings. Some inmates tell us that the water had come up to their chest level, and they were still in locked cells. Some other inmates helped them get out of those cells and escape the floodwaters to higher levels of the facility. They were also left there without any food or water for up to four days. There was no air circulation, and the toilets had started to back up. So the stench was unbearable for these prisoners.
They started to break windows to let the air in, but also to let people outside know that there were still people in this building that had begun to flood.
Goodman: We're joined also on the telephone by Dan Bright. He's a former resident of New Orleans, detained in the Orleans Parish Prison, building Templeman III, the night before Hurricane Katrina struck, now relocated to Grand Prairie, Texas. Can you tell us what the Templeman III building is, Dan? Dan Bright: The Templeman III building is a receiving cell. You go there, and they hold you until they put you into a steady housing development. And like she was saying, we were strictly abandoned. They just left us. When we realized what was going on, it was too late.
It was total chaos. The water was up to our chest. You had guys laying in the water trying to climb to the top of their bunks. You had older guys who didn't have any medicine who we were trying to help. And the way we got out was we had to kick the cell door for maybe like an hour or two. And the cell doors, they sits on this hinge. You have to kick it off the hinge. And when you kicked it off the hinge you have to slide out the door.
And Templeman III is...two levels. You had an upper level and bottom level. The guys on the bottom level was totally stuck in this water. Lights was out. So we had to get out on the top level and come down and help those guys. And the police, they had left.
Goodman: Wait a second. You're saying that the police, the guards, were gone?
Bright: The guard was gone.
Goodman: There were only the prisoners?
Bright: There was only -- that's us.
Goodman: And you were locked in.
Bright: Right. Correct.
Goodman: And so how did you escape?
Bright: Well, we had to kick -- like I said, we had to kick the cells, maybe [for]hours. You had to squeeze out of the cells. We found pipes, anything that we could find to pry the cells open downstairs to help the guys downstairs. We broke the windows to try to signal for help. No one came to our rescue.
Goodman: So you made your way out of the windows?
Bright: We made our way out of the cells and to...the lower levels where most of the water was at. And we broke that window and climbed out. The dorm was made strictly like a college dorm, just like two cells into one. You have to forgive me -- I'm kind of still groggy, because I'm just getting up. So I'm trying to explain myself the best I can.
Goodman: Thank you. So, some of you made it out. What about people who were locked in cells?
Bright: They couldn't get out. We couldn't help all of them.
Goodman: Could you hear them?
Bright: Yeah, they were trying to get them out. We couldn't help everybody. The water was constantly rising.
Goodman: So when you got out, what did you do?
Bright: When we got out, they had maybe like ten deputies outside the building with boats.
Goodman: They had deputies outside the building but none of the deputies inside the building to help you?
Bright: None. It was like, if you get out, you get out. It's not too bad. So when we got out, they took us to a bridge, what's called an overpass bridge, and they just put us on these boats, brought us to this bridge and left us there for maybe like three days without food or water or anything. They just left us there.
Goodman: Could you see the jail from where you were on the overpass?
Bright: Right. Yeah. You stare at guys in the windows trying to get their attention. They wasn't even paying attention. They had guys burning stuff, putting up signs, trying to get any kind of help they could get.
Goodman: They were burning things to get people's attention?
Bright: Right.
Goodman: What were the signs they were putting up that you could see from the overpass?
Bright: Help signs.
Goodman: Saying "Help?"
Bright: Yes. You had guys burning blankets trying to get their attention. The helicopter would pass over. Guys would burn sheets up or blankets or something to try to get their attention also.
Goodman: So you're saying helicopters would fly over. They would see the burning sheets. You were with deputies on the bridge. They could see like you could see?
Bright: Right.
Goodman: So what did they say, when you said there are men still in there?
Bright: They didn't say anything. These -- most of the deputies had, you know, just gone. They didn't even bother to try to help us. And not only that, they had -- these same deputies were stealing property, our personal property. My daughter was trying to telephone me and find out where I was at, and a deputy answered my phone.
Goodman: Your daughter called, and the deputy answered your cell phone?
Bright: Correct.
Goodman: Did you ever get your personal property back?
Bright: No.
Goodman: Did any of the men?
Bright: No, ma'am.
Goodman: Did you --
Bright: All of the guys was complaining about what was missing. Phones, their jewelry. You know. Watches. Stuff like that.
Goodman: Dan Bright, we're also joined by Neal Walker. He is a Director of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, speaking to us from Houston. He interviewed 48 prisoners last Wednesday. Can you describe the whole facility, Neal? Dan Bright, locked in Templeman III, but describe what is the rest of it, Templeman I and Templeman II. Neal Walker: Orleans Parish Prison, for your listeners, is really not a prison. It's a jail. It's a temporary detention facility. Other parts of the country you refer to county jails. We call them parish prisons in Louisiana. Orleans Parish Prison is, in fact, one of the country's largest jails, although New Orleans was far from one of the country's largest cities before the storm. At any given time, there would be 7,500 to 8,000 prisoners being held at Orleans Parish Prison. Now, some of these prisoners were in fact serving misdemeanor sentences, and others were picked up for parole violations, but the vast, vast majority of the prisoners being held at Orleans Parish Prison were pretrial detainees. They had only been charged. They had not been tried and convicted. Now, the complex itself includes not only the facility known as Orleans Parish Prison, the original old jail facility, but it describes a complex of other detention buildings, as well, including the house of detention, Templeman I, II, and III, and central lockup, which is a one-story facility where prisoners are processed after their arrest. And I heard accounts of that building being completely underwater. The prisoners were looking at it from the windows at Templeman III and could see that central lockup was completely underwater.
Goodman: Completely underwater?
Walker: Right.
Goodman: How many men?
Walker: I don't know how many men were in central lockup at that time. Again, that's -- you know, if you get booked where they bring you, the booking officers will bring you to central lockup, where you'll be fingerprinted, and as Dan was saying, your property will be removed and inventoried and then stored. And apparently, according to what Dan was saying, the prisoners don't go to their cells with their property. It's put in lockers, but it sounds like these deputies got into the lockers and got the prisoners' property. But those prisoners are only held at central lockup for, you know, a matter of hours as they're being processed. And then they go off to one of the other detention centers.
Goodman: And so, the story that you have heard Dan Bright tell, that you've just heard the report from Corrine Carey, in your talking with scores of men, how much does that resonate? How many times did you hear that same story?
Walker: You hear a very similar story from everybody who was housed where Dan was held. I mean, there were other prisoners held in different places. You know, they were locked into their cells, not able to get out. I understand in the house of detention that the guys were literally not able to get out their cells at all, and in Templeman, prisoners were able to grab shower rods and break out the windows in an attempt to gain some attention from whoever they could get to see them. But I -- you know, the stories are very consistent that floodwaters were rising, that the deputies had fled the jail, that there was no food, there was no water. The power went off, I think, sometime early Monday morning when the storm hit, and they went Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with no food. I heard one prisoner who said that water was being distributed in basins, but it looked to be as polluted as the water that was coming out of the faucets. I heard accounts of some prisoners being interviewed with ugly white sores all over their -- the skin that was exposed, and these prisoners had reported drinking the floodwaters, although I didn't see any prisoners with those sorts of infections myself.
Goodman: And Neal Walker, we're going to break for stations to identify themselves, and we'll come back to this discussion about where have all of the prisoners gone? Human Rights Watch has calculated over 500 are at this point unaccounted for, just judging from the dockets before and after the hurricane. We'll also be joined by Phyllis Mann, who has been investigating this story and speaking to scores of prisoners, men who were farmed out to different prisons, and women as well, hundreds, who were brought from the jail to Angola, the maximum security prison for men. [break]
Goodman: We continue the investigation into where have all of the prisoners gone after Hurricane Katrina. We are talking specifically about the Orleans Parish Prison. Our guests are Corrine Carey, researcher for Human Rights Watch. They have just put out a report "Imprisoned and Abandoned." We are also joined by Dan Bright, one of the people who was detained in the Orleans Parish Prison the night before the hurricane struck, now relocated to Texas. Phyllis Mann will join us in a minute, of Alexandria, Louisiana, criminal defense lawyer, also Neal Walker, director of Louisiana Capital Assistance Center. Corinne Carey, from your investigation, when were the authorities called to evacuate the Orleans Parish Prison?
Carey: The Orleans Parish sheriff, Marlin Gusman, didn't call for assistance from the State Department of Corrections until midnight on Monday after the eye of the storm had hit and the prison had already began to flood. Other area parish prisons had called for assistance on Saturday and Sunday to start evacuating their inmates. And all of their inmates have been -- had been evacuated safely at that point.
Goodman: Now, the position of the sheriff, the Orleans sheriff, is a very powerful one in New Orleans.
Carey: In every parish it's one of the most powerful positions to hold, yes.
Goodman: And the attorney general is the former parish sheriff?
Carey: Yes. Charles Foti was the Orleans Parish sheriff before he became attorney general.
Goodman: Did he design the evacuation plan?
Carey: We have not been able to find the evacuation plan. We heard reports that the evacuation plan was on a website. A Department of Corrections spokesperson told us that it was on the website, but it has since been removed. So we actually, though we have made inquiries, don't know what the evacuation plan was. In any event, the Orleans Parish sheriff didn't follow any evacuation plan, nor did he fortify the institution to allow people to ride out the storm with food, water and other supplies.
Goodman: So, he called on Monday night, and then what happened?
Carey: Monday at midnight. The Department of Corrections then began to start evacuating prisoners. It seems to us they started on Wednesday and finished on Friday although things are very confusing, and there are a number of different buildings in that complex.
Goodman: We're talking about thousands of prisoners?
Carey: Over 6,000 prisoners. And prisoners from area -- other parish prisons were evacuated to Orleans Parish Prison.
Goodman: To the flooded prison?
Carey: Prior to the flood. Yes. They were evacuated to the prison. And so, you had people -- you had a prison that was already at capacity, and then you had maybe 2,000 more prisoners from area prisons brought in. So, that's why when you hear Dan Bright talking about breaking out of cells, there were prisoners in common areas. They were in recreational areas, they were in visiting areas. So they were not locked down, and they were able to grab pipes and break them in the absence of guards and help the other inmates break out of their cells and break the windows.
Goodman: So, Dan Bright, when did you make it to the overpass? What night was it? Or what day?
Bright: It was Tuesday morning.
Goodman: Tuesday morning. How long did you stay on the overpass?
Bright: It was Tuesday night. Sunday, I went down.
Goodman: So you broke out on Tuesday?
Bright: Right. After the storm had passed. And when we got out to central lockup area, back to the central lockup area, these were the other guards waiting for us outside with the boats. So they took us from central lockup area to the bridge. It was nighttime. The city was completely dark. We stood on the bridge until maybe like two days, two-and-a-half days.
Goodman: Two-and-a-half days.
Bright: Yeah. No food, no water. We couldn't stand up. They made us sit down. We couldn't even get up and urinate. We had to urinate on ourselves. They didn't even want us standing up.
Goodman: You said you urinated on yourselves because you couldn't stand. Were you chained?
Bright: Excuse me?
Goodman: Were you chained?
Bright: No. They didn't have any chains. They didn't have anything. They were just rushing us -- as we broke out and thought we were trying to get to our families or whatever. We weren't trying to escape. We were just trying to get away from that prison. When we got out, they snatch us, put us on airboats and bring us to the bridge.
Goodman: So you stayed there for two days, no food. Water?
Bright: No water. No food. They had water. But they wasn't giving us any.
Goodman: And how many of you were there?
Bright: It was a lot. I would say maybe like -- I couldn't tell. It was over 400. It was a lot of us.
Goodman: And then after those two days, what was it? Thursday or Friday?
Bright: It was Thursday when they moved us. They put us on the buses. And they brought us to this place, another jail called Hunt's Correctional Center.
Goodman: Near Baton Rouge.
Bright: Right. And they just put all of us in this one huge gate and made us sit on a field. And they left us there.
Goodman: Sitting on the field?
Bright: Right. You had to sleep on the wet grass. They didn't have anywhere we could urinate or defecate. We had to do that out in the public. You know. They gave us one blanket. We had -- that was it. You had to sleep on the wet grass. You had -- we didn't have hot food. We didn't have cold water. In fact, they come once a day and throw peanut butter sandwiches over the gate. They wouldn't even come in the gate. They would just throw it over the gate.
Goodman: They threw the sandwiches at you.
Bright: Correct. They were throwing them over the gate.
Goodman: And then you would race for them.
Bright: Right, we would fight over sandwiches. You know, it wasn't -- there wasn't any order in this yard. In fact, you had -- the entire prison system was in there. You had guys with life sentences. You know, all kind of guys that wasn't supposed to be around one another. You had federal prisoners in there. They even had this guy Len Davis in there.
Goodman: Who is Len Davis?
Bright: He was convicted -- he was a cop. He was an NOPD police officer, convicted for all the murder of a female. He was on death row.
Goodman: He was a New Orleans Police officer on death row, and he was in there in the field with you?
Bright: Right. He was back down here trying to get some time back, and he got caught up when the storm came. So they drove him in there, too.
Goodman: Neal Walker, what do you know about this?
Walker: Well, the first thing I can tell you is that the New Orleans Police Department is one of the most violent and corrupt police departments in the country, and Dan's absolutely right. There are two police officers on the New Orleans Police force who are actually on death row, and I have heard other accounts that Len Davis, the police officer he is referring to, was in fact on that football field, if that's what it was, where the prisoners were evacuated to upriver at the Hunt's Correctional Facility.
Goodman: I want to bring Phyllis Mann into this conversation, attorney from Alexandria, Louisiana, who has been working non-stop since the hurricane, identifying people who were brought up to the Rapides Parish Prison in your area. These stories that you are hearing, you have been interviewing hundreds of people, men and then women at Angola. Are these similar to what you have heard? Phyllis Mann: They're completely similar to what I have heard. I have personally interviewed or overseen the interviewing of over 2,400 men and women between September 7 and as late as last night. And these are men and women who were at the various facilities in Orleans and the others, as Corinne referred to, that were brought to Orleans from other affected parishes. These people didn't have a chance to talk to each other. Like Dan describes, it was complete pandemonium in Orleans. As people got out of the various buildings that comprised the Orleans Parish complex there, you know, some of them spent one day on the bridge, some of them spent three days on the bridge. From there, they were randomly loaded into buses, and there was no rhyme nor reason as to who got on what bus. And they -- most of them went through Hunt Correctional and spent time on that football or soccer field or whatever it was. Some of them were there for two or three days. I saw large numbers of people who were badly, badly sunburned as a result of being out in the elements at Hunt Correctional while they waited. And then these people again randomly got distributed to in excess of 35 facilities throughout the state, and some of them are prisons, some of them are private prisons. Many, many of them are parish jails operated by local sheriffs in each parish. And as I have gone from place to place and talked to different people who had been held, they are all telling remarkably consistent stories. And many of these people have not even seen television at the point that I have talked with them. You know, it would be a week or two weeks after the hurricane, and they still had not been able to watch television to know what had happened there. So, for all of these people to tell such remarkably consistent stories, to me, is a very serious indication of the truth of what they're saying.
Goodman: Dan Bright, what happened after you left Hunt? When were you taken from there somewhere else? Or were you?
Bright: They took me to Rapides Parish. You had to wait in line in this football field to try to get on the bus. So, it took up to maybe like two days to a week. Fortunately, I was able to get on the bus like two-and-a-half days after. I went to Rapides Parish, where I met Miss Mann. And I can tell you it was a whole lot better.
Goodman: Was it around Sunday that you made it there?
Bright: Yes. It was a whole lot better living conditions from where I just came from.
Goodman: And how did you ultimately get out?
Bright: Out of the Rapides Center?
Goodman: How did you get out of jail? How did you end up being free?
Bright: Ms. Mann and a bunch of more attorneys, Ben Cohen, filed a habeas corpus for all of your misdemeanor charges, because they were violating our rights. We hadn't seen the judge. You know, most guys had served the sentence that was no more than 30 days, so they had to let us go. The D.A.s were still trying to fight that. That's another issue, though.
Goodman: Phyllis Mann, explain that process. Filing the writ of habeas corpus. And who were these men who were in there?
Mann: Sure. There were 199 people who had been evacuated to the Rapides Parish Detention Center. The warden and the sheriff here in Rapides Parish quickly allowed us to come in and sit down and interview those men and gather their case information. And then that was compiled into a list of the people who had already served whatever time they were supposed to serve. For example, there was one man who was in jail for reading tarot cards without a permit and was supposed to have been released prior to August 29th when the hurricane occurred, but did not get out and was still sitting there. Dan was another of those men. Some of them were in on what we call municipal charges, which are basically city violations. They're not even misdemeanors. And Ben Cohen and Marcia Widder filed a state habeas corpus action, which is the kind of pleading that you file -- it basically means, you know, to produce the body. You're requiring the person who is holding someone to produce them in court and then prove whether or not they are legally holding them. That action was filed on behalf of quite a large number of men. Nineteen of them were released when the hearing was held. But this is a long, slow process for us to have to do this on behalf of each of the over 8,000 people who are currently being held.
Goodman: Corrine Carey of Human Rights Watch, your final comment?
Carey: Sure. I just wanted to add that we have also spoken with corrections officers who say the same kinds of things. They saw prisoners hanging out of the windows. They saw the signs. And they, too, have concerns. It's hard to describe, but the corrections officers, many of them, feel that that were abandoned at the jail, as well. It's really a failure to evacuate. The corrections officers and the inmates were put in jeopardy. The inmates happened to be locked in their cells.
Goodman: And so, now what happens? How does the accounting take place. For example, have the authorities gone into the prison at this point to look into the cells where men perhaps couldn't get out?
Carey: A spokesperson from the Orleans Parish sheriff's office said that the sheriff had gone into the jails to inspect for damage. We don't know. We contacted FEMA to see whether anyone from the federal agencies had been in, and we haven't gotten response from them. The State Department of Corrections has not been in, as far as we last knew, to inspect the facility. What we would like is we would like the Department of Justice to do an investigation of their own. We need to know what happened in that jail, whether there were bodies left and whether there were any casualties.
Goodman: Again, the number of unaccounted-for prisoners?
Carey: There were 517 the last we checked, 130 of them being from Templeman III, the building that we have talked about today.
Goodman: And guards, any missing guards?
Carey: Not as far as we know, but the thing about the guards is that they were left on the overpass bridge. They were not transported to other facilities. They made their way in small groups of their own to shelters, to the stadium, to the Convention Center. They were not -- there's no keeping track of where the guards went from there. They didn't go with the prisoners.
Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now! © 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/26073/

Posted by lois at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)

The Failed Drug War

The Failed Drug War
By Charles Shaw, AlterNet
Posted on September 28, 2005, Printed on September 28, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/26030/
Malcolm X once said, "Any person who claims to have deep feeling for other human beings should think a long, long time before he votes to have other men kept behind bars -- caged. I am not saying there shouldn't be prisons, but there shouldn't be bars. Behind bars, a man never reforms."

On Friday, September 9, I became one of the roughly 25,000 people released from an Illinois prison this year -- 600,000 nationally -- after completing only 10 weeks of a one-year sentence due to extreme overcrowding. My crime was victimless -- simple possession of a controlled substance, specifically, a small amount of marijuana and MDMA.

But as the rare upper-middle class, educated white American in prison, I found myself in a truly alien, self-perpetuating world of crushing poverty and ignorance, violent dehumanization, institutionalized racism, and an entire sub-culture of recidivists, some of whom had done nine and 10 stints, many dating back to the '70s.

Most used prison as a form of criminal networking knowing full well they would be left to fend for themselves when released. We were told on many occasions that an inmate was worth more inside prison than back in society. Considering it costs an average of $37,000 a year to incarcerate offenders, and the average income for black Americans is $24,000, and only $8,000-$12,000 for poor blacks, one can easily see their point.

But unlike the vast majority of ex-offenders, I was fortunate enough to return to an established life and work, and a support system of friends, family, and colleagues.

The Chicago Tribune reported this year that about two-thirds of the more than 600,000 ex-convicts released in 2005 will be re-arrested within three years, and about half will return to prison for a new crime or violation of parole. Despite having "paid their debt to society," once released, their punishment is not nearly over. These days there is little to no hope of any real reform, as within the various Departments of Corrections, "correction" is a painfully misleading euphemism for the warehousing of offenders.

There are few, if any, re-entry programs for ex-offenders and virtually no jobs or social services to help keep them afloat in an increasingly difficult and unforgiving society. Thus, most ex-offenders have no choice but to return to their old crime-infested neighborhoods, destitute and desperate to survive any way they can. A significant majority of the new crimes or parole violations are drug related, often nothing more than testing positive on a monthly drug screen.

This lack of any employment, training, or rehabilitative opportunities has created a permanent underclass of ex-offenders who remain trapped in poverty, unable to provide for themselves or their families without resorting to the few, generally illegal means available to them. Faced with their very survival, most have no compunction about engaging (or re-engaging, as the case may be) in drug dealing rather than starving.

What may be even worse is that for some, their ongoing "crimes" are only those of association, or in some cases, the consequences of being black and poor. Laws prohibiting ex-felons from associating with other ex-felons and gang members, such as the Illinois Street Gang Terrorism Omnibus Prevention Act, or those preventing ex-offenders from being in areas designated as "high crime" or where "controlled substances are illegally sold, used, distributed, or administered" means that many ex-offenders are in violation of their parole simply by going home, where the majority in their neighborhood, including family members, have criminal records, and drugs are sold on almost every corner.

I cannot begin to recount all the men I met, particularly those with prior records or those on parole, who were re-incarcerated for crimes they did not commit, simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. Not possible! Our system is just!

True, it is for those who can afford justice in the form of a bond and a private lawyer, or for those against whom the system is not already unduly prejudiced. But in a system with corrupt cops eager for arrests, zealous state attorneys eager for convictions, jaded and overwhelmed public defenders eager for quick pleas, and rigid bond judges eager to set bail far beyond what anyone in the defendant's socio-economic class could reasonably afford, there is little opportunity for a fair trial.

For so many, including myself, the conditions in the penitentiary were preferable to those in Cook County Jail -- where some 30,000 detainees languish awaiting the resolution of their cases -- so a quick plea is the lesser of all evils and the shortest route to freedom. Had I chosen to fight my case, there is little doubt I would still be there today. In the end, what does that say about our criminal justice system?

Instead of correction and rehabilitation, what we have is what criminal justice Professor Richard Shelden, of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, calls a "criminal justice industrial complex" where "the police, the courts and the prison system have become huge, self-serving and self-perpetuating bureaucracies, which along with corporations have a vested interest in keeping crime at a certain level. They need victims and they need criminals, even if they have to invent them, as they have throughout the 'war on drugs' and 'war on gangs.'"

Thirty years ago Gore Vidal noted that "roughly 80 percent of police work in the United States has to do with the regulation of our private morals…controlling what we drink, eat, smoke, put into our veins ... with whom and how we have sex or gamble."

Then there were roughly 250,000 prisoners in the nation. Today there are more than 2 million, with another million in county jails awaiting trial or sentencing, and another roughly 3 million under "correctional supervision" on probation or parole.

The total national cost of incarceration then was $4 billion annually; today it's $64 billion, with another $20 billion in federal money and $22-24 billion in money from state governments earmarked for waging the so-called "War on Drugs."

Nationally, around 60 percent or more of these prisoners are drug criminals. Yet, throughout all this time and expense there has not been the slightest decrease in either drug use or supply.

And amidst all the talk of race as a factor in the Katrina disaster let us not forget a bigger disaster: one in every 20 black men over the age of 18 is in prison compared to 1 in 180 white men. Despite African Americans comprising only 12% of the total population, in five states, including Illinois, the ratio of black to white prisoners is 13 to 1.

The U.S. Department of Justice reports that blacks comprise 56.7% of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons while whites comprise only 23.3% (in my Illinois prison -- one of 28 in the State -- of the 1,076 inmates, 689 were black, 251 were white, and 123 were latino). Based upon these numbers, a full 30% of African-Americans will see time in prison during their life, compared with only 5% of white Americans, even though white drug users outnumber blacks by a five-to-one margin.

Anyone familiar with these facts was not surprised by the response to the largely poor and black victims of Katrina. It was simply a further affirmation of their invisible status within our society, further proof of the Third World existing within the First in America.

What may be the biggest shame in all of it is how New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin himself reinforced all the most miserable black stereotypes by characterizing the looters as "drug starved crazy addicts wreaking havoc" in an attempt to expedite federal assistance and justify a declaration of martial law. It spoke volumes to what resonates within the public consciousness, stirring up some of our deepest fears.

It's time to realize, once and for all, that this war is lost. It's akin to trying to empty flooded New Orleans streets one teaspoon at a time. But sadly, Americans have forgotten this war amongst the multitude of more fashionable, media-friendly wars that have arisen in the last five years.

No matter how much money the government pours into the "war on drugs," it doesn't appear to make a dent in drug use or drug-related crime. The body count still rises. Dead and corrupt cops, dead gang youth, dead traffickers and couriers, dead innocent bystanders. And then there is the urban "collateral damage" -- devastated families, addiction, disease, overdoses from unregulated, poor quality drugs, exploding prisons, crushing costs, corrupt officials, craven politicians, sensationalist media, and a limitless harvest of offenders. Where does the madness end?

We cannot address poverty and race in America nor can we talk about needless death and expense without addressing the drug war. If we don't stop the direction in which we are heading, by 2020 there will be over 6 million people in prison, and thousands more lives extinguished in the crossfire of a domestic war that we had no chance of winning in the first place.

Charles Shaw, a writer and activist, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Newtopia Magazine. He is writing a series on his recent prison experience.

Posted by lois at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2005

NY Times Editorial: Phantom Constituents in the Census

A longstanding quirk in census rules counts incarcerated people as "residents" of the prisons where most are held for only a short time, instead of counting them in the towns and cities where they actually live. This practice was scarcely noticeable 30 years ago, when the prison population was insignificant. But with 1.4 million people in prison today, this padding of electoral districts' population figures shifts political power from the densely populated urban areas where most inmates live to the less populated rural districts where prisons are often built.

In 48 of 50 states the inmates cannot vote anyway. But they still count as constituents when state legislators sit down to draw up legislative districts. This bogus inflation gives prison districts undeserved strength in the state legislature and more influence than they would otherwise have in state affairs. Indeed, many legislative districts actually contain far too few people to be legal districts at all when the nonvoting inmates are subtracted. In some places, the phantom constituents account for more than 20 percent of the population count.

This arrangement has an unfortunate resemblance to early America under slavery, when slaves were barred from the polls but counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of apportioning representation in Congress. In addition, legislators from the rural prison counties often use this purloined power to vote against the interests of the urban communities from which prison inmates most typically come. By counting impoverished inmates as citizens, the prison counties also reap more than a fair share of federal dollars that are earmarked for the poor.

Several experts, including a former director of the census, have suggested that the bureau count inmates at their preprison residences. A panel reviewing residency issues in general has heard compelling testimony that should drive it to the same conclusion. And instead of waiting until the next census in 2010, the Census Bureau should simply change its procedures now. Counting inmates where they live would cure what has clearly become a troubling flaw in the census process.

Peter Wagner http://www.PrisonersoftheCensus.org

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/26/opinion/26mon3.html

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

September 25, 2005

Falling So Far, Coming Back Can be a Long Hard Climb

Sep 18, 2005
Dan Rodricks
Baltimore Sun
HERE'S WHAT happens in the big city: A 42- year-old man, who wasted half his life in jails and prisons because of heroin, announces that he's clean and wants out. No longer will he do dope or deal dope. He wants to leave the ranks of the thousands of men and women who for years helped suck the life out of vast stretches of Baltimore. "I just want to get back to working, and being productive," the man says. He sounds earnest.

So one day he finds himself on trial for a job. It's not much of a job - busing tables in a restaurant - but it's a way to get a little income and stay busy until he can find something better, and a way to show his wife, a state employee, that he's determined to do the right thing.

The man has one day to prove that he can bus tables.

And he blows it.

Here's the version I got: The man had never had a job like this before, clearing away dirty dishes and flatware in a busy downtown restaurant. He claimed he didn't know that waiters or waitresses - and not the guy who buses tables - collect tips. And that's exactly what he did: He pocketed cash and coin as he cleared tables. The restaurant management caught on, refused to accept what the man did as a novice's mistake, and dismissed him on the spot.

That's how it goes. For men and women who have been on the street or in prison for long stretches of their lives, the comeback trail is a steep hill.

'It's hard out here'
"It's hard out here," dozens of men and women have said this summer as I spoke to them about their search for jobs after prison and drug treatment. Many employers won't consider hiring them, and a lot of ex-offenders fail even when given a chance.

Thousands of Baltimoreans have criminal records, the vast majority of them because of illegal narcotics. And, in this supposedly liberal state, they've spent more time in jail than one might think.

According to a new report from the Justice Policy Institute, Maryland sentencing guidelines result in stiffer jail sentences for generally nonviolent drug offenders than for those who commit more serious crimes. The report pointed out that those caught up in the drug life relapse into doing dope or committing other petty crimes; when they violate terms of their probation, their jail time gets up to a third longer than it would have been had they been punished for the original offense.

This doesn't make sense. It never did. Warehousing drug offenders during Baltimore's long heroin-and-cocaine era has been a waste of money.

While incarcerated (at a cost of $24,000 a year to Maryland taxpayers), addicts should be sentenced to drug treatment; drug dealers should be trained for new careers. Doing otherwise - or, mainly, nothing - has resulted in a recidivism rate of 50 percent statewide, and in Baltimore a terrible waste of human resources, with thousands of unemployed ex-offenders on the street.

One of the toughest realms of social work in this city is ex-offender job placement - and it's one of the most important, indeed one of the great challenges facing Baltimore.

We have in our midst thousands of men and women - uneducated or undereducated, poor, sometimes homeless, addicted or in recovery from addiction - who need to be directed away from drugs and into sustained employment.

There are a handful of nonprofit agencies at work in this realm. One of them is Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake's ex-offender program. Its official title is Supporting Ex-Offenders in Employment Training and Transitional Services, or SEETTS. It's located on Redwood Street, and every week men and women go there for help. One of their helpers is the job placement coordinator, Chip Reis, a former Catholic priest who maintains a positive attitude singed by realities such as the failure of the 42-year-old man described at the top of this column.

'Can't help everybody'
"You want them to succeed, you really do, but not all of them do," says Reis. "I've had people come through here who I would have bet on like Seabiscuit but who still failed. You can't help everybody."

Reis knows where to find jobs. He knows which Baltimore companies won't hire ex-offenders, and which will. He says a lot of employers do not appreciate the scope of the problem in Baltimore, and how they could be part of the solution. So he devotes a day a week to recruiting new businesses for SEETTS.

The rest of the time, Reis runs a class that helps prepare his clients for interviews, and he gives them job leads.

"This is not an employment agency. I don't guarantee jobs. I tell them that up front," says Reis. "I say, 'You have to be out there [looking for jobs], too.'"

Several ex-offenders - drug dealers, drug users or dealer-users - called The Sun this summer for help in finding a job. Of those referred to Reis' program at Goodwill, 13 landed jobs, and 24 entered SEETTS. Another 20 made contact with Reis but did not register for his program.

There are a lot of frustrations associated with this work, and it requires acres of patience, but Reis finds it fulfilling. It's some of the most important work going on in Baltimore these days. "Oh, it's very rewarding," says Reis. "Guys will say to me, as they go off to a job or to look for a job, 'I won't let you down, Mr. Chip.' And I always answer, 'Don't let yourself down.'"

Posted by lois at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)

Essential Facts About the Victims of Hurricane Katrina

ResourceShelf’s DocuTicker
Essential Facts About the Victims of Hurricane Katrina
Source: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities
http://www.cbpp.org/9-19-05pov.htm

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

Rap about Katrina

Bass Is Loaded, did a rap song, Louisiana 2005, about the hurricane. You can listen to it online at http://www.myspace.com/bilc

Posted by lois at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2005

Katrina--Rescue Came from the Grass Roots---Not FEMA

Black Commentator
Rescue Came from the Grass Roots:
The People, Not FEMA, Saved Themselves
by Bruce Dixon, BC Associate Editor

http://www.blackcommentator.com/151/151_dixon_katrina.html

From her Atlanta home, former Gulf Coast resident Latosha Brown and a few friends watched the man-made catastrophe unfold in the wake Hurricane Katrina.

"We kept expecting to see the National Guard, the government, the Red Cross, somebody to do something. The idea that our leaders would allow people to fend for themselves two, three, five days with no food, water, medicine or help from outside - we just couldn't get our minds around it.

"People were dying by the hundreds in New Orleans, and more folks we knew in Mississippi, in Alabama were hurt, missing and homeless or hungry. You've got two choices when you see something like that. Choice one is to feel defeated. Choice two is to be pro-active and do something about it. There were about six of us in my living room at that moment, all movement vets. We called around to see what we could make happen ourselves.

"The first folks to send a couple of vans of food and supplies was TOPS, The Ordinary Peoples Society, a prison ministry in Dothan AL founded and staffed by ex-offenders. They organized food from a food bank, pooled their money to get additional goods and moved it to Mobile where they connected with a second organization of formerly incarcerated brothers down there to distribute it while they went back to Dothan for more. That's why we tell everybody now that it was felons who were the first to feed, the first to respond to need, the first to get up and do something. They didn't wait for permission or for a contract. That's real leadership."

The Real Leaders

Rev. Kenneth Glasgow of Dothan Alabama and Paul Jackson of Mobile each spent a decade in prison. Both are part of a network of black civic and religious organizations that have fought for years to restore the right to vote to over 200,000 former prisoners in Alabama, most of them African American men. Glasgow and his organization hustled food and got the first vans on the road southbound to the gulf. Jackson and his organization met the vans and guided them to where the need was greatest. "We started going into the projects," said Glasgow. "We went to Orange Grove and other places, somewhere the water had reached second floor windows, but nobody had seen FEMA or the Red Cross. We just started targeting areas where nobody else was coming."

The former prisoners found small and medium sized black churches in the affected area who also hadn't been contacted by the Red Cross or any government agency but who'd mobilized their own members to begin feeding their neighborhoods. The ex-offenders began sharing their supplies, their contacts and their information about unmet needs with these community partners. By the second food and water trip south, the former prisoners were bringing families out of flooded and devastated areas back to safety and temporary housing, and soon the ex-felons were driving in shifts with vans moving both ways around the clock.

Abandoned by the Government

Brown and her friends imagined that by their second or third trip south, local or federal officials, the National Guard or someone in authority would be on the scene to feed people, to evacuate the sick, homeless and injured, restore essential services, assess the damage and generally do what governments of modern and civilized societies are expected to do. But in Gulf Coast Alabama and Mississippi, just as in New Orleans, it didn't happen.

"When we realized this wouldn't be over in a couple days, we hit the phones again," Latosha Brown told BC. "We asked for help from community and civic organizations we'd worked with, from churches we knew, from businesses and individuals and doors just flew open. It was amazing. One friend was able to get $10,000 worth of food donated, but it sat there all morning because we had no way to move it. A brother in the community, a truck driver stepped up and volunteered to get it down to the Gulf Coast for gas money. Paul Jackson down in Mobile got us a warehouse to receive goods being sent, and somebody's supervisor on the job lent a forklift and driver. We found more vans in other places, and on the fourth day our group in Selma working with a local church opened up a shelter for a hundred people. Every truck and van that carried supplies down brought families out on the way back, including a number of Cambodian and Vietnamese families."

"The black churches tapped their own networks," said Paul Jackson of One For Life in Mobile. "Donations, supplies and volunteers came from churches all over Mississippi and Alabama. We got help from churches in Minnesota, Maryland and Virginia that arrived in black neighborhoods before anybody from FEMA or the Red Cross. Still, even after the arrival of official help we kept finding pockets of mostly black people bypassed or ignored by FEMA and the Red Cross.

This should have been no surprise. Much of the National Guard was in Iraq. FEMA never demanded that Red Cross officials leaders expand their personal network of contacts across the tracks into Black Biloxi, Black Mobile, Black Gulfport and Black Pascagoula. So well stocked and well-supplied Red Cross operations sat in white churches only a short distance from predominantly black areas which had not been reached by any private or government relief agency before black churches and black ex-offenders and black grassroots organizations took matters into their own hands.

Ex-Offenders are First Responders

"We didn't get as much help from the Red Cross as we expected," Latosha Brown told BC, "and at first we put it down to them just being overwhelmed. But the pattern we saw of them failing to notice the needs in our community when they were just so close, failing to partner with those on the ground doing work in those areas when they have no problem accepting donations from black people was really disturbing.

"I flew down to Gulfport on my own dime, partly to meet with local Red Cross officials. It was a real disappointment to be in a place where all these supplies and resources were concentrated, and see them make very little effort to partner with their own neighbors, with black churches, with the formerly incarcerated brothers and others who were on the ground serving the neighborhoods where we knew the need was so great.

"I never answer my cell phone during meetings, but somehow the spirit told me I should answer it during this particular meeting, this one time. It was some of our people driving the vans. Three of our vans on the way north out of the flooded areas were loaded with evacuees, but no cash and about to run out of gas somewhere in Mississippi. They were calling me because they knew I might have a credit card. I was in a meeting with several Red Cross bigwigs but I couldn't get any of them to help gas up our guys on the road, not a one. We got next to no help from the Red Cross that day. On the way out they offered us a couple cases of juicy juice and some overripe bananas. I wanted to cry."

Whether Brown cried that day or not, the coalition of churches, community organizations, business people, former prisoners and others engaged in grassroots relief effort soldiered on. By September 15th they had moved $100,000 worth of food and supplies to affected areas, gained access to eight buses, had evacuated over a thousand people and were helping supply and run four shelters. Through contacts with realtors and builders they were arranging temporary and permanent housing for families, and funneling volunteers from dozens of churches to affected areas to assist in cleanup. A week later, just before this article's press time, SOS After Katrina had secured the cooperation of the National Medical Association, the premiere organization of African American physicians to provide medical services to some evacuees and persons in affected areas.

"We call ourselves SOS After Katrina" said Latosha Brown. "That stands for Saving Our Selves, cause if we don't who will?"

What is a Government for?

Brown and the coalition of organizations that make up SOS Katrina know that taking care of citizens is still the responsibility of government, and they vow to stick around for the political fight to make that happen. But since it did not happen this time, they stepped up. The Red Cross did not fulfill its responsibility to serve the whole community. SOS After Katrina and the black church will continue to struggle with them - not against them, but with them, to help fix this too. Again, if we don't fight to save ourselves, who will?

The same Thursday night that BC interviewed Latosha Brown President Bush spoke to the nation from New Orleans. The president's hypocritical lip service to the right of the city's evacuated residents to return and to remain, was followed by a $50 billion dollar pledge and a wage of cost-plus, no-bid contracts to corrupt military contractors that included Halliburton and Bechtel. This, and the suspension of the 70 year old Davis-Bacon Act, allowing federal contractors to further lower the already low prevailing wages in the region are just the beginning. The good people at OMB Watch put it like this:

"The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has unveiled a vast plan for using the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast as an excuse for broad rollbacks of federal protections, including environmental, worker health and safety, and minimum wage standards..

"The president's recent speech announcing the White House's plan for reconstruction of the region included reference to a "Gulf Coast Opportunity Zone." Though Bush gave little detail of what such an opportunity zone would entail, the Heritage Foundation report using the same language details a vast give-away to corporate special interests and a full-scale repeal of health and safety protections.

If the Heritage Foundation and the Bush Administration have their way the Gulf states will be the scene of more crimes against public safety, health and prosperity in the months and years to come. They are not the least bit ashamed to tell us so, and some of the first legislative proposals along this line were submitted September 15.

We have seen grassroots black leaders in our churches and community organizations answer the call to pull together a people's relief effort in response to the government's failure to plan and provide for its citizens in crisis.

The question now is whether members of our established black political leadership are willing to relentlessly expose the root causes of these failures and make sure they never happen again. What will black political leadership do to protect us and the nation from Bush's cynical "Gulf Coast Opportunity Zone"? What good are institutions like the Congressional Black Caucus if they do not offer real alternative visions, hold public hearings, educate the public, and campaign for concrete remedies. Unity of the caucus would be nice, but clarity and an opposing vision of what the Gulf coast must look like, what America must look like are far more important at this time.

The grassroots leadership has stepped up. Now it's time for members of the Congressional Black Caucus to find their voices. So far, the contrast between the can-do spirit of our churches and community organizations, and yes, our organized ex-offenders and what we hear from most of our black faces in high places is glaring, obvious and a little sad.

The web site of SOS After Katrina is www.sosafterkatrina.org Some of the organizations included in SOS After Katrina are: Alabama Coalition on Black Civic Participation,
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
The Ordinary Peoples Society
One For Life
Southern Christian Leadership Council
Black Leadership Forum
The Hip Hop Caucus
Clergy Who Care, Birmingham AL
Circle of Love Fellowship Ministries
The Hip Hop UN
NAACP, Mississippi Chapter
National Medical Association, Jackson MS chapter
Center for Pan Asian Community Service
Students and student leaders at the Atlanta University Center

Congregations of dozens of large and small churches in several states Bruce Dixon can be reached at bruce.dixon@blackcommentator.com.

Posted by lois at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)

Cocaine Price, Availability Unaffected by Plan Columbia

September 23, 2005
Billions of U.S. tax dollars spent on the Bush Administration's "Plan Columbia" has failed to put any dent in cocaine street prices or availability, the Los Angeles Times reported Sept. 18.

Drug traffickers have adapted to beefed-up law enforcement, finding new routes for shipping drugs via speedboats and ships when police focused on land and air routes. And observers say a coca crop-spraying program paid for by the U.S. government has had little effect on drug supply.

The Bush administration has called the five-year-old spraying program a success -- the United Nations said spraying has cut the number of acres cultivated for coca in half -- but just as much cocaine is available on the street, and at about the same price and purity. In fact, a gram of cocaine costs less on the street today than it did in 2000. "We anticipate a gradual impact," said David Murray, an assistant to U.S. drug czar John Walters.

"They spray heavily in a [Columbian state] like Putumayo or Guaviare, but you keep seeing it pop up in new departments like Meta," said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Center for International Policy. "A lot of the new coca-growing in new areas is not being detected." Some sources say growers are planting in small plots, which are hard to find, and also have developed a new strain of coca that produces higher drug yields.

After spending $3 billion on Plan Columbia to date, the Bush administration is asking Congress to continue funding the project. "The plan is producing results," Bush said during a recent meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, citing increased numbers of cocaine seizures. In 2005, 45 tons of cocaine have been seized in joint U.S.-Columbian maritime operations, up from 33 tons in all of 2004. The Columbian Navy seized an additional 23 tons on its own.

However, that still means that about 420 tons of seaborne cocaine are eluding authorities, half of which goes to the U.S. These sea shipments alone would satisfy two-thirds of U.S. demand for the drug.

The Senate Appropriations Committee may be balking at Bush's request for more funding of Plan Columbia, noting that "the aerial eradication program is falling far short of predictions and that coca cultivation is shifting to new locations ... There is no indication that the quantity of cocaine entering the United States has decreased."

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

September 23, 2005

New Orleans: Katrina: Prisoners and Guards

9/23/05, Times Picayune
Prison became island of fear and frustration
As floodwaters rose, inmates and guards were in it together

'It was a wild ride,' chief deputy says
By Michael Perlstein
Staff writer
When New Orleans plunged into darkness and spiraling chaos in the days after Katrina passed, Orleans Parish Prison, a 6,400-inmate city-within-a-city, plunged even deeper, bringing the complex of concrete lockups perilously close to a security and humanitarian meltdown.

Interviews with more than a dozen deputies and employees, many of whom didn't want to reveal their names for fear of losing their jobs, depict a five-day struggle to keep destructive and desperate inmates at bay. The ordeal was marked by escapes by inmates and wholesale job walk-offs by deputies. But when officers in charge finally went over the head of Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman and called Attorney General Charles Foti for state reinforcements, the ensuing rescue operation was nothing short of heroic. Everyone escaped by boat as nearly every Sheriff's Office vehicle had been quickly and completely submerged.

Signs of the pandemonium can be seen throughout the sprawling complex of 10 concrete lockups, all of which took on 6 to 10 feet of water in the low-lying wedge of land off Broad Street between Interstate 10 and Tulane
Avenue: tied-together blankets hanging from broken cell windows, scorch marks from fires, rescue boats scattered on streets and sidewalks.

Next to one smashed jail cell window, taped to the outside of the building, is a sign scrawled by an inmate, "We Need Help." On the perimeter of the same building, slung over razor-wire atop a 16-foot fence, a cluster of thick blankets marks an apparent escape.

Chief Deputy Bill Short said Thursday he could confirm only four escapes, but the Sheriff's Office computer system was fished out of floodwaters just a couple of days ago and a full head count by the state Department of Corrections is still under way. The four escapees were transfers from the St. Bernard lockup, Short said, and they bolted shortly after the storm by breaching the roof of the Intake Processing Center.

"They made it to the roof and decided they had to get out. As far as others, I just don't know," said Short, who was promoted to his new position a week ago in acknowledgment of his steely command of the 800-inmate House of Detention during the storm and its aftermath.

Other deputies said they knew of more than a dozen escape attempts. One inmate, an Australian tourist who rode out the storm in Parish Prison after getting arrested on Bourbon Street for criminal trespassing, said he saw some inmates get away from once-secure areas, although he didn't know how far they made it.

"We had no food, no power, no air-conditioning, no toilets," Ashley McDonald, the Australian tourist, said in earlier published reports. "A lot of people started breaking out and escaping and that's when attention was brought to the jail."

One thing Short said he knows for certain is that there were no deaths, not among the inmates, not among the 900 or so employees who reported to work, not among the scores of residents who floated or waded in from the surrounding neighborhood to the relative safety of the veranda of the high-rise Community Correctional Center. One group from the area, a woman and two men, used 2-by-6-foor boards to row a hot tub to the impromptu gathering point, Short said. Others who were stranded were fished out by deputies.

"Did we know exactly what to do?" Short asked. "Nobody did. It was a wild ride, but we must have done some good things because nobody died."

Separating fact from storm-spawned fiction about the prison's inundation has been difficult, especially since the prison complex was plunged into a virtual communications blackout and each of the 10 lockups became islands surrounded by toxic water. Rumors of massive jail breaks, Gusman being taken hostage and large-scale riots have proved false. Gusman was not available for comment for the past two days because of meetings, a spokeswoman said.

But first-hand accounts from three of the largest facilities - Community Correctional Center, the House of Detention and Old Parish Prison - revealed a harrowing five days before everybody was evacuated. All of the sources told about multiple resignations, deputies who tossed their badges to the ground and turned their shirts inside out, only to find themselves in the awkward position of being stuck by floodwaters alongside their former colleagues. Short estimated that if he tried today to reassemble the agency's 900 sworn deputies, he could probably scrounge up 700.

The shrinking security presence made it only more difficult to deal with the prison's most pressing problems: keeping order and ferrying people to dry ground. Deputies said the mission was carried out despite losing power the day after the storm passed, running out of food the following day and finding nearly all entrances blocked by water when help finally arrived.

"Typical panic, that's what it was, longtime deputy Monte Davis said. "People just get disturbed when they don't know what's going on. It was a mess."

The earliest sign of inmate unrest was heard, not seen, deputies said: the sound of splintering glass as prisoners smashed the buildings' narrow exterior windows.

"They were hungry, they were thirsty and most of all, they were hot," a Community Correctional Center deputy said. "We saw them just hanging from the windows."

Short said deputies eventually sanctioned the destruction.

"The inmates did break out windows," he said. "In some cases, our staff helped them. If you didn't break the windows, you didn't breathe."

Deputies said they repeatedly calmed inmates by telling them that food, water and rescue were on the way, but the message began wearing thin. In the Community Correctional Center, two commanders and a deputy said, inmates breached several layers of security, smashing visitor center security windows and breaking through stairwell doors.

The worst damage was done by inmates who broke off metal shower rods and dayroom benches, then used them as battering rams, they said.

"The knocked out some cinder blocks and breached some visitation booths," the deputy said. "It was like the movie 'Attica.'"

Until the cavalry showed up Wednesday in the form of SWAT teams from the state Department of Corrections, the deputies said they were forced to scare inmates back into cells by brandishing their pistols and occasionally firing off beanbags.

Several deputies and commanders said there were periodic reports throughout the complex that sounded like gunfire, but Short said he didn't hear much about the use of lethal force.

"I used my shotgun a couple of times to break a window," Short said. "At first I tried my flashlight, but I broke it."

One deputy with military experience rigged up makeshift hot water bombs by using the heating element in the prefab military meals distributed by the National Guard. "We threw the water bombs through the broken windows to keep them back," the deputy said.

While the security situation was growing more and more tense, rising waters forced deputies to move inmates from lower floors to higher floors, in some cases mixing hard-core inmates with municipal offenders, teenagers with career criminals. Short said deputies gave in to agitated inmates by giving them full access to the sixth-floor rooftop.

Short said his staff was able to quell most of the inmate unrest, and in some cases, older inmates stepped in to calm the more volatile prisoners.

"I hate to use the word babysat, but they stayed with them and kept them calm," Short said. "There were some inmates who acted out, but I'd say 99 percent acted responsibly."

Even in the areas where the inmates were calm, stress among deputies was rising with each passing hour because the Sheriff's Office had only five boats, not nearly enough to evacuate thousands of inmates and a growing population of civilians. On the Community Correctional Center veranda, the scene resembled a smaller-scale version of the notorious evacuation crises at the Superdome and Convention Center, with hundreds of people living and sleeping on prison cots and chairs, trash and other debris rising in piles around them.

When one of the larger boats was idled with a fried motor, Short said he and his deputies crossed a rooftop and broke into an adjacent parking garage at police headquarters so they could "scavenge" car batteries for the boat's electric trolling motor. During a tour of the jail Thursday, Short showed how they used a downed utility line to lower the batteries to the boat bobbing in the water below.

Still, Short and others said, it took a call to Foti to regain complete security and get everbody out. Foti, Orleans Parish criminal sheriff for 30 years, responded quickly and forcefully by sending state Department of Corrections guards and SWAT teams. They were joined by a flotilla of 20 boats from the state Wildlife and Fisheries Department.

"DOC was a savior," Davis said. "When things weren't going fast enough, the attorney general lit a fire under people and got a lot of things going."

"One of the captains called Foti and said, "We're losing the battle," a deputy said. "They (DOC) showed up with all the things we didn't have: shotguns with beanbag rounds, tasers, rubber bullets, riot gear, bulletproof shields."

Once the inmate outbreaks were quelled and enough boats were on hand to carry people out, one of the storm's last and most massive waterborne evacuations began to unfold over three days, from Wednesday until the last employees were fished out of the prison complex Friday.

Most of the civilians were dropped off on the Broad Street overpass, where military helicopters flew them to evacuation points. The inmates were either flown or boated to an elevated portion of Interstate 10, where they were assembled until DOC buses could take them to other prisons around the state.

During the building-by-building rescues, the lines between inmates and deputies, deputies and commanders, commanders and civilians grew invisible, Davis said.

"Position doesn't mean much in those situations," Davis said. "I worked side-by-side with the sheriff and, other than him being my boss, everybody was in the same boat. It was just regular people trying to survive."
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tporleans/archives/2005_09_23.html#082074

Posted by lois at 06:24 PM | Comments (0)

Katrina--New Orleans Organizers Call for Amnesty

New Orleans organizers call for amnesty

by Rose Braz

New Orleans – On the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans organizers from national grassroots organization Critical Resistance are demanding amnesty for those arrested during the aftermath of Katrina and for an accounting of what happened to prisoners during the evacuation of New Orleans.

“We mourn all the victims of Katrina, including those hidden victims who were locked up in Orleans area jails during the storm and those who have been imprisoned indefinitely in its aftermath,” said Critical Resistance Southern Regional Director Tamika Middleton, who was based in New Orleans.

“Thousands of people in New Orleans area jails have been separated from their families and do not know whether their loved ones are alive or dead, while hundreds of others have been refused the right to call their loved ones, held at gunpoint on freeway overpasses or are now locked up inside a sweltering New Orleans bus depot,” continued Middleton.

“Nearly 230 people have been booked in a makeshift jail set up in a Greyhound Station, the vast majority for the ‘crime’ of feeding and clothing themselves during the hurricane,” added Jordan Flaherty of Critical Resistance New Orleans.

“Our schools are closed and people have been left without food, water or shelter, but somehow this city has the means to open a jail? Locking people up in this crisis is a cruel mismanagement of city resources and counters the outpouring of the world’s support and concern for all victims of Hurricane Katrina,” continued Flaherty.

According to Lisa Kung of the Southern Center for Human Rights, “When people in the Orleans Parish Prison were finally evacuated, they were scattered to over 30 facilities throughout the state.” Kung also noted that “despite knowing a levee break would put everyone in the jails in danger, there was no evacuation plan for the people locked up in New Orleans. The right to safety and dignity demands an evacuation plan in case of a levee break. Those basic rights were ignored by officials on all levels, and people who had no way to escape the floodwaters were left without a way out.”

Organizers are also calling for a complete accounting of what happened to Orleans area prisoners amid disturbing reports that indicate that some prisoners may have been left behind to drown.

Meanwhile, on the streets, residents who lost everything are now confronted with martial law. “We met two grandmothers whose 16-year-old grandsons were handcuffed and taken away for allegedly pushing to get on busses that finally arrived after they had spent four days on the freeway overpass. Their grandmothers have not seen them since,” reported Xochitl Beverra of Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children.

“On this Day of Prayer and Remembrance, we demand amnesty for prisoners in New Orleans,” said Tamika Middleton, who was evacuated from New Orleans. “Prisoners in New Orleans must be returned to their families to heal from this crisis.”

Critical Resistance is a national grassroots organization whose mission is to end society’s reliance on imprisonment as an answer to social, political and economic problems. Critical Resistance’s Southern Regional Office, located in New Orleans Mid-City neighborhood, was destroyed in the hurricane. Family members attempting to locate their loved ones who were in Orleans area jails may call the Louisiana Department of Corrections at (225) 342-3998. For more information, you can also contact Xochitl Beverra at (504) 606-8846.

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Posted by lois at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)

Louisiana: 16 women prisoners released from Angola held

By PENNY BROWN ROBERTS

Advocate staff writer

A New Orleans federal judge freed 16 prisoners Thursday who had more than served their time.
U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey ordered the release of female inmates evacuated from the Orleans and St. Bernard parish prisons after Hurricane Katrina and housed in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola beyond their scheduled release dates.

The late afternoon hearing stretched into two hours as the judge and lawyers hatched a plan for finding the convicts transportation or shelter from the approaching Hurricane Rita.

"My job under the Constitution is to not let people stay in jail who are not supposed to be there," Zainey said. "But as a humanitarian, I think we're all concerned about what happens to them once they're let go."

The women were among 94 who filed suit Tuesday against Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin N. Gusman, Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan and other law-enforcement agencies, demanding their freedom.

Most are being held on minor misdemeanor offenses, such as public drunkenness, trespassing, disturbing the peace, prostitution or lewd conduct.

The state Department of Public Safety and Corrections planned to release the 16 women Thursday night, give each $10 and buy them bus tickets to the adjoining state of their choice or take them to shelters.

Zainey also ordered the future freeing of two women whose release dates are approaching. But Zainey declined to free 13 others who still have pending charges against them.

Two inmates already had been freed by another judge, and the prison records of another woman couldn't be located to determine whether she could be released.

Still at issue are 60 prisoners, many claiming they've never had the opportunity to post bond or make an initial appearance before a judge. A hearing has been scheduled for Monday to determine their fate.

All told, Hurricane Katrina forced authorities to evacuate about 8,200 inmates from Orleans and Jefferson parishes to state prisons and parish jails.

The hurricane shut off access to inmate records several weeks ago, keeping many behind bars longer than normal. Prisoners left the flooded jails without identification, delaying their release.

The corrections department already has set free more than 200 inmates from Orleans, St. Bernard, Plaquemines and other hurricane-ravaged parishes whose release dates have passed. It provided cash and transportation or shelter to those people as well.

Zainey said he will "continue to monitor the situation to ensure these people don't fall through the cracks. I don't want people that aren't supposed to be in jail in jail."

Click here to return to story:
http://2theadvocate.com/stories/092305/new_released001.shtml

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

VT: Advocates Seek to Restore Benefits for those released from prison

Article published Sep 23, 2005. Rutland Herald, VT
Advocates seek to restore benefits for released inmates

MONTPELIER — Vermont inmates, like those in many other states, often find upon release that they are no longer enrolled in federal housing, health care, veterans' and other benefits.

Offenders sometimes leave prison with only a few dollars in their pockets, and may have to wait weeks or months to be re-enrolled in federal programs. That makes it more difficult for former inmates to rejoin society and increases the chance they will commit another crime, officials and advocates said Thursday.

The discussion at the Capitol Plaza hotel was the first step by the Vermont Association for Mental Health as it tries to develop a system ensuring that former inmates are getting the food stamps and Social Security benefits they are entitled to as soon as they leave prison.

"The corrections system has become, unfortunately, a place where many mental health and substance abuse clients end up," said Ken Libertoff, director of the Vermont Association for Mental Health.

A vast majority, up to 85 percent by some estimates, of roughly 2,000 people in Vermont's prisons suffer from mental illness, substance addiction or both, according to the state.

Government officials, including Gov. James Douglas, agreed that the issue needs to be addressed.

Douglas said the state's prison population, which had been relatively stable in recent years, is now on the rise again.

"We can't afford for that to happen," he said.

In addition, the state's projected decline in high school graduates and low unemployment means that employers need all the productive workers they can get — including former inmates.

Re-establishing federal benefits for inmates is "a significant issue which must be addressed throughout the agency," said Cynthia LaWare, deputy secretary of human services.

The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., is supporting the Vermont Association of Mental Health's work in the area with a two-year grant of about $60,000 a year. The center is also supporting similar programs in Maryland and Minnesota.

For inmates who have a psychiatric disorder, the daunting task of applying for federal benefits becomes even more difficult, according to Eileen Elliott, a lawyer and former deputy secretary of human services who has been hired as a consultant by Vermont Association for Mental Health. That is why it is important to ensure that those inmates get help in completing the paperwork, she said.

Part of the Bazelon Center's proposal is that states enact laws establishing a program to help mentally ill and addicted inmates regain federal benefits when they leave prison.

If such a bill is proposed by mental health advocates to the Vermont Legislature, it might result in a disagreement with administration officials, who said Thursday that state government is already poised to take on the task without additional legislation.

"The good news in Vermont is that we do not need legislation to do these things," LaWare said.

Many of the suggested changes in state policy — for instance, temporarily suspending instead of canceling Medicaid benefits while offenders are in prison — are either being done already in Vermont or can be done without legislation, state officials said.

Indeed the Agency of Human Services reorganization has already paved the way for a more comprehensive approach to preparing inmates for release, said Suzanne Santarcangelo, deputy commissioner of the Department of Developmental & Mental Health Services.

And instead of ensuring that prisoners' benefits are suspended rather than terminated during prison terms, she said, the system should concentrate on making sure that departing inmates are enrolled in services whether they were enrolled in the past or not.

"The goal of the work is to make sure someone walks out the door with their health care in place," Santarcangelo said.

But A.J. Ruben, supervising attorney for Vermont Protection and Advocacy Inc., a federally funded watchdog group, said he could assure those attending the meeting Thursday that there are problems in the way the system works now.

"There is a great need," he said. "When they are behind the bars, nobody really cares about them."

It is a good thing if the state can plan for the reintegration of inmates into society, as required by legislation passed earlier this year, Ruben said, but so far that is not happening.

Corrections Commissioner Robert Hofmann added that it is important to keep in mind that re-establishing benefits for the mentally ill inmates is important, but the ultimate goal should be returning former inmates to the workforce whenever possible.

Contact Louis Porter at louis.porter@rutlandherald.com.

Posted by lois at 06:10 PM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2005

New Orleans: Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwater

This is horrible but sadly not horrible beyond belief.
New Orleans: Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters
Officers Deserted a Jail Building, Leaving Inmates Locked in Cells
(New York, September 22, 2005)—As Hurricane Katrina began pounding New Orleans, the sheriff's department abandoned hundreds of inmates imprisoned in the city’s jail, Human Rights Watch said today.

Inmates in Templeman III, one of several buildings in the Orleans Parish Prison compound, reported that as of Monday, August 29, there were no correctional officers in the building, which held more than 600 inmates. These inmates, including some who were locked in ground-floor cells, were not evacuated until Thursday, September 1, four days after flood waters in the jail had reached chest-level.

“Of all the nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, this must be one of the worst,” said Corinne Carey, researcher from Human Rights Watch. “Prisoners were abandoned in their cells without food or water for days as floodwaters rose toward the ceiling.”

Human Rights Watch called on the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct an investigation into the conduct of the Orleans Sheriff's Department, which runs the jail, and to establish the fate of the prisoners who had been locked in the jail. The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, which oversaw the evacuation, and the Orleans Sheriff’s Department should account for the 517 inmates who are missing from list of people evacuated from the jail.

Carey spent five days in Louisiana, conducting dozens of interviews with inmates evacuated from Orleans Parish Prison, correctional officers, state officials, lawyers and their investigators who had interviewed more than 1,000 inmates evacuated from the prison.

The sheriff of Orleans Parish, Marlin N. Gusman, did not call for help in evacuating the prison until midnight on Monday, August 29, a state Department of Corrections and Public Safety spokeswoman told Human Rights Watch. Other parish prisons, she said, had called for help on the previous Saturday and Sunday. The evacuation of Orleans Parish Prison was not completed until Friday, September 2.

According to officers who worked at two of the jail buildings, Templeman 1 and 2, they began to evacuate prisoners from those buildings on Tuesday, August 30, when the floodwaters reached chest level inside. These prisoners were taken by boat to the Broad Street overpass bridge, and ultimately transported to correctional facilities outside New Orleans.

But at Templeman III, which housed about 600 inmates, there was no prison staff to help the prisoners. Inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch varied about when they last remember seeing guards at the facility, but they all insisted that there were no correctional officers in the facility on Monday, August 29. A spokeswoman for the Orleans parish sheriff’s department told Human Rights Watch she did not know whether the officers at Templeman III had left the building before the evacuation.

According to inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch, they had no food or water from the inmate’s last meal over the weekend of August 27-28 until they were evacuated on Thursday, September 1. By Monday, August 29, the generators had died, leaving them without lights and sealed in without air circulation. The toilets backed up, creating an unbearable stench.

“They left us to die there,” Dan Bright, an Orleans Parish Prison inmate told Human Rights Watch at Rapides Parish Prison, where he was sent after the evacuation.

As the water began rising on the first floor, prisoners became anxious and then desperate. Some of the inmates were able to force open their cell doors, helped by inmates held in the common area. All of them, however, remained trapped in the locked facility.

“The water started rising, it was getting to here,” said Earrand Kelly, an inmate from Templeman III, as he pointed at his neck. “We was calling down to the guys in the cells under us, talking to them every couple of minutes. They were crying, they were scared. The one that I was cool with, he was saying ‘I'm scared. I feel like I'm about to drown.' He was crying.”

Some inmates from Templeman III have said they saw bodies floating in the floodwaters as they were evacuated from the prison. A number of inmates told Human Rights Watch that they were not able to get everyone out from their cells.

Inmates broke jail windows to let air in. They also set fire to blankets and shirts and hung them out of the windows to let people know they were still in the facility. Apparently at least a dozen inmates jumped out of the windows.

”We started to see people in T3 hangin' shirts on fire out the windows,” Brooke Moss, an Orleans Parish Prison officer told Human Rights Watch. “They were wavin' em. Then we saw them jumping out of the windows . . . Later on, we saw a sign, I think somebody wrote `help' on it.”

As of yesterday, signs reading “Help Us,” and “One Man Down,” could still be seen hanging from a window in the third floor of Templeman III.

Several corrections officers told Human Rights Watch there was no evacuation plan for the prison, even though the facility had been evacuated during floods in the 1990s.

“It was complete chaos,” said a corrections officer with more than 30 years of service at Orleans Parish Prison. When asked what he thought happened to the inmates in Templeman III, he shook his head and said: “Ain't no tellin’ what happened to those people.”

“At best, the inmates were left to fend for themselves,” said Carey. “At worst, some may have died.”

Human Rights Watch was not able to speak directly with Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin N. Gussman or the ranking official in charge of Templeman III. A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department told Human Rights Watch that search-and-rescue teams had gone to the prison and she insisted that “nobody drowned, nobody was left behind.”

Human Rights Watch compared an official list of all inmates held at Orleans Parish Prison immediately prior to the hurricane with the most recent list of the evacuated inmates compiled by the state Department of Corrections and Public Safety (which was entitled, “All Offenders Evacuated”). However, the list did not include 517 inmates from the jail, including 130 from Templeman III.

Many of the men held at jail had been arrested for offenses like criminal trespass, public drunkenness or disorderly conduct. Many had not even been brought before a judge and charged, much less b