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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.

© Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved

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.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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).

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

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.

© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/26030/

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.'"

Copyright C 2005, The Baltimore Sun

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.

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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 been convicted.

From: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/22/usdom11773.htm

© Copyright 2003, Human Rights Watch 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor New York, NY 10118-3299 USA

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CA: Federal Detainees Stage Sit-In to Protest Delay of Hearings

Federal Detainees Stage Sit-In to Protest Delay of Hearings About 950 men being held at a facility in Lancaster refuse to return to their barracks until officials agree to address the backlog. By Amanda Covarrubias and Sam Quinones Times Staff Writers

September 22, 2005

Upset over delays in deportation proceedings, about 950 federal detainees at the Mira Loma Detention Center in Lancaster refused to return to their barracks for four hours Wednesday until officials assured them that they would address their concerns.

As TV helicopters hovered overhead, the men outfitted in bright orange jumpsuits used bed sheets to spell out the words "Help," "No Violencia" and "Liberty" on the center's lawn. Some inmates lay on the ground to spell out similar words with their bodies.

Dozens of Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies and prison guards in riot gear stood nearby, but the protest never became violent.

The demonstration began at 7 a.m. when detainees refused to return to their barracks after breakfast. Instead, the men sat in the central courtyard, refusing to move until representatives from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency agreed to meet with them to discuss their frustrations with the criminal justice system.

Detainees typically wait from two weeks to a month, and sometimes longer, for a deportation hearing, said Michael Vaughn, a supervisory officer with the immigration agency.

Two immigration judges are assigned to Mira Loma, but as the inmate population has steadily climbed from about 600 to about 950 in recent years, the wait to see a judge has grown longer, he said.

"The courts are backlogged, and they just want to get home," Vaughn said. "They think the length of time to get a hearing with a judge is too long. They wanted to speak to ICE concerning their court dates."

Although detainees can sign a waiver dismissing their right to a hearing and agreeing to immediate deportation, many illegal immigrants are wary of signing documents, Vaughn said. And those who do may have to wait anyway, particularly if the receiving country requires travel documentation or other special circumstances exist, Vaughn said.

The detainees were assured that their concerns over delays would be addressed, although no specifics were given, Vaughn said. After the incident, immigration agency representatives met in the barracks with the detainees, of whom more than 100 agreed to sign a waiver, said Virginia Kice, an agency spokeswoman.

The detention center, with low-slung barracks surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, is located in the Antelope Valley, about 50 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It houses illegal immigrants and noncitizen detainees arrested in a five-county region. The federal government has contracted with the Sheriff's Department since 1996 to hold detainees at the center. Most of them are from Mexico and Central America.

Wednesday's demonstration was the latest in a series of similar protests staged at Mira Loma dating back to 1997. The earlier incidents ended without major problems.

Immigration officials are facing a detention crunch nationwide, partly because of a 1996 federal law that requires all foreign nationals with criminal records and facing deportation to remain in custody until their case can be heard.

Roughly 20,000 illegal immigrants are being detained nationwide, awaiting deportation hearings, Kice said.

The Sheriff's Department contracts with many county jails across the state to hold detainees, she said. Mira Loma, with about 950, is one of the largest, along with centers in El Centro and San Pedro, she said.

The Lancaster court had three judges until late last year when one left, said Greg Gagne, spokesman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Virginia-based federal agency in charge of overseeing 53 immigration courts nationwide.

Nevertheless, the Lancaster court has not experienced any undue waits, Gagne said.

"Its overall hearing schedule is roughly consistent with the other courts in the system," he said. "Their initial hearings are occurring within four weeks of [detainees'] arrival Š This particular court has a reputation of being very diligent at keeping its docket moving along. So I don't know what it's all about. I can't figure it out."

Attorneys who defend Mira Loma clients confirm that description.

"I've never had any prolonged delay," said Paul Medved, a Los Angeles immigration attorney. "They try to move the cases pretty swiftly."

But with only two judges, "the trial dates are further out there than they used to be," said Alejandro Garcia, a Los Angeles immigration attorney who visits Mira Loma three times a week.

In addition, many detainees have been in county jail only briefly and may be eager to waive their rights to a deportation hearing and be sent home, he said. For them, several weeks may seem like a long time, he added.

"They end up doing more time [at Mira Loma] than they ever did in county jail," Garcia said. "They're like, 'Hey man, get me out of here,' especially if they're not going to fight their case."

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prison22sep22,1,6630666.story?coll=la-he
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September 21, 2005

Friends & Families of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children Katrina Update

Dear Friends and Allies,

It has been 22 days since the storm hit, 3 weeks since the levee broke, 20 days since we began witnessing on national TV, the images of thousands of forgotten people fighting to survive and being abandoned by those whose job it was to rescue. Sometimes it feels like it all happened yesterday. Sometimes it feels like years have passed in these last three weeks. There are no more people suffering and dying in the superdome and out on the causeway, but the nightmare is hardly over.

This brief update of what FFLIC has been observing, experiencing and doing is being sent out via a listserve. You are receiving it if you have called or emailed with donation offers, support, words of solidarity or offers to volunteer. We apologize if anyone would prefer not to receive these - please unsubscribe by sending an email to fflic.mayfirst.org if you do not want to receive any more. You can also have others join by sending an email to that same address.

Thanks to you all

First, of all we want to say thank you to all of you who have supported, donated, and volunteered. We cannot express fully enough how much your solidarity means to us as individuals and as an organization. If we have neglected to return your call or get back to you with a thank you email, please know that we sincerely apologize! It has taken us a minute to get organized and we know some people may have not received the prompt response they should have. Please know that we appreciate every dollar, every computer, every box of paper, every word of encouragement.

Finding Folks

FFLIC is now working with Critical Resistance and Communities United to have volunteers all over the country go shelter to shelter with information for anyone who has a loved one who was locked up or detained in the affected areas when the storm hit. We have volunteers in Arizona, California, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Arkansas, etc. We are talking with people, collecting information, and helping folks call the hotline and facility numbers to locate where their family members are and speaking directly to them or leaving them messages. If you are interested in volunteering with us to help us help folks find their family members, please contact Daniel Horowitz de Garcia at Daniel@cuapj.org.

Going shelter to shelter, here’s what we can tell you about some of what we’ve discovered:

Some shelters are well organized, providing needed services, with staff who are respectful and caring of the survivors. Houston’s convention center was a good example of this. Some are dirty, mis-managed, with racist and unpleasant staff. At the River Center in Baton Rouge, we witnessed dinner being served – a hot dog, a bag of chips and an apple. We also witnessed the National Guardsmen patrolling the sleeping quarters, two at a time with huge AKs slung over their shoulders. The woman who I was helping find her son as her grandson played around us asked me, “why are they here? Are we in prison?” We hear that many Red Cross staff in Lafayette and Lake Charles have been fired and replaced after serious complaints of prejudice and disrespect. One volunteer said she wouldn’t be surprised if folks just got fed up and started rising up against the Red Cross authorities.
All around Louisiana and Texas, local responses to Katrina survivors vary from welcoming to hostile. In Houston, we saw signs and expressions of sympathy and support. In Lake Charles the city is planning to put a fence around the shelter and has doubled law enforcement in areas like the mall and popular restaurants. The theme of treating survivors like prisoners has been repeated over many of our visits and observations. In St. Louis, they just skipped the middle step and created a shelter out of an abandoned prison.
We have been in touch with several of our long time members, for those who know them: Ms. Mathews now has an apartment in Houston after several weeks in the Astrodome, Ms. Flora is safe in Jackson, MS. Ms. Sabrina should be flying out with her 2 sons to Colorado Springs, and Ms. Cortez and Mr. Minoo are both safe. We are still searching for others. If anyone would like to send support to these individuals, please let us know. We are keeping a list of what people need and can get that information to you.
Those who are left in the shelters right now are the folks who have no where else to go. Many are planning on staying there until they can go back to New Orleans. Many are separated from families that are in shelters as far away as Massachusetts, Los Angeles and San Antonio, TX.
People have harrowing, horrifying, overwhelming and inspiring tales of surviving the storm, surviving the evacuation, saving lives, watching loved ones die. It is important that these stories be told and heard. It is important that people know the extent of what went wrong and how people paid the price for it.
We continue to hear the stories of young people and adults locked up who were not evacuated but who had to break free from their cells, sometimes leaving others behind in chest high water that was rising. We continue to hear nothing from state officials that addresses this issue and commits to investigating who was responsible and what will be done to determine how many prisoners lost their lives.
FFLIC’s Hurricane Relief Fund

Our fund is finally being put to good use! We are helping folks with housing, transportation and basic necessities. We have raised over $10,000 thanks to the generosity of dozens of people across the country. We have been moved to tears by the letters and notes which accompany the checks apologizing for not sending more, not being able to do more. Our collective sense of powerlessness is profound. We are determined to overcome it and make something of this tragedy.

Moving Forward
There is so much to do. Hopefully, by next week, we will have an office set up and operating in Lake Charles, Louisiana. We cannot stop with simply gathering the information, finding our members, and helping families reconnect. The fight for a transformed juvenile justice system must continue, but not in isolation. This disaster has illuminated that the racism and oppression which have fueled the juvenile and criminal justice systems in this state for years are the very same which abandoned people to die in our city after the storm hit. For these reasons, we must figure out how to continue to build membership and channel the rage, and righteous indignation that people have into a movement that demands justice on every level – in the short, medium, and long term. FFLIC has joined with Community/Labor United (CLU) to strategize how to do this in a unified, powerful way. For those organizers who would like to come down and support us, please stay in touch with us, we will soon have a clearer sense of all that needs to be done and how to begin the doing.
Last Notes
As folks know, FFLIC is a project of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (JJPL), a legal and advocacy organization dedicated to transforming Louisiana’s juvenile justice system. JJPL and our Board of Directors have been incredibly supportive of and generous about FFLIC’s work in this crisis while also trying to continue on with the JJ reform work that has been years in the making. We want to invite anyone who would like to donate to JJPL and FFLIC’s efforts, to designate on your checks whether you are making a donation to “JJPL and FFLIC” overall or specifically for the “JJPL/FFLIC Hurricane Relief Fund” which goes to fund the immediate needs of displaced families and children with whom FFLIC is working. JJPL/FFLIC Hurricane Relief Checks can be still sent to:

920 Platt Street, Sulphur, LA 70663.

Checks to JJPL may be sent to Sonji Hart at: 392 Sisters Rd., Ponchatoula, Louisiana, 70454.
Thank you all – with love and respect,
Xochitl, Gina, Grace and Kori

FFLIC Staff
Visit our website for articles and information at www.fflic.org

Posted by lois at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)

NH: Small Businesses Complain About PRison Competiton

New Hampshire Public Radio

http://www.nhpr.org/node/9603

Small Businesses Complain About Prison Competition
Reported by Amy Quinton on Friday, August 26, 2005.

Putting prisoners to work is nothing new, but inmates are now doing much more than making license plates. In New Hampshire, prisoners farm, make signs and furniture, run printing presses and sell their products on the open market. But some small business owners complain that selling those products creates unfair competition. As New Hampshire Public Radio's Amy Quinton reports, state legislators are considering a bill that would limit correctional industries.

A rough transcript follows:

In a warehouse behind barbed-wire fence, bars and i-d check points, a printing press spits out envelopes for the town of Rye. The man working the machine is closely guarded -- he¹s an inmate at the state prison in Concord. Print shop manager Jim Weaver says prisoners here learn almost all they need to know to get a job when their sentence ends. "Anything you could order from a shop on the outside is pretty much how it goes, we¹re trying to give these guys a marketable skill when they get out, and the only way they can do that is to have them running the same types of jobs they would have on the outside." The state prison runs a print shop, sign shop, furniture shop, tech shop, the list goes onŠ Correctional Industries Administrator Dennis Race says of the 1300 men serving time, more than 300 work in various industries. He says it¹s for good reason ­ these jobs help decrease recidivism. "Statistically it¹s been studied by the US Department of Justice that an inmate going back into the community with a marketable skill is less likely to return to prison." Race says that saves taxpayers money. And state correctional industries make about two million dollars a year in sales. That money is pumped back into the prison, and that too saves taxpayers money. Most of the work ­about 75% ­ is for state agencies, cities and towns. But prisoners are also making products for sale to the public. Sales to private individuals account for almost 25% of business, a four percent increase from 2001. And some small companies say correctional industries are taking their customers away. "I try really hard not to be outraged because that seems to be non productive but it distresses me," Howard Hoke is C-O-O for Echo Communications, a New London based print shop. He says he¹s had two of his customers take their work to the prison. "It appears that it might be leading towards two percent of our commercial printing sales volume going out the door, that¹s fairly significant I think, its enough annual sales volume that I can¹t just let something like that go." Hoke says businesses can count on losing a few customers a year for one reason or another, it¹s fair competition. But he says customers are leaving because the prison can offer lower prices. "When the only reason is they could get it done for a third the price and oh by the way it¹s the state prison, there¹s no competition there¹s nothing we can do." Prisoners wages average around a dollar an hour. The prison print shop couldn¹t provide a price list for their products. They say their prices are similar to other print shops. And Corrections Industries Administrator Dennis Race says it would be counter-productive to put private shops out of business.
"We don¹t strive to compete with them, it would be contrary to what we¹re all about. We want these companies to hire our inmates when they¹re released we¹d like to partner with them, we¹re not in competition with them at all." But Hoke isn¹t the only small business owner complaining about prison industries. In Grafton county, county jail inmates work selling produce at a farmstand on busy Route 10. The stand brought in about $25,000 to the county this fiscal year.
But local farmer Daryl Grasso says their produce prices are way below market value. She owns a stand a few miles away, off route 10, and is leading a fight to get the prison farm stand shut down. "When they first hit the scene the pricing that they came out with completely flattened the local market, all the local farmers and farmers markets were affected, it hit them in the pocket book." Since then the stand¹s pricing policy has changed, says Grafton County Corrections Supervisor Glen Libby. "It¹s not less than 10% of the average of what you can get at the local markets, the department of agriculture¹s weekly bulletin and farm stands registered with the NH Department of Agriculture." Customers like Monroe resident Dick Fagnant says he¹s seen a difference in prices this year, but says he supports the prison farm stand for other reasons. "I think it¹s a good project for the inmates to have, as far as the labor goes, and I don¹t feel they¹re competing they started this stand when there were no others around." But Grasso says the new pricing policy is unfair because it uses grocery store prices, which are always cheaper than farm stand prices. And she argues even if prices were the same, a government industry will always have more advantages.
"They don¹t pay one cent for the prisoners for working, they have no tax dollars for all the acreage they have, no workman¹s comp requirements, so they have all that free labor, and they¹re still charging the public for produce, a little or a lot it doesn¹t matter, it makes no difference. They don¹t belong there." Grasso¹s dispute with the prison farm stand has led state legislators to consider a bill that would stop the sale of products made with inmate labor
-- if it competes with private businesses.
Representative Bob Guida from Grafton County co-sponsored the bill. "Is it fair for government to, for the sake of inmates, disadvantage any business. Those people broke the law, they¹re certainly entitled to retraining, but not at the expense of the local population that¹s already paying their freight." Several states, including Vermont, Connecticut, and New York limit prison industry sales to state agencies, municipalities, or schools. But state correctional industry administrator Dennis Race says many states are looking to expand industries as well. He thinks the bill is a bad idea. "Anything that would diminish the sale of our product would be a negative impact to what we¹re trying to do, I believe at the end of the day intelligent people will make the right decision." State Representative Bob Guida says the bill is unlikely to pass as written because it¹s far too sweeping. A study committee is currently looking at the bill, and legislators will likely take it up again the next legislative session. For NHPR news, I¹m Amy Quinton.

Posted by lois at 10:31 PM | Comments (0)

"There are Treating Us Like Prisoners" Students Organzing in NYC

September 20, 2005, NY Times
Students Protest Use of Metal Detectors in Their Bronx School
By JANON FISHER
Complaining that they were being treated like inmates, some 1,500 students from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx marched nearly two miles to the borough's Department of Education offices yesterday to protest the use of metal detectors at the school and not being allowed off campus during lunch.

The three-hour protest snarled traffic on streets between the school, on West Mosholu Parkway, and the department's offices in Fordham Plaza. No one was arrested.

The students' discontent started last week after school officials, citing escalating crime at the school, announced that beginning this week students would have to pass through metal detectors before entering the school, which has an enrollment of about 4,600. The students were also told that they would not be allowed to leave the school during lunch.

Defending the policy at a news conference yesterday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said, "I know it is annoying for some people, but the first thing, the most important thing, is to make sure that all students and people who work in the schools are safe."

A year and a half ago, the Police Department recommended detectors after the department's School Safety Division found that the number of major crimes at DeWitt Clinton was 60 percent higher than the citywide average for schools of the same size. DeWitt Clinton, whose alumni include Neil Simon, James Baldwin and Burt Lancaster, had 13 major crimes during the 2003-4 school year, while the citywide average was 8.3, according to the school safety division.

The detectors have been in place since the beginning of the school year, but yesterday was the first day they were used, causing hourlong delays.

"The line for the girls was 200 yards long," said Fernando Reyes, 17, a senior. "If you got metal in your pockets they make you go to the back of the line."

Another student, Marleesa Lee, 17, a junior, said, "They're treating us like prisoners. " She complained that the school had emphasized security at the expense of academics. "They have money for metal detectors, but not for books."

Saira Asif, 15, a junior, carried a sign that read, "This is school, not a jail."

Administrators met for about an hour with some of the students who had organized the protest and promised to install more metal detectors to speed up the lines. The students then went back to their classes.

The leaders of the protest promised to continue if some of their demands were not met.

"They're going to compromise," said José David, 17, who met with administrators. "It's a process. We'll see what happens over the next couple days."

Even some of the demonstrators admitted that there had been an increase in violence.

Ms. Lee agreed that "last year there were a lot of fights, but they were on the avenue, not in the school."

Thomas J. Lueck contributed reporting for this article.

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September 21, 2005, NY Times
Protest Over Metal Detectors Gains Legs as Students Walk Out
By FERNANDA SANTOS
The first rumors started swirling last spring, in hushed talks in the classroom, amid hallway banter, in lunchtime chats at pizza parlors along Jerome Avenue. Metal detectors were coming to DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.

By the time the summer school term began, students were noticing the newly installed surveillance cameras along DeWitt Clinton's stairwells and the shell of a metal detector perched beyond a side door. "The school is on lockdown," one student wrote on an Internet message board, Sconex.com.

Soon, instead of their usual postings about classmates turned couples, prom king contenders and unbearably hot days of boredom at home, students were complaining about the changes that awaited them - and, eventually, organizing a protest.

Two days ago, all the planning became a reality. For the first time in recent memory, 1,500 New York City high school students skipped classes, marched for two miles and got what they wanted: a sit-down meeting with school administrators, who have agreed to meet with students again and listen to their demands.

How they got to this point is a lesson in modern-day democracy that blends teenage angst and the Internet; a show of force borne out of disagreement and frustration among the students of one of the city's most traditional and toughest high schools.

The Education Department installed the metal detectors because of DeWitt Clinton's high crime rate, one that is 60 percent higher than the citywide average for schools of the same size. But the protest was not violent, said Edward Jackson, 17, a senior and a tight end on the high school's football team.

"It was a good protest, the way protests should be," he said. "We got a chance to show that we care about what goes on in our school. We were able to express our point of view."

The DeWitt Clinton of today, which had 13 major crimes during the 2003-4 school year, counts many celebrities among its graduates. It is the alma mater of the actor Burt Lancaster, the fashion designer Ralph Lauren and the cartoonist Stan Lee. It opened its doors in 1935 as an all-boys' school and stayed that way until the mid-1980's, when it began to enroll girls.

The protest started to gather steam on Sept. 14, six days after the school year began. That morning, at each of the 10 periods of gym class, school safety officers explained to the students how the process would work: Line up, remove metal from your pockets, take off your belt and walk through the metal detector. Book bags would be searched, too, scanned by X-ray machines like those at airports, and, starting Monday, no one would be allowed to leave the building at lunchtime. The safety officers said it would be too hard to screen all the returning students.

It did not sit well with José David, 17, a senior. Last Thursday, he circulated a petition against the lunchtime confinement and the metal detectors.

"In 46 minutes, I got 266 signatures," he said.

On Friday, Mr. David posted a message on the Sconex.com site and invited students to join him in a protest on Monday. The plan was to gather south of the school and stand there, silently, until the end of the first period of classes. At 7 a.m., Mr. David said, he found himself standing alone on the lawn outside the high school while other students queued up around the block, waiting for the security clearance to get in.

"Nobody stood with me, not even my friends at first," Mr. David said. "A lot of people were like, 'Don't even waste your time.' I felt like an idiot."

A cameraman and reporter for a local cable news station arrived (Mr. David had sent them an e-mail message last Friday). But as the time passed and the line into the school grew, clusters of frustrated students decided to join Mr. David. By 11:30 a.m., they numbered 1,500, said Mr. David and other students outside the school yesterday.

"People got so excited that we were all coming together," said Héctor Garcia, 18, a senior. "I honestly didn't think that we would get that many people marching for one cause."

Three hours later, the protesters arrived at the Department of Education's office at Fordham Plaza, two miles away, carrying banners and demanding to be heard. Four students were eventually invited in. They asked that the metal detectors and security cameras be removed, that they be allowed to have lunch outside the school, and that an earlier ban on cellphones be lifted.

None of the new rules were eliminated, but officials agreed to keep listening. Guidance counselors are to meet today to select a team of student representatives who will present the student demands and negotiate with the administration.

But in the meantime, there has been a change: the line to get into the school yesterday morning moved faster because school safety officers used three of the four metal detectors at the school, instead of two, as they did on Monday.

Keith Kalb, a Department of Education spokesman, said that yesterday, "no student was late for any period due to scanning."

He said students and parents had been told earlier that DeWitt Clinton would have metal detectors, but students said that all they knew was that the school would undergo a security upgrade.

"This is just the beginning," said Anthony Stafford, a student. "The protest was just to get the word out that we're serious about being heard."

Janon Fisher contributed reporting for this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/nyregion/21walkout.html?pagewanted=print

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 10:24 PM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2005

CA: Minority Pupils Said Shortchagned

September 15, 2005 latimes.com
Minority Pupils Said Shortchanged
Schools with more blacks and Latinos have less-experienced, lower-paid teachers, a group says its study of salaries shows.

By Seema Mehta, Times Staff Writer

In California's largest school districts, teachers who work in schools with predominantly poor and minority students aren't paid as much as their counterparts at more affluent campuses within the same district, according to a report by an education advocacy group released Wednesday.

The lower levels of spending often mean that less-experienced teachers are instructing the children who have the greatest needs, according to the study, which found the inequity in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Santa Ana, San Bernardino and eight other large school districts.

"African American and Latino and low-income students across the state are being shortchanged big time when it comes to teachers' salaries," said Russlynn Ali, executive director of the Education Trust-West, an advocacy organization in Oakland devoted to closing the gap in achievement of African American and Latino students, versus whites and Asians. "This inequity we exposed today in teacher spending amounts to a perverse subsidy to wealthier schools paid for by poor schools."

However, Santa Ana Supt. Al Mijares said of the study, "I find it to be riddled with errors. It seems to me that someone took a bunch of numbers and made irresponsible comparisons. I don't think whoever wrote this study really had a grasp of the facts and knew how to interpret the data and make accurate findings."

The study compared overall teacher salaries among schools in the same district and routinely found six-figure disparities in total teacher salaries that are largely prompted by union agreements allowing more experienced teachers to choose where they work, the group said. Senior teachers end up going to more affluent and higher-performing schools, leaving newer teachers to work in schools with more needy students.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said he found the findings "disturbing, but not surprising."

"People will tend to gravitate toward newer schools and less-challenging environments — it's human nature," he said. "We need to help change the culture…. This is one more indication that the pernicious achievement gap needs to be addressed."

Some disparities highlighted in the report are striking, such as a comparison of two Los Angeles high schools: Locke, with nearly 100% minority enrollment and 66% of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches — an indicator of poverty — and higher-performing Granada Hills, with about 32% minority enrollment and about 27% eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. The average teacher at Locke is paid about $8,000 less than the average Granada Hills teacher, a discrepancy that if rectified would add nearly $1 million in total teacher spending at Locke.

Deborah Hirsh, chief human resources officer at the Los Angeles Unified School District, said some data in the report are outdated, but agreed with the overall findings.

"Some of the most challenging schools — they have higher turnover and they have a more junior staff," she said. "Urban school districts should do everything possible to get the very best possible teachers where they are needed the most."

Hirsh noted that L.A. Unified had worked to recruit more qualified teachers, and that 91% are now fully credentialed. Additionally, the district has placed "new-teacher coordinators" at several schools to provide staff support, she said.

Other educators called the report flawed and misleading.

"It gives a distorted view," said Linda Hill, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino City Unified School District. "As a teacher who taught in the district for 13 years, I never heard one person say 'I want to teach at a school of mostly white kids.' "

Dean Vogel, secretary-treasurer of the California Teachers Assn., said he found the study's focus on teacher salaries inappropriate. Rather, the spotlight should be on increasing education funding in the state and improving working conditions, he said.

"When we ask teachers what would it take to attract you to [lower-performing] schools, it's very interesting," he said. "You hear the same thing over and over again: smaller class sizes, safe and clean classrooms, adequate supplies and materials."

Information about every school district in the state is available at http://www.hiddengap.org .

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Same district, different salaries

Schools with high percentages of poor and minority students often have less-experienced teachers with lower salaries than schools with students who are more affluent and white, even within the same school district, according to a report released Wednesday. The numbers shown represent the average difference between a teacher's salary in a school with high enrollment of poor or minority students, compared with what a teacher earns at a school that is more affluent or has fewer minorities:

Average annual teacher-salary "gap" in 12 large California districts:

*

HIGH POVERTY LEVEL:

Elementary Middle High school

Elk Grove Unified** $697 $-2,514* $3,042

Fresno Unified 3,160 3,052 1,165

Long Beach Unified 6,942 5,578 4,032

Los Angeles Unified 1,589 1,826 -159*

Oakland Unified 1,996 4,218 143

Sacramento City Unified 5,231 -895* 4,958

San Bernardino City Unif. 5,760 3,451 4,356

San Diego City Schools 3,909 4,087 3,196

San Francisco Unified 2,341 1,872 4,464

San Jose Unified 4,517 5,498 2,255
San Juan Unified** 3,259 5,654 1,893

Santa Ana Unified 3,021 4,517 -3,540*

HIGH MINORITY LEVEL:

Elementary Middle High school

Elk Grove Unified** $1,970 $-5,080* $2,363

Fresno Unified 2,977 3,581 2,178

Long Beach Unified 7,069 4,498 3,907

Los Angeles Unified 2,093 2,246 1,521

Oakland Unified 4,403 1,374 3,702

Sacramento City Unified 6,168 2,866 11,447

San Bernardino City Unif. 6,012 4,540 5,115

San Diego City Schools 5,331 5,114 3,022

San Francisco Unified 5,116 7,264 8,355

San Jose Unified 4,605 5,498 2,111

San Juan Unified** 2,291 4,199 2,580

Santa Ana Unified 2,006 2,557 705

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

LA: DOC Hotline operating for people to locate adults and youth incarcerated in prisons/jails

Good news: there's now a DOC hotline... Sept. 9
ated to 35 different facilities throughout the state. Most are n
Dear folks with loved ones who were OPP or the youth detention centers in the New Orleans area, (Those without a loved one in OPP or youth detention, please forward in any way you think may help reach individuals who have folks locked up in Orleans/Jefferson.)

Adults who were in OPP, Gretna, or other parish jails. About 8000 people locked up in Orleans (including pre-trial, boot camp, DOC prisoners, parish prisoners, etc.) evacuow in DOC prisons (including private contract prisons). Others went to Sheriffs' prisons throughout the state. There was apparently no rhyme or reason on who ended up where. The DOC set up a hotline today for families to call. Folks looking for their people should call (225) 342-3998 or (225) 342-5935 to locate where your loved one is now located. The hotline should be taking calls from 7:00 am - 10:00 pm, but it is not yet fully staffed. The DOC has said that they will only tell family members where their loved one is located, and will not have any other information (release date, case status, etc.). You should be allowed to give a message to your loved one. We do not know whether & how this official hotline will work. If you are having problems with the hotline, please contact me (preferably by email, if you're able). We still have not been able to find out how many of the 6000+ OPP prisoners are accounted for, and are hearing disturbing accounts of the evacuation of OPP. If you have any first or second person accounts, please send/forward here to my email lkung@schr.org mailto:lkung@schr.org.

Youth in detention All youths held in Bridge City Center for Youth (BCCY) are accounted for and are now held at Jetson Correctional Center. Call Jetson at (225) 778-9000 and ask for John Anderson, Michael Gaines, Ricky Wright, or Linda London. Family members should demand that their child be brought to the phone immediately and be allowed to talk to their family. Youths held at the Youth Study Center, Plaquemine Detention Center, St. Bernard Center, Terrebonne Detention Center, and Riverde Detention Center have been routed to placements in other parts of the state. Family members should call Perla at (225) 287-7988 or (225) 328-3607 (cell) or Stacey at (225) 287-7955 to find out where their child is located. Ask Perla for a phone number, call, and demand that they be permitted to speak to their child immediately on the phone. FFLIC has not confirmed that all youths have been accounted for. Adults arrested post-Katrina. The official word is that about 125 felony arrests have been processed through the "Camp Greyhound" jail, and that folks are being sent to Hunt Correctional. Youth arrested post-Katrina We do not yet know where people age 16 or under who were arrested during the general evacuation are being held.
Please help. If your city has a shelter, small or large, please go into the shelter and post the attached informational flyer. Call your local newspaper and ask them to run the hotline information. Distribute these hotline phone numbers in any way you can. The DOC currently does not have any plan for distributing the hotline numbers.

Thanks to everyone.

Lisa Kung

Southern Center for Human Rights

Atlanta, GA 30303

(404) 688-1202 ext. 225

(404) 688-9440 (fax)

(213) 595-5127 (cell)

Posted by lois at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Minority Pupils Said Shortchanged

Schools with more blacks and Latinos have less-experienced, lower-paid teachers, a group says its study of salaries shows.
By Seema Mehta
Times Staff Writer

September 15, 2005

In California's largest school districts, teachers who work in schools with predominantly poor and minority students aren't paid as much as their counterparts at more affluent campuses within the same district, according to a report by an education advocacy group released Wednesday.

The lower levels of spending often mean that less-experienced teachers are instructing the children who have the greatest needs, according to the study, which found the inequity in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Santa Ana, San Bernardino and eight other large school districts.

"African American and Latino and low-income students across the state are being shortchanged big time when it comes to teachers' salaries," said Russlynn Ali, executive director of the Education Trust-West, an advocacy organization in Oakland devoted to closing the gap in achievement of African American and Latino students, versus whites and Asians. "This inequity we exposed today in teacher spending amounts to a perverse subsidy to wealthier schools paid for by poor schools."

However, Santa Ana Supt. Al Mijares said of the study, "I find it to be riddled with errors. It seems to me that someone took a bunch of numbers and made irresponsible comparisons. I don't think whoever wrote this study really had a grasp of the facts and knew how to interpret the data and make accurate findings."

The study compared overall teacher salaries among schools in the same district and routinely found six-figure disparities in total teacher salaries that are largely prompted by union agreements allowing more experienced teachers to choose where they work, the group said. Senior teachers end up going to more affluent and higher-performing schools, leaving newer teachers to work in schools with more needy students.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said he found the findings "disturbing, but not surprising."

"People will tend to gravitate toward newer schools and less-challenging environments — it's human nature," he said. "We need to help change the culture…. This is one more indication that the pernicious achievement gap needs to be addressed."

Some disparities highlighted in the report are striking, such as a comparison of two Los Angeles high schools: Locke, with nearly 100% minority enrollment and 66% of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches — an indicator of poverty — and higher-performing Granada Hills, with about 32% minority enrollment and about 27% eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. The average teacher at Locke is paid about $8,000 less than the average Granada Hills teacher, a discrepancy that if rectified would add nearly $1 million in total teacher spending at Locke.

Deborah Hirsh, chief human resources officer at the Los Angeles Unified School District, said some data in the report are outdated, but agreed with the overall findings.

"Some of the most challenging schools — they have higher turnover and they have a more junior staff," she said. "Urban school districts should do everything possible to get the very best possible teachers where they are needed the most."

Hirsh noted that L.A. Unified had worked to recruit more qualified teachers, and that 91% are now fully credentialed. Additionally, the district has placed "new-teacher coordinators" at several schools to provide staff support, she said.

Other educators called the report flawed and misleading.

"It gives a distorted view," said Linda Hill, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino City Unified School District. "As a teacher who taught in the district for 13 years, I never heard one person say 'I want to teach at a school of mostly white kids.' "

Dean Vogel, secretary-treasurer of the California Teachers Assn., said he found the study's focus on teacher salaries inappropriate. Rather, the spotlight should be on increasing education funding in the state and improving working conditions, he said.

"When we ask teachers what would it take to attract you to [lower-performing] schools, it's very interesting," he said. "You hear the same thing over and over again: smaller class sizes, safe and clean classrooms, adequate supplies and materials."

Information about every school district in the state is available at http://www.hiddengap.org .

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Same district, different salaries

Schools with high percentages of poor and minority students often have less-experienced teachers with lower salaries than schools with students who are more affluent and white, even within the same school district, according to a report released Wednesday. The numbers shown represent the average difference between a teacher's salary in a school with high enrollment of poor or minority students, compared with what a teacher earns at a school that is more affluent or has fewer minorities:

Average annual teacher-salary "gap" in 12 large California districts

HIGH HIGH

POVERTY MINORITY

LEVEL LEVEL

Elementary Middle High school Elementary Middle High school

Elk Grove ETR

Unified** $697 $-2,514* $3,042 $1,970 $-5,080* $2,363

Fresno ETR

Unified 3,160 3,052 1,165 2,977 3,581 2,178

Long Beach ETR

Unified 6,942 5,578 4,032 7,069 4,498 3,907

Los Angeles ETR

Unified 1,589 1,826 -159* 2,093 2,246 1,521

Oakland ETR
Unified 1,996 4,218 143 4,403 1,374 3,702

Sacramento ETR
City Unified 5,231 -895* 4,958 6,168 2,866 11,447

San Bernardino ETR
City Unif. 5,760 3,451 4356 6,012 4,540 5,115

San Diego ETR
City Schools 3,909 4,087 3,196 5,331 5,114 3,022

San Francisco ETR
Unified 2,341 1,872 4,464 5,116 7,264 8,355

San Jose ETR
Unified 4,517 5,498 2,255 4,605 5,498 2,111

San Juan ETR
Unified** 3,259 5,654 1,893 2,291 4,199 2,580

Santa Ana ETR
Unified 3,021 4,517 -3,540* 2,006 2,557 705

http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-salary15sep15,1,23172.story?coll=la-news-learning

Posted by lois at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2005

NY Times: PA Playing Games with Voting Rights

September 14, 2005
Playing Games With Voting Rights
The State of Pennsylvania took a shameful step backward when the State House passed a bill that could potentially deprive tens of thousands of parolees and probationers of the right to vote. Even if the bill fails to be passed by the State Senate - as many people predict - it will inevitably suppress the vote in the poor and mainly minority communities where ex-felons tend to live. People in those communities are already confused about their rights under the law, and many who are actually eligible to vote don't do so out of fear that they may be penalized or turned away at the polls.

The Pennsylvania bill comes at a time when the rest of the country is moving in the opposite direction. Over the last decade, a dozen states have softened or revoked disenfranchisement laws, understanding that voting rights are integral to the mission of reintegrating ex-offenders into the community. Indeed, the American Correctional Association, which represents prison officials, recently called on states everywhere to stop barring ex-offenders from the polls because that practice was inconsistent with the goal of rehabilitation.
The Pennsylvania bill represents an odious attempt by lawmakers to undo a state court ruling overturning a law that required newly released prisoners to wait five years before getting the right to vote. Republican lawmakers who disliked the court ruling liked it even less when community activists in Democratic parts of the state began to inform ex-felons that they now had the right to return to the polls. Legislators are also trying to direct public attention away from a hugely unpopular pay raise that they voted for themselves earlier this year. That makes the attack on voting rights all the more reprehensible.

NYTimes Editorial

Posted by lois at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2005

University of Pennsylvania- Criminal History Does Not Rule Out a Job

Criminal history does not rule out a Penn job
Following arrest of unscreened U. City worker, importance of background checks in dispute
By Andrew Whitney
September 12, 2005
A checkered past won't bar you from holding a job ---- at least not in some Penn departments.

As a result of relatively decentralized hiring practices, University policy only requires that new hires in some divisions undergo a criminal background check as a prerequisite for employment.

The issue has came to the fore in recent weeks after an employee of the University City District -- the non-profit organization charged with cleaning the neighborhood and reducing crime -- was arrested while on the job.

Crew Warrenton was connected with at least three burglaries that occurred over the summer near campus. It turns out that the suspect, had an extensive criminal history -- including a burglary conviction that resulted in a sentence of five to 20 years in prison.
After his Aug. 28 arrest, UCD amended its policies so that all new workers are subject to background checks.

The situation has raised the question of whether employees near college campuses such as Penn's are examined carefully enough.

Several years ago, Penn implemented pre-employment criminal-history checks for certain positions within the University.

Vice President for Human Resources Jack Heuer said he is pleased with the current policies -- which were created in January 2001 in a more limited form.

Heuer said that Penn conducts background checks for all employees in divisions reporting to Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli. These divisions include the Office of Audit and Compliance, the Office of Budget and Management Analysis, Business Services, the Office of the Vice President for Finance, the Office of Investments, the Division of Human Resources, the Division of Public Safety and Information Systems and Computing.

"A negative finding does not [necessarily] preclude employment," Heuer said. "There has to be a job relationship."

If an employee were going to work in a dormitory, for instance, Human Resources would be particularly concerned with theft- or assault-related convictions.

In the event that a check uncovers a conviction, Heuer said, Human Resources, the general counsel and the Office of Audit and Compliance convene to consider the case. There is no blanket rule.

There is only one exception. The job application asks about prior convictions, and if an applicant is found via a background check to have falsified his or her answer, the person will not receive employment.

Human Resources performs hundreds of checks each year, Heuer said -- usually between 350 and 500.

Yet despite the number of checks performed, "We have [never] denied employment based on an adverse finding."

Heuer has a theory as to why this is so: The knowledge that there will be a background check, he believes, dissuades many with checkered pasts from applying in the first place.

Background checks raise some contentious ethical issues, however.
"If somebody has paid their debt to society and there has been a successful period of reentry," Director of the Master's in Criminology Program Laurie Robinson said, "we can't allow this to be a permanent black mark."

At the same time, she acknowledged, data demonstrate that a person who has previously been convicted of a crime is more likely to commit that offense than a person without such a history.

It is a balancing act, she believes, between ensuring student safety and allowing convicts to move on with their lives.

This story was printed from DailyPennsylvanian.com.

Site URL: http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com.

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

New Orleans: This is Our America

"We looked at the pictures of the Superdome and saw a sea of dark faces, and it seems impossible to conceive that a country half a century after Brown v. Board is still so segregated. And we say this is America? Yet shock is hardly in order, when the face of the urban poor is still so overwhelmingly black, when segregation is still a way of life in almost every major city. One in four African-Americans lives in poverty. More than 70 percent of the nation's black students now attend predominantly minority schools, and the prisons into which those classrooms all too often feed are equally unequal."

The Cavalier Daily, Charlottesville, VA
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Opinion
New Orleans: This is our America

Katie Cristol, Cavalier Daily Columnist

The words come in a drumbeat:Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, in a heartbroken opinion editorial, laments that "I've cried a lot of tears the past few days as I watched television -- to see somebody lying dead outside the convention center. This reminded me of Somalia. But this is America."

"This is a shell-shocker. I never saw anything like this in Afghanistan. I can't believe this is America," said U.S. Army Veteran Warren Ezell, voicing a refrain repeated among his brother and sisters in arms, home from the perils of the Middle East to destruction of Katrina.

And average Americans helplessly chant the questions, at an utter loss. "This is America? People have been dying on the streets of New Orleans -- on American soil -- with no food and water?" reads a letter to the editor in the Detroit Free Press.

This is America?

It's become a mantra of sorts in the two weeks since Hurricane Katrina. We shake our heads at the newspapers, the televisions, and, heartbroken, ask if this can be America. People dying for want of food, water and proper medical attention, exploited by those criminals who capitalize on the chaos and sold short by those officials entrusted with alleviating it, do not fit in our national self-image. This is America?

Through the scripted noise of sanctimonious government talking points about people choosing to ignore the warnings to evacuate came the truth that people who desperately wanted to get out couldn't get out. And we say this is America? But this chasm of rich and poor, where socioeconomic standing determines who lives and who dies, is exactly what America looks like on a daily basis. Katrina hit right before payday; in a country where a third of workers survive paycheck to paycheck, how could we have possibly expected efficacy out of an evacuation plan that depended on an individual's access to a car and a full tank of gas?

Census figures released two weeks ago show that poverty rates have increased for the fourth year in a row, up 12.7 percent since 2003, to 37 million Americans living in poverty, and Katrina has merely exposed a truism in modern America: Being poor is a health hazard. Low-wage workers disproportionately represent the uninsured, and Americans at the bottom end of the earnings spectrum are almost five times as likely to be in fair to poor health as towards the middle and top. Poverty doubles the risk of dying from heart disease. Cancer patients without insurance are less likely to receive surgery, chemotherapy or radiation treatment. The dead bodies floating down flooded New Orleans streets are casualties of being poor, and so are hundreds of other Americans each year.

We looked at the pictures of the Superdome and saw a sea of dark faces, and it seems impossible to conceive that a country half a century after Brown v. Board is still so segregated. And we say this is America? Yet shock is hardly in order, when the face of the urban poor is still so overwhelmingly black, when segregation is still a way of life in almost every major city. One in four African-Americans lives in poverty. More than 70 percent of the nation's black students now attend predominantly minority schools, and the prisons into which those classrooms all too often feed are equally unequal.

The newspaper photo captions that call white people leaving decimated storefronts "survivors" and black people doing the same "looters" are merely reflecting the way our criminal justice system looks at race. African-Americans make up 15 percent of drug users and 37 percent of prisoners incarcerated for drug use; how absurd to expect that crimes of hurricane-induced desperation should be judged any differently. Our nation's cities are characterized by patterns of segregation and gentrification. A disaster of this magnitude in New York, Washington, D.C. or Chicago would yield the same demographic group left behind.

It would be unforgivably callous to belittle the suffering of those whose lives were devastated or cut short by Hurricane Katrina. The fact that misery and inequity exists on such a vast scale in this country should not lessen our sympathy for everyone -- regardless of race, class, or privilege
-- affected by this unprecedented tragedy. Yet as we sift through the wreckage of the Gulf Coast, searching for responsibility and accountability in order to prevent this sort of disaster from happening ever again, we'd be well served to remember that this sort of disaster happens every day in miniature.

We have got to stop saying "this is America" as though it's part of the question of how could this happen, because it's not. It's the answer. Yes, this is America laid bare, and the outpouring of grief for what has happened to our nation should not stop at the water's edge.

Katie Cristol's column usually appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at kcristol@cavalierdaily.com.

http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVArticle.asp?ID=24101&pid=1326

Posted by lois at 06:49 PM | Comments (0)

The Disaster at Attica- September 13, 1971

Tuesday September 13, 2005
The Disaster at Attica

In 1971, over half the town of Attica¹s nearly 2,800 residents worked at the facility, with white rural guards watching over a largely black and Latino urban population. The symbiotic relationship was an incubator of resentment and fear. ³You have Harlem and the South Bronx and Bed-Stuy inside the walls, and they¹re guarded by farmers who are scared as hell of them,² said one observer. The inmates had long complained of physical and psychological torture and abhorrent conditions. A state representative who had toured the prison had called it a ³seething cauldron of discontentment that was about the erupt.²

The eruption happened on the morning of September 9, when a group of prisoners resisted returning to their cells and badly beat three guards, stealing their keys. The violence quickly spread as prisoners flooded ³Times Square,² where the four corridors leading to the separate cell bocks intersected. They started freeing other prisoners, beating more guards, and taking hostages.

By early afternoon, all but cellblock D, where the hostages were held, was back under control of the prison authorities. In Cellblock D, a group of Black Muslims swiftly organized themselves to protect the hostages and stop the chaos. Russell George Oswald, the state¹s commissioner of correctional services, showed up and was led into the prison¹s yard by heavily armed prisoners. There he found a semi-functioning social order, and the hostages appeared to be in good condition, though badly shaken. He had been appointed as a reformer after riots in other New York prisons and work stoppages at Attica, but now more than a thousand prisoners regarded him suspiciously from under football helmets, their faces masked in sheets, weapons in their arms.

Over the next four days what unfolded was an exercise in incompetence and miscalculation. Negotiations stalled, brokered by an ever-changing ad hoc mediation team of more than 30 people formed in response to the prisoners¹ demands. A macabre crowd formed around the jail‹hysterical relatives, pushy reporters, and rowdy protesters. Oswald shuttled back and forth, harangued on all sides by those who thought he was compromising too little and those who thought he was compromising too much.

The prisoners¹ main demand was full amnesty for their actions during the takeover. On September 10, William Quinn, one of the beaten officers, who had been ferried to safety during the riot, died. Both sides in the negotiations dug in their heels. Twenty-eight of the prisoners¹ demands were granted, but they had been promised better conditions before. What they feared most was reprisals at the hands of their guards.

At the core of the situation was race. Oswald and the mediators simply couldn¹t get the prisoners to believe they would be safe with their white guards. ³If they¹re shooting white college students, they certainly weren¹t going to spare a group of black convicts,² one inmate said, referring to the gunfire at Kent State University the year before and summing up the racial arithmetic they all lived by.

Observers frantically pled with Oswald for more time, but on the morning of September 13 the hostages appeared on a catwalk with knives at their throats. Without warning, Oswald ordered an attack. Just after 9:30 a.m., a helicopter dropped tear gas, and a barrage of bullets rained on the yard. In less than ten minutes, over two thousand rounds had been fired, and thirty-nine people were dead. One hostage ran out shouting, ³White power!²

The revenge the prisoners feared was meted out over the next four hours as the guards retook the prison, forcing inmates to strip, beating them, and threatening to castrate them. Only a few wounded prisoners were allowed out; the others were treated in an eight-by-ten-foot cell soaked in blood. ³It was the worst thing I¹ve ever seen,² the doctor told the press.

³There¹s always time to die. I don¹t know what the rush was,² a disappointed member of the negotiation team said. Like most of his colleagues, he believed the bloodshed could have been prevented by patience. It was announced that the ten hostages who died had all had their throats cut, but the autopsies revealed only gunshot wounds. They had been killed by their rescuers, who seemed to have fired indiscriminately. The coroner said, ³It was like a turkey shoot.²

³I don¹t know any other employer who could murder their employees and get away with it, except the government,² a former hostage remarked. In 2005, he and his co-workers were awarded $1.3 million in damages.

The immediate result of Attica was a deluge of reform bills and an additional 12 million dollars for the state¹s Department of Correctional Services. But have America¹s prisons really improved since then? With more than 2 million people behind bars, the United States has the world¹s largest prison population. Its rural landscape is dotted with jails, mini-civilizations of largely black and Latino urban populations under the watch of mostly white guards. Inmates have more time outside their cells, better food, and improved sanitary conditions, but underlying tensions remain strong.

One thing can be said for certain: At least there has never yet been another Attica.

Elizabeth D. Hoover is a former editor at American Heritage magazine.
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/web/20050913-attica-prison-hostages
-new_york.shtml>

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

Hurricane Katrina - More information for people who have loved ones incarcerated in LA

Hello Everyone,
I was given this website information to pass along to everyone. It doesn't matter what state you are in if there are people in your area that were evacuated or anyone who has roots to Louisiana this would be an avenue to finding their loved ones. Please all of you make copies of this and take it to the shelters in your area, post it in supermarkets, post offices, wherever you can think of some of these people might go to. If any of you can get the loved ones full name DOC# and where they were housed before the disaster. Get this information to me and I will make the phone calls necessary. I have alot of members that are willing to help with the calling.
Also Louisiana CURE will be having their monthly meeting tomorrow night. Tuesday, September 13, 2005, at the Bishop Tracy Center, in Baton Rouge, La. The address is 1800 Acadian Thrwy. The meeting will be more of a support group meeting that we will be in discussion as to how we as a group can help these families reunite.
We will have a couple of people there to give us general information. This will not be a question and answer type of meeting. These people have been in meetings from the start of all this nightmare and are tired and need to get some rest, But they have agreed to meet with us to relay this information.
Please let anyone you know about this meeting and I will relay the results via e-mail to those that cannot make the meeting.
You are all in my prayers, and I leave you with this thought. God did not make this happen, he allowed it to happen. He is only preparing us for the end times. His prophecy is coming to pass.
In God's Time,
Claudia Boudreaux email: carouselhorse55@bellsouth.net
Executive Director
Louisiana CURE
The message is ready to be sent with the following file or link attachments:
Shortcut to: http://www.lacdlkatrinarelief.blogspot.com/

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

September 12, 2005

Are You Searching for Someone Who Was In Prison When Katrina Hit?

ARE YOU SEARCHING FOR SOMEONE WHO WAS
IN PRISON WHEN KATRINA HIT?

If you had a family member locked up in Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) or Jefferson Parish Detention Center when Katrina hit, call the DOC hotline at (225) 342-3998 or (225) 342-5935 to locate where your loved one is now located. The hotline is taking calls from 7:00am – 10:00pm.

No matter where your family member was locked up when Katrina hit, you can also call these numbers to tell your loved one where you are and how you are doing.

If these numbers are not working or if the person you talked to could not help you, call Lisa at the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR) at (404) 688-1202 ext. 225, or email lkung@schr.org.

For children and youth locked up at Youth Study Center, Plaquemine Detention Center, St. Bernard Detention Center, Terrebone Detention Center, Rivarde Detention Center, or any other youth detention facility, call Perla at (225) 287-7988 or (225) 328-3607 to locate where your child is being housed, and/or to tell your child where you are. Ask Perla for the phone number of the facility where your child is now located, call the facility, and ask to speak to your child.

For parents of children locked up at Bridge City Center for Youth when Katrina hit, call (225) 778-9000 and ask to talk to your child.

If these numbers are out of date or if the person you talked to could not help you, call Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children (FFLIC) for help: Grace (337) 513-7039 or Xochitl (504) 606-8846, or email us at familiescantwait@yahoo.com, xochitl@mediajumpstart.org.

Updated: 09/09/05

Posted by lois at 09:46 PM | Comments (0)

OR: Judge- Mother Can't Be Charged for Passing Meth to Her Fetus

Judge: Mom can’t be charged for passing meth to her fetus
BEND (AP) — A 19-year-old Bend woman charged with passing methamphetamine to her infant through her umbilical cord cannot be prosecuted under Oregon law, a judge has ruled.

“While this court believes the use of methamphetamine by a pregnant woman is a moral outrage against one’s child, this court concludes nevertheless that it is not a crime under Oregon law,” Deschutes County District Court Judge Stephen Tiktin said Thursday, dismissing the charges.

An indictment was filed against Mary Lou Cervantes last year, after her baby tested positive for methamphetamine, according to the testimony of a Bend police detective.
Because health care providers are required by law to report suspected child abuse, hospital workers contacted the state Department of Human Services when the baby was born in September 2004, and employees from that agency, in turn, contacted police.
The young mother was charged with causing a person to ingest a controlled substance, applying a controlled substance to a minor and recklessly endangering another.
Cervantes’ attorney, Karla Nash, asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing that her client had not committed a crime under Oregon law. Oregon statutes, she said, do not sufficiently inform pregnant women who ingest controlled substances that they can be prosecuted if their babies test positive for drugs after birth.
Cervantes’ lawyer said that any drugs that were in her system were taken before the child was born, constituting prenatal exposure — and Oregon law does not provide protection for a fetus in criminal cases.

Posted by lois at 08:30 PM | Comments (0)

SC: Poor Sit, Wait for Justice as Clogged Courts Keep Jails Crowded

By WARREN BOLTON
Associate Editor
DEBTOR’S prisons were abolished long ago, but there are people today who linger in jails across our state and country because they don’t have the money to post bail.

Most people accused of breaking the law are able to come up with money to make bail and remain free while awaiting trial. But many poor people can’t. Instead, they await their trial in jail, sometimes serving out 30-day sentences for minor violations.

“I feel like there are a lot of them that can’t make bail,” said Lexington County Sheriff James Metts, who runs the county jail. He said it’s not because bail is set too high — it’s just too high for them. The inmates and their families don’t have the money or resources.

“We know who a lot of these people are,” he said. “A lot of those would probably be in the magistrate court.”

These are the people who habitually commit minor crimes and can never pay their low bails. “I call them the lifers (who serve) 30 days at a time,” the sheriff said.

This phenomenon is one of a number of contributors to jail overcrowding. Others include the backlog of court cases and increasing numbers of jury trials.

Overcrowding at the Lexington jail was thrust into the spotlight recently when State staff writers Rick Brundrett and John O’Connor wrote about the backlog of cases in the 11th Circuit solicitor’s office. In February 2004, Solicitor Donnie Myers wrote that his office had “roughly 9,000” pending cases. By June’s end, Mr. Myers’ office had more than 8,500 cases pending. Mr. Myers has said property, drug and violent crimes make up the backlog, but he didn’t provide a breakdown of the types or ages of the cases.

The backlog isn’t a surprise. Unfortunately, many counties —particularly the larger ones — have hefty backlogs. There simply aren’t enough courtrooms, judges, prosecutors or public defenders to keep pace. Clogged court systems perpetuate jail overcrowding as the number of inmates awaiting trial climbs.

On Aug. 2, 391 inmates were being held at the Lexington County jail awaiting trial in General Sessions Court. Another 86 were awaiting trial in magistrate’s court. That means 60 percent of the 798 inmates at the jail were awaiting trial.

The 798, which also includes federal prisoners and people serving sentences for Family Court and criminal violations, are well above the jail’s capacity of 682. Mr. Metts has said there have been more than 900. The average stay for those awaiting trial is three years.

Many of those awaiting trial are there because they’re potential threats to the community or possible flight risks. Judges either set those inmates’ bonds high or deny them bail altogether.
“The hard-core criminals, they need to be in jail,” Mr. Metts said. But he said there are inmates in jail who could be diverted elsewhere through alternative programs to ease overcrowding.

He’s right. As counties work to alleviate jail overcrowding, not only should they continue efforts to make sure bonds aren’t too high, but they must determine whether there are categories of people who should be housed elsewhere. For example, it doesn’t make sense to have someone with a drinking problem spend 30 days at a time in jail for public drunkenness. They should be in a place where they can get help instead of taking up jail space.

Sheriff Metts said his department has a policy of not jailing people on minor charges. While someone accused of DUI or domestic violence is taken to jail, a person charged with violating the open container law receives a summons to appear in court.

“We try to cut people loose when we can,” Mr. Metts said. He said the jail population would be lower if municipalities and the Highway Patrol didn’t jail people for minor violations.
Mr. Metts said men serving sentences for failure to pay child support play a role in overcrowding as well. While they’re locked up, the amount they owe continues to climb. “They just can’t get out because they owe too much money,” he said.

Often, the men lose their jobs. When they do get out, they’re in a deep hole with no income. Some end up back in jail.

Many counties, including Lexington and Richland, have spent countless dollars and formed task force after task force in an effort to ease jail overcrowding. They’ve done everything from asking judges to reduce bonds as much as possible to building more jail space. But there is no permanent fix.

Sheriff Metts said tougher legislation, such as the two-strikes law, and tougher sentences help crowd jails. Because many face long sentences, “a lot of people aren’t pleading guilty like they used to,” he said. “They’re holding out for jury trials.”

Lexington has reduced jail population in the past. But every time things seem under control, momentum is lost. The county is working again to assemble a jail committee. Also, County Council members have said they must address jail overcrowding soon.

Because most jail inmates haven’t been convicted, jail staff must be careful in handling them. “They’re still cloaked with that cloak of innocence until proven guilty,” Mr. Metts said. “There are a lot of rights they don’t give up because they’re in jail.”

Those in jail awaiting trial should get priority when it comes to scheduling trials. As it is, cases involving people who are free because they could afford to post bond often get heard more quickly.

The poor remain locked up, forced to wait with those deemed a danger to others and flight risks.
“Nobody seems to care about the ones in jail except for us, who have to,” Mr. Metts said.
Reach Mr. Bolton at (803) 771-8631 or wbolton@thestate.com.
© 2005 The State and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.thestate.com

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

Global Strategies Group Closes Baghdad Airport Over Pay

Security Company Closes Baghdad Airport Over Pay

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr., NY Times
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Saturday, Sept. 10 - The private security company that guards Baghdad International Airport shut down the airport on Friday, saying it had not been paid for the past six months. But the company, Global Strategies Group, announced early Saturday that it had agreed to reopen the airport on Saturday morning after a promise by the Iraqi government to pay half the amount owed.

The shutdown on Friday nearly led to a standoff between American military forces and Iraqi soldiers when United States forces rushed to the airport to prevent Iraqi troops from taking it over, according to Iraqi officials and the security company.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced Saturday morning that at 2 a.m., American and Iraqi forces "commenced an operation to remove all remaining terrorist elements" from the northern insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar, where an American regiment has been fighting for months to suppress an insurgency that controls much of the city. Dr. Jaafari's statement offered no details, but said "the terrorist elements being targeted by this operation are guilty of blatant crimes against its people."

In Washington, President Jalal Talabani said American troops would be needed in Iraq for at least two more years and warned that a premature withdrawal would be a victory for terrorists.

The Baghdad airport is the one dependable way for many reconstruction and security contractors to enter and leave Iraq. Early in the occupation, Westerners could travel by road west to Jordan, north to Turkey and south to Kuwait. But for more than a year those roads have been too dangerous, with insurgents in restive Sunni Arab towns like Mahmudiya, Mosul and Ramadi a deadly threat.

After Global Strategies closed the airport at dawn on Friday, infuriated Iraqi ministry officials dispatched their own troops to secure the airport. But the Iraqis turned back to avoid a confrontation with American soldiers who had already hurried to the airport from their nearby base, according to Iraqi officials and Global Strategies. Global Strategies has offices in London; Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates; and Washington.

Giles Morgan, a spokesman for Global Strategies, said the company was keeping employees on the job at any places critical to the overall security and integrity of the airport. The American military sent troops to guard the airport, he said, specifically because they had been informed that Iraqi forces were on their way to take control.

"The Ministry of Transportation said they were deploying interior ministry personnel to secure the perimeter, and it was on that basis that the U.S. military deployed the quick-reaction forces they have standing by at the airport," he said.

The acting Iraqi transportation minister, Esmat Amer, said the Iraqi government had "ordered the forces to pull back after American forces were deployed at the first checkpoint on the road," according to The Associated Press. "We did not want to create a confrontation."

An American military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, said he could not confirm that information. He called the American deployment at the airport "precautionary" and said he did not know how long it would last. "We have troops there in case Global walks off the job," he said.

A spokesman for the Iraqi Transportation Ministry, Ahmed Abdul Wahab, said that by Friday afternoon the airport had reopened. But Mr. Morgan of Global Strategies said that civilian passenger flights were not operating Friday. Royal Jordanian Airlines, which operates two daily flights into Baghdad from Amman, Jordan, said there were no flights on Friday.

Global Strategies has almost 600 employees - Iraqis, Fijians, Nepalese and Westerners - who guard the airport. Although it has been paying them full salaries, the Iraqi government has failed to pay the security company for work since March, Mr. Morgan said.

The company shut down the airport for 48 hours in June over the nonpayment, he said, but went back on the job after assurances of a resolution. He said the airport could be reopened for civilian passengers by 8 a.m. Saturday.

Among Western security contractors in Baghdad, Global has a good reputation for successfully guarding the airport for more than a year. At the airport, "security incidents have fallen to virtually nil," Global said in a statement on Friday.

Mr. Amer, the transportation ministry official, told The A.P. that the government had been trying to renegotiate the contract for Global Strategies, worth $4.5 million monthly. Mr. Morgan said he could not comment on how much was in dispute, but said that the company would probably not demand the other 50 percent of money owed for the past six months. The money to be paid under the new deal does not fully cover expenses over the past six months on the contract, he said.

In a speech in Washington, Mr. Talabani argued that a withdrawal of forces from Iraq "in the near future could lead to the victory of the terrorists in Iraq and create grave threats to the region."

His plan, he said, was to gradually reduce American forces over two years. But he suggested their presence was needed to ward off not only terrorist groups, but other nations seeking advantage in Iraq.

Mr. Talabani's call for patience closely parallels President Bush's arguments, though Mr. Bush has been careful never to estimate how long an American troop presence may be required.

In Tal Afar, where the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment is continuing a campaign begun in May to oust an entrenched network of insurgents, American and Iraqi soldiers have surrounded the city and 80 percent of the residents have fled, according to The A.P. Two car bombs there on Friday killed five Iraqi soldiers, The A.P. reported, adding that the beheaded and handcuffed bodies of 10 men in civilian clothes were found in the city.

Talks appeared to be continuing Friday evening on possible last-minute changes to Iraq's draft constitution, presented to the National Assembly two weeks ago. An official with the United Nations, which will oversee the printing of five million copies distributed to Iraqis, said he had still not seen a final version. The official said he expected a final version to be submitted at the National Assembly's meeting on Sunday.

Members of the constitutional panel have said there is an agreement to amend one article that had angered some Sunni members. The article, which previously stated only that Iraq is part of the Islamic world, will be revised to say Iraq is part of the Islamic world and the Arabic world.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington for this article,Michael S. Schmidt from New York and Robert F. Worth from Baghdad.

Published: September 10, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/international/middleeast/10iraq.html?th&emc=th

Posted by lois at 08:22 PM | Comments (0)

Women In Charge

Not exactly an accomplishment of the women's movement...or at least no women's movement I belonged to!
Posted on Sat, Sep. 10, 2005
Women in charge
BY ALEX FRIEDRICH
Pioneer Press

Half of the state's male correctional facilities are run by female wardens.

In the world of American prisons, Minnesota is a rarity. A greater share — 50 percent — of the state's prisons are run by women than in all other systems but Washington state's.

Jessica Symmes became the latest in this trend when she was named warden of the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Oak Park Heights in August. She and newly appointed Warden Lynn Dingle of the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater are part of a generation of female leaders who have changed the face of Minnesota corrections.

Their careers started at a time when prisons hired women only for office positions. But after 30 years of working their way through the profession, these women have reached career high points — and exemplify a transformation of the system.

Female prison leaders "have changed the dynamic of Minnesota corrections," said Joan Fabian, state commissioner of corrections. They have an "innate ability to build relationships and consensus in the workplace, which benefits both the staff and offenders."

In a nutshell, Fabian andother corrections officials suggested, men may try to dominate where women emphasize openness and respect.

Understanding their effectiveness means understanding the dynamics of a prison. Many inmates come from dysfunctional families, raised in a climate of yelling and force. Prison machismo often pits a male guard against an inmate bent on standing up to him. In such a charged atmosphere, small problems can explode into showdowns.

"But there's nothing in it for an inmate to punch a woman," said former Corrections Commissioner Frank Wood. An inmate has nothing to prove in that situation, so the female guard can often talk him down and avoid a confrontation.

For example, one weekend morning, a male corrections officer at Oak Park Heights had trouble getting an inmate to return to his cell and change out of the clothes he had slept in. Demands didn't work, and the prisoner dug his heels in.

Symmes, an officer at the time, stepped in. "I said, 'Look — You can't go outside in your jammies,' " she recalled.

Jammies?

"It had probably been a long time since someone had used that word with him," Symmes said.

The inmate laughed, returned to his cell and changed.

"If you treat offenders with some degree of respect," Symmes said, "you'll usually get cooperation."

To grasp how things have changed, consider prisons at the time of former commissioner Wood, a man who became a key figure in the advancement of women in Minnesota corrections.

When Wood entered the system as a guard in 1959, cellblocks were for men only. Women stayed in clerical positions.

But the profession opened up in the late 1970s. Wood, who'd taken over the Stillwater prison, said he was the first warden to put female officers into Minnesota cellblocks.

One reason was to instill "normalcy" in the prison by creating a mixed-gender atmosphere more like what inmates would find on the outside, he said. The other was to give women equal treatment and opportunities for advancement.

"There was a lot of resistance," recalled Wood. "People thought (female guards) were going to be hurt or raped."

But the change worked, and by the time Symmes and Dingle were ready to advance, they said, the going was relatively smooth.

The two wardens — Symmes is 50 and Dingle is 52 — both began as clerical workers in the mid-1970s at the Stillwater prison, where they got to know one another.

Their paths soon went in different directions. Dingle rose through administration while Symmes walked the cellblocks as an Oak Park Heights correctional officer, rising to become a watch lieutenant and then through the administration.

Dingle got her first warden slot in 1995, when she was named to run the Willow River/Moose Lake prison. She took over at Shakopee in 1999 and then at Oak Park Heights in 2001. Symmes replaced her there in August, when Dingle moved to Stillwater.

The two are among five women overseeing prisons within Minnesota's 10-facility system.

They were not the first chiefs at all-male institutions. Wood had appointed several women to warden posts during his term in the mid-1990s, following Connie Roehrich's promotion to warden of the Willow River/Moose Lake facility in 1989. Patt Adair became the first female warden of a high-security male prison in St. Cloud in 1995.

In the end, several female corrections leaders said, inmates have seemed more used to female wardens than those on the outside.

As a warden, Dingle once met Gov. Jesse Ventura, who she recalls joked, "You don't look like a warden."

He was just making small talk in his T-shirt and jeans, she said, "but I wanted to say, 'You don't look like a governor.' "

Female wardens in the Minnesota Correctional Facility system:

Patt Adair, MCF-St. Cloud

Terry Carlson, MCF-Willow River/Moose Lake

Lynn Dingle, MCF-Stillwater

Connie Roehrich, MCF-Faribault

Jessica Symmes, MCF-Oak Park Heights

Alex Friedrich can be reached at afriedrich@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-2109.

© 2005 St. Paul Pioneer Press and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.twincities.com

Posted by lois at 08:18 PM | Comments (0)

September 09, 2005

A Legal System in Shambles

September 9, 2005
NY Times

By PETER APPLEBOMEand JONATHAN D. GLATER

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept. 8 - At Rapides Parish Detention Center 3 in Alexandria, which normally holds convicted felons, there are now 200 new inmates who arrived hot, hungry and exhausted on buses this week after being evacuated from flooded jails in New Orleans.

They have no paperwork indicating whether they are charged with having too much to drink or attempted murder. There is no judge to hear their cases, no courthouse designated to hear them in and no lawyer to represent them. If lawyers can be found, there is no mechanism for paying them. The prisoners have had no contact with their families for days and do not know whether they are alive or dead, if their homes do or do not exist.

"It's like taking a jail and shaking it up in a fruit-basket turnover, so no one has any idea who these people are or why they're here," said Phyllis Mann, one of several local lawyers who were at the detention center until 11 p.m. Wednesday, trying to collect basic information on the inmates. "There is no system of any kind for taking care of these people at this point."

Along with the destruction of homes, neighborhoods and lives, Hurricane Katrina decimated the legal system of the New Orleans region.

More than a third of the state's lawyers have lost their offices, some for good. Most computer records will be saved. Many other records will be lost forever. Some local courthouses have been flooded, imperiling a vast universe of files, records and documents. Court proceedings from divorces to murder trials, to corporate litigation, to custody cases will be indefinitely halted and when proceedings resume lawyers will face prodigious - if not insurmountable - obstacles in finding witnesses and principals and in recovering evidence.

It is an implosion of the legal network not seen since disasters like the Chicago fire of 1871 or the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, events in times so much simpler as to be useless in making much sense of this one.

"There aren't too many catastrophes that have just wiped out entire cities," said Robert Gordon, a professor at Yale Law School who teaches legal history.

The effects on individual lawyers vary, from large firms that have already been able to find space, contact clients and resume working on cases, to individual lawyers who fear they may never be able to put their practices back together. But the storm has left even prominent lawyers wondering whether they will have anything to go back to.

William Rittenberg, former president of the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a lawyer for 35 years in New Orleans, said he had spent the time since the storm living like a gypsy with his wife and two dogs, moving from Columbus, Miss., to Houston to San Antonio. Mr. Rittenberg said that his firm's main client had been the teachers union for the New Orleans schools, but that there is no way to know when or if school will resume this year.

"I really don't know if I have a law practice anymore," he said.

Some logistical issues are being addressed as the courts scramble to find new places to set up shop. The Louisiana Supreme Court is moving its operations from New Orleans to a circuit court in Baton Rouge. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is moving to Houston, and electronic technology has allowed lawyers and courts to save files and documents in a way that would have been impossible in the past.

But the biggest immediate problem is with criminal courts in southern Louisiana, with thousands of detainees awaiting hearings and trials who have been thrust into a legal limbo without courts, trials, or lawyers.

So in Alexandria, a city in central Louisiana, in a scene repeated at prisons and jails throughout the state, Ms. Mann said she and other lawyers had interviewed all 200 inmates, and the criminal defense lawyers' organization was painstakingly trying to compile a registry of prisoners and lawyers. The goal is to put them together, though many of the prisoners do not yet have lawyers and many of the lawyers are scattered across the country.

Ms. Mann said that some prisoners, no doubt, were accused of serious crimes, but that most had been arrested on misdemeanor charges like drunkenness that typically fill local lockups. Most were either awaiting hearings or had not been able to make bond and were awaiting trial, which, for many, had been set for the day the hurricane hit.

"I talked to one guy who was arrested for reading a tarot card without a permit," she said. "These are mostly poor people. They haven't been in contact with their family. They have no word at all. A lot of them are pretty devastated. You had a lot of grown men breaking down and boohooing when you talked to them. The warden said they hadn't had food or water for two or three days. So a lot of them were just grateful to be out of the sun, in an air-conditioned place where they could find food and a shower and a mattress."

In addition to the logistical problems of setting up courts, finding a place to meet, and getting judges, lawyers and evidence, a major question looms about how to pay for the defense of indigent detainees. Louisiana has been in a low-grade crisis for years over the issue, and currently two-thirds of the money to defend those too poor to afford lawyers comes from court costs for traffic and parking offenses.

But with the evacuation of New Orleans and its environs, none of that money will be available.

Legal officials say that without a quick resolution of the problem the state may be forced to apportion cases to public defenders on a level that makes adequate representation impossible or to free prisoners rather than violate their constitutional right to a speedy trial.

More than a week after the storm, not all the news is bad. Some law firms, particularly larger ones with offices outside New Orleans, have reorganized with remarkable speed, saving records electronically, finding new space and housing for lawyers in Baton Rouge Lafayette, Houston, or other areas.

Lawyers at McGlinchey Stafford, a firm of about 200 lawyers based in New Orleans and with offices in Baton Rouge and other cities, were among the lucky ones. The lawyers, support staff and their families left New Orleans in advance of the storm as partners in its Baton Rouge office worked to find them housing and office space, said Rudy Aguilar, managing partner of the firm.

After the storm, Mr. Aguilar said, the firm put two college students whose parents worked for the firm on a plane to Chicago to buy computers for the new office space. The students rented a truck and drove the computers back to Baton Rouge for the new office, which by Labor Day was up and running, he said.

Within days, Rick Stanley of Stanley, Flanagan & Reuter, an 11-lawyer litigation firm had people working in borrowed space in offices in Baton Rouge and Lafayette and at homes in Jackson, Miss., and Amarillo, Tex. On Labor Day, Mr. Stanley signed a lease for new space in Baton Rouge on the hood of his car in a Home Depot parking lot.

"The Monday of the storm," he said, "I was in a state of shock, realizing the whole way of life we knew had passed away, and Tuesday I just said we need to get back up and running, and we did."
And some say, with the perverse logic of the law, Hurricane Katrina - months from now, when people return home - will spawn an unimaginable flood of legal issues. Beth Abramson who is organizing pro bono efforts for the state bar anticipates a torrent of legal issues having to do with ruined property, insurance, environmental issues and countless other concerns.

Michelle Ghetti, a law professor at the Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge said some courts and lawyers moved faster than she could have imagined to shift operations and resume business. On the other hand, the legal issues posed by the storm multiply almost daily.
"Someone just mentioned child molesters," Ms. Ghetti said. "There's a registry in which people are supposed to be notified where they are. But for all we know, they're in shelters or being taken into people's homes.
"New things come up every day. I think this storm is going to produce more legal issues and complications than anyone has ever imagined."
Peter Applebome reported from Baton Rouge for this article and Jonathan D. Glater from New York.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

8,200 Prisoners Evacuated After Katrina

Thursday, September 8, 2005
8,200 prisoners evacuated after Katrina

By T.J. Scott
tjscott@thenewsstar.com
The evacuation of prisoners from southern Louisiana has been com-pleted with the number of prisoners moved ‹ originally estimated at 5,000 ‹ swelling to 8,200. The transfer is probably the largest mass prisoner movement in recent U.S. history.

Approximately 1,200 inmates were transported to facilities in northeastern Louisiana with available bed space, and more are expected. Pam Laborde, spokesperson for the Department of Corrections, catego-rized the situation as temporary. ³This is just to get them out, and get them stabilized,² she said. Inmates are still being shuffled around local institutions to allow fa-cilities to accommodate more. Richland Parish Sheriff Charles McDonald said the Richland Parish Detention Center accepted female inmates from Ouachita Correctional Center on Thursday to allow OCC to make more room for male inmates. Laborde said that it is unlikely the move will require the immediate hiring of additional security or staff in this area. A few parish sheriffs¹ offices have indicated they may eventually have to look at small staff in-creases, but most said that the situation has not exceeded the scope of their existing resources. Warden Johnny Sumlin, of the Union Parish Detention Center, said he does not anticipate taking on more inmates or additional staff. ³It might take a few accommodations, but we can handle it,² he said.

Laborde said sheriff¹s departments, including those in Catahoula, Concordia, East Carroll, Ouachita and Union parishes, have assisted with the evacuations, transportation and housing. Thirty-three officers from the Division of Probation and Parole in Monroe helped with evacuations in the south.
There have been no reports of problems from evacuated inmates by any of the facilities. In fact, most facilities have reported that the behavior of the evacuated inmates has been exemplary ­ matched only by the attitudes and response of existing inmates. Billy McConnell, spokesperson for LaSalle Management, said that they would categorize the evacuated inmates as ³extremely well-behaved² and that his agency has not had problems with them. Inmates at facilities in Claiborne, Concordia, Catahoula, LaSalle, and Ouachita parishes were asked to donate any items they might have to assist the incoming inmate evacuees. McConnell said LaSalle received enough donations from current in-mates to provide for the evacuee inmates. He also reported that a dormitory at one of their facilities received a standing ovation from the evacuated inmates in thanks for all they had done. The first inmates moved were those with health problems and medical needs, followed by female inmates. Among the 2,000 prisoners ex-pected to be evacuated to Angola State Prison, historically an all-male institution, are 500 female inmates. Trusties were moved to another location in the prison. The women will be housed in the trusty dorms and kept separate from the male population. The Reuniting Hearts program at Angola, a program that reunites prisoners with their children, was canceled because of the resulting chaos left by the storm, but the annual Angola Prison Rodeo will still be held in October.

Originally published September 8, 2005

http://www.thenewsstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050908/NEWS/50908002

Posted by lois at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

Gulf Coast Crisis: Legal System?

GULF COAST CRISIS: LEGAL SYSTEM

Can justice be done in midst of a disaster?
Evidence, records likely under water
By Charles Sheehan, Tribune staff reporter

September 9, 2005

Hurricane Katrina uprooted half of all practicing attorneys in Louisiana and upended the state and federal legal system. The storm threatens to disrupt cases ranging from an assault charge against Michael Jackson to the hundreds of suits filed against Merck and Co. for its painkiller Vioxx.

New Orleans is home to the Louisiana Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, and the U.S. District Court and U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, as well as the city's criminal courts building. The evidence room of the Orleans Parish Criminal Courts Building, a massive structure at the corner of Tulane Avenue and Broad Street, is believed to be under water.

As the flooded streets of New Orleans are brought under the control of law enforcement, legal experts are trying to determine how they are going to prosecute cases and how thousands of defendants can get a speedy trial guaranteed to them under the Constitution.

Evidence for an untold number of criminal investigations might be lost, along with records from hundreds of private law firms.

Records from the Court of Appeals may be under water along with a handful of city, district, civil and circuit courts.

Now, legal issues as basic as the constitutional right to a speedy trial are being discussed between judges in broken conversations on cellular phones. At emergency meetings in Baton Rouge, prosecutors and defense attorneys are debating how to alter laws that give judges authority only in stretches of Louisiana where courthouses have been destroyed. The objective is to enable judges to hear cases outside their jurisdictions.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed an executive order this week suspending deadlines for almost all state court proceedings and throwing out statutes of limitations. But legal experts say it will be difficult to get around constitutional issues not covered under the governor's order.

Defendants must be put before a magistrate judge within 72 hours in Louisiana where it is determined if there is probable cause to hold them in custody or require bond. They must be formally arraigned within 60 days.

Of the 8,000 prisoners transferred from flooded prisons, about 4,500 have not had charges filed against them, or they have a trial or an appeal pending, said Julie Cullen, director of the criminal division at the Louisiana attorney general's office.

All of them have the right to a speedy trial, and time is running short.

"There are the short-term concerns and we're dealing with that, but there are long-term ramifications in how we protect constitutional rights of individuals in the midst of a disaster," Cullen said.

Temporary facility

The state has set up a temporary facility near Baton Rouge that has been able to handle the defendants who must go before a magistrate.

Yet the New Orleans infrastructure that supported myriad legal services, private and public, does not exist there, including things as simple as bonding agencies, said David Price, president of the State Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys.

The state Supreme Court, the District Attorneys Association and other legal experts were drafting a series of proposals this week for an executive order that would allow Blanco to override or suspend some statutory requirements, giving the state breathing room, Cullen said.

Those proposals could be on the governor's desk by early next week.

Defense attorneys have played a part in crafting the proposals, but concerns remain for people who were already in jail, or who may have been arrested in the chaotic days after New Orleans' levees broke.

"My concern is that this drags on for a month, two months, who knows," Price said. "People are no longer going to get their day in court, which is their right. At that point, they're just citizens sitting in jail."

Members of the Supreme Court are meeting with district attorneys, the Louisiana attorney general and other experts to determine how to put defendants on trial outside of parishes where they were arrested.

No one is making predictions on when the city will be habitable again, much less when a jury pool could be assembled.

"There is an allowance for a change of venue, but that's typically the defendant asking for that," Price said. "The state could make the argument that it can't get a fair trial in New Orleans because there is no courthouse and no jurors. No one knows."

Federal judges affected

Hurricane Katrina did not limit the disruption to state courts. Laws that prohibit federal judges from doing court business outside their jurisdiction have handcuffed Louisiana's Eastern District judges.

In the face of a catastrophe, Congress acted quickly to remedy that.

The House unanimously passed legislation Wednesday that would allow federal courts to operate outside their jurisdiction in the event of a disaster and the Senate followed suit Thursday.

President Bush could sign the changes into law as early as Friday.

Talk of such legislation began in earnest after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The proposed legislation goes back a couple of years and was intended for use in an emergency," said Dick Carelli, spokesman for the federal courts administrative office in Washington. "Here's your emergency."

Federal judges from Louisiana's Eastern District have scattered to three cities and were awaiting authority from the president.

Hurricane Katrina did much more than destroy courthouses and make jurisdictional boundaries ludicrous.

"There were about 16,000 dues-paying attorneys in Louisiana and half of them were in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes," said Frank Neuner Jr., president of the Louisiana State Bar Association.

Up to eight district attorneys offices were flooded or destroyed, said Pete Adams, president of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association.

"There is going to be a big backlog, that is all that anyone can be sure of," Adams said. "I can't really guess when we will be returning to any sense of normalcy. We're not going to give up, though."

For those in private practice, the return to normalcy may have to be found elsewhere, some attorneys said.

Larry Arcell, 53, an attorney with the New Orleans firm Barker, Boudreaux, Lamy & Foley, left all the records behind in his downtown office. He is tracking down clients using his memory and the Internet in Houston, where he is staying.

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509090158sep09,1,5848767.story?coll=chi-news-hed

csheehan@tribune.com
Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

Posted by lois at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)

Hurricane Katrina---Donations Needed for Justice Activists Struggling to Rebuild

Here are two oranizaitons that can use your donations:
1. Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children (FFLIC).
2. Critical Resistance. The CR Southeast Regional Office in New Orleans was destroyed by the Hurricane. Tamika Middleton, the South East Regional Coordinator for CR, was unfortunately
living in New Orleans, working directly with the CR New Orleans folks. She is safe and out of there now, but the CR office there was destroyed. The that the national staff is attempting to set up another SE office somewhere else.
Donations can be made through the www.criticalresistance.org

Brothers and Sisters Who Want to Help,

Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FFLIC) is a 5 year old grassroots statewide organization dedicated to creating a better life for Louisiana’s youth, who are or at risk of being incarcerated. We have offices in New Orleans and in Lake Charles. We have members across the state of Louisiana.

As you can imagine, our whole world has been turned upside down by the course of events in the last week.

We have members in New Orleans who we cannot find. Some were old and sick, some told us they were staying when we called last Saturday, saying “God will take care of me.” In Louisiana right now, there are hundreds of kids locked up who have no idea if their families are alive or not. The youth from the Orleans Parish Detention Center arrived at Jetson Correctional Center for Youth on Wednesday, covered in sewage, starving, dehydrated, having been stranded for days with no water or food.

We want to find our members and the young people our sister organization works with (the Youth Empowerment Project) and their families. We need to find homes for children who are being released but have no homes to return to. We need to get people out of shelters that are treating them like prisoners and into homes or at least hotel rooms with food and water and some security and hope.

We also want the racist, dehumanizing news coverage to stop. We want members and non-members alike to LIVE and stop being blamed for being abandoned and left to die. We want our friends and families to stop being treated like “insurgents” in some kind of war, cast as “looters,” and “thugs,” and told that the people who are supposed to be saving them have the right to “shoot to kill.”

We want people to understand that, in the words of a friend, a hurricane of poverty and racism hit New Orleans a long time ago. The people you see on national TV today, drowning in contaminated water, starving to death, fighting for survival in a situation where no one meant for them to survive – these people have been living this reality for years. Only now, the world is watching. Only now it is happening faster and being photographed by news media that can get in and out of the city even though food and water cannot. Now, in vivi-color, we are all watching the sick truth of how this city, this state and this nation do not care about poor people of color. Worse than don’t care.

We have to do something. It is not in our organizational “mission” to find people homes and reunite incarcerated kids with their families. Nor is it our mission to go shelter to shelter helping people focus the kind of rage and fury that leads to riots into something powerful, productive, and potentially future-altering. But we have cried and yelled and talked about it for days and today we finally pulled out the butcher block and markers and planned.

So many people have written asking for ways they can help and we’re definitely going to need it. If you want to help FFLIC help our families survive the ineptitude and racism has left thousands to die, here are some things you can
do:

1) Donate: Send a check to the “FFLIC Hurricane Relief Fund” to 920 Platt Street, Sulphur, Louisiana, 70663.

2) Volunteer: Come and help us walk through the shelters, find people, help folks apply for FEMA assistance, figure out what needs they have, match folks up with other members willing to take people in. We especially need Black folks to help us as the racial divide between relief workers and evacuees is stark. Email us ASAP if you would like to help with this work.

3) Send supplies for the effort: We don’t need tee-shirts and underwear. We need things like cars, computers, a copy machine, a fax machine. All of these items are going to what we need to have in place to better help our families. To find out exactly what we need, call us at the number below.

4) Organize others to send donations, supplies or come down here and help.

5) If you are of modest means and you can’t volunteer your time, do what you believe gives us strength. Pray, write op-eds or letters to the editor, organize your block, write FEMA and tell them what you think, protest local racist media coverage

We can’t promise you a 501(c) (3) letter to make your donation tax deductible. We are trying are hardest to get this in place soon but its not our priority. We can promise you that every dime will be spent helping the beautiful people of New Orleans who have lost everything they have, survive and resist.

Do not hesitate to email us with questions. PLEASE email all 4 addresses
however:
kdhiggs@hotmail.com, familiescantwait@yahoo.com, deenv_2000@yahoo.com, xochitl@mediajumpstart.org

With hope, rage, and heavy hearts,

FFLIC staff
Gina Womack, Xochitl Bervera, Grace Bauer and Kori Higgs

--
Xochitl Bervera
Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children
1600 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd
New Orleans, LA 70113
(504) 522-5437 x248 (w)
(504) 606-8846 (c)

Posted by lois at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2005

US Conference of Mayors Adopts Resolution calling for Counting Prisoners Where they are Sentenced

2005 ADOPTED RESOLUTIONS
URBAN ECONOMY POLICY, US Conference of Mayors

BRINGING FAIRNESS AND RELEVANCE TO CENSUS BUREAU COUNTS OF INCARCERATED AMERICANS
WHEREAS, Federal funds are appropriated most fairly when apportioned according to citizen residences; and

WHEREAS, people under correctional commitments to prisons are residing in those facilities only for time limited sentences and 95% will return to their home communities upon release; and

WHEREAS, the families of inmates remain in residence in the home community of the inmate and oftentimes require support and assistance in that community; and

WHEREAS, the Census Bureau currently counts residency of prison inmates based on the location of the inmate’s prison; and

WHEREAS, federal funding, when appropriated to state and local areas based on population, follows the inmate to the prison community’s location; and

WHEREAS, this formula draws a disproportionate amount of funding to prison community locations, while restricting the amount of funds that go to the actual home communities of the inmates; and

WHEREAS, Congress and the Administration are structuring a significant effort to assist in the safe and successful return of inmates leaving prison; and

WHEREAS, it is absolutely essential that funding be available to operate reentry programs in the home communities of people returning from prison,

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that The U.S. Conference of Mayors urges Congress to bring fairness and relevancy to the appropriation of federal funds by adopting the necessary legislation to require the Census Bureau to count inmates based on the community that they reside in at the time of sentencing and not on the location of the inmate’s prison.

©2005 The U.S. Conference of Mayors
Tom Cochran, Executive Director
1620 Eye Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006
Tel. 202.293.7330 ~ Fax 202.293.2352
info@usmayors.org

Posted by lois at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)

US: The Profit of Prison

The Economist
August 1st, 2005

JOHN FERGUSON has done time in prison. He well remembers the days he spent guarding inmates and mopping floors at a women's jail in New Mexico. Four years ago, he swapped his office for the prison floor to take part in a television series that sent corporate executives to work on the front-lines of their companies. The experience was educational: "Your feet got tired because you're walking around on concrete all the time," he says, with his slight Tennessee twang. "I learned that it's a business that could be very mundane but you can't ever relax-you've got some folks that are spending every working hour trying to figure out how to do mischief".

As head of America's largest private prison operator, the Nashville-based Corrections Corp of America (CCA), Mr Ferguson is responsible for 63,000 inmates in 19 states and Washington, DC-and his potential market is growing all the time. Inmate numbers in America rose by 25% between 1996 and 2004. America now has 726 prison inmates for every 100,000 people, compared with 142 in England, 91 in France and 58 in Japan. With public prisons notoriously overstretched, private prisons have been quietly picking up the slack since the Reagan years.

It is a business prone to nasty surprises. CCA, which had confidently built prisons during the 1990s boom years, was saddled with debt and empty beds after stabbings and escapes at one of its Ohio prisons caused a slump in business. Mr Ferguson took the reins in 2000 and salvaged the firm, but there have still been plenty of bumps. In the past year CCA has weathered riots in Oklahoma (one death) and Kentucky as well as a hostage-taking in Florida-to say nothing of lawsuits following a riot in Colorado in July 2004. "Inmates are litigious," laments Mr Ferguson.

All these problems also afflict state-run prisons. But they are a particular threat to CCA, because many people still find the very idea of a privately run prison faintly immoral. Critics complain that a private company will inevitably treat prisoners simply as inventory. But Mr Ferguson responds that prisons-like any other public service-can be improved by competition and flexibility. For states with a sudden capacity problem, CCA can supply "just-in-time" beds. The company can also build prisons faster than the government-15 months for CCA compared with up to five years for states and eight for the federal government.

The private sector can offer other innovations. After his spell on the front-line in New Mexico, Mr Ferguson came away appalled by the number of hours prison guards spend documenting their movements in a logbook; he is trying to switch to an electronic system. But his real trump card is cost. CCA and its competitors can almost always undercut the state-Florida even obliges the private sector to operate 7% more cheaply than the public sector. The savings owe much to lower staffing costs, and economies of scale. "The public sector has a tendency not to eliminate positions when they're not needed," says Mr Ferguson, who spent four years as Tennessee's finance commissioner.

Only a handful of CCA facilities has unions, which gives the company a cost advantage since the public-sector prisons tend to have powerful unions. Critics of private prisons say that the CCA method poses a security risk, since workers with fewer benefits and lower pay will be less vigilant. But Mr Ferguson has a ready retort: "If that is the case, Southwest Airlines would be having a crash every month," he says, pointing out that his prisons are all regulated and inspected by the government.

If Mr Ferguson can see off his critics, there is plenty of scope for growth. Although CCA's latest quarterly earnings showed no advance from the same period last year-the result of a regrettable shortage of inmates at some facilities-Mr Ferguson expects big new contracts with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The bureau is already CCA's largest customer, and its projections put it about 30,000 beds short by 2010, according to CCA. Many of the detainees sent to private prisons are illegal immigrants; indeed, a surge in criminal aliens needing beds helped save CCA five years ago. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, another federal bureau, could bring more business if Congress funds the intelligence-reform bill passed last in late 2004.

Mr Ferguson rules out going abroad for new business-one of his first acts upon taking charge five years ago was to ditch CCA's international ventures. A much more promising source of potential business is state governments. Private prisons have footholds in about three-quarters of the 50 states. They are strongest in the South and west-but northern states are beginning to open up as well. Vermont, for example, last year asked CCA to house 700 of its inmates, mostly in a Kentucky facility.

Golden opportunities

The big prize would be California. So far the Golden State has mostly run its own prisons. But the badly overcrowded public system has huge problems-a federal judge recently mandated reforms to the provision of health care for Californian inmates, after denouncing instances of "outright depravity". Private operators are closely watching Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's prison policies and union-busting activities. CCA has no contracts yet in California, although in July the GEO Group, CCA's largest rival, was contracted to operate a 200-bed minimum-security facility in California.

Privatisation of existing prisons gives plenty of scope for CCA to expand, without any further increase in the United States' already exceptional level of incarceration. Mr Ferguson fends off suggestions that he longs for a further surge in prisoner numbers, or lobbies for more lock-em-up laws. "It's kind of like saying a heart surgeon's out advocating to reduce anti-smoking programs so they'll have more hearts to work on-we just don't do that." In any case, the trend towards locking up felons for ever longer periods is already firmly established.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12602

Posted by lois at 10:59 PM | Comments (0)

Poverty Rate increases for 4th year

washingtonpost.com
The Lagging Poor

Tuesday, September 6, 2005; A24
THE POVERTY level edged up last year, to 12.7 percent -- the fourth straight annual increase. Overall median income remained flat at $44,389, down 3.8 percent from its peak in 1999. This is a robust economic recovery?

The Census Bureau's annual report on income, poverty and health insurance in the United States is not alarming -- but neither is it cheering, or even reassuring. Rather, the numbers underscore the lagging and uneven nature of the economic recovery since the 2001 recession. According to the new data, 4 million more people were living in poverty in 2004 than in 2001, and 4.6 million more people lacked health insurance.

Administration officials counsel patience, pointing to the downturn of the 1990s, when it took several years for the poverty rate to start to fall. "The last, lonely trailing indicator of the business cycle," Commerce Department official Elizabeth Anderson said of the poverty rate.

This has about it more than a whiff of wishful thinking. For one thing, the increase in poverty between 2003 and 2004 is in fact out of the ordinary; such a rise hasn't happened between the second and third years of an economic recovery since the federal government began collecting poverty data in 1960. For another, the poverty rate may be a lagging indicator, but in this case it's not lonely: See, for example, the median income of working-age households, which declined 1.2 percent.

Another ominous signal involves health insurance coverage. Although the percentage of people with coverage remained unchanged from 2003 to 2004, that masked a shift from employer-provided insurance to government coverage. The percentage of people with employer-based health insurance fell for the fourth year in a row. Most of this slack has been taken up by Medicaid, the shared federal-state health program for the poor and disabled. But with state budgets under increasing strain from Medicaid costs and with Congress poised to make cuts in the program, it's not at all certain that states will be willing or able to maintain coverage for working Americans hovering at the edge of poverty.

In the wake of this data and the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was wise to postpone this week's planned vote to repeal the estate tax. Lawmakers need to remember in the weeks to come that this is an economic recovery that continues to leave too many Americans behind.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Posted by lois at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)

September 06, 2005

New Orleans: With Jails Flooded, Bus Station Fills the Void

The New York Times
September 7, 2005
With Jails Flooded, Bus Station Fills the Void

By ALEX BERENSON
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 6 - This city has no gas stations, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no hospitals and not very many people.

But it does have a jail.

With all the major jails in and around New Orleans closed because of
flooding, the temporary lockup opened Monday in the Greyhound Bus Station on the edge of downtown.

The jail will house people accused of looting and others arrested in New Orleans and surrounding cities, holding them until they can be sent to a state-run correctional center in St. Gabriel, about 70 miles northwest. There they will be arraigned and have an opportunity to make bail.

"This is a real start to rebuilding this city, this jail," said Burl Cain, the warden of Angola, the giant state prison in eastern Louisiana. State and local authorities worked closely to create the Greyhound jail. The Orleans Parish sheriff, Marlin Gusman, commands the lockup, but the staff is largely made up of state guards on loan from Angola, as well as a volunteers from Kentucky.

In addition to armed guards from the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections and the Orleans Parish sheriff's office, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the Drug Enforcement Administration were at the jail, as well as two assistant United States attorneys, said Jim Letten, the United States
attorney for New Orleans, who has set up an office in Baton Rouge.

The main jail in Orleans Parish, a county-size area that encompasses the city of New Orleans, is still under several feet of water. The 6,000 prisoners who filled various state and local jails in the parish at the time of Hurricane Katrina have all been moved outside the city, Sheriff Gusman said. The temporary jail fills a void by giving the police a place to take the people they arrest, he said.

"We have to make it possible for the police to do their job," Sheriff Gusman said. "You cannot do a thing unless you feel safe."

Inside, the jail looks a little like a jail and a lot like a bus station. Prisoners are photographed and fingerprinted, then transferred to holding pens topped with razor wire in the lot behind the terminal. Behind the ticket counter, medics wait to handle injuries to prisoners or guards. A small handwritten sign proclaims, "Welcome to the New Angola South."

David R. Dugas, the United States attorney for Baton Rouge, said the
temporary jail in New Orleans was being powered by "a generator large enough to run Angola prison."

On Monday, the jail was as hot and sticky as the rest of New Orleans,
although fans kept up a steady breeze as inmates were processed by employees, including Jonalyn Cain, Mr. Cain's wife. Wearing a bulletproof vest, Ms. Cain said she would have rather been somewhere else but wanted to be near her husband.

The temporary jail has 16 holding pens, each with room for about 40 prisoners and watched by a handful of shotgun-wielding guards. On Monday night, the pens were mostly empty, with fewer than 100 prisoners divided into five pens, three for women and two for men. Local authorities said Tuesday that 150 people had been arrested in recent days. Some could face federal charges.

The New Orleans police are still concentrating on rescue missions and
patrolling the streets and are making few arrests, so most of the prisoners came from Jefferson Parish, just west of New Orleans. They had been arrested mainly for various looting-related offenses, Sheriff Gusman said. James Thomas, of Metairie, a city just west of New Orleans, said he had been brought in after taking towels from a store.

"All my towels - they was used up," Mr. Thomas said. "I was hoping to get some towels to get a bath with." Another man acknowledged that he had stolen a car and protested that government officials had encouraged residents to evacuate by any means necessary.

In general, the prisoners said they were satisfied with the conditions, but they said they were upset that they could not make phone calls. Several asked a reporter to notify their parents that they were alive and said they did not know how they would rebuild their lives once released.

"I lost everything," said one prisoner, Alphonse Douglas. "My house,
everything."

Sewell Chan contributed reporting from Baton Rouge for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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

NYFD Hiring People with Minor Drug Convictions

September 2, 2005

People with minor alcohol or other drug convictions are being hired as firefighters in New York City -- a practice defended by officials with the New York Fire Department (NYFD).

The New York Times reported Sept. 2 that the fire department has adopted a policy of hiring firefighters with certain minor offenses in their past as long as they agree to random substance-abuse testing after they are hired. NYFD officials said the "stipulation agreements" allow the department to hire otherwise qualified applicants who may have made mistakes during their youth.

Moreover, they said, the agreements allow the department to more closely monitor firefighters who may be vulnerable to addiction issues; those who fail drug tests also can be fired.

"You don't want to out-of-hand reject someone for what might have been a youthful indiscretion," said NYFD spokesman Francis X. Gribbon, who said the number of firefighters hired on condition that they sign the stipulation agreements has risen 50 percent over the last three years. Of the 3,200 firefighters hired since 2002, 165 have signed the agreements.

Some critics questioned the need for the policy. "The Fire Department is one of the most desirable positions in city government," said Glenn Corbett, an assistant professor of fire science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "I can't see why they would want to bend over backwards to bring in someone who has problems when they have other candidates who are well qualified."

Both the NYFD and the New York Police Department bar convicted felons from being hired, but even the police department will consider hiring applicants with misdemeanor records.
VISIT THIS PAGE ONLINE for accompanying web links and resources: http://www.jointogether.org/y/0,2521,578180,00.html
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Posted by lois at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)

MN: Tab coming due on state sentencing policies

Posted on Tue, Sep. 06, 2005

Prisons, hospitals seek $140 million for construction
BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press

After spending nearly two decades of getting tougher on crime, Minnesota lawmakers will be asked next year to pay a steep price for their policy changes.

The state departments of Corrections and Human Services are seeking about $140 million to expand prisons and build state hospital lockups for sex offenders. That would fund the largest construction program for those agencies in more than 10 years.

"It just knocks me over," Senate Capital Investment Committee Chairman Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon, said of the prison and state hospital budget requests.

The two departments are asking for more prison cells and secure hospital rooms to house expected increases in inmates and sex offenders who are committed to mental institutions after serving prison sentences.

Last year, Minnesota had the fastest-growing prison population of any state. It shot up 13 percent from 2003, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Since 1999, the state's prison population has increased about 45 percent, from 5,766 inmates to 8,333 in 2004, said Dennis Benson, deputy state corrections commissioner. The department projects the number of inmates will grow an additional 33 percent, to 11,049, by 2010.

Asked what's driving prison population growth, Benson replied: "Probably more than anything, about 16 years of sentencing policy changes on the part of the Minnesota Legislature to increase sentences."

Prison terms for sex crimes and drug crimes were lengthened dramatically, Benson said. The "methamphetamine epidemic" has produced a stunning increase in prisoners.

More crimes are being solved by new DNA testing and other techniques, he said. Prosecutors are more aggressive, society is less tolerant of crime and "Minnesota is a bigger place."

Another factor is a dramatic increase in the number of people returning to prison after being released, said Sen. Jane Ranum, DFL-Minneapolis, chairwoman of a public safety budget committee. The recidivism rate is rising in part because of what she characterized as inadequate state funding for supervision of released inmates, treatment for chemical dependency and mental illness, and crime-prevention programs.

But the underlying reason more prison space is needed is that state officials have decided to lock up more criminals, said House Public Safety Committee Chairman Steve Smith, R-Mound, the chief sponsor of a 2005 law that increases sentences for sex offenders and other violent criminals. He predicted Minnesotans would "rise to the occasion" to provide more space and better security at prisons for inmates, staff and visitors.

Sen. Linda Berglin, DFL-Minneapolis, says more convicted sex offenders are being committed to state hospitals because of fallout from "the Rodriguez case." She was referring to Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., a registered sex offender charged with kidnapping and murdering Dru Sjodin in late 2003, after he was released from prison.

"That's the most expensive mistake state government has made in some time," said Berglin, chairwoman of the budget committee that oversees state hospitals.

Since then, state corrections officials, county attorneys and judges have been sending more sex offenders to hospitals after they are released from prison. Before that policy change, state hospitals were admitting about 18 sex offenders a year. Now, they are taking in about 60 new sex offenders each year, and that number might grow, said Wes Kooistra, assistant state human services commissioner.

The Human Services Department projects the hospitals' sex-offender population will increase from the current 306 patients to 500 by 2011. The hospitals need more secure facilities to house those patients.

Here are the biggest capital budget requests by the Corrections and Human Services departments. Both Benson and Kooistra cautioned that these are preliminary figures that could change this fall:

• $41.5 million to expand the Faribault state prison, increasing its capacity from 1,941 inmates to 2,286. That would be on top of an $85 million expansion there approved this spring.

• $18.6 million to build a new 150-bed segregation unit at Stillwater prison to house extremely high-risk, violent and dangerous inmates.

• $8.8 million for a 92-bed expansion at the Shakopee women's prison.

• $44 million to build a 150-bed secure facility for sex offenders and dangerous mentally ill patients at the St. Peter state hospital.

• $25 million to provide 50 additional beds for the sex-offender treatment program at Moose Lake state hospital.

Both Langseth and Rep. Dan Dorman, R-Albert Lea, the chairman of the House Capital Investment Committee, said lawmakers will be hard-pressed to fund all those projects. They estimated the 2006 Legislature would be able to finance $700 million to $900 million in construction projects. That would fund less than one-third of the $2.5 billion to $3 billion in building requests they expect.

With Corrections and Human Services seeking a "far bigger share" of the capital budget, Langseth said, "that will put a squeeze on other, very good investments," such as college and university buildings, parks and trails, water-conservation projects, and mass transit.

Nonetheless, he expects heavy political pressure for the prison and hospital projects. "If you don't fund them, you're called soft on crime," he said. "Each party thinks it has to one-up the other on being tough on crime."

It's not just politics, Dorman said. Lawmakers have an obligation to house the people put away by their policy changes. "If we're going to get tough on crime, somebody's got to be responsible at the other end for providing places to lock more people up," he said.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty has not examined those budget requests or decided which projects to recommend to the Legislature, said Brian McClung, the governor's press secretary. Pawlenty will propose a capital budget by Jan. 15.

Though Minnesota has the fastest-growing prison population in the nation, it still ranks second-to-last in percentage of its population incarcerated.

Last year, the state locked up 169 inmates per 100,000 in population, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Only Maine, with 149 inmates per 100,000 residents, had a lower incarceration rate. The average rate for all states was 433 per 100,000 in population.

The recent surge in Minnesota's population does not signal a trend toward becoming more like other states, Smith said. The state will continue to divert the vast majority of offenders to supervision by local probation officers.

There's one exception to that rule, he said. "This year, we made a 180-degree turn on our policy toward sex offenders."

While Minnesota's crime-related construction costs are going up, the state remains the envy of criminal justice officials across the nation for holding down its incarceration rate, said Scott Thornsley, a criminologist at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania and an expert on prison population trends.

"Minnesota is probably, and unfortunately, catching up to the rest of the nation," Thornsley said. "But your state officials shouldn't be criticized for that. They've done an unbelievable job in keeping your state inmate population as low as it is. Other states are still looking at the kinds of diversionary programs that Minnesota has already done."

© 2005 St. Paul Pioneer Press and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.twincities.com

Posted by lois at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)

Alternatives to Red Cross Giving for Hurricane Katrina

This site has a very long and interesting list of people/organizations doing Hurricane Relief/Rebuilding, etc.

including Friends and Families of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children.
http://www.sparkplugfoundation.org/katrinarelief.html

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Tides Foundation has a Rapid Response Disaster Relief Fund that specializes in relief projects that serve those most in need and most forgotten or disenfranchised from traditional relief organizations:

http://www.tidesfoundation.org/RR_0905.cfm

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New Orleans Network : a way for people to connect with and support the New Orleans evacuees in their area, It will

also be a way for New Orleans refugees to find each other in their exile communities and organize to take back their city and make sure that it is rebuilt in ways that serve ALL New Orleans residents. There will be exile community bulletin boards, discussion boards, resource listings, advocacy how-to sheets, events calendars, etc. They are seeking donations.

http://www.NewOrleansNetwork.org

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Neighborhood Story Project:

They'll spend the next 4 months working with evacuee high school students to document the stories of

people living in the Astrodome. They are in the process of reprinting the original Neighborhood Story Project Books at a print shop in Houston. The original books, each written by a high school student about their neighborhood in New Orleans, were the best-selling books in New Orleans over the summer, behind Harry Potter 6. All remaining copies were destroyed in the flooding.
Anyone who wants to help get their local independent bookstore to take a box of these incredible books to sell as a way to raise money for relief and recovery, and as a way to get out the amazing stories of the people and neighborhoods of New Orleans, please contact: jamieschweser@yahoo.com

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

September 05, 2005

In Manhattan the poor earn 2 cents for each dollar of the rich

September 4, 2005, NY Times
In Manhattan
By SAM ROBERTS
Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue is only about 60 blocks from the Wagner Houses in East Harlem, but they might as well be light years apart. They epitomize the highest- and lowest-earning census tracts in Manhattan, where the disparity between rich and poor is now greater than in any other county in the country.

That finding, in an analysis conducted for The New York Times, dovetails with other new regional economic research, which identifies the Bronx as the poorest urban county in the country and suggests that the middle class in New York State is being depleted.

The top fifth of earners in Manhattan now make 52 times what the lowest fifth make - $365,826 compared with $7,047 - which is roughly comparable to the income disparity in Namibia, according to the Times analysis of 2000 census data. Put another way, for every dollar made by households in the top fifth of Manhattan earners, households in the bottom fifth made about 2 cents.

That represents a substantial widening of the income gap from previous years. In 1980, the top fifth of earners made 21 times what the bottom fifth made in Manhattan, which ranked 17th among the nation's counties in income disparity.

By 1990, Manhattan ranked second behind Kalawao County, Hawaii, a former leper colony with which it had little in common except for that signature grove of palm trees at the World Financial Center. The rich in Manhattan made 32 times the average of the poor then, or $174,486 versus $5,435.

The analysis was conducted for The Times by Dr. Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College of the City University of New York.

The growing disparity in Manhattan helped drive New York from 11th among cities with the biggest income disparities in 1980 to fifth in 1990 and fourth in 2000, behind Atlanta; Berkeley, Calif.; and Washington, according to the analysis. "The gains are all going to the top," Dr. Beveridge said. "It's a massive class disparity."

Last week, the Census Bureau reported that even as the economy grew around the nation, incomes stagnated and poverty rates rose. The Bronx, with a poverty rate of 30.6 percent, was outranked only by three border counties in Texas where living costs are lower.

Swollen, in part, by the earnings of commuters who work in New York City, median household income among the states was highest in New Jersey ($61,359) and Connecticut ($60,528). It was $47,349 in New York State, also above the national median.

A separate analysis, being released this weekend by the Fiscal Policy Institute in Albany, warns that the middle class is being depleted while the rich are getting richer and the poor are growing in number and barely getting by - more so in New York State and particularly upstate.

The loss of good-paying jobs, especially in manufacturing, "has meant that the 'hollowing out' of the middle of the income distribution continued at a rapid pace," the institute, a union-backed research group, concluded. It said the number of families earning between $35,000 and $150,000 declined by 50,000 from 2000 to 2003 while the number that earned above $150,000 and below $35,000 increased.

Dr. Mark Levitan, senior policy analyst for the Community Service Society, a liberal research and advocacy group, said he did not believe the city's economy was "uniquely weak," but said an increase in the poverty rate from 19 percent to 20.3 percent, as measured by the census's new American Community Survey, "is fundamentally a story about stagnant wages."

Edward Wolff, a New York University economist, attributed the growing disparity to ballooning Wall Street incomes and declining wages for lower skilled workers. "Though these forces are at work across the country," he said, "the heavy preponderance of corporate headquarters, the financial sector and the legal sector in New York City has made the increase in the ratio of income between the top and bottom quintile more extreme than in other parts of the country."

Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said the income gap, which in Manhattan has historically been large, can endure indefinitely.

"The elites, the top sliver of the income scale, can drive consumption and investment forward while the bottom half slogs along," he said. "If inequality had embedded within it its own seeds of destruction, it would implode sooner than later. But that doesn't appear to be the case. Many who have fallen behind have a skewed notion of their prospects for upward mobility."

Manhattan, he said, is "an amplified microcosm" of conditions elsewhere in the country.

The income gap in Manhattan was far wider than in any other county. In tiny Clay County, Georgia, which has only 1,355 households and ranked second, the rich, on average, made about 38 times what the poor made.

Compared with the poorest Manhattanites, those in the top fifth are disproportionately male, non-Hispanic white and married. Roughly equal proportions among rich and poor are immigrants, are employed by private profit-making companies and work in sales.

The lowest-income census tract in the city is a triangular patch of East Harlem east of First Avenue and north of East 119th Street, where, despite a hint of gentrification in a renovated brownstone or two, the neighborhood is dominated by the mammoth though generally well-tended public housing project called the Wagner Houses. The median household income there is $9,320, most of the residents are black or Hispanic and do not have high school degrees, 56 percent live below the poverty level and about one in 10 are foreign born.

Darryl Powell, a 43-year-old automobile mechanic, said that most were struggling just to get by. "They're trying to keep a roof over their head," he said. "People are trying to hold onto what they've got."

Sheila Estep said she was facing eviction because she was working as a full-time mother raising three sons rather than returning to her earlier jobs as an electrician, plumber and cosmetologist. "If I fail at my job, they'll fail at theirs," she said.

Sharon Hammond, who sells cosmetics, said she and other tenants wished their neighborhood were better and that she had a working stove instead of a temporary hotplate in her apartment, but added: "Everybody can't be rich."

Manhattan's highest-income census tract is a six-square-block rectangle bounded by Fifth and Park Avenues and East 56th and 59th Streets. The median household income in this mostly commercial section of East Midtown is $188,697 (average family income is $875,267); none of the residents identified themselves as black; nearly one-third have advanced degrees and more than one in three are foreign born. Even there, though, the poverty rate is 16 percent.

"The income gap, while supposedly increasing, seems to be a natural phenomenon," said the developer Donald J. Trump, who lives in Trump Tower. "Times have been good, but times have been good for many people and many classes of people. I think there is a very large middle class - but not in this section, by the way."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 10:30 PM | Comments (0)

September 04, 2005

Read this before giving to the Red Cross

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2005/010905redcross.htm
Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red Cross
Establishment charities have criminal history of stealing disaster funds

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones | Updated September 3 2005

As the aftermath of hurricane Katrina continues to wreak mayhem and havoc amid reports of mass looting, shooting at rescue helicopters, rapes and murders, establishment media organs are promoting the Red Cross as a worthy organization to give donations to.

The biggest website in the world, Yahoo.com, displays a Red Cross donation link prominently on its front page.

Every time there is a major catastrophe the Red Cross and similar organizations like United Way are given all the media attention while other charities are left in the shadows. This is not to say that the vast majority of Red Cross workers are not decent people who simply want to help those in need.

But what the media fails consistently to remember in their promotion of the organization is that the American Red Cross have been caught time and time again withholding money in the wake of horrible disasters that require immediate release of funds.

The Red Cross, under the Liberty Fund, collected $564 million in donations after 9/11. Months after the event, the Red Cross had distributed only $154 million. The Red Cross' explanation for keeping the majority of the money was that it would be used to help 'fight the war on terror'. To the victims, this meant that the money was going towards bombing broken backed third world countries like Afghanistan and setting up surveillance cameras and expanding the police state in US cities, and not towards helping them rebuild their lives.

Then Red Cross President Dr. Bernadine Healy arrogantly responded when questioned about the withholding of funds by stating, "The Liberty Fund is a war fund. It has evolved into a war fund."

Despite the family members of victims of 9/11 complaining bitterly to a House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight panel, the issue seemed to be brushed under the carpet and the mud didn't stick.

The Red Cross' scandalous activities reach back far before 9/11.

After the devastating San Francisco earthquake in 1989, the Red Cross passed on only $10 million of the $50 million that had been raised, and banked the rest.

Similar donations after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the Red River flooding in 1997 were also greedily withheld.

Insight Magazine reported,

“The first days after the bombing,” says one family member, “people from all over the country were sending checks in lieu of flowers and we were getting a lot of checks and cash every day — hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. Then the Red Cross went down to the post office and made arrangements to collect the mail and they would deliver it to us in bulk. All the mail had been opened, and from that point on there never was a dime, even in letters that said money was enclosed.”

The Red Cross has been caught engaging in rampant corruption on an all too regular basis.

3,000 people died after thousands of Canadians were infected with HIV and hepatitis C from tainted blood supplies.The Canadian Red Cross pleaded guilty to the charges earlier this year after they had been directly caught knowlingly shipping out the infected blood.

Smaller charities that were involved with the 2004 Tsunami relief project went public to say that large charities like Red Cross and United Way were engaged in secret backroom negotiations with each other that meant a large portion of the donation money was purposefully restricted from reaching the most needy areas affected by the disaster.

The history is clear, the Red Cross and other large so-called charities are in actual fact front group collection agencies for the military industrial complex.

Many informed historians have even alleged that the Red Cross was used as a Skull and Bones cover to overthrow The Russian Czar and pave the way for the rise of the Bolsheviks.

Do not give any money to the Red Cross unless you support the expansion of empire abroad and police state at home. Find a smaller trustworthy organization in the local area of New Orleans and make your donation to them.

Posted by lois at 03:14 PM | Comments (0)

September 01, 2005

NY Times Editorial: Disenfranchisement of People with Felonies rooted in race

August 29, 2005
Nebraska in the Lead
The United States stands virtually alone among democracies in having laws that continue to disenfranchise former prisoners even after they have paid their debts to society and finished parole or probation. A vast majority of the nearly five million citizens who were barred from voting in the last presidential election would have been free to vote in Australia, Britain, France and Canada.

Like so much of what ails America, laws that strip felons of the right to vote are rooted in race. The South enacted these restrictions during the late 19th and early 20th century as part of a sweeping effort to limit black political power. This ugly legacy is painfully evident in statistics showing that black people account for about 40 percent of disenfranchisement cases and only about 12 percent of the population. Indeed, in the half-dozen states that have the strictest postprison sanctions, an astounding one in four black men have permanently lost the right to vote.

But the argument that felons should be permanently cast out of the body politic is losing its grip in many Northern and Midwestern states where Democrats and Republicans have proved equally willing to revisit and relax disenfranchisement laws.

In Iowa, the governor recently signed an executive order restoring voting rights to felons who complete their sentences. In Nebraska, the Legislature voted to replace a voting ban for convicted felons with a system that automatically restores their rights after they complete their sentences and pass through a two-year waiting period.

The Nebraska case is all the more interesting because the law was embraced by conservative Republican legislators who helped override the governor's veto. An emotional high point in the debate came when State Senator Lowen Kruse, a retired pastor, told his colleagues about a neighbor who had been out of jail 10 years and had become a family man with a good job - "just the kind of person you want within your community." The man, he said, deserved to have his vote automatically returned instead of being forced to beg a board of pardons to restore his rights. "I would rather keep my dignity," Senator Kruse said, "and I would much rather that we allow him to keep his dignity and help him to move on."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 06:08 PM | Comments (0)

CA: "Bulldoze It Down" organizers work to keep a former prisons from becoming a CO training center

Back Article published Aug 29, 2005
Group hopes to keep women's prison closed

STOCKTON - Activists across California vowed to increase pressure on local and state officials to keep a vacant prison near Stockton from reopening as a training academy for correctional officers.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said last week the first trainees will converge on the Northern California Women's Facility on Arch Road by year's end. Opposition groups fear this is the first step to returning the facility to an active prison.

"Bulldoze it down," exclaimed Debbie Reyes, a representative of the Oakland-based California Prison Moratorium Project. Reyes said she favors turning over the 134-acre prison grounds to the business sector. Anything but a prison, she said.

Reyes said she has redoubled efforts to rally opposition among community groups in San Joaquin County. They plan to take their case to the county Board of Supervisors, which has so far been unresponsive, she said. Board Chairman Steve Gutierrez did not return calls last week seeking comment on the prison.

"He can go to the Legislature and say, 'We don't want anymore of these types of facilities in the community,' " Reyes said. "We want something healthy for the community."

Opened in 1987, the 800-bed prison was emptied of inmates in 2003 in a cost-saving measure. The prison is on an arid swath of land east of Highway 99 near a complex of state-run youth prisons, including the N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility.

California's adult prison population this month reached an all-time high with 165,378 inmates, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Elaine Jennings. The women's prison gives the state a real-life setting, with prison cells, guard towers and recreational yards where hundreds of badly needed correctional officers can be trained. Department of Corrections officials had talked of turning the women's prison into a reception center such as Tracy's Deuel Vocational Center where inmates entering the system are temporarily held before being assigned to a prison to serve their sentences.

Deuel is at 219 percent of capacity. Some inmates sleep on bunk beds set up in a gym converted into a dorm. Overcrowding two years ago in the dorms sparked a riot.

But filling the women's prison with inmates would exacerbate the state's shortage of correctional officers, Jennings said. The state anticipates large numbers of correctional officers to retire in the next two years.

"Really, what it came down to, we have a critical need for more staff," Jennings said. "At this time, this is the best use for this facility."

The state plans to use the women's prison as an academy for up to five years. At that time, its future will be reconsidered, Jennings said.

Luis Magaña, a Stockton activist, said he has organized at least three meetings in Stockton to debate options for using the former women's prison. He could not get representatives to attend in an official capacity. State officials are working in secrecy, he said.

"It's tax money," Magaña said, "but they're making decisions without us that could negatively affect our community."

Ari Wohlfeiler, a representative of the Oakland-based Critical Resistance, which advocates for fewer prisons, said as long as the prison stands, it can be easily filled with more inmates. Wohlfeiler said he's skeptical about state officials talking about prison reform.

"It's something that could be turned over in a quick second," Wohlfeiler said. "They're clearly hedging their bets that they're going to shrink."

Bob Driscoll, a Lancaster salesman whose son has been incarcerated more than five years in a prison in Lancaster, said overcrowded prisons are unhealthy. More prison space is needed if the state is going to continue incarcerating people, he said.

"Their punishment is to be taken away from society, not to go in and suffer a hardship," Driscoll said.

Contact reporter Scott Smith at (209) 546-8296 or ssmith@recordnet.com
from the Stockton Record http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200550829007

Posted by lois at 06:04 PM | Comments (0)