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October 31, 2005

Women Account for Nearly 1 in 4 Arrests

by REBECCA CARROLL, Associated Press
October 23rd, 2005


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Women made up 7 percent of all inmates in state and federal prisons last year and accounted for nearly one in four arrests, the federal government reported Sunday.

A co-author of a Bureau of Justice Statistics report, Paige Harrison, linked an upswing in the rate of arrest for women to their increased participation in drug crimes, violent crimes and fraud.

The number of women incarcerated in state and federal prisons in 2004 was up 4 percent compared with 2003, nearly double the 1.8 percent increase among men, the study said. In 1995, women made up 6.1 percent of all inmates in those facilities.

"The number of incarcerated women has been growing at a rate nearly double that of men, due in large part to sentencing policies in the war in drugs," the Sentencing Project, a group promoting alternatives to prison, said in a statement.

The group said the number of drug offenders in prisons and jails has risen from 40,000 in 1980 to more than 450,000 today. According to FBI figures, law officers in 2004 made more arrests for drug violations than for any other offense -- about 1.7 million arrests, or 12.5 percent of all arrests.

Those sentenced for drug offenses made up 55 percent of federal inmates in 2003, the report said.

The total number of people incarcerated grew 1.9 percent in 2004 to 2,267,787 people. That figure includes federal and state prisoners as well as 713,990 inmates held in local jails, 15,757 prisoners in U.S. territorial prisons, 9,788 in immigration and customs facilities, 2,177 in military facilities, 1,826 in Indian country jails and 102,338 in juvenile facilities.

The country’s state and federal prison population -- 1,421,911 -- grew 2.6 percent in 2004, compared with an average growth of 3.4 percent a year since 1995.

Growth last year in federal prison populations was 5.5 percent, outpacing overall prisoner growth but slipping from the 7.4 average annual growth in federal prison populations since 1995. The number of inmates in state prisons rose 1.8 percent, with about half that growth in Georgia, Florida and California.

Harrison attributed some of the prison population rise to tougher sentencing policies implemented in the late 1990s. She said the average time served by prisoners today is seven months longer than it was in 1995.

"You bring more people in, you keep them longer -- inevitably you’re going to have growth," she said.

The Sentencing Project said the continued rise in prisoners despite falling crime rates raises questions about the country’s imprisonment system. The group said the incarceration rate -- 724 per 100,000 -- is 25 percent higher than that of any other nation.

"Policymakers would be wise to reconsider the wisdom of current sentencing and drug policies, both to avoid expensive incarceration costs and to invest in more productive prevention and treatment approaches to crime," Marc Mauer, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

Another group, the Justice Policy Institute in Washington, said the statistics show little relationship between prison population growth and the crime rate, which has been falling in recent years.

"The nation does not have to lock more people up to have safer communities," said Jason Ziedenberg, the institute’s executive director.

About 8.4 percent of the country’s black males between the ages of 25 and 29 were in state or federal prison, compared with 2.5 percent of Hispanic males and 1.2 percent of white males in the same age group, the report said.

Blacks made up an estimated 41 percent of inmates with a sentence of more than one year, the report said.

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Posted by lois at 05:49 PM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2005

NY: In City Jails, A Question of Force

October 30, 2005
In City Jails, a Question of Force
By JULIA PRESTON
Even in the rough society of the cellblock, where batons and pepper spray rule, a guard is not supposed to punch a prisoner in the face. A face blow - a head strike, in the cold parlance of corrections - should be a last resort.

Shawn Davis was on the receiving end of a head strike when he was an inmate in a Rikers Island jail, and he lost the sight in one eye. Eric Richards, another inmate, had his eardrum broken. Charles Paige's cheekbone was fractured.

"The very first blow was to my face," Mr. Paige said, recalling his scuffle with Rikers Island officers while, he said, his hands were cuffed behind his back.

Head strikes should be rare in jails: they subdue by causing painful and sometimes permanent injury to inmates, and can leave guards hurt as well. But in New York City, hundreds of inmates have suffered head injuries in recent years after clashes with correction officers, according to a lawsuit in United States District Court in Manhattan based on information culled from official reports.

The reports reveal that inmates' heads were punched, hit with batons and kicked in a roster of pain that is costly in human and medical terms and adds friction to an already tense environment. Officers, too, suffered, with broken fingers, fractured wrists and sprained arms.

The suit, by the Legal Aid Society and two law firms, opens a window on the corridors of the city's jails and the hierarchy of violence that guards are instructed to use to control them - a scale that begins with verbal cajoling, ascends to pepper spray and body blows and blocks, and reaches head strikes only when a guard is fighting to save himself. That scale sounds grim but is increasingly accepted practice in prisons across the country and has proven effective in New York jails where it was observed.

The suit recognizes that prison guards must sometimes resort to force. But it charges that the city's officers routinely use head blows instead of starting with less harmful methods. City guards have not been adequately trained, the suit claims, to follow the sequence of escalating force tactics, even though it is clearly spelled out in city correction policy.

"Force is not a foreign concept in a prison, it's part of everyday life," said Jonathan Chasan, a Legal Aid lawyer. But he said, "They should be able to restrain without this level of injuries."

After four years of legal jousting, the two sides are now in intensive settlement talks. Judge Denny Chin has set a trial date for Nov. 28 but apparently hopes to work out an agreement before then.

City officials declined repeated requests for comment on the allegations, saying they do not discuss continuing litigation. In motion after motion, however, the city has battled the suit in court. The city points out that recorded incidents in which guards used force in its jails have decreased significantly, dropping by 33 percent from 2000 to 2004, and are infrequent considering the size of the system, which in all admits about 100,000 new inmates a year.

"Excessive force is not a systemic problem and is antithetical" to its correction practices, the city contends.

The lawsuit looks closely at incidents in which guards used force against inmates in six jails on Rikers Island from Jan. 1, 2000, to Aug. 1, 2003. Of a total of 2,596 incidents, 703 incidents produced head injuries to 738 inmates.

Steve J. Martin, a lawyer and corrections consultant who is a witness for the plaintiffs, sifted through 745 reports of the most serious incidents, which included versions from guards and inmates as well as medical reports. He found 70 cases of inmates with facial fractures or broken teeth, and 113 cases of inmates with facial cuts requiring stitches - results he called "an astounding and frightening litany of injurious force."

Mr. Martin said his research revealed a "routine use of hard impact strikes to the head" in city jails. In one month, April 2003, in three Rikers Island jails he scrutinized, there were 42 serious incidents in which guards used force, with head strikes recorded in 13.

In a more recent sample cited in the suit from six jails, which includes reports from four months in the year before November 2004, guards used head strikes in at least 46 of 218 recorded incidents where they applied force.

Mr. Martin also provided head strike information from other prison systems he has studied, appointed by either a court or a correction agency. Examining reports of guards' use of force in five jails in and around Fort Lauderdale, Fla., during 18 weeks in 2004, for example, among 200 incidents, Mr. Martin found fewer than 8 head strikes. In the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, in 54 incidents during eight months in 2004, only 2 head strikes were reported. In a sample from Clyde N. Phillips State Prison in Buford, Ga., a rural prison, of 105 force incidents there were none in which an officer reported a head strike, although 10 inmate head injuries were recorded.

A number of the inmates bringing the Rikers Island lawsuit are repeat offenders with volatile temperaments or chilling criminal records - the sort of inmate whom correction officers find hardest to keep in line.

Shawn Davis, 38, is a schizophrenic. He explained, in an interview in state prison in Beacon, N.Y., where he is serving five years for sexual assault, that he visits the clinic once a month for an injection, since he can have fits and seizures if he misses it. After he returned to Rikers Island from a court date on May 28, 2002, an officer barred him from going to the clinic.

"She cursed at me using smart language," Mr. Davis said. "It got me so hyper. I very anxious to have my medications."

He decided to do "something that said I wanted attention," he said: "I picked up a plastic chair and threw it" over the heads of officers in the cellblock control booth.

He was restrained and his hands were cuffed behind his back, Mr. Davis said. But, he said, while riot squad officers dragged him down a hallway, one guard punched him in the face. One guard gave him a parting kick in the temple, Mr. Davis said.

"Both eyes just shut down," he said. "Ruptured globe" was the finding of two surgeons at Bellevue Hospital Center, who operated the next day to try to save his left eye. Doctors later concluded it would never see again.

According to a summary of the correction officers' accounts of the episode, one officer said he had defended himself from a punch by Mr. Davis by punching the inmate back three times in the face. The officer had "a superficial scratch to the left eyebrow and right side of the face." The summary was written by Vincent M. Nathan, a lecturer in criminal justice at the University of Toledo, Ohio, who is also a witness for the inmates in the suit. The city did not provide any material from correction officers.

Another inmate, Eric Richards, 28, could not even remember, in a deposition he gave last year, all his criminal convictions, starting with the one for his first car theft when he was 16. Mr. Richards was in a Queens courthouse holding cell on Jan. 29, 2002, when he objected to a strip search. Mr. Richards claimed that one angry guard had knocked him over with a punch in the face while another had jumped on him and pushed a finger under Mr. Richards's eyelid.

"I'm screaming, 'Get your hands out of my eyes!' " Mr. Richards said. Another officer slammed his head into cell bars, he said.

According to Mr. Nathan's summary of the correction officers' accounts, they said Mr. Richards had started the fight by pushing past one officer and punching another. Two officers acknowledged having punched Mr. Richards in the face. Three officers reported injuries, including one with a sprained ankle.

Medical reports showed that the perforated eardrum had left Mr. Richards deaf in his right ear, and he is also partly blind in one eye.

Martin F. Horn, the correction commissioner, at first agreed to an interview, then declined on the advice of lawyers for the city. But a copy of the city's correction policy, revised by Mr. Horn last year, shows that New York has embraced the idea of a scale of force with many incremental steps before head strikes.

Officers are instructed to try to dominate a balking inmate with "control holds" and "take-down technique." They should not go for head blows "unless unavoidable," and must especially avoid hitting inmates in the head with batons. Guards are required to record any head strikes, which are also called head shots, in a special log book.

Although the policy might sound like bureaucratic rigmarole for a guard facing a raging inmate, corrections experts said prisons around the nation have adopted similar procedures after finding them effective in lowering violence.

"If properly presented and reinforced with training, they do work," said William C. Collins, a lawyer who is an editor of The Correctional Law Reporter, a newsletter. "They allow an agency to give their staff a sense of what is appropriate under some circumstances, and what isn't." Blows to the head, he added, "pretty much aren't on the list."

Several corrections experts said they were troubled by the head strike and injury rates in New York City. "If use-of-force policies are appropriate and followed, you're not going to see a lot of injuries," said Michele Deitch, a University of Texas professor of corrections policy and a leader of a task force for the American Bar Association that is revising national standards for the use of force in prisons.

The suit, in which Legal Aid is working with lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell and Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, seeks better training for guards in self-defense and take-down methods, and calls for working video cameras in the jails.

Measures similar to those demanded in the suit were put into effect, after hard-fought earlier litigation, in the Central Punitive Segregation Unit on Rikers Island, the isolation cells for inmates who make trouble in jail. They resulted in a "significant diminishing" of inmate injuries in confrontations with guards, according to the final court order in the case, in 2002.

City officials seem more focused on the fact that overall violence is diminishing than on continuing head injuries. In a deposition last year, Commissioner Horn was asked if he was familiar with the department's system for "reporting head shots."

"Is that a drink?" the commissioner replied.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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

October 29, 2005

Katrina:Bill Would Lift Aid Ban for People with Drug Felonies

October 28, 2005
Hurricane Katrina victims with prior drug convictions would be able to get federal benefits like food stamps and student loans under legislation introduced in Congress this week.

The Houston Chronicle reported Oct. 26 that the Elimination of Barriers for Katrina Victims Act, introduced by Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), calls for a three-year suspension of current laws that ban such benefits, along with public-housing assistance, for convicted drug offenders.

"The bill does not affirm or support acts of crime, (but) it should not be labeled or stigmatized," said Lee. "These are individuals who have lost everything and to a great extent are victims."

One such victim is New Orleans resident Antoinette Samson, 31, who said her family cannot get aid in Texas because her husband was convicted of crack-cocaine possession. The Samsons and their three children are currently being housed by a church. "What is there to do?" she said. "I have no money, I don't even have a job."

The measure may face opposition in Congress, although supporters warned that denying aid to drug offenders only encourages them to return to crime.
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October 28, 2005

Dutch Investigating High Toll in Fire That Killed 11 People Detaineed in Prison

October 28, 2005
Dutch Investigating High Toll in Fire That Killed Detainees
By GREGORY CROUCH and MARLISE SIMONS
AMSTERDAM, Oct. 27 - The Dutch authorities were trying Thursday to determine why the death toll was so high in a fire in a detention center for drug smuggling suspects and illegal immigrants at Schiphol Airport here that killed 11 people.

It took fire squads three hours to control the blaze, which began after midnight Wednesday, and televised images showed that at least part of the detention center had been gutted. Officials said nearly 200 prisoners were being held in the prefabricated complex at the time.

At least 14 people were treated for injuries, 6 of whom were members of the police or security forces.

A spokesman for the local fire department said the first fire trucks arrived at the site 10 minutes after the fire began. But the main question remains why so many people died.

At a news conference in Haarlemmermeer, a town near the airport, officials said part of the reason might have been that there was no quick way to release the prisoners. They said the buildings, which were a temporary holding center rather than a normal prison, had no system for opening cells simultaneously. "The prison guards had to open each cell door individually," said Marjolein Kistjes, a town hall spokeswoman.

The authorities said it was not clear yet how the fire had started and whether it might have been set.

One detainee told a Dutch radio station that once the fire erupted in one of the cells, the prisoners cried out in alarm, but they were not taken seriously. The detainees started kicking and screaming to convince the authorities that the situation was serious, the prisoner said. But even after the guards responded, it took some time to free all the prisoners.

The destroyed wing of the large detention complex consisted of 24 double-occupancy cells, and officials said 43 detainees were in the wing at the time. Most of the guards belonged to a private security company.

In the chaos after the fire, while detainees were being taken out of the cell complex and moved to other towns, at least five escaped. By dawn Thursday, police helicopters were trying to chase them down.

Members of Parliament called Thursday for an inquiry into the airport prison and the conditions there.

The police said they had not yet identified the dead.

The detention center opened in 2003 in part to deal with the growing wave of drug couriers arriving from Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 3,300 courier suspects were arrested in 2004 alone.

But as the Netherlands tightened its immigration laws and took a hard look at political asylum claims, the airport jail also became a transit center for deportees. Some who died were thought to be recent arrivals or people awaiting deportation.

Gregory Crouch reported from Amsterdam for this article, and Marlise Simons from Paris.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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

CA: Prison Law Office: Lawyers Go Behind Bard as Guardians of Prisoner Rights

Lawyers Go Behind Bars as Guardians of Prisoner Rights
By Maura Dolan
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

October 11, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO - They exposed the state's locking up of juvenile offenders for 23 hours at a stretch in cells smeared with blood and feces.

They helped spark an unprecedented federal court takeover of California's prison healthcare system after revealing that prisoners were dying because of medical neglect.

They ended the practice of placing mentally ill prisoners in extreme
isolation.

The Prison Law Office, a nonprofit group of lawyers who labor in the shadow of San Quentin Prison, has in recent years scored a string of court victories felt in nearly every corner of California's teeming prisons.

"There is almost no aspect of California corrections, adult or juvenile, that is not subject to a court order, and almost all of those are the result of suits brought by the Prison Law Office," said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

Although its lawyers are underpaid by law firm standards and represent wildly unpopular clients, the group has become a litigation powerhouse so successful that the state in recent years has chosen to fold rather than fight it.

Why, then, do the lawyers seem more frustrated than triumphant?

They complain that the pace of change in California's prisons and youth correctional facilities is achingly slow, that court orders and negotiated settlements take years to achieve and mark only the start of reform.

As they trudge from prison to prison to make sure that promised improvements are in place, they say they must continually remind themselves of what they have accomplished during the group's 30 years of legal advocacy.

"People aren't shot dead anymore; let's start with that one," said Steve Fama, 49, who has worked at the Prison Law Office for 20 years. "During the late '80s to mid-'90s, the number of prisoners shot dead in California was staggeringly disproportionate to the number shot dead in all the other state prisons combined."

The 10 lawyers, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, work in a cluster of modest offices on San Francisco Bay. They receive as many as 100 letters a day from inmates asking for help.

"The kind of cases the Prison Law Office has litigated involve a guy
sticking his arm through the food slot and a guard breaking his arm, people crawling up the stairs to parole hearings because there were no provisions for people with disabilities and inmates on psychotropic drugs dying because their cells overheated," said Sue Burrell, an attorney for the Youth Law Center, a public interest law firm.

In a lawsuit against the California Youth Authority, the Prison Law Office complained:"Rehabilitation cannot succeed when the classroom is a cage and wards live in constant fear of physical and sexual violence from CYA staff and other
wards."

In a report stemming from a lawsuit the office helped bring, a
court-appointed monitor found that the Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation was refusing to discipline guards for serious misconduct at Pelican Bay, a super-maximum security prison.

"Some correctional officers end up acquiring a prisoner's mentality: They form gangs, align with gangs and spread the code of silence," the monitor, John Hagar, wrote.

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson reported that at least 34 inmates had died recently because of neglect, incompetence and "even cruelty" by medical staff. Henderson's action followed a lawsuit by the Prison Law Office.

On a tour of medical facilities at San Quentin, the judge observed a dentist who neither washed his hands nor changed his gloves after placing his hands in patients' mouths.

"On average, an inmate in one of California's prisons needlessly dies every six to seven days due to constitutional deficiencies in the . medical delivery system," Henderson said.

The Prison Law Office was established when memories of the siege at Attica Correctional Facility in New York were still fresh. The 1971 uprising, in which 43 were killed, raised public awareness of brutality and racism in American prisons and spurred widespread calls for reform.

But the passage of years diminished the power of Attica, and the impulse for reform gave way to laws instituting harsher and harsher prison sentences. The inmate population exploded.

From 1983 to 1995, the number of California inmates rose from 30,000 to 160,000. Despite an unprecedented prison construction boom, the prisons are at roughly 193% of their design capacity, frustrating efforts to improve conditions.

Don Specter, 53, director of the Prison Law Office, said sentencing laws need to be revised to reduce the numbers behind bars. As long as the prisons are overcrowded, conditions that violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment will persist, he said.

During the lawyers' visits to the prisons, the inmates tend to be
appreciative.

"A lot of them realize you're their only hope, the only thing that stands between them and the guard," Specter said.

The lawyers have complained that prison rules sometimes make meetings with their clients difficult.

Sara Norman, 37, another lawyer in the office, recalled her irritation when guards at a youth correctional center in Stockton forced her to wear a bulky green stab-proof vest during a tour.

Talking to wards through their food slots, Norman said, she apologized for he vest. "That is not the way I want to be interacting with them," she said.

Alison Hardy, 44, also an office lawyer, said she vigorously objected when guards at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo insisted that she could meet with prisoners only if they were shackled. The guards prevailed.

Yet a prison guard once locked Norman into a plexiglass cell with an
unshackled convicted murderer on death row.

After the interview concluded, Norman called out to the guards to let her out. No one heard her. Eventually, she resorted to "banging and banging and banging on the door."

The inmate was "perfectly nice," and they laughed about the incident, she said. Her point was that prison rules are "utterly arbitrary."

The lawyers said they generally have good relations with prison staff, although their litigation record has caused some resentment.

When the state loses a case, it must pay the Prison Law Office reasonable attorney fees, which is how the office pays for itself.

Lance Corcoran, executive vice president of the prison guards' union,
complained that taxpayers are bearing the expense.

He said the Prison Law Office has "incredible power" and faulted the
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for doing "a very poor job of defending" itself.

Jerold A. Prod, an administrative law judge and former chief counsel for the state corrections department, described the Prison Law Office as "probably a cut above the average public interest legal organization." He also observed that the lawyers could be "blinded by their cause."

He recalled a time when the group wanted work opportunities to be equal for male and female inmates, even though the men vastly outnumbered the women behind bars and the female inmates, he said, mostly wanted to go to beauty
school.

"The fastest way to start a riot at the California Institution for Women at that time was to shut down the cosmetology clinic," Prod said.

The Prison Law Office has benefited from significant free help from some of the state's top private law firms.

"They pick their shots," said Richard B. Ulmer Jr., a partner at Latham & Watkins who has worked with the office.The group knows its way around Sacramento. Specter, often described as unassuming, is reputed to be a fierce negotiator.

"He comes across as a very gentle, quiet person, but man, get out of the way," said Burrell, of the Youth Law Center.

Bruce Slavin, general counsel for the corrections department who has dealt with the Prison Law Office for 20 years, said relations with their lawyers have become "less confrontational" and "less adversarial" over the years.

"If the Prison Law Office brings a complaint to me, they are usually going to be accurate in identifying the problem," Slavin said. "Their solution may not be the same as our solution."

Specter said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger "has a commitment to prison reform that no other governor has had" but still has failed to make any significant reforms.

"The governor gets creamed by the victims' rights activists and the prison guards and starts to sound more and more like [former Gov.] Pete Wilson," Specter said.Even when the governor has signed onto a reform, months may pass before the prisons adopt it, the lawyers said.

Fama, the group's 20-year veteran, recalled his frustration during a recent visit to monitor implementation of reforms at a Southern California prison. He discovered that a logbook intended to ensure that emergency medical supplies were in place had been provided only the day before his visit. The prison was supposed to have had the book months earlier.

Fama said his aggravation eventually gave way to hope. Although progress was slow, his visit had made a difference.

ttp://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prison11oct11,0,4274950,full.story?coll=

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Rosa Parks, Founding Organizer of he Civil Rights Movement

October 25, 2005
Rosa Parks, 92, Founding Symbol of Civil Rights Movement, Dies
By E. R. SHIPP

Rosa Parks, a black seamstress whose refusal to relinquish her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., almost 50 years ago grew into a mythic event that helped touch off the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's, died yesterday at her home in Detroit. She was 92 years old.

Her death was confirmed by Dennis W. Archer, the former mayor of Detroit.

For her act of defiance, Mrs. Parks was arrested, convicted of violating the segregation laws and fined $10, plus $4 in court fees. In response, blacks in Montgomery boycotted the buses for nearly 13 months while mounting a successful Supreme Court challenge to the Jim Crow law that enforced their second-class status on the public bus system.

The events that began on that bus in the winter of 1955 captivated the nation and transformed a 26-year-old preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. into a major civil rights leader. It was Dr. King, the new pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, who was drafted to head the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization formed to direct the nascent civil rights struggle.

"Mrs. Parks's arrest was the precipitating factor rather than the cause of the protest," Dr. King wrote in his 1958 book, "Stride Toward Freedom. "The cause lay deep in the record of similar injustices."

Her act of civil disobedience, what seems a simple gesture of defiance so many years later, was in fact a dangerous, even reckless move in 1950's Alabama. In refusing to move, she risked legal sanction and perhaps even physical harm, but she also set into motion something far beyond the control of the city authorities. Mrs. Parks clarified for people far beyond Montgomery the cruelty and humiliation inherent in the laws and customs of segregation.

That moment on the Cleveland Avenue bus also turned a very private woman into a reluctant symbol and torchbearer in the quest for racial equality and of a movement that became increasingly organized and sophisticated in making demands and getting results.

"She sat down in order that we might stand up," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said yesterday in an interview from South Africa. "Paradoxically, her imprisonment opened the doors for our long journey to freedom."

Even in the last years of her life, the frail Mrs. Parks made appearances at events and commemorations, saying little but lending the considerable strength of her presence. In recent years, she suffered from dementia, according to medical records released during a lawsuit over the use of her name by the hip-hop group OutKast.Over the years myth tended to obscure the truth about Mrs. Parks. One legend had it that she was a cleaning woman with bad feet who was too tired to drag herself to the rear of the bus. Another had it that she was a "plant" by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The truth, as she later explained, was that she was tired of being humiliated, of having to adapt to the byzantine rules, some codified as law and others passed on as tradition, that reinforced the position of blacks as something less than full human beings.

"She was fed up," said Elaine Steele, a longtime friend and executive director of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. "She was in her 40's. She was not a child. There comes a point where you say, 'No, I'm a full citizen, too. This is not the way I should be treated.' "

In "Stride Toward Freedom," Dr. King wrote, "Actually no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.' "

Mrs. Parks was very active in the Montgomery N.A.A.C.P. chapter, and she and her husband, Raymond, a barber, had taken part in voter registration drives.

At the urging of an employer, Virginia Durr, Mrs. Parks had attended an interracial leadership conference at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tenn., in the summer of 1955. There, she later said, she "gained strength to persevere in my work for freedom, not just for blacks but for all oppressed people."

But as she rushed home from her job as a seamstress at a department store on Dec. 1, 1955, the last thing on her mind was becoming "the mother of the civil rights movement," as many would later describe her. She had to send out notices of the N.A.A.C.P.'s coming election of officers. And she had to prepare for the workshop that she was running for teenagers that weekend.

"So it was not a time for me to be planning to get arrested," she said in an interview in 1988.

On Montgomery buses, the first four rows were reserved for whites. The rear was for blacks, who made up more than 75 percent of the bus system's riders. Blacks could sit in the middle rows until those seats were needed by whites. Then the blacks had to move to seats in the rear, stand or, if there was no room, leave the bus. Even getting on the bus presented hurdles: If whites were already sitting in the front, blacks could board to pay the fare but then they had to disembark and re-enter through the rear door.

For years blacks had complained, and Mrs. Parks was no exception. "My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest," she said. "I did a lot of walking in Montgomery."

After a confrontation in 1943, a driver named James Blake ejected Mrs. Parks from his bus. As fate would have it, he was driving the Cleveland Avenue bus on Dec. 1, 1955. He demanded that four blacks give up their seats in the middle section so a lone white man could sit. Three of them complied.

Recalling the incident for "Eyes on the Prize," a 1987 public television series on the civil rights movement, Mrs. Parks said: "When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up and I said, 'No, I'm not.' And he said, 'Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the police and have you arrested.' I said, 'You may do that.' "

Her arrest was the answer to prayers for the Women's Political Council, which was set up in 1946 in response to the mistreatment of black bus riders, and for E. D. Nixon, a leading advocate of equality for blacks in Montgomery.

Blacks had been arrested, and even killed, for disobeying bus drivers. They had begun to build a case around a 15-year-old girl's arrest for refusing to give up her seat, and Mrs. Parks had been among those raising money for the girl's defense. But when they learned that the girl was pregnant, they decided that she was an unsuitable symbol for their cause.

Mrs. Parks, on the other hand, was regarded as "one of the finest citizens of Montgomery - not one of the finest Negro citizens - but one of the finest citizens of Montgomery," Dr. King said.

While Mr. Nixon met with lawyers and preachers to plan an assault on the Jim Crow laws, the women's council distributed 35,000 copies of a handbill that urged blacks to boycott the buses on Monday, Dec. 5, the day of Mrs. Parks's trial.

"Don't ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday," the leaflet said.

On Sunday, Dec. 4, the announcement was made from many black pulpits, and a front-page article in The Montgomery Advertiser, a black newspaper, further spread the word.

Some blacks rode in carpools that Monday. Others rode in black-owned taxis that charged only the bus fare, 10 cents. But most black commuters - 40,000 people - walked, some more than 20 miles.

At a church rally that night, blacks unanimously agreed to continue the boycott until these demands were met: that they be treated with courtesy, that black drivers be hired, and that seating in the middle of the bus go on a first-come basis.

The boycott lasted 381 days, and in that period many blacks were harassed and arrested on flimsy excuses. Churches and houses, including those of Dr. King and Mr. Nixon, were dynamited.

Finally, on Nov. 13, 1956, in Browder v. Gayle, the Supreme Court outlawed segregation on buses. The court order arrived in Montgomery on Dec. 20; the boycott ended the next day. But the violence escalated: snipers fired into buses as well as Dr. King's home, and bombs were tossed into churches and into the homes of ministers.

Early the next year, the Parkses left Montgomery for Hampton, Va., largely because Mrs. Parks had been unable to find work, but also because of disagreements with Dr. King and other leaders of the city's struggling civil rights movement.

Later that year, at the urging of her younger brother, Sylvester, Mrs. Parks, her husband and her mother, Leona McCauley, moved to Detroit. Mrs. Parks worked as a seamstress until 1965, when Representative John Conyers Jr. hired her as an aide for his Congressional office in Detroit. She retired in 1988.

"There are very few people who can say their actions and conduct changed the face of the nation," Mr. Conyers said yesterday in a statement, "and Rosa Parks is one of those individuals."

Mrs. Parks's husband, Raymond, died in 1977. There are no immediate survivors.

In the last decade, Mrs. Parks was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. But even as she remained an icon of textbooks , her final years were troubled. She was hospitalized after a 28-year-old man beat her in her home and stole $53. She had problems paying her rent, relying on a local church for support until last December, when her landlord stopped charging her rent.

Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Ala., on Feb. 4, 1913, the elder of Leona and James McCauley's two children. Although the McCauleys were farmers, Mr. McCauley also worked as a carpenter and Mrs. McCauley as a teacher.

Rosa McCauley attended rural schools until she was 11 years old, then Miss White's School for Girls in Montgomery. She attended high school at the Alabama State Teachers College, but dropped out to care for her ailing grandmother. It was not until she was 21 that she earned a high school diploma.

Shy and soft-spoken, Mrs. Parks often appeared uncomfortable with the near-beatification bestowed upon her by blacks, who revered her as a symbol of their quest for dignity and equality. She would say that she hoped only to inspire others, especially young people, "to be dedicated enough to make useful lives for themselves and to help others."

She also expressed fear that since the birthday of Dr. King became a national holiday, his image was being watered down and he was being depicted as merely a "dreamer."

"As I remember him, he was more than a dreamer," Mrs. Parks said. "He was an activist who believed in acting as well as speaking out against oppression."

She would laugh in recalling some of her experiences with children whose curiosity often outstripped their grasp of history: "They want to know if I was alive during slavery times. They equate me along with Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and ask if I knew them."

Correction: Oct. 26, 2005, Wednesday:

Because of an editing error, a front-page obituary of Rosa Parks in late editions yesterday referred incorrectly to The Montgomery Advertiser, which printed a front-page article on Dec. 4, 1955, that publicized a boycott of Montgomery's buses the next day. It is a general-interest newspaper, not a black one.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 08:53 AM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2005

Black Commentator: The Battle for New Orleans: Only a Real Movement Can Win This War

Issue 156 - October 27 2005

by BC Co-Publishers Glen Ford and Peter Gamble

New Orleans represents a challenge to African Americans, unprecedented since the epic struggles of the Fifties and Sixties. The perverse reality, to which African Americans must rise, is that the man-made disaster in the Gulf provides what may be the last chance to build a real Movement, encompassing the broadest sectors of Black America. Cruel history presents the catastrophe as an unwanted opportunity, a test of Black people’s capacity for the operational unity craved by the vast bulk of African Americans. The pain and anger in Black America is all but universal, and demands collective action, the outcome of which will largely define the true State of Black America as it has evolved over the last two generations.

Let us put it bluntly: If Black America fails to configure its human, organizational and material resources to effectively resist the theft and ultimate disfigurement of New Orleans, then we will be forced to confront the existence of fundamental, crippling flaws in the African American polity.

There is much reason for optimism. Movements often need monsters, and George Bush and his minions are a horror show. The Katrina debacle plunged Bush’s Black approval rating to 12 percent, as measured by the prestigious Pew Research Center. That’s only slightly above what most pollsters consider the approval category’s irreducible minimum - "about as low as you can go," according to Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies senior analyst David Bositis. Few doubt that the administration’s callous and ineffectual handling of the Katrina crisis ("negligent homicide," charged Black Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney) caused the near-evaporation of Bush’s thin Black support.

(An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll taken earlier in September showed only two percent of Blacks approved of Bush’s performance. However, the poll included only 89 African Americans, too small a sample to be considered reliable.)

All African American eyes are on New Orleans, that once-flawed, now devastated jewel of the Diaspora whose people have been dispersed to the far corners of the United States: Alaska, Utah and, literally, who knows where, in addition to large Black population centers. The dissolution of a major African American city - far eclipsing in scale the destruction of Black Tulsa in 1921 - has seared the collective Black psyche. The pain and anger in Black America is all but universal, and demands collective action effectively coordinated by those who purport to be leaders. In the process, new leadership - and hopefully, a "new" New Orleans that is fit for mass Black habitation - will emerge.

Reversing the Slide

Until the watershed year of 1965, which saw both passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Watts, Los Angeles rebellion, most Black Americans, especially in the South, were focused on the elimination of Black voter disenfranchisement and legal segregation. The Civil Rights Movement was not propelled by a laundry list of issues - rather, its overarching project was the defeat of Jim Crow.

By the time of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination and passage of the last major civil rights legislation in 1968 (the Fair Housing Act), the Jim Crow project seemed essentially completed - although still requiring years of mopping up operations. However, Black Power projected an additional set of demands, much more complex and varied, and calling forth a murderous government response that added yet another layer of Black grievances. While the beneficiaries of the Civil Rights Movement - those African Americans whose circumstances allowed them to walk through newly opened doors - sprinted to higher living standards and elected and corporate offices, mass Black incarceration became the order of the day in every state of the union, ravaging the very fabric of the bottom half of African American society and threatening to destabilize the half that were doing relatively well.

Although the historical Black Political Consensus survived the sea change that followed the death of Jim Crow, the scope of both Black aspirations and grievances expanded dramatically, reflecting the diversity of the upwardly mobile Black sectors’ often frustrated dreams and the multiplying injuries endured by the left-behind, criminalized Black population.

The Black Movement devolved to various sets laundry lists with often radically different orders of priority, depending on which Black sector was doing the listing. Most African Americans can agree on most items on the list - after all, the Black Political Consensus remains intact - but not on which items are most compelling. Thus, the diversity of the forces set loose in the Black polity by the death of Jim Crow, while not centrifugally spinning African Americans out of a common orbit, has resulted in sometimes dramatic mismatches in political priorities among Black sectors.

We have traveled a great distance from the simple elegance of the chant: "What do we want? Freedom! When do we want it? Now!"

As a consequence, efforts to forge "unity" across the Black spectrum inevitably produce long lists of the What We Believe and What We Demand type, drawn up in order of the priorities of whichever group or tendency dominates the gathering. Usually, such lists are broadly inclusive, demonstrating that those in attendance respect and share the concerns of their brothers and sisters representing other Black sectors or political schools of thought. However, laundry lists can only lead to operational unity among those who give high priority to the same items. Other, pro forma line item endorsements add up to not much more than a well-meant "Amen."

A Common Focus

There can be no question that millions of African Americans are eager to find their own specific mission within the context of a broad Black movement, as proven beyond doubt by the 1995 and 2005 "Million" rallies - events that drew multiples of the (integrated) 1963 March on Washington crowd. The problem is, these searchers find themselves still without a mission at the end of the rally.

This October’s Million More Movement rally produced a 10-point Issues Statement, while Nation of Islam leader Min. Louis Farrakhan offered his "Covenant with God, Leadership and Our People." Essentially, both documents are generalized versions of the usual laundry lists - useful for their inclusiveness, just as the rally was worthwhile as "a mass reaffirmation of the existence of an African American polity, a form of Black nationhood that yearns for unity and autonomy in the struggle against white supremacy, and for its own sake." (see BC, "MMM: The Quest for a Movement," October 20, 2005).

But most of all, the huge throng wanted an action plan for New Orleans.

"Katrina" was on virtually every speaker’s lips - the crowd-arouser. From Dr. Ron Daniels, of the Institute of the Black World, who reported that 30 heads of national Black organizations had convened to assist the Katrina families; to CME Bishop Henry Williamson, who assured the vast audience that his denomination was deployed in the Gulf region in strength, providing aid and ministry; to the (whacky) songstress Erykah Badu, who made sense to the crowd only when she invoked "Katrina"; to Min. Farrakhan, who proposed a one dollar per week contribution to a Millions More Movement Disaster Relief Fund; to Congressional Black Caucus chairman Mel Watt’s announcement that the CBC would soon introduce "a specific piece of legislation, restoring the families of the Gulf area…a goal that is definable" - speaker after speaker, representing the broadest spectrum of African American sectors, disciplines and political tendencies, made common cause with Black New Orleans.

"Katrina" - shorthand for the tortures inflicted on the helpless by nature and man, and the planned ethnic cleansing of a great Black city - has the potential to ignite a movement much wider and deeper than the campaigns to Boycott South Africa and Free Nelson Mandela, solidarity actions that breathed life into broadly-based Black politics in the Eighties. Katrina touches home and history, friends and family; it revealed the Black condition in the raw. The exodus of multitudes speaks to the Old Testament cultural framework that is wired into the consciousness of even the most secular African American. On the scales of historical group memory and symbolism, the five days of video-taped Black debasement in New Orleans will weigh as heavily on the African American psyche as the dogs and water hoses of Birmingham.

Katrina-related activities have proliferated beyond the countable, to become an obligatory action item on every authentic Black organization’s agenda. The expanding universe of Katrina projects in some respects already resembles the pre-1960 Civil Rights Movement - a focus of all Black people’s deep concern, but inchoate, not yet fully formed.

In a relatively short period of time, the 1950s Civil Rights offensive was transformed into a great engine of social change. In the current era, however, it is the Right that is on the domestic and global offensive. A Katrina-spawned movement will begin, of necessity, as a broad, Black-anchored resistance.

The Fight to Return

Every strata of Black America - all of which were physically represented on the Capitol Mall, October 15 - shared a soul-deep identification with Mtangulizi Sanyika, of the African American Leadership Project, as he outlined the New Orleans Citizen Bill of Rights. In abbreviated form, the displaced citizens demand: the right to return; to retain their right of citizenship in the city; the right to shape and envision the future of the city; the right to [fully] participate in the rebuilding of the city; the right to quality goods and services; the right to affordable neighborhoods; the right to be paid a livable wage; the right to increased economic benefits; the right to preferential treatment in…work associated with rebuilding the city; the right to contracting preference; the right to an environmentally clean and hurricane safe city; and the right to preserve and continue the rich and diverse cultural traditions of the city. (See the full text of the document at the bottom of this page.)

The 12-point Bill of Rights fits wholly within the Black Political Consensus, and could serve as a guide to citizens of virtually every American city. Indeed, the document contains most of the elements of BC’s recommendations for urban "democratic development…to preserve and further empower the huge and strategic Black and Brown presence in the central cities" (More on that, below.)

Thus, a true national movement to defend and support the citizens of New Orleans, if sustained, would infuse millions with the lessons and logic of a new urban politics that elevates human and citizenship rights above corporate rights. A movement that is immersed in the language, spirit and values of the New Orleans Citizen Bill of Rights would refine and clarify the African American conversation, and also alter the prisms through which non-Black Americans perceive the world. That’s what real movements do; it’s what the Civil Rights Movement did. In a real sense, the New Orleans document takes the rights gained by the decades-ago movement to what Black folks used to call "a higher level."

However, the Bush regime recognizes none of these rights - not for New Orleans citizens, nor for people anywhere on the planet. Rushing like a storm surge, the Bush men and the corporations they serve saw the breach of the city’s levees as a grand opportunity to flood the region and nation with reactionary rollbacks of citizen and worker protections, to impose by "emergency" measures Hard Right programs that could not pass congressional muster.

Bush Bum-rushes the Gulf

"Whether or not by design, the administration has used the tragedies of hurricanes Katrina and Rita to waive, bend, and break federal laws that protect our civil rights, worker rights, public health and safety, while suspending rules that help small and minority-owned businesses," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), in a letter to key congressional committees.

Among the administrations offenses against law and decency:

Cutting wages for construction workers in the Gulf states by indefinitely suspending the Davis- Bacon Act, which guarantees workers are paid the region’s prevailing or average wage. Suspending wage protections for Gulf Coast workers allows all contractors, regardless of whether or not the work relates to cleanup and reconstruction, to pay as little as $5.15 hour.
Ignoring federal procurement practices, which has resulted in the award of several multi-million dollar no-bid contracts that hurt local small, minority, and women owned businesses.
Denying equal opportunity employment initiatives for workers in the Gulf states through an exemption from some existing Affirmative Action Program (AAP) requirements for new federal contractors dealing with Hurricane Katrina relief.
Exploiting the hurricane to create a private and religious school voucher program that could allow federal money to be used to promote employment discrimination.
Allowing a temporary waiver of environmental protections in the Gulf Coast region and supporting additional environmental suspensions at the expense of the health and safety of Katrina survivors, particularly the poor, disabled, and minority populations.
Rebuilding segregated and inaccessible housing.
Enforcing immigration laws during search and rescue.
The latter outrage demonstrates the Bush men’s pure, devilish cynicism and howling racism. While allowing reconstruction contractors to import low-wage, non-citizen workers from Latin America, Homeland Security’s immigration agents conduct raids that single out Latino-looking residents of emergency shelters.

Having failed to get congressional approval for a federal school voucher program except in the colony of Washington, DC, Bush seeks to establish a de facto national voucher system by dispensing half a billion dollars to private schools that enroll the far-flung children of displaced families.

Thwarted over the years by the U.S. Supreme Court in their jihad against affirmative action, the Bush crowd decrees that such programs will be cleansed from the Gulf by emergency fiat.

Bush policy is the precise opposite of the New Orleans Citizen Bill of Rights. The lines of struggle have been drawn in the muck left by Katrina.

Wade Henderson, speaking for the LCCR and 60 other civil rights, labor and advocacy organizations, declared: "Instead of directly meeting the rebuilding challenges created by Katrina, the administration has chosen the moral equivalent of a Trojan Horse."

Little George Wallace, standing in the Alabama schoolhouse door in 1963, seems tame by comparison. At least Governor Wallace was faithful to some version of the rule of law, albeit perverted. Bush recognizes no law, at home or abroad. His regime’s lawlessness has created a host of allies for a new Black movement to call on, should it choose to - from a far longer list than was ever available to Dr. King.

For Whom Katrina Tolls

"If New Orleans is rebuilt as an enterprise zone, private investors will wait for the government to clean up the mess and then build luxury condos to replace affordable housing. They'll turn New Orleans into a theme park, with its former residents unable to afford to come back." - Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. in the Chicago Tribune, October 11, 2005.

It does not have to be that easy. But the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans will surely be accomplished in the absence of a mass Black movement, mobilizing elements of all African American classes and disciplines, the broadest range of large and small organizations, and the forging of strategic alliances with non-Blacks.

Activists should understand that the Battle for New Orleans will take place over years - and that the Bush-corporate assault is well-advanced. In a brilliant article first posted on the website of the Clark-Atlanta University-based Environmental Resource Center, EJRC director Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright, a Katrina survivor who directs the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University, spelled out what the nascent movement is up against:

"Hurricane Katrina has opened the floodgate of land speculation and redevelopment scenarios that plan ‘for’ rather than plan ‘with’ the storm victims. What gets built and redeveloped (and for whom) and who participates in the re-building process are major economic justice issues. A small group of private companies, nongovernmental organizations and members of think tanks have divided up ‘pre-completed’ no-bid contracts. A predatory form of ‘disaster capitalism’ exploits the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering."
The Right’s "radical social and economic engineering" cries out for a massive Black response that is equally sophisticated and comprehensive - and backed by masses of fired-up people. The liberation of a once-great Black city from the grip of land pirates acting in concert with the federal government, is no easy task. However, the struggle must be joined, since the outcome may well decide the fate of urban - and therefore Black - America.

Katrina hurled New Orleans into a kind of time machine, instantly fast-forwarding the city to an advanced stage of the gentrification process. The "Negro-removal" stage was skipped entirely, courtesy of the floodwaters. In real-time cities, poor and working people drift away house by house, block by block, with very little drama, to points…unknown. An incremental exile, a piece by piece theft of community, then a final, anti-climactic fait accompli.

In maddening contrast, the Katrina drama has fixed our attention on the sheer precariousness of the Black condition. Like Ebeneezer Scrooge, we see the future of our cities - and we ain’t in it. A specter from the urban future screams at us in the present, in the form of a quarter million displaced African Americans and a valuable hole where a cultural center of Black America used to be.

Suddenly, Black folks are waking up, shaking - and universally angry.

Where There’s a Will, There Must Also Be a Plan

The collective Black human and material infrastructure is exponentially more developed than in 1955, when the African American working poor of Montgomery, Alabama sustained a bus boycott that humbled Jim Crow in the former capital of the Confederacy; or in the years that followed, when a tiny group of progressive Black preachers embarrassed a racist superpower in the eyes of the world, forcing Uncle Sam to leave his white supremacist clothes in the closet; or in 1964, when mere hundreds of young people invaded the fortress of Mississippi with virtually no money in their pockets and little backup during Freedom Summer.

The best and the brightest of the era were at the core of activism, but there were not many of them, and even less cash. The resources that Blacks and their allies can bring to bear in the Battle for New Orleans are on a different order of magnitude than 40 years ago. At long last, and at such high cost to the people of the Crescent City, one senses a general Black will to struggle.

A true national movement has as many components as the polity, itself. The Battle for New Orleans will require lawyers, researchers, city planners, architects, social scientists, psychologists, financiers, educators, pension fund managers, liberation theologians, culture workers, athletes, medical practitioners, criminal justice experts, chefs, t-shirt designers, micro- and macro-organizers, as solid a front of Black politicians as can be assembled - and hundreds of thousands of foot soldiers in struggle.

A vision of the new New Orleans is also required- a full-blown counter-vision to the condo-studded "theme park" corporate blueprint, one that will inspire both those displaced from the city and the African American movement at-large.

In BC’s final edition of the five-part series, "Wanted: A Plan for the Cities to Save Themselves" (July 29, 2004), we sketched some of the steps that must be taken, and questions that must be answered in the quest to build a healthy city, a place that exists for the benefit of those who live there. Much the same process applies to the task of rebuilding and restoring New Orleans under the auspices of its largely displaced citizens.

"We must present the fullest picture of the [new] city’s demographic, physical, and economic layout and activity: where different populations live; how dollars move; where people work, and what types of work they do; where they shop; how they move around the city; what public or private institutions anchor which neighborhoods, and what activity do they create; what is the state of the housing stock, and where; how many businesses exist; who owns them, and who do they employ, and where do the employees live; what is the state of infrastructure (streets, water, sewage, phone and cable telecommunications, mass transit lines, etc.), and who does the infrastructure serve; what are the physically attractive (and, therefore, valuable) sites and vistas, and who owns/controls them; how are police deployed; where are the schools…?"
If African Americans fail to develop a plan for New Orleans, they will have no effective role in the final product of reconstruction, whatever the exertions of a reinvigorated Black movement.

Black America is challenged to make Katrina/New Orleans the center of gravity around which an inclusive African American movement revolves - a unifying nexus and vision that draws together organizations and previously unaffiliated individuals, especially youth, in common cause. There are plenty of tasks for us all.

African American Leadership Project & The New Orleans Local Organizing Committee & The Greater New Orleans Coalition of Ministers

New Orleans Citizen Bill of Rights’
1. All displaced persons should maintain the "Right of Return" to New Orleans as an International "Human Right." A persons’ socioeconomic status, class, employment, occupation, educational level, neighborhood residence, or how they were evacuated should have no bearing on this fundamental right. This right shall include the provision of adequate transportation to return to the city by the similar means that a person was dispersed. THE CITY SHOULD NOT BE DEPOPULATED OF ITS MAJORITY AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND LOWER INCOME CITIZENS, and must be rebuilt to economically include all those who were displaced.

2. All displaced persons must retain their right of citizenship in the city, especially including the right to vote in the next municipal elections. Citizen rights to the franchise must be protected and widely explained to all dispersed persons. The provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 should be examined and enforced in this regard.

3. All displaced persons should have the right to shape and envision the future of the city. Shaping the future should not be left to elected officials, appointed commissions, developers and/or business interests alone. We the citizens are the primary stakeholders of a re-imagined New Orleans. Thus, we MUST be directly involved in imagining the future. Provisions must be included to insure this right.

4. All displaced persons should have the right to participate in the rebuilding of the city as owners, producers, providers, planners, developers, workers, and direct beneficiaries. Participation must especially include African-Americans and the poor, and those previously excluded from the development process.

5. In rebuilding the city, all displaced persons should have the right to quality goods and services based on equity and equality. Disparities and inequality must be eliminated in all aspects of social, economic and political life. It should be illegal to discriminate against an individual due to their income, occupation or educational status, in addition to the traditional categories of race, gender, religion, language, disability, culture or other social status.

6. In rebuilding the city, all displaced persons should have the right to affordable neighborhoods, quality affordable housing, adequate health care, good schools, repaired infrastructures, a livable environment and improved transportation and hurricane safety.

7. In rebuilding the city, workers, especially hospitality workers should have the right to be paid a livable wage with good benefits.

8. In rebuilding the city, African-American should have the right to increased economic benefits and ownership. The percentage of Black owned enterprises MUST dramatically increase from the present 14%, and the access to wealth and ownership must also be dramatically improved.

9. In rebuilding the city, African-Americans and any displaced low income populations should have the right to preferential treatment in cleanup jobs, construction and operational work associated with rebuilding the city.

10. In rebuilding the city, the right to contracting preference should also be given to Community Development collaboratives, community and faith-based corporations/organizations, and New Orleans businesses that partner with nonprofit service providers and people of color. No contracts should be let to companies that disregard Davis-Bacon, Affirmative action and local participation. Proposed legislation to create a "recovery opportunity zone" should specifically include Community Development organizations and minority firms as alternatives to the no bid multi-national companies. Over the last 30 years, such firms have demonstrated their capacity to successfully build hundreds of thousands of quality affordable housing, and neighborhood commercials and businesses and service enterprises.

11. In rebuilding the city, priority must be given to the right to an environmentally clean and hurricane safe city, rather than the destruction of Black neighborhoods or communities such as the lower 9th ward. Priority must also be given to environmental justice, disaster planning and evacuation plans that work for the most transit dependent populations and the most vulnerable residents of the city.

12. In rebuilding the city, priority must be given to the right to preserve and continue the rich and diverse cultural traditions of the city, and the social experiences of Black people that produced the culture. The second line, Mardi Gras Indians, brass bands, creative music, dance foods, language and other expressions are the "soul of the city." The rebuilding process must preserve these traditions. THE CITY MUST NOT BE CULTURALLY, ECONOMICALLY OR SOCIALLY GENTRIFIED. INTO A "SOULLESS" COLLECTION OF CONDOS AND tract home NEIGHBORHOODS FOR THE RICH. We also respectfully request that the CBC initiate its own Commission to thoroughly investigate all aspects of the physical and human dimensions of the Katrina disaster.

Spokesperson: Mtangulizi Sanyika, AALP Project Manager can be reached via Email: WAZURI@AOL.COM.

Posted by lois at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2005

Senseless Census: Cities Lose Voting Power to Rural Communties With Prisons

by Susan E. McGregor
The Amsterdam News, NY
October 20, 2005
When someone is sent to prison, there are certain rights they're expected to lose. Their freedom is stripped away and so is their right to vote.

But for more than 36,000 Blacks incarcerated in New York State, a prison sentence may have deprived them of something else as well: their legal residence.

Despite the fact that the New York State Constitution explicitly states that "no person shall be deemed to have gained or lost a residence by reason of his presence or absence...while confined in any public prison," the 2002 New York State redistricting process did exactly that to more than 43,000 New York City residents incarcerated upstate.

"This is a grotesque injustice in the way that communities are disenfranchised," said Eric T. Schneiderman, deputy minority leader of the New York State Senate.

Last February, Schneiderman, who represents parts of the Bronx and New York counties, introduced legislation that would require future redistricting to be based on a prisoner's last known address, replacing the current practice of using federal census counts, which tally non-traditional populations - like prisoners - essentially by where they slept on the night of the census.

"The census is not why we have all these prisons," says Peter Wagner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative. "But the census is why we have all these problems. States never looked at the fact that the census data was not in compliance with their constitutions."

But while the current districting process violates the New York State Constitution, the 2002 redistricting plan did pass muster with the Department of Justice, partly because compliance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act only requires that redistricting not be "retrogressive."

Yet the conflict between federal and local assessments of residence has produced some impressive paradoxes in the counties where prisons are located. For example, Franklin County, which borders Canada, excludes prison populations when determining its internal districts, but the federal census includes prisoners in Franklin's county-wide population. On the state level, the prisoners exist as residents; on the local level they do not. Research has shown that this counting contradiction exists in approximately one-third of prison districts in New York State.

But the issue extends past the boundaries of the districts and counties that house the prisons. The fundamental problem is that counting prisoners as residents means that the number of actual constituents in prison counties is lower, and therefore each of those constituents' vote is effectively worth more than the vote of someone in another county.

In Franklin County, it was figured that "the vote of 8 residents near the prisons [is] worth as much as 10 residents elsewhere in the county."

Eric Stowers, political Director of the Downtown for Democracy Political Action Committee, which has organized around this issue, points out that "anyone not in a prison district is being hurt."

On the state level, Schneiderman said that he is "very optimistic" about the future of the redistricting issue in the Legislature. But just in case, he and the non-profit coalition New Yorkers for Equal Representation have secured the firm of Boies, Schiller and Flexner, which has tried cases against Microsoft and President Bush, among others, to file a pro bono lawsuit against the state.

Meanwhile Wagner and his associates are lobbying for changes to federal census methods, presenting testimony this past June to the body charged with reviewing census residence rules. According to Wagner, changing the census rules is the best solution both because it would make general research easier and because "this is definitely a problem in every state."

* * *
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/news/amsterdamnews10202005.shtml

Posted by lois at 09:34 PM | Comments (0)

October 24, 2005

Incarceration Won't Solve Region's High-Crime Rate

Incarceration won't solve region's high-crime rate
Letter to the Editor, Springfield (MA) Rebpublican. October 24, 2005
I hope that Sheriff Michael J. Ashe, District Attorney William M. Bennett and Acting Police Commissioner William Fitchet read, not only the front-page page story, "Inmate populations hits a record," (The Republican, Oct. 18), but also the column on Page 11 by William Raspberry ("The price of low expectations").

Raspberry refers to work by Professor Todd Clear of the City University of New York, who has documented that mass incarceration - standard in Springfield even before this recent increase - serves to destabilize communities, not make them safer. In exhaustive research, Clear and others have demonstrated that locking up large numbers of people and then releasing them into the same communities where they have little chance of finding drug treatment, legal employment or job training further marginalizes people and their communities.

Incarceration becomes the one-size-fits all response and, with it, comes demands for larger budgets, more and bigger jails and more police. It turns out mass incarceration does not create less crime. It is a self-perpetuating cycle and one that the sheriff and police will not voluntarily break.

Instead, it is up to each of us to demand that we want fewer people in jail and would rather have some of the $55-plus million spent each year to cage people at the Hampden County jail to go to quality education, drug treatment and economic development - the long-lasting and real crime deterrents.
LOIS AHRENS The Real Cost of Prisons Project Northampton

Posted by lois at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)

New Mexico: The Pitfalls of Regional Jails

Editorial

Saturday, October 8, 2005

The pitfalls of regional jails

our views

At first glance, the idea of a regional jail serving Socorro, Catron, Torrance and Sierra counties seems to make a lot of sense.

Torrance County has no jail and houses its inmates at a private prison, which has doubled the county's detention budget; Catron County has an inadequate small jail that needs to be replaced; and Socorro and Sierra counties have rundown old facilities that are at or over capacity, requiring both to have to send their overflow to Gallup. All four counties lack adequate facilities for juveniles and, for the most part, proper facilities for females.

Each of the counties has a relatively small population and none has the financial resources to build a new jail on its own. At the same time, each is paying increasingly more in detention costs to maintain an increasingly inadequate status quo.

Collectively, the population of the four counties justifies a single new jail and the financing it would take to build it. And if transportation costs were built into the operating expenses of the jail, the burden would be shared equally wherever the facility is located (which would most likely be Socorro County for centralization reasons) without the host county getting an unfair advantage.

Despite these positives, there are some pitfalls that other counties have experienced that should serve as cautionary notes.

For instance, one of the suggestions made in the preliminary discussion was to build a large facility ‹ 1,000 beds was mentioned ‹ and rent out the excess to the federal government to house federal prisoners.

Bad idea, as many jails have found out.

First of all, a large facility has large expenses ‹ more staff, more overhead, more maintenance ‹ and unused capacity costs money. With the competition to house federal prisoners, there's no guarantee of 100 percent occupancy and, in fact, few jails that cater to the feds make any money to offset their own costs.

Second, in general, the federal government isn't looking for jail space for tax evaders and white-collar crooks. It needs housing for hardcore federal felons ‹ major drug lords, murders, kidnappers and others who require high security, which has higher expenses.

Instead of large facilities to address future needs, detention experts recommend that new jails be built with capacity for just slightly more than is required for the immediate future. Because modern jails use modular, pod designs, it is relatively inexpensive to add pods as the need arises.

As the regional jail process develops, the counties also need to watch out for the "vultures," those who want to latch onto the project to make a few bucks.

Back in the early 1990s, Valencia County was considering building a new county jail. The initial cost estimate for a modest, adequate, modern facility was $6 million to $7 million. Within weeks, out-of-state "jail consultants," designers, builders and everyone else with a desire to get a piece of the pie had descended on the county. Within months, thanks in part to the make-money-with-fed-prisoners lure, the size of the proposed jail had quadrupled, and the estimated cost was over $40 million, with some independent estimates ranging as high as $80 million.

It was only through the courage and diligence of an official in the state Department of Finance and Administration that the whole scheme finally fell apart.

Later, Valencia County built a sensible jail that serves its needs without busting the budget.

That, we would hope, would be the approach the county officials involved in developing this proposal would take.

Most importantly, the counties need to keep control of the process at all levels and avoid "pie in the sky" deals and private, for-profit prison operators.

A regional jail might be the best idea, but the four counties involved need to study it from the standpoint of meeting their needs, not entering the prison business.
http://www.dchieftain.com/opinion/55104-10-08-05.html

Posted by lois at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

MA: Teen Acquitted in School Zone Marijuana Case

The Associated Press
September 28, 2005
PITTSFIELD, Mass.- An Otis teenager has been acquitted of dealing marijuana in a case stemming from a controversial arrest that could have landed him in jail for two years.

Kyle Sawin, 18, was found innocent Friday of three counts each of distribution of marijuana and of committing a drug violation in a drug-free school zone.

Prosecutors say Sawin was selling drugs to an undercover police officer in a Great Barrington parking lot that was located within a school zone. Selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school carries a two-year mandatory minimum prison sentence.

One school is located about 175 paces from the parking lot; another is about a four-minute walk away, at the bottom of a hill down a side street. Both schools were closed for the summer when Sawin was arrested for selling enough marijuana to roll about three joints.

A jury deadlocked on the case when Sawin was first tried in July. District Attorney David Capeless pushed for a retrial despite opposition from some community members who said charging Sawin - who had no prior criminal record
- with the school zone violation was unfair.

Sixteen others who were arrested with Sawin in last year's parking lot drug bust are still awaiting trial.

Posted by lois at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)

Number of Women in Prisons Is On The Rise

October 24, 2005
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (AP) - Women made up 7 percent of inmates in state and federal prisons last year and accounted for nearly one in four arrests, the government reported Sunday.

The number of women incarcerated in state and federal prisons in 2004 was up 4 percent compared with 2003, more than double the 1.8 percent increase among men, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported. In 1995, women made up 6.1 percent of inmates in those facilities.

The total number of people incarcerated grew 1.9 percent in 2004 to 2,267,787.

That figure includes federal and state prisoners, as well as 713,990 inmates held in local jails, 15,757 in United States territorial prisons, 9,788 in immigration and customs facilities, 2,177 in military facilities, 1,826 in Indian jails and 102,338 in juvenile facilities.

The country's state and federal prison population, 1,421,911, which excludes state and federal prisoners in local jails, grew 2.6 percent in 2004, compared with an average growth of 3.4 percent a year since 1995.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2005

771,608 people arrested for marijuana in 2004

Marijuana Arrests at All-Time High Again
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/408/alltimehigh.shtml

America's war on drugs continued full steam ahead last year, with the FBI reporting in its annual Uniform Crime Report Monday that an estimated 771,608 persons were arrested on marijuana charges in 2004, nearly nine out of ten of them charged with simple possession. The figure is an all-time high, breaking last year's record of 755,000, and gives the lie to oft-repeated law enforcement claims that marijuana enforcement is not a high priority. While marijuana use levels have been near stagnant in the past decade, the number of pot arrests has more than doubled since 1993.

The number of people arrested on marijuana charges in the US last year is greater than the population of the entire state of South Dakota (755,000), or for those urban dwellers, nearly as many as the population of San Francisco (777,000) and more than all of Jacksonville (736,000), Columbus, Ohio (711,000), or Austin (657,000).

Marijuana arrests accounted for 44.2% of all drug arrests, but it's not just pot arrests that were sky-high. The total number of drug arrests topped 1.74 million last year, and again, the vast majority -- 81% -- were for simple drug possession. Although drug use levels have remained relatively flat over the past decade, the number of drug arrests has increased by more than 9% since 2000 and nearly 23% since 1994.

Drug arrests were the single highest arrest category, edging out drunk driving (1.43 million arrests), simple assault (1.28 million), and petty larceny (1.19 million). There were more drug arrests than arrests for all property crimes combined (1.65 million) and more than three times more drug arrests than arrests for all violent crimes combined (590,000). (Simple assaults are not included in the serious violent crime category, which tallies aggravated assault, murder and intentional manslaughter, rape, and robbery.)

But it was the high number of marijuana arrests that brought out the critics. "These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor marijuana offenders," said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "This effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources that diverts law enforcement personnel away from focusing on serious and violent crime, including the war on terrorism."

"If we look at the government surveys, marijuana use has been stable or trending a bit downward in recent years, and yet we keep setting new records for the number of arrests," said Marijuana Policy Project communications director Bruce Mirken. "This strongly suggests that the arrest rates are driven by law enforcement priorities, what cases the cops choose to investigate, which arrests they decide to make. It is local police priorities that are causing this to happen. Reasonable people have to ask if this makes any sense," he told DRCNet. "Maybe there is a better use for these law enforcement resources, such as going after actual criminal or terrorists or other dangerous folks."

There are regional variations, noted Mirken. "While marijuana arrests as a percentage of all drug arrests increased from 39.9% in 1995 to 44.2% last year, the percentage of pot arrests was lowest in the West. Where things really went through the roof is in the Northeast, where marijuana arrests went from 36.3% of all drug arrests to 48.5%. Why that is happening in the Northeast I don't know, but somebody up there is putting more emphasis on marijuana smokers."

A marijuana arrest has human costs, ranging from a criminal record to loss of student financial aid and potential career difficulties. Sometimes the consequences of a simple pot bust are even more serious.

"It's important to remember that each of these statistics represents a human being, and in many cases, a preventable tragedy," said Aaron Houston, MPP director of government relations. "One of those marijuana arrests in 2004 was Jonathan Magbie, a quadriplegic medical marijuana patient who died in the Washington, DC, city jail while serving a 10-day sentence for marijuana possession. Had Congress not blocked the district's medical marijuana law from taking effect, Jonathan Magbie would almost certainly be alive today."

"Arresting adults who smoke marijuana responsibly needlessly destroys the lives of tens of thousands of otherwise law abiding citizens each year," NORML's St. Pierre said. "With nearly 17 million citizens arrested on marijuana-related charges since 1965, is now not the time for the state and federal governments to finally consider legally controlling marijuana via taxation? Is not such a public policy preferable to the current one where government arrests an extraordinary amount of citizens for an adult behavior that is not deviant, or, for that matter, dissimilar than consuming products that contain alcohol?"

Of the 17 million marijuana arrests mentioned by St. Pierre, nearly half have occurred in the last 10 years. Almost eight million people have been busted for pot since 1995.

Posted by lois at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)

Museum of Modern Art Mutes Harm Reduction Message

MOMA Exhibit Mutes DanceSafe's Drug Harm Reduction Message
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/408/moma.shtml

Last week, Marc Brandl, executive director of the rave culture harm reduction organization DanceSafe was feeling pretty pleased. After months of back and forth with one of America's most prestigious art institutions, some of DanceSafe's harm reduction materials were slated to appear in an exhibit at New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

"DanceSafe is proud to announce that our drug information cards, Adulterant Screening Kits, and poster will be going on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. The harm reduction- based tools we have used for years to educate and empower people around the world will be included in a special exhibit called 'SAFE -- Design Takes on Risk,'" Brandl announced last week.

According to MOMA, the SAFE exhibit "features a carefully selected array of more than 300 contemporary design objects and prototypes from all over the world designed for a variety of reasons: to protect body and mind from dangerous or stressful circumstances; respond to emergency situations; ensure clarity of information; and provide a sense of comfort and security. The objects displayed in the exhibition address the spectrum of human fears and worries, from the most exceptional to the most mundane, from the dread of earthquakes and terrorist attacks to fear of darkness and loneliness."

This week, after seeing the exhibit, Brandl and DanceSafe were singing a different tune. Most of the DanceSafe materials were not in the exhibition. Of all the materials DanceSafe provided to the museum, the only item to make it into the show was a postcard on the dangers of hearing loss. To add insult to injury, the exhibit also distorted DanceSafe's drug education and harm reduction mission statement, making the group appear as if it were devoted to sonic harm reduction, not reducing the harms of drug use under prohibition.

"We had been in contact with them since March, when the approached us asking if they could use our cards for an exhibit, and we signed an agreement to that effect," Brandl told DRCNet. "I even made a last minute phone call last week, and they assured us everything was all set. We didn't have any indication that our materials had been cut; all they said was that everything was ready to go," he said.

"But when we got to the opening, all they had on display was our card about hearing protection and they described us as an organization that works at parties to help people with their hearing and to get home safely -- there was no mention at all of drugs," Brandl said. "Now, hearing safety and getting people home safely is in our mission statement, but 95% of our mission is drug-related harm reduction, as in drug education and pill testing at concerts."

At the MOMA exhibit, DanceSafe was described as "a not-for-profit organization targeting the rave and nightclub community encouraging protecting hearing loss and getting home safely."

That's not quite how DanceSafe sees itself. According to the group's mission statement, available on its web site, "DanceSafe is a nonprofit, harm reduction organization promoting health and safety within the rave and nightclub community... We train our volunteers to be health educators and drug abuse prevention counselors within their own communities, utilizing the principles and methods of harm reduction and popular education. Our volunteers staff harm reduction booths at raves, nightclubs and other dance events where they provide information on drugs, safer sex, and other health and safety issues concerning the electronic dance community (like driving home safely and protecting one's hearing). We also provide adulterant screening or pill testing services for ecstasy users... Our information and services are directed primarily towards non-addicted, recreational drug users. Non-addicted drug users are an under-served population within the harm reduction movement, despite the fact that they comprise the vast majority of drug users in our society. While many organizations exist that provide services to drug-dependent individuals, few groups address the needs of the majority of non-addicted, recreational users. We hope to fill this gap..."

Brandl and other DanceSafe members suspect that MOMA pulled the drug information cards and adulterant testing kit because the museum did not want to step into the controversial territory of making drug use safer, but that suspicion remains unconfirmed.

"The first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the exhibit was the drug war strikes again," said Brandl. "I am sorry to see drug war politics creep into a modern art museum that is cutting edge and supposedly above such things."

Paola Antonelli, MOMA curator of architecture and design and the person in charge of the exhibit, didn't provide any confirmation of Brandl's thesis in her relatively non-responsive response to a DRCNet query about the matter. "DanceSafe was selected for SAFE is because we are in awe of their approach to safety by means of harm reduction," she said in an e-mail. "We feel that the strategy and the way it is realized with design are admirable and valuable. We are proud to have them in the exhibition."

As for the missing drug-related materials, all Antonelli would say was, "Very often, when the installation happens, the original checklist gets revised and works might be dropped. Other works in the exhibition were similarly sacrificed. I am sorry that they have felt misrepresented. Our intention was quite the opposite, giving wide visibility to a company that is doing a lot of good."

Antonelli has not responded to a second DRCNet query requesting clarification about whether concern about promoting safer drug use was a factor in the decision to not use the drug information cards or testing kit.

DanceSafe is not just complaining; the group's New York City chapter met Wednesday night to plot strategy. "We have not made a final decision about what to do about this, but it's possible we may distribute some of our information cards that were not included outside of the MOMA or to people going in," said Allison McKim, who along with Sarah Hill is co-director of DanceSafe NYC. "I was talking to national director Marc Brandl about some strategies to get some media attention. I suspect in the next few days we will probably distribute in or near the MOMA itself," she told DRCNet. "We will also encourage our members and friends to complain to MOMA about this."

For McKim, too, MOMA's decisions on the DanceSafe materials were mystifying. "I'm very surprised in part because when they are doing an exhibit about design approaches to dealing with risk, it seems like it would be very appropriate for tackling issues like drug use," she observed.

For whatever reasons, MOMA chose differently.

Posted by lois at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)

Post-Hurricane Katrina: New Orleans Narcs Itching to Make More Busts

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/408/nonarcs.shtml
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans doesn't have the money to prosecute its current prisoners, prisoners whose sentences have been completed are being held weeks beyond their release date, the city still can't find 169 prisoners missing since the storm, and doesn't have a prison to keep them in (the Amtrak station is serving as a makeshift jail) if it does find them. The police department has seen 250 officers desert their posts during the flood, four officers charged with brutality, and others accused of looting. Oh, and the chief of police resigned.

But none of that is stopping the New Orleans Police Department's Vice and Narcotics Squad. In an interview this week with the Kansas City Star, head narc Capt. Tim Bayard said his 48-officer unit stayed intact throughout the crisis. The spirit of police camaraderie within the unit was so high that the entire squad, including women, shaved their heads in a statement of solidarity. "Even the women shaved their heads, ya know?" Bayard explained. "We have a dedicated bunch here."

This week, after weeks of dealing with the hurricane and its aftermath, the drug squad is itching to get back in business. Using storm-damaged Wagner's Meat Market on Claiborne Street as their station, the narcs gathered to get their orders from Bayard.

It was time to get out and bust some dopers, Bayard told his eager squad. "Stay together. Hunt in packs. And I want to drive this point home: Get in touch with your snitches. Let's get something going... If you got bad guys you can deal with, set it up. I'd like to get back to doing real police work again."

"Alright!" came the chorus of replies.

New Orleans may be recovering from the terrible damage of Hurricane Katrina, but some of its residents will soon suffer new damage inflicted by prohibition's war without end.

Posted by lois at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)

NY: Placements in Foster Care Are at Lowest Since Mid-80's

October 23, 200
Placements In Foster Care Are at Lowest Since Mid-80's
By FERNANDA SANTOS
The number of New York City children in foster care has dropped to roughly 18,000 - half what it was just six years ago, and a total that approaches levels not seen since the mid-1980's, when crack cocaine began to sweep through local streets and tear thousands of families apart.

City officials and other experts say that the decline has been driven by a number of forces: a healthy economy, a radical falloff in the use of a highly destructive drug, and a shift in local child welfare policy, which now seeks to keep children in their own homes whenever possible.

"It's a historic change," said David Tobis, executive director of the Fund for Social Change, a private organization that tracks child welfare trends nationwide. "What happened in New York is extraordinary. There's a lot that needs to be changed, and the city recognizes it, but you can't deny that the continuous drop in foster children is terrific - and the city is doing that while helping families stay together."

Indeed, interviews with government officials, independent experts and lawyers who work in the Family Court system reflect widespread agreement that the city has made great strides in preserving families by offering parents a host of services - counseling, housing aid, food stamps, drug treatment - to help avert further abuse.

In 1991, the city's foster care population reached a record high of 49,100 - a figure reflecting the consequences of the crack epidemic, but also the way the child welfare agency counted children in care - and generally has been in decline since then. Still, as recently as 1999, the number of children in the custody of the state stood at 35,200.

Some experts and officials caution that the steep declines of recent years is cause for concern. They question whether the push to keep families together might be leaving children in harm's way, and worry that there is not an adequate supply of preventive services - counseling and drug treatment - for all the families at risk.

Moreover, they raise the possibility that the closing of any number of foster care agencies as the overall population shrinks might leave the city vulnerable in the event of another crisis.

"I see the changes with cautious optimism," said Lauren Shapiro, director of the family law unit at South Brooklyn Legal Services, which represents parents whose children have been placed in foster care. "Where the gap is now is that the preventive services are not enough, and what's out there is not comprehensive enough."

City officials, however, are quick to assert that investigators with the Administration for Children's Services are trained better than ever to accurately assess a child's needs and less likely to miss any warning signs. What is more, when families are kept together, the city saves millions of dollars.

Under the Bloomberg administration, the money saved by the city's child welfare agency through the reductions in the number of children in foster care - an estimated $27 million in the fiscal year that began in July - will be put back into the system in large part to finance the services that help families stay together while under agency supervision.

"It's not that we won't need more money as we go along, but this plan allows us to start moving toward fulfilling the current needs of the system," said John B. Mattingly, the agency's commissioner. "The goal is to reach a balance, to have an agency that is putting its money, and the right amount of money, in the right programs."

New York City's foster care population has undergone drastic changes in the past 25 years, but none as profound as those sparked by the beating death of 6-year-old Elisa Izquierdo by her mother in 1995. The girl had repeatedly come to the attention of child-welfare workers, but they missed the warning signs.

The unprecedented public pressure that followed compelled the Giuliani administration to hire a former prosecutor, Nicholas Scoppetta, himself a product of foster homes, to fix the system. Mr. Scoppetta's tenure was initially characterized by aggressive enforcement: from 1996 to 1998, nearly 35,000 children were removed from their homes and placed in foster care. In 1999, however, that number began to go down because, Mr. Scoppetta said, officials slowly recognized that child safety could be better served by preventing the trauma of foster care placement in the first place.

"There is always a debate as to whether you're a family preservation agency or a child protective agency, but I think that misses the point," Mr. Scoppetta, now the city's fire commissioner, said in an interview. "It's about assessment, and the whole perspective is that if a child can be safe at home, you should leave that child at home."

The agency under Mr. Scoppetta's leadership is generally credited with hiring more people, increasing salaries, improving training and establishing a computerized evaluation system to track the quality of its foster care services. It also adopted the recommendations of a panel of national experts brought in by court order to evaluate the foster care system.

Under Mr. Scoppetta's successor, William C. Bell, the number of admissions into the foster care system dropped to 6,200 in 2003, his last year in the agency, from a record high of 12,000 in 1998.

Meanwhile, agency officials assert, only 8 percent of the children left in their homes after reports of abuse or neglect were maltreated within a year of the first accusations. Moreover, the overall number of complaints of abuse has declined by 52 percent over the last seven years - an indication, some experts say, that the city has managed to keep families together without compromising children's safety.

"The new approach of keeping families together is just as effective at treating the disease - i.e., child abuse - without nearly as many side effects - i.e., the trauma of separation," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, a private group in Alexandria, Va.

"There is no system in the country that has succeeded going the other way, favoring removal over preservation," Mr. Wexler said. "New York City tried going the other way first, and it didn't work. It's clear the panic didn't make children safer."

Nationwide, other cities and states with troubled child welfare systems have also moved away from removing children as the first option, and their foster care populations have also slowly begun to decline.

The principal reason for reduction of the nation's foster care population is that welfare agencies have been able to significantly increase the number of children discharged from foster care, often through adoption, according to Wade Horn, the assistant secretary for children and families at the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

For New York, the next step, Mr. Mattingly said, is to develop a partnership between the agency and community-based organizations that would allow the city to mobilize a network of foster parents at a moment's notice should crisis spark a sudden increase in demand.

The partnership, which is still in its planning phase, would also allow these organizations to invest in programs and services that are most needed to protect children and preserve families in their neighborhoods.

"What we hope to be able to do is to offer neighborhoods flexible funding so that they can spend the money on these families and their children the way they think is best," Mr. Mattingly said.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Priv

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

Boston: Addicted to Drug Money---DA & The Police Hoard Money for Salaires and Consutlants

By Michele McPhee/ Special Report
Sunday, October 23, 2005 - Updated: 08:58 AM EST

Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley is using monies seized in criminal investigations to pay the salaries, pensions and benefits of 10 prosecutors - funds that are earmarked to fight the war on drugs, the Herald has learned.

Conley's chief of staff John Towle defended the salaries as a legitimate use of drug forfeiture funds, saying: ``Under the law it's allowable.''

The BPD and the DA's office receive hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in revenues from the confiscated assets of drug dealers, money that is spent with no public scrutiny or budgetary constraints.

Now several city councilors are sponsoring a bill that would earmark one-third of those monies specifically for drug treatment.

``Treatment and recovery is an equal partner on the the war on drugs,'' City Council President Michael Flaherty said. ``Unless we bring treatments and recovery to the table, we are never going to get to the point of being able to curb substance abuse and drug activities in our neighborhood.''

Mayor Thomas M. Menino said he supports the bill that will earmark drug monies to treatment beds. But Towle said his office will fight to keep the money, which is currently split between the DA`s office and the BPD.

Under Massachusetts law, drug forfeiture money can be used for ``any law enforcement purpose'' deemed appropriate.

``We are putting prosecutors in the courtroom,'' Towle said.

The DA's office also used the money for office space, equipment and drug purchases for undercover detectives, according to an accounting of the fund received by the Herald.

The BPD spent the bulk of its drug forfeiture money on a contract with Ron Smith & Associates, which has been paid more than $250,000 to clear a backlog of unprocessed fingerprint evidence. The cost includes hotels, airfare and food for experts who have flown in from Mississippi. Other expenditures included nearly $10,000 on crime scene cones and $34,000 on 33 digital cameras.

The DA's office did give a $7,000 grant this year to the Gavin Foundation's Cushing House, which is a residential treatment center for teenaged boys. A similar house for adolescent girls is opening this month at in at the Cushing House.

The City Council said that's not enough and several councilors signed a petition to create a special law to decide who should get funds from city forfeitures.

The bill includes startling information from the city's public health department, such as: ``Boston had the highest rates of reported illegal substance use among major metropolitan areas in the nation.''
BostonHerald.com - Local / Regional News: Addicted to drug money: DA, cops hoard dealer dough for salaries and consultants

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

October 22, 2005

Women Who I Incarcerated Finally Gets An Abortion

October 21, 2005, NY Times
Inmate at Center of Case Gets Abortion
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A Missouri inmate whose effort to get an abortion went all to the way to the U.S. Supreme Court underwent the procedure.

The woman had the abortion Thursday in St. Louis, after the courts ruled that the state Corrections Department must provide her with transportation to the clinic at taxpayer expense.

The four-months-pregnant inmate was in prison in Vandalia, 80 miles from St. Louis, for violating her probation on a methamphetamine-possession charge.

The woman, whose name was not released, was willing to pay for the abortion but said she could not afford transportation. The prison system refused to give her ride because of a Missouri law that forbids the use of tax dollars to facilitate an abortion.

But a federal judge ruled that the policy violated the woman's right to an abortion, and the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let the judge's action stand.

''The governor remains disappointed in the court actions that compelled the state's involvement,'' said Spence Jackson, a spokesman for Gov. Matt Blunt. Jackson said that the prison policy reflects Missouri values.

The travel costs were estimated at $350 for two guards plus fuel.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press

Posted by lois at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)

State Removes Newborn Over Father's 20 year old conviction

October 22, 2005
Officials Remove Newborn Over Father's Abuse Case
By KATE ZERNIKE
POTTSVILLE, Pa., Oct. 21 - County officials here in Eastern Pennsylvania left notes on Melissa WolfHawk's door, she said, warning her that they were monitoring her pregnancy. They told her they would try to take her child as soon as she gave birth.

She had the Caesarean section on Tuesday. Against her doctors' wishes, she left the hospital two days later to appear in court, but on Friday she lost her fight when a judge gave the boy to Schuylkill County.

At issue, officials say, is not so much Ms. WolfHawk's fitness as a mother as her choice of mates. The newborn's father, her husband, served a decade in prison as a sex offender in New York 22 years ago, convicted in the rape and sodomy of two teenage girls. The boy is the third child Ms. WolfHawk has lost for just that reason. The baby - lawyers are not disclosing his name - will be in temporary custody pending a hearing on longer term arrangements on Oct. 31, as well as an ongoing challenge that Ms. WolfHawk has filed in federal court.

The case illustrates the debate over how far the authorities should go in drawing boundaries between sexual offenders and their neighbors - or, in this case, their own families.

Ms. WolfHawk's lawyer says the county is violating her rights, and misusing the sex offender registries that have been established in the last several years across the country under measures known as Megan's Laws.

"That they're going to decide who you can associate with as a parent, that's just astounding," said Mary Catherine Roper, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing Ms. WolfHawk. "I don't know when imminent danger to a child became you can't have any friends we don't like, or even any exes we don't like. If you ever associate with someone who turns out to have engaged in child abuse then that's it for you."

County officials argued during the federal court hearings that they had a doctor's report saying that Ms. WolfHawk had used drugs; she denies that, saying there is no evidence in any of her medical records and that she will undergo screening to prove she is clean.

But officials say that their primary concern is the record of her husband, DaiShin John WolfHawk, although there is no evidence, they say, that he has abused children recently.

"He has a history of violent sexual abuse against kids," said Karen Rismiller, a lawyer for Schuylkill County Children and Youth Services. "Just because he served time doesn't allow someone to be around children. He's a sex offender registered in Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland."

Ms. WolfHawk testified on her own behalf in the hearing Friday, which was closed to the public. She refused to say anything as she walked out of the courtroom, holding her abdomen with a hand still affixed with a hospital bracelet, and wearing a blue sweatshirt reading "Transport for Christ" and her long red hair in braids. Judge Charles M. Miller said she could have two hours of supervised visits with the baby before the next hearing. Her lawyer said she had been breastfeeding the child and would deliver frozen milk to the county. "She's hoping it gets to the baby," Ms. Roper said, "but that obviously isn't the same as holding and breastfeeding her baby."

"It's devastating to an infant to be stripped from his mother in the very first days of his life," Ms. Roper said.

Ms. WolfHawk has expressed support for her husband in previous interviews, saying she saw no evidence that he was the monster depicted by county officials. He appeared with her in federal court last week, but did not appear here Friday. He could not be reached for comment.

Ms. Roper said that the two, who married in June 2002, have maintained separate residences for about two years, and that Ms. WolfHawk would be willing to sign an agreement to stay away from him if that would win her custody of her child.

The county, however, says that the baby is proof that she will not stay away from him. Mr. WolfHawk, now 53, was known as John Joseph Lentini when he pleaded guilty in 1983 to raping and sodomizing two teenage girls. He was sentenced to 5 to 15 years and served 10. Under state versions of Megan's Law, he is required to register with local police.

Mr. WolfHawk changed his name and declares himself chief of an Indian tribe called the Unole E Quoni, which he says has 175 families but is not recognized by any government. Ms. WolfHawk's lawyer said the two met 11 or 12 years ago; they are both members of the tribe.

Ms. WolfHawk had a son by a previous marriage, and Schuylkill County officials moved to take custody of him two weeks after the WolfHawks married, her lawyer said. The boy, now 8, remains in foster care. She became pregnant by Mr. WolfHawk and moved to nearby Lancaster County in 2003, because, a caseworker testified in federal court, she feared that Schuylkill County would take the child. Schuylkill County alerted Lancaster County, whose officials found her living in Schenectady, N.Y., and took the child back to Pennsylvania. By that time, a couple Ms. WolfHawk had lived with briefly in Maryland had filed for custody of the child, arguing that Mr. WolfHawk was unfit. That couple now has custody of the child.

In federal court hearings, county officials alleged that besides the two girls he was convicted of raping, Mr. WolfHawk had abused his daughter, who is now in her 30's, an accusation he denied.

The unusual case has raised some doubts even with groups that champion the rights of abused children.

Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, said he respected the right of agencies to take custody of endangered children, but said that the standard for removing a child had to be set "very high."

"If somebody was convicted 20 years ago and has not reoffended, and the circumstances of the offense would not appear to make him a threat to young children, then this is troublesome," Mr. Allen said.

David L. Levy, the chief executive of the Children's Rights Council, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, said, "I am not aware of any case where a 20-year-old conviction, no matter how heinous, has been used to remove a child from the care of the perpetrator and from a mother who had nothing to do with that crime."

"The state may think that because they're married, the only way to make the child safe from the father is to remove him from the mother," he said. "But what about her due process and constitutional rights? If they can show a present danger, I'd be the first one to support removal, but they need to show a connection between 20 years ago and now."

Terry Aguayo contributed reporting from Miami for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Compan

Posted by lois at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2005

National Advocates for Pregnant Women--Building Pro-Choice Grassroots activism

Dear Friends and Supporters:

Last month, we had an extraordinary opportunity to test the theory that by building on the lessons learned from our clients, our concurrent work on drug policy reform, and Terry McGovern’s research on building grassroots pro-choice activism, we could begin to go on the offensive in our efforts to advance reproductive and social justice in America. On September 22 I testified by telephone before the South Dakota Task Force on abortion, along with other experts – pro and anti-choice -- I participated in an event clearly intended to lay the groundwork for new and even more punitive restrictions on access to abortion services in South Dakota and nationwide.

How this came about?

In September our colleague and ally Terry McGovern at the Women's Health and Human Rights Advocacy Initiative at Columbia University (WHHRAI) forwarded an e-mail from South Dakota Activists asking for a legal expert to testify at a special Legislative Taskforce Hearing on Abortion. We assumed one of the much larger pro-choice groups that focus on abortion would provide the legal expertise they were looking for. When it turned out that the South Dakota activists had not been able to find anyone, we followed up, and in the end provided the needed testimony.

Why was South Dakota having hearings on abortion?

Just like people who oppose environmental protection measures, people who oppose abortion don’t have any real science or medicine on their side. So what do they do? They create doubt. So for example, they convinced the South Dakota legislature to have hearings on the question of whether or not abortion in America today is voluntary and informed. Of course abortion is both – but by asking such questions our opposition creates doubt and puts our side on the defensive.

Indeed, the anti-choice movement has been doing this effectively for the last thirty years. Anti-choice activists use state legislatures as a tool not only for creating doubt but also as a laboratory for proposing and testing new restrictions on abortion. The new restrictions – whether on “partial birth abortion” or “fetal pain” also provide vehicles for inflaming and organizing opposition to abortion and support for broader economic and political agendas. This particular hearing and task force are apparently designed to provide the basis for new restrictions on abortion – including one that would require all pregnant women seeking to have an abortion to first have a psychiatric or other separate evaluation before being allowed to have the procedure. Even more ominously, local activists believe South Dakota wants to be the first state to provide the newest US Supreme Court justices with an opportunity to overturn Roe.

Supporting Local Activist, The Value of Going On The Offensive

Unfortunately, grassroots and state based pro-choice activists have had far too little support in their efforts to match and surpass the well organized efforts of the anti-choice activists. Our side also tends to stick to certain scripts that narrowly defend abortion and that rely on legal arguments that are technically correct—but unlikely to inspire or motivate our base –much less expand it. NAPW took a different approach. We took on the task force and anti-choice expert Vincent Rue by asking why the committee was ignoring the health concerns of the majority of pregnant women – including the ones who continue to term and the ones who suffer miscarriages and stillbirths. As local activists reported, the anti-choice members on the committee were finally, on this rare occasion, put on the defensive.

When we fully challenge anti-choice activists and put them on the defensive, we create the possibility for advancing an affirmative, offensive strategy and a framework that honors rather than demeans pregnant women, mothers and families.

Below please find two of the thank yous we received as well as the local AP story on the hearing. One of the e-mails we got after the testimony said: “To me, this feels like the beginning of a movement in SD.” As for the press, it does not capture the scope or tenor of our testimony, but it is an unusually balanced piece.

In any event, we hope this testimony will spark discussion and ideas for shifting the debate and developing both new frameworks and new commitments to supporting state-based activists like Kate Looby as well as the real grassroots activism that NAPW and WHHRAI are demonstrating is possible. We will update you soon on other aspects of NAPW’s work including some victories in cases in Oregon, Wyoming, and Washington.

Yours Truly,

Lynn and Wyndi and Wen-Hua

Posted on Thu, Sep. 22, 2005
Experts disagree about abortion counseling, consent

CHET BROKAW
Associated Press

PIERRE, S.D. - A South Dakota panel studying abortion heard Thursday from experts on both sides of the issue who disagreed sharply on whether women get enough information before abortions and whether they make voluntary decisions to have abortions.

Vincent Rue of the Institute for Pregnancy Loss in Jacksonville, Fla., said women are often under stress when they decide to get abortions and many report that they wish they had received more information before making that decision. Women also need time to evaluate the information before deciding whether they should have an abortion, he said.

"If an abortion decision is not voluntary, consent is not possible," Rue told the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion.

However, New York lawyer Lynn M. Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women said state laws around the nation require that women seeking abortions get more information than they would receive before getting other kinds of medical treatment.

"There is no legal, medical or scientific evidence that abortions are being done in this nation involuntarily," Paltrow said.

The task force heard Wednesday and Thursday from a series of national experts on various issued related to abortion. The panel decided to hear from South Dakota experts and take public testimony at its next meeting on Oct. 20-21.

The panel, created by this year's Legislature, is studying aspects of abortion and will report to the Legislature by Dec. 1. That report may urge changes in South Dakota's laws regulating abortion. State lawmakers said the study is needed because more medical and scientific information has become available since the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

Rue said women often feel pressured to have abortions from family members and others, and they are under pressure to make a decision quickly.

Rue recommended that states impose a longer waiting period between the time women receive information and the performance of an abortion, better screening to determine which women are at risk of having physical or psychological problems from abortions, and tailoring some information to teenagers.

Laws also should require that clinics report if women seeking abortions have been victims of abuse, give more information to women about the options of childbirth and adoption, and do a better job of determining whether women seeking abortions have been victims of abuse, Rue said.

"If women are not prepared and they make a decision in a highly stressful environment, then in my opinion that decision is not one they will comfortably live with the rest of their lives," Rue said.

Rue said he believes there are serious deficiencies in current screening and counseling provided to women seeking abortions.

Paltrow said abortion opponents have manufactured doubts about whether women voluntarily consent to abortion. She said such allegations indicate a lack of respect for the 25 million women who have had abortions since the 1973 court decision legalized abortion.

Paltrow also said that if women and fetuses are given separate legal rights, problems can occur such as hospitals seeking to force women to deliver through Caesarean sections instead of by natural birth.

Lynn M. Paltrow
Executive Director
National Advocates for Pregnant Women
www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.org

TESTIMONY TO THE SOUTH DAKOTA TASK FORCE TO STUDY ABORTION

Lynn M. Paltrow, J.D.
Executive Director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women
September 22, 2005

Madame Chairwoman and Members of the Task Force: Thank you for this opportunity to present to you today. My name is Lynn Paltrow. I am an attorney and Executive Director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, an organization devoted to protecting the interests of pregnant and parenting women and their families. In addition to litigation and policy analysis, I am author and co-author of numerous commentaries and articles including ones published in medical journals such as the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Journal of the American Medical Association. I am also a frequent lecturer to medical and public health organizations and to health care providers. In addition, I have served on both state and federal panels concerning pregnant and parenting women. Many of the cases that I have worked on involve women who have wanted to continue their pregnancies to term and many of these women oppose abortion.

I have been asked by this Task Force to provide “An analysis from both the legalistic perspective and from the psychological perspective of the degree to which the decision to undergo an abortion is actually voluntary and the degree to which such abortion constitutes an appropriate legal waiver or termination of the relationship between the woman and the unborn child.”

I want to begin by being clear about the women who are the subjects of this Task Force’s inquiries. More than half of all women having abortions already are mothers, raising one or more children. A majority of those having abortions that are not yet raising children, will someday become mothers and spend much of their lives raising and caring for their children and other loved ones. As a result, the questions addressed by this Task Force concern mothers and pregnant women. These are the women that I will be talking about today.

As an attorney, I will be focusing on legal questions especially on the meaning of the term “voluntary.” I will also address whether pregnancy should be viewed as some kind of contractual relationship between two wholly independent parties — pregnant woman and fetus. In order to explore these questions I will provide case examples that demonstrate what happens when pregnant women and fetuses are treated as separate and competing legal entities as well as cases where women’s reproductive and health decisions have unquestionably not been voluntary.

The meaning of “involuntary”

I begin with the case of Angela Carder: Angela Carder at 27 years old and 25 weeks pregnant became critically ill. She, her husband, and her parents as well as her attending physicians all agreed on treatment designed to keep her alive for as long as possible. The hospital, however, called an emergency hearing to determine the rights of the fetus. A lawyer appointed for the fetus used the anti-abortion argument that fetuses are separate legal persons with independent rights. This lawyer argued that the fetus had a right to life and that what Angela Carder, her husband, and her family wanted did not matter. Despite testimony that a cesarean section could kill Ms. Carder, the court ordered the surgery, finding that the fetus’s rights were controlling. The surgery was performed over her explicit objections and resulted in the death of both Angela and her fetus. The fetus, or as in Angela’s parents words — their “unborn grandchild” — died within two hours and Ms. Carder died two days later with the c-section listed as a contributing factor.

According to the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary at 2564 (1981) Voluntary means: “1(a): proceeding from the will: produced in or by an act of choice, (b): performed made, or given of one’s own free will, (c): ready, willing, (d): done by design or intention: not accidental: intentional, intended.” Clearly the surgery Ms. Carder was forced to have in the name of fetal rights — that ended both her pregnancy and her life — were not voluntary.

Unlike Ms. Carder, Ayesha Madyun survived. She too, however, was forced to have a c-section based on the claim that her fetus had independent rights greater than hers. Ms. Madyun had been in labor for more than 30 hours and as a result, her doctors believed that her baby was at risk of dying from an infection. Her request to be allowed to wait longer before having a cesarean section so she could try natural delivery was portrayed to the court as an irrational religious objection to surgery. The court granted the order. After Ms. Madyun had been subjected to surgery without her consent and forcibly cut open, the doctors found that there was in fact no infection.

The forced surgery that Ms. Madyun endured in the name of fetal rights was not voluntary. In Illinois, another hospital also using anti-abortion arguments claiming the existence of separate legal rights for fetuses, obtained a court order permitting it to force a pregnant woman to undergo a blood transfusion. Doctors "yelled at and forcibly restrained, overpowered and sedated" the woman, in order to carry out the order. This blood transfusion was not voluntary.

Although appellate courts and leading medical organizations have now overwhelmingly rejected these forced interventions, these cases provide key examples of what “involuntary” means in the context of pregnancy and what has and will happen if pregnant women and fetuses are viewed as having independent legal rights.

A more recent case provides another disturbing example. In January 2004, Pennsylvania resident Amber Marlowe went to the hospital to deliver her seventh baby. She and her husband describe themselves as true believers in the Bible and they deeply oppose abortion. For medical reasons far from compelling, the hospital believed that Mrs. Marlow needed to have a c-section. Neither Mrs. nor Mr. Marlowe had any religious objection to surgery. Both felt however that after six other deliveries Ms. Marlowe knew her own body well enough to know that this delivery was possible without surgery. In addition, the Marlowes did not want to subject either Amber or her unborn child to unnecessary surgery that would increase risks to both, and that would unnecessarily prolong the mother’s period of recovery (something that this primary caretaker of six and soon to be seven children wanted to avoid). Rather than respect her informed decision, the hospital sought and obtained a court order giving the hospital custody of the fetus “before, during, and after delivery,” as well as the right to force Ms. Marlowe to have the C-section. The hospital used anti abortion legal arguments asserting the independent legal rights of the fetus. Mr. and Mrs. Marlowe left the hospital before the order could be executed. Mrs. Marlowe gave birth to a healthy baby through vaginal delivery.

Mrs. Marlowe avoided involuntary surgery. Nevertheless, this case presents another clear example of action that would prevent voluntary medical decision-making. The hospital sought and obtained an order “permitting [the hospital] to perform a C-section delivery of Baby Doe without the consent of the Doe parents.”

There are other very clear examples of what “involuntary” means. Over the course of American history, for example, thousands of white American women, Native American, Latina, and African American women were sterilized against their wills, without consent, or under threat. For example, in 1975 ten Chicana women sued Los Angeles County hospital and state officials for incidents of forced and coerced sterilization. One of the women had refused to giver her consent to a sterilization. She was punched in the stomach by a doctor and then sterilized. This woman’s reproductive health experience was unquestionably involuntary.

In the Relf case, two African-American teenagers in Alabama were sterilized without their consent or knowledge. A federal district court found that there was “uncontroverted evidence in the record that minors and other incompetents have been sterilized with federal funds and that an indefinite number of poor people have been improperly coerced into accepting a sterilization operation under the threat that various federally supported welfare benefits would be withdrawn unless they submitted to irreversible sterilization.” These reproductive health outcomes were unquestionably involuntary.

Another example of the true meaning of involuntary is reflected in the lives of African-American women who, during slavery, had no rights whatsoever regarding their reproductive lives. Sexual intercourse, marriage, childbearing, and birth were all under the control of their masters.

These examples of forced, and involuntary treatment of women provide an important contrast to the experience women have of abortion in America today.

The meaning of voluntary

Each year approximately one million women in America have abortions. There is no legal, medical, or scientific evidence that these women who have had abortions have done so involuntarily. Indeed, in today’s legal and political climate we would have to conclude that the abortion decision is “super voluntary” “ultra voluntary” or “voluntary plus.”

South Dakota along with virtually every other state in the union has enacted stringent laws in the name of informed consent. These laws not only impose counseling and informational requirements far beyond those required prior to other medical procedures but some of these laws also require health care providers to convey explicitly state opposition to the procedure. Since 1992 states have enacted 487 laws restricting access to abortion. Many of these laws call for scripted and mandatory counseling, waiting periods, and parental notice or consent. Some additionally require abortion providers to offer women ultra-sound images before the procedure and to inform them of economic supports hypothetically available to them if they continue to term.

The fact that approximately one million women each year have abortions in spite of these requirements, in spite of increasing social and political pressure against abortion, and sometimes in spite of picketers, protesters, and stalkers calling them murderers, should reassure this Task Force that the abortion decision is more voluntary, conscientious, and determined than many health and family related decisions in America today.

I have not been able to find any cases that found that reproductive health providers have forced or coerced abortions. In instances where there have been concerns that family or teachers have attempted to coerce an abortion, the decision in Roe v. Wade has provided pregnant woman with protections. For example, in Arnold v. Bd. of Educ. of Escambia County Ala., 880 F.2d 305, 311 (11th Cir. 1989) parents claimed that a school guidance counselor, vice-principal, and school board coerced a student into having an abortion. The court allowed a civil rights suit against the school officials to go forward. Citing none other than Roe v. Wade, the court explained that our constitutional law ensures that “the individual must be free to decide to carry a child to term." Similarly, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the US Supreme court noted that its decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), "had been sensibly relied upon to counter" attempts to interfere with a woman's decision to become pregnant or to carry to term. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 859 (1992).

Lacking case law examples, or peer reviewed, evidence-based research establishing that women’s abortion decisions are not voluntary or informed, the analysis called for today relies on implication; the suggestion that the pregnant women and mothers of America are being tricked or manipulated. Far from reflecting involuntary, coerced or misinformed decisions, however, the real experiences of women who are the subject of today’s hearings make clear that their decisions are based on profound ethical, religious, and family considerations.

Some years ago women and family members were asked to write letters describing why they or someone they knew chose to have an abortion. Not one of the people who wrote said they or a loved one had had an abortion because they were forced to do so. Instead each of the writers talked about fundamental family and religious values and their deep sense of responsibility. One woman wrote: “When I found out I was pregnant, I had my two boys to care for, and Norma, a baby girl. I already had all that I could handle, because my third child, our daughter was a spina bifida baby, and I had made a promise to myself, when she was born with this condition, that I would take care of her . . ..” Another explained her decision saying, “I was a Christian then, as I am now, and constant prayer asking for guidance through peace is how I was able to feel that God guided me toward that decision, also.”

For so many pregnant women and mothers the decision to have an abortion is not only voluntary, it is ethically mandated by obligations to self and to others.

The legal, medical, and social history of abortion confirms that the decision to end a pregnancy is “super voluntary” or “voluntary plus.” Before the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, state governments were free to substitute their political judgments for the personal, moral judgments of women and the medical judgments of doctors. Despite the laws that prohibited or restricted abortion, women made decisions about their reproductive lives and obtained the abortions they needed and wanted. After abortion became illegal in the United States in the late 1800’s, women continued to have them, defying statutory prohibitions on abortion, as well as public norms and for some, clear religious proscriptions. Estimates of illegal abortion in the United States in the 1960’s ranged between 200,000 and 1,200,000 a year.

The fact that women had abortions in the past, despite criminalization, and continue to have abortions in America today in spite of increasing barriers to that health care service makes clear that the decision to have an abortion – is a voluntary decision.

Finally, if this Task-Force is truly committed to the value of the lives of all pregnant women and mothers it would necessarily include within the scope of its investigation so-called crisis pregnancy centers. In contrast to the extraordinarily regulated providers of abortion services, who are required as a matter of medical ethics and law to provide accurate medical information and to obtain informed consent, crisis pregnancy centers are not similarly regulated and have repeatedly been found to provide false and misleading information to the women who seek help at those centers.

The decision to have an abortion is still “voluntary” even when made in constrained circumstances.

This committee should not confuse the question of whether or not a decision is voluntary and informed with the different question of whether or not men and women must make important life, health, and family decisions within real-life financial, community, and personal constraints.

For example, if a woman chooses to have an abortion because her boyfriend beats her up when he finds out that he impregnated her, the decision to have an abortion can still be both voluntary and informed, even if made under circumstances that influence her decision and constrain unlimited choice.

According to the South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence, in the United States, “1.3 women are raped every minute.” Put differently this means that in America there are “78 rapes each hour, 1,872 rapes each day, 56,160 rapes each month and 683,280 rapes each year.” Also according to SDCADV “50% of women in America will be battered in their lifetime; one out of three are battered repeatedly every year.” The leading cause of pregnancy related deaths in America today is murder.

The violence so many women in South Dakota and across America experience on a daily basis is another good example of the meaning of “involuntary.” A Task Force to examine why men —who disproportionately though not exclusively — commit violence against women would reflect true valuing of mothers, pregnant women and their families and life itself.

The sad truth is that whether pro-or anti choice, the vast majority of women must make reproductive health decisions in a country that has sent a clear message: We do not value the work that you do as mothers and caretakers. America is one of only three industrialized nations in the world that does not require any paid maternity leave. While holding this Task Force hearing about abortion, South Dakota has not to my knowledge explored the possibility of guaranteeing new mothers or fathers any paid parental leave. Similarly pregnant women of all political and cultural stripes are vulnerable to workplace discrimination. Between 10 and 20 million women, including those who work part-time or for small companies, are not protected from discrimination based on pregnancy. Again, while this legislature has considered numerous bills over the years to restrict access to abortion, no legislation to my knowledge has been introduced, much less passed, to prevent these forms of discrimination against pregnant women and mothers who must work in order to feed and house their children.

Pregnant women must also make reproductive decisions in a context in which they must worry about whether they will be able to provide for and protect the children they do have. Nearly one in five children are living in poverty. In addition, America’s infant mortality rates continue to exceed many third world countries. According to the CIA's World Factbook, the United States ranks 43rd in the world in infant mortality. If the United States could reach the level of Singapore, ranked first, we would save 18,900 children's lives each year.

Rather than yet more restrictions on abortion, South Dakota’s legislature should consider how to help women to care for their families and ensure that pregnant women live in a country where they need not worry that their children will survive infancy or go without health care, food, shelter, a good education, and a safe and healthy environment.

The decision to have an abortion is still voluntary even if some women experience sadness or other feelings at some point after the procedure.

This committee must also distinguish between decisions that are voluntary and informed and the feelings people necessarily have about the decisions they have made in their lives. The fact that some women unquestionably experience severe post partum depression following child birth is something to be taken seriously, but it does not provide any basis for concluding that pregnancy and childbirth are involuntary, occurred without adequate information, or that it is now necessary — for their own protection — to require every woman seeking prenatal care to obtain a separate psychological evaluation. Similarly more than 900,000 women each year suffer miscarriages and stillbirths. Many do so without meaningful support from any health care provider. Some experience serious psychological distress from this experience. These facts, however, again tell us nothing about whether or not the decision to become pregnant and to try and carry to term — in spite of the risks of miscarriage and stillbirth — was involuntary or uninformed.

Testimony by psychologist Vincent Rue before this Task Force claims that women who have abortions are at serious risk of experiencing what he as called “post abortion trauma,” a unique trauma associated with having had an abortion. Dr. Rue argued that this Task Force should adopt significant and costly new laws based on his personal theories. These theories, however, have been rejected by his peers — both in the field of psychology and among leaders opposed to abortion. Former United States Surgeon General, Dr. Koop, for example though personally opposed to abortion, has testified, “the psychological effects of abortion are miniscule from a public health perspective.” Moreover the assertion that there are unique and significant psychological harms as a result of abortion has been rejected by numerous peer reviewed scientific studies addressing this question and by leading medical groups including the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association.

Having said this, it is nevertheless crucial to the lives of all pregnant women and mothers that our families and communities acknowledge that women who have abortions, like those who suffer miscarriages, and those who continue to term, and those who give up their children for adoption, may experience a wide range of emotional responses. However, to use those feelings to suggest that the very deliberate, conscientious, and sometimes difficult decision to have an abortion is some how involuntary or misinformed is to express profound disregard and disrespect for the 25 million women who have made that decision.

Rather than deny women’s experiences or risk misusing them to justify a political agenda, this Task Force could support Exhale — a national non-judgmental abortion talk-line that offers women as well as friends and family members a place to talk about their feelings. (1-866-4-EXHALE). Similarly, this Task Force could, if truly concerned with the lives and well-being of all pregnant women and mothers, endorse full parity for mental health services for everyone who needs them.

It is not possible to treat pregnant women and fetuses as competing legal entities in the context of abortion without undermining the health, wellbeing and safety of all pregnant women and new mothers.

This committee also asked me to consider “the degree to which such abortion constitutes an appropriate legal waiver or termination of the relationship between the woman and the unborn child.”

If pregnancy is a “legal” “relationship,” with opposing rights and the possibility of state oversight, the implications for the civil rights, health and well-being of pregnant women and their children is in serious question. Does a pregnant woman who cannot overcome her addiction to cigarettes violate this “legal” “relationship,” making her an appropriate subject for court ordered treatment, arrest for child endangerment, or child welfare interventions? Does a woman lose her right to informed medical decision when she becomes pregnant? Could the state mandate that all women deliver by c-section because of perceived benefits to the unborn child? Could the state outlaw vaginal births after c-sections?

Similarly, if pregnancy is viewed as a legal relationship between completely separate parties having separate, competing rights, shouldn’t every woman who has experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth be questioned about the extent to which she may have contributed to that pregnancy loss and whether those actions or omissions constituted an appropriate legal waiver?

These questions do not represent far-fetched hypothetical possibilities.

For the last 30 years anti-abortion rhetoric has portrayed abortion as murder and the women who have those abortions as “baby killers” and “murderers.” Increasingly, all pregnant women are being viewed as proper subjects of the criminal law and court supervision. Pregnant women in more than 30 states including South Dakota have been arrested based on the claim that a health problem, action or circumstance a woman experienced during pregnancy can be treated as child abuse of she continues to term, or murder if she suffers a miscarriage or stillbirth. Women in California, Florida, Utah, South Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and North Carolina have been charged with manslaughter and even first-degree murder for having suffered unintentional stillbirths. Prosecutors in these cases have argued that something they did or did not do during pregnancy caused these pregnancy losses. In some cases the pregnancy loss is blamed on an untreated drug problem, in another a severely depressed woman was arrested after an attempted suicide might have contributed to a pregnancy loss, and in another it was the pregnant woman’s decision to delay having a c-section that transformed her into a murderer. Such prosecutions continue despite the lack of authorizing legislation, court rulings rejecting such misuse of state law, and in spite of the overwhelming oppositions from medical, child welfare and public health organizations.

Today, many pregnant women and newly delivered birth mothers also face child welfare interventions based on the claim that something they did or did not do during pregnancy constitutes child abuse or neglect. Women for example who have tested positive for illegal drugs and even for drugs prescribed to them during labor, have had their children removed by child welfare authorities who viewed these women as somehow violating a contractual or legal relationship to their unborn children. This is true in spite of the fact that not a single state, including South Dakota, has enough drug treatment available for all of the pregnant and parenting women who want and need it.

Finally, the earlier exampled of forced surgery over the objections of pregnant women, husbands and doctors has been the direct result of giving legitimacy to the idea of legal separation between pregnant women and the fetuses they carry.

This Task Force must recognize that to oppose the recognition of fetal personhood as a matter of law is not to deny the value and importance of potential life as matter of religious belief, emotional conviction, or personal experience. Rather, by rejecting such a new legal construct, the Task Force can improve both maternal and fetal health and ensure that no family ever had to endure the losses that Angela Carder’s family suffered at the hands of the state, in the name of fetal rights.

Creating Doubt, Leaving Too Many Pregnant Women, Mothers Out

By focusing exclusively on abortion, the committee implies that the provision of health care to women who continue to term is more than adequate and closes its eyes to the many serious problems such women face in accessing fully voluntary and informed care. In fact, many women who are giving birth are not provided with essential information. For example, the World Health Organization considers acceptable levels for cesarean rates as not less than 5% and not more than 15% of all deliveries. Yet approximately 28% of all US births are by cesarean delivery, accounting for approximately one million cesareans. Some providers and hospitals have even higher rates. Nevertheless, South Dakota does not require health care providers to provide expectant parents with information about their c-section rates and related information, including rates of births using induction and births utilizing episiotomies. Such information is necessary in order for families to make informed decisions about which providers they will use for their deliveries.

Many hospitals have also instituted policies banning vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC), “misleading women to believe they must undergo cesarean surgery whether there is a medical need for it or not.” Lack of attention to the ways in which pregnant women who continue to term are left uninformed or actually mislead suggests a lack of concern for the majority of pregnant women in the state.

By focusing only on abortion, these hearings also create the illusion that all pregnant women who choose to deliver their babies are not only provided with full information but also treated with care and respect. Yet, instances of poor communications, failure to inform, and even abuse are apparently so common in the birthing context that one organization has created a guide for filing complaints. The form begins by asking:

What do we do when obstetricians or other hospital staff have treated us rudely, abusively or violently? Do they ever hear from us afterward? Abusive behavior toward women, especially in childbirth, is unacceptable and harmful (can cause Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome). Abusive or unacceptable behavior can include threats, scolding, coercion, yelling, belittling, lying, manipulating, mocking, dismissing, refusing to acknowledge, treating without informed consent, omission of information, over-riding your refusal of a treatment, misrepresentation (of medical situation, of interventions, of reasons they “need” you to do something or not do something), etc. For a raised consciousness on this topic, read: Violence against women in health-care institutions: an emerging problem. by A. F.P.L. d’Oliveira, S.G. Diniz and L. B. Schraiber The Lancet, Vol. 359. May 11, 2002.

Moreover, a growing number of pregnant women in America are now giving birth inside jails and prisons, some delivering while shackled to their beds, others left to give birth or miscarry in a prison bathroom. A true commitment to all pregnant women and mothers would require investigation of all aspects of reproductive health care in all contexts, not just the care provided to women seeking to end their pregnancies.

Reproductive health care providers in general also often fail to provide women with essential information about the possibility of miscarriage and stillbirths. Even though miscarriages and stillbirths occur in as many as 15-20 percent of all pregnancies, ob/gyns and prenatal care providers rarely inform women of this risk or offer information that would help women prepare for and cope with this very common and very possible loss. South Dakota does not mandate such disclosure nor create mechanisms for training health care providers in how to convey this information or provide support through the process. The narrow focus of this Task Force again suggests a lack of concern for all pregnant women.

Earlier testimony also claimed that abortion providers fail to screen women for a history of sexual abuse and violence. Although it is unclear that any peer reviewed research finds any unique failure on the part of abortion providers in this regard, it is clear that raising this concern only on behalf of women seeking to end their pregnancies creates the disturbingly false impression that all other pregnant women and mothers are carefully screened and counseled. In fact numerous studies find that few physicians screen their patients for abuse. A 1990 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that only 10 percent of primary care physicians routinely screen for intimate partner abuse during patient visits. Again, I need to ask if this Task Force in fact wishes to ignore the needs of the majority of pregnant women who continue their pregnancies to term each year and potentially make their situation worse by creating the impression that somehow their health care and informational needs are being fully met?

Earlier today, a witness also suggested that the voluntary nature of abortion services should be doubted because some women obtaining abortions do not meet the person who will perform the procedure until a few minutes beforehand. Even if true, there is no research to suggest that this phenomenon in any way jeopardizes women’s health or in any way undermines the informed consent process. What this argument does do however, is create another false impression; that other medical patients are getting better care and more individual attention from their physicians than the group selected for scrutiny by this panel — pregnant women seeking to end their pregnancies.

The United States remains the only western industrialized country not to have a national system of health insurance. Forty-three million Americans, including eight and half million children, lack health care coverage. 41 percent of women of childbearing age, who have incomes below the federal poverty level, do not have private health insurance or Medicaid. In South Dakota, 88,350 people are without health insurance, the equivalent of 12% of the state’s population. Forty-one % of South Dakota’s Indian youth reported having no health insurance; 21 % report having received no routine health care in the past two years.

In fact as the March of Dimes recently noted: “An extensive literature documents that many uninsured Americans do not receive necessary or appropriate medical care.” Moreover, low-income pregnant women receiving publicly funded care often “go to overcrowded hospitals staffed by interns and residents who are overworked and insufficiently trained.” Again it is necessary to ask why, given the pressing problems so many American’s face in obtaining adequate prenatal and delivery services as well as a full range of other health care , the focus is on one procedure — abortion— that has been proven time and again to be safe, effective, and voluntary?

Finally, Dr. Rue argued that all women seeking abortion services should be required to submit to some kind of psychological evaluation. It is ironic that in a country where millions of Americans who desperately need mental health services cannot get them, the State of South Dakota is apparently considering requiring such services for a select group of women that do not by any evidence-based standard require such services. Indeed, South Dakota has chosen to provide only partial parity for insurance coverage of mental health services, leaving many South Dakotans who in fact need such services without coverage.

It is indeed ironic that this Task Force is focusing on an issue –abortion – that in fact has been extensively studied and shown time and again to be one of the most common and safest medical procedures in the United States today. The risk of abortion complications is minimal; less than 1% of all abortion patients experience a major complication. The risk of death associated with childbirth is about 11 times as high as that associated with abortion.

Lacking scientific or medical evidence of its danger or harm, those opposed to abortion as a matter of religious or personal convictions must resort to the strategy of creating doubt. Posing questions such as “Are abortion decisions really voluntary?” and suggesting that not enough research has been done to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of abortion services is a strategy with fascinating parallels to the effort to undermine environmental protections. There, in the face of overwhelming evidence of human contribution to global warming, opponents of environmental protection and regulation create doubt about the extensive science establishing the relationship between human behavior and environmental hazards.

Suggesting that the 25 million women who have chosen to have abortions since 1973 somehow were acting under circumstances of coercion, force, or deception, serves the political purpose of creating doubt about the women who have made the abortion decision and about the safety, efficacy, and value of legal abortion itself. Perhaps even more disturbing is the extent to which such questions create doubt about pregnant women and mothers as moral agents and valued members of our society.

The questions that this Task Force is considering do not focus on pregnant women and mothers as life and caregivers — but rather only as people who “terminate” or abandon their “unborn children.” This focus distracts attention from the profound debt America owes to its pregnant women and mothers. American women — many of whom at some point in their lives have had or will have abortions — “do 80 percent of the child care and two-thirds of the housework.” They do this work without any form of formal compensation, without any guaranteed pensions, and without any form of insurance or healthcare should they need it. Economists suggest that if Americans had to pay for the volunteer and unpaid labor that America’s pregnant women and mothers do, we would go bankrupt.

We claim to be a culture of life — but that has little meaning when the primary way we value the women who give that life is to portray them as incompetent decision makers and limit their access to abortion services. If we truly love and respect our mothers we will address the range of health and economic issues they really do harm them and their children. Suggesting that they cannot make decisions or that they need to be supervised by courts or psychiatrists says yet again to America’s pregnant women and mothers We do not value you or the work you do. South Dakota has the opportunity to send a different message: We take mothers and parenthood seriously, and our next hearings will be about how to ensure that you have the health insurance, economic security, and access to educational resources that you and your family need.

The author wishes to acknowledge and thank Professor Jeanne Flavin, Sarah K. Schindler-Williams, Katy Quissel, and Wen-Hua Yang for their assistance in preparing this testimony.
See, e.g., Howard Minkoff, MD & Lynn M. Paltrow, JD, Melissa Rowland and the Rights of Pregnant Women, 104 J. OBSTET. & GYNECOL., 1234 (2004); Wendy Chavkin, MD, MPH and Lynn M. Paltrow, JD, Physician attitudes concerning legal coercion of pregnant alcohol and drug users, Letter to the Editor, 188 AM. J. OBSTET. GYNECOL. 298 (2003); Lisa H. Harris, MD and Lynn Paltrow, JD, The Status of Pregnant Women and Fetuses in US Criminal Law, 289 MS- JAMA 1697 (2003); Mary Faith Marshall, Jerry Menikoff, and Lynn M. Paltrow, Perinatal Substance Abuse and Human Subjects Research: Are Privacy Protections Adequate?, 9 Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews 54-59 (2003).
Lynn Paltrow presenter to: North American Society of Psychosocial Obstetrics and Gynecology, Thirty First Annual Meeting, Lihue, HI, PAUL C. WEINBERG MEMORIAL LECTURE, The Many Prices of Reproductive Capacity for Women; American Psychiatric Association, ISSUE WORKSHOP, Politics and Pregnancy: The Regina McKnight Case, New York, New York, with Andrea G. Stolar, M.D. and David J. McDowell, Ph.D.; NYU School of Medicine, Masters Scholar Program and the Jonas Salk Society for Biomedical and Health Sciences, Women’s Health Care Seminar, New York, New York, Speaker “Pregnancy and the Fourth and Fifth Amendment: Does Pregnancy Limit a Woman’s Right to Privacy?”; University of Louisville, Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law, Louisville Kentucky, “Pregnant Drug-Using Women: Issues of Concern to Bioethicists.” Featured Speaker, New York University School of Medicine, Master Scholars Program Colloquium, Medical-Legal Intersections in Women’s Health, New York, New York; Rand Corporation, Grant Hill Speakers Series on Science and Drug Policy, Santa Monica, California.
Advisory committee member, Statewide Provider Advisory Committee, for THE NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND OFFICE OF ALCOHOLISM AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE SERVICES, 2000-2002; Panel Member, Domain II: Reducing the Stigma and Changing Attitudes, CSAT National Treatment Plan, Substance abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2000-2002
Legislative Research Council, Dr. Marty Allison, Chair, Dr. Maria Bell, Vice Chair South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion Agenda, Second Day.
John Leland, Under Din of Abortion Debate, An Experience Shared Quietly, N.Y. TIMES (Sept. 18, 2005 at A1) (citing a report of the Centers for Disease Control available http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5309a1.htm#tab12). Lynn did find Arkansas law cite (think I was looking for SD before): ARK. CODE ANN. § 20-16-602 (West 2003), but I am not sure if you would want it here.
R.K. Jones, J.E. Darroch & S.K. Henshaw, Patterns in the Socioeconomic Characteristics of Women Obtaining Abortions in 2000-2001, 34(5) PERSPECTIVES ON SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH 226, 228-230 (2002) (reporting that 61% of women seeking abortions have already had 1 or more live births).
In re A.C., 573 A.2d 1235, 1253 (D.C. 1990) (en banc) (vacating a court-ordered cesarean section that was listed as a contributing factor to the mother’s death on her death certificate); see also, George Annas, Foreclosing the Use of Force: A.C. Reversed. THE HASTINGS CENTER REPORT 27, July 1, 1990.
In re Madyun Fetus, 114 Daily Wash. L. Rptr. 2233 col. 3 (D.C. Super. Ct., Oct. 27, 1986); Cynthia Gorney, Whose Body Is It, Anyway, THE WASHINGTON POST (“On July 26, at 3:32 a.m., Ayesha Madyun delivered a 61/2-pound baby boy who was born with excellent lungs and no sign of infection.”).
In re Fetus Brown, 689 N.E.2d 397, 400 (Ill. App. Ct. 1997) (overturning a court-ordered blood transfusion of a pregnant woman). See also In re Baby Boy Doe, 632 N.E.2d 326 (Ill. App. Ct. 1994) (holding that courts may not balance whatever rights a fetus may have against the rights of a competent woman, whose choice to refuse medical treatment as invasive as a cesarean section must be honored even if the choice may be harmful to the fetus).
Both the American Medical Association and the Ethics Committee of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have taken express positions opposing court ordered interventions against pregnant women and against effort by hospitals and doctors to seek such orders. See American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Committee Opinion No. 55, Patient Choice: Maternal-Fetal Conflict (1987) ("Actions of coercion to obtain consent or force a course of action limit maternal freedom of choice, threaten the doctor/patient relationships, and violate the principles underlying the informed consent process."); Report of American Medical Association Board of Trustees, Legal Interventions During Pregnancy, 264 JAMA 2663, 267 (1990) (“Judicial intervention is inappropriate when a woman has made an informed refusal of a medical treatment designed to benefit her fetus.”)
WVHCS-Hospital, Inc. and Baby Doe, v. Jane Doe and John Doe, Motion for Special Injunction Order and Appointment of Guardian at 3.(“Baby Doe, a full term viable fetus, has certain rights, including the right to have decisions made for it, independent of its parents, regarding its health and survival.”)
Lisa Collier Cool, BABYTALK MAGAZINE at 57 (May 2005); Terrie Morgan-Besecker, Judge’s and Hospital’s decision in the wrong, say legal experts, Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Jan16, 2004 www.timesleader.com/mid/timesleader/7722356.htm; David Weiss, Court delivers controversy, Mom rejects C-section; gives birth on own terms, Wilkes-Barre Times Leader (January 16, 2004) WVHCS-Hospital, Inc. and Baby Doe, v. Jane Doe and John Doe, Court of Common Please, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Civil Action-Equity Number 3-E 2004 Memorandum Opinion, Speical Injunction Order and Appointment of Guardian (Jan 14, 2004) Motion For Special Injunction Order And Appointment of Guardian filed on behalf of WVHCS-Hospital (“The defendants Jan and John Doe are hereby temporarily restrained from refusing to consent to a C-section delivery of their unborn fetus . . “)
Id. See also, WVHCS-Hospital, Inc. and Baby Doe, v. Jane Doe and John Doe, Motion for Special Injunction Order and Appointment of Guardian at 4. (Emphasis added).
Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927) (upholding a Virginia statute providing for sterilization of women, since “[t]hree generations of imbeciles are enough”); STEPHEN JAY GOULD, THE FLAMINGO’S SMILE 306-18 (1985) (revealing the truth about Carrie Buck and her daughter in a moving philosophical essay). at http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_eugenics.html (last visited Apr. 23, 2004); see also Eugenics Archive, Image Archive on American Eugenics, available at http://www.eugenicsarchive.org (last visited Apr. 23, 2004); DOROTHY ROBERTS, KILLING THE BLACK BODY 59-76 (1997); Michael Ollove, The Lessons of Lynchburg, BALT. SUN, May 6, 2001, at 7F (describing the rise of eugenic sterilization laws in the United States including interviews with some people who had been forcibly sterilized).
In 1976 the U.S. General Accounting Office revealed that the federally funded Indian Health Service had sterilized 3,000 Native American women in a four-year period using consent forms "not in compliance ... with regulations." See also, WARD CHURCHILL, A LITTLE MATTER OF GENOCIDE: HOLOCAUST AND DENIAL IN THE AMERICAS 1492 TO THE PRESENT 249-50 (1997) (arguing as much as forty-two percent were sterilized); PAULA GUNN ALLEN, OFF THE RESERVATION: REFLECTIONS ON BOUNDARY-BUSTING, BORDER-CROSSING, LOOSE CANONS 38 (1998) (arguing more than twenty-five percent were sterilized).
Sterilization Abuse: A Task for the Women’s Movement by the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse (January-1977) (citing Laura Foner & Evelyn Machtinger, Sterilization, NEW AMERICAN MOVEMENT (June 1976). Angela Hooton reports that Black and Latina women have been required to undergo sterilization as a condition of their probation or receipt of welfare benefits. In one case, a 21 year-old defendant was indicted for being present in the same room as her boyfriend while he smoked marijuana but was allowed probation conditional on her acceptance of sterilization. A Broader Vision of the Reproductive Rights Movement: Fusing Mainstream and Latina Feminism, 13 AM. U. J. GENDER SOC. POL’Y & L. 59, 71 (2005).
Relf v. Weinberger, 372 F.Supp. 1196, 1199 (D.C.D.C. 1974), vacated, 565 F.2d 722 (D.C. Cir. 1977); Rosalind P. Petchesky, "Reproduction, Ethics, and Public Policy: The Federal Sterilization Regulations," Hastings Center Report, October 1979.
DOROTHY ROBERTS, KILLING THE BLACK BODY (1997).
John Leland, Under Din of Abortion Debate, An Experience Shared Quietly, N.Y. TIMES (Sept. 18, 2005 at A1). L.B. Finer & S.K. Henshaw, Abortion Incidence and Services in the United States in 2000, PERSPECTIVES ON SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH 2003; 35: 6-15
Id. citing NARAL ProChoice, http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/yourstate/whodecides/index.cfm
Id.
Since 1977, there have been 80,000 acts of violence or disruption at clinics providing abortions. NATIONAL ABORTION FEDERATION, VIOLENCE AND DISRUPTION STATISTICS: INCIDENTS OF VIOLENCE AND DISRUPTION AGAINST ABORTION PROVIDERS IN THE U.S. AND CANADA, (2005), available at http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/violence/2003.html
Amicus Brief, Richard Thornburg v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 9 WOMEN’S RTS. L. REP. 3 (1986).
See W. Hern, ABORTION PRACTICE 17020 (1984). See also M. Potts, P. Diggory, & J. Peel, Abortion 87-89 (1977).
See J. Mohr, ABORTION IN AMERICA: THE ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF NATIONAL POLICY, (1800-1900 at 20-45 (1978); K. Luker, ABORTION AND THE POLITICS OF MOTHERHOOD, 14 (1984).
See e.g., E. & Mary K. Messer, BACK ROOM (1988); D. Schuler & F. Kennedy, ABORTION RAP (1971).
Ward Cates, Legal Abortion: The Public Health Record, 215 SCIENCE 1586 (1982).
To put this question in a broader perspective: 46 million women around the world have abortions each year. In some of these countries abortion is illegal. Women have abortions anyway. Worldwide, 78,000 women die annually from unsafe, illegal abortions Induced Abortion Worldwide. Alan Guttmacher Institute. http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/fb_0599.html
See e.g., Deb Berry, Choose Lies, ORLANDO WEEKLY (April 17, 2003) (describing misinformation, deception, and pressure exerted by state funded crisis pregnancy centers in Florida).
See Rickie Solinger, Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States (2001).
See John Leland, supra at A28, describing one woman’s experience: “She arrived at the [abortion] clinic with a cut on her nose and bruises on her forehead and lip, which she sustained after telling her boyfriend she was pregnant. “He flipped out because he wasn’t ready,” she said. She had thought, upon learning of the pregnancy, that she “was about to get married,” she said. She came in with two fellow sergeants, who wore their uniforms. Her boyfriend was in jail, she said.”
http://southdakotacoalition.org/statistics.html
Victoria Frye, 2001. Examining homicide’s contribution to pregnancy-associated deaths. JAMA March 21. 285, 11, 1510-1511; Donna St. George, Many New or Expectant Mothers Die Violent Deaths, Washington Post (Dec 18, 2004 ).
See, e.g., Kirstin Downey Grimsley, Study: U.S. Mothers Face Stingy Maternity Benefits; U.N. Agency Finds Disparity With Other Nations, WASH. POST, Feb. 16, 1998, at A10; Catherine Valenti, Paid Leave for All? With California Taking the Lead, States Consider Paid Family Leave, ABC NEWS, at http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/business/US/paidleave_031009.html (last visited Apr. 25, 2004); Andrea Mahony, Paid Maternity Leave Entitlements Around the World, PROFESSIONAL UPDATE, at http://www.apesma.asn.au/newsviews/professional_update/2001/june/paid_maternity.htm (June 2001)(“In fact the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women states: “‘Parties shall take all appropriate measures … to introduce maternity leave with pay or with comparable social benefits without loss of former employment seniority or social allowances.’”).
Unfortunately, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act includes several sizable exemptions. See 42 USCS § 2000e -(k). It does not apply to employers of less than 15 people. It does not apply to women who work part time. Nor does it apply to new mothers or federal government employees or employees of private clubs and religious organizations. According to the National Bureau of Labor Statistic, there were approximately 10,558,000 women of childbearing age (16-44) who worked part time in 2002. 7,150 women worked at a firm that employed less than 10 people; another 4368,000 women worked at firms that employed 10-24 people. Excluding the military, 728,000 women worked for the government and 2,148,000 worked for private clubs or religious organizations. The number of women of childbearing age who are not protected by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act is somewhere between 10 and 23 million. To put this in perspective, the total number of women of child bearing age in the labor force as of December 2002 was approximately 50,587,000 million. (www.bls.gov). This means that between 20 and 40 percent of working women are not covered by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
See e.g., S.D. Codified Laws § 28-6-4.5 (2005) (preventing use of state funds for abortions unless life of the mother is at stake); §§ 34-23A-1–45 (current through 2005) (delineating 59 different regulations and definitions related to abortion); cf. §§ 34-23B-1 – 5 (2005) (setting out 5 provisions for pre-natal education).
Catholic Campaign for Human Development, Poverty USA: The Faces of American Poverty, at http://www.usccb.org/cchd/povertyusa/povfact2.htm. (Dec. 5, 2003) (stating that “the total number of children in poverty increased to 12.1 million in 2002, up from 11.7 million in 2001.” (U.S. Census Bureau, Poverty in the United States: 2002, Current Population Reports, Sept. 2003.)).
Nicholos Kristoff, Katrina, The Aftermath, Nation Lets Down Its Most Vulnerable, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION (Sept 7, 2005); See also Erin McCormick & Reynolds Holding, Too Young to Die: Part I: Life’s Toll, San Francisco Chronicle at A-16 (Oct. 3, 2004) available at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/03/MNINFANTMO.DTL (citing researchers’ concerns that the abnormally high infant mortality rate, even when adjusted for increased likelihood based on race and economic status, was due to a confluence of factors including endemic unemployment and nearby industrial pollution).
Vital and Health Statistics, Trends in Pregnancy and Pregnancy Rates by Outcome. CDC. January 2000. Stephanie J. Ventura et al, Trends in Pregnancy Rates for the United States, 1976-97: An Update.” NATIONAL VITAL REPORTS 49(4) (2001).
LINDA LAYNE, MOTHERHOOD LOST: A FEMINIST ACCOUNT OF PREGNANCY LOSS IN AMERICA (2003)
The most frequently cited figures for miscarriages and stillbirths are 15-20 percent of all pregnancies with a much higher ratio of one includes pregnancy that end during the first two weeks after conception. MOTHERHOOD LOST at 3.
Chris Mooney, Research and destroy: how the religious right promotes its own "experts" to combat mainstream science, Sidebar, Bucking the Gipper, WASHINGTON MONTHLY, (Oct. 2004).
N. Stotland, The myth of the abortion trauma syndrome, 268 JAMA, 2078-2079 (1992).
In 1989, the American Psychological Association (APA) convened a panel of psychologists with extensive experience in this field to review the data. They reported that the studies with the most scientifically rigorous research designs consistently found no trace of "post-abortion syndrome" and furthermore, that no such syndrome is scientifically or medically recognized. American Psychological Association. "APA research review finds no evidence of 'post-abortion syndrome' but research studies on psychological effects of abortion inconclusive." Press Release, January 18, 1989.
See, e.g., HEATHER CARLINI, BIRTH MOTHER TRAUMA (1992); ADOPTEE TRAUMA (1997).
1-866-4-EXHALE, www.4exhale.org.
State v. Christensen, Minnehaha County, No. CR 90-377 (S.D. Cir. Ct. Mar. 12, 1990).
Jaurigue v. Justice Court, No. 18988, Excerpts of Transcript (Super. Ct. San Benito Cty, Cal. Aug. 21, 1992 (dismissing fetal homicide when a stillbirth occurred), writ denied, (Cal. App. 1992); People v. Jones, No. 93-5 Transcript of Proceedings (J. Ct. Siskiyou Cty, Cal. July 28, 1993 (dismissing fetal homicide charges brought against Lynda Jones, a 36 year old woman with no prior criminal record other than minor traffic violations, after she gave birth prematurely and the infant died).
Peter Franceschina, Teen Whose Baby Died Gets Prison, Treatment, SUN SENTINEL (Ft. Lauderdale), Jan. 4, 2002, at 1B; Susan Spencer-Wendel, Mom Who Did Drugs Before Giving Birth Gets Deal, PALM BEACH POST (Florida), Jan. 4, 2002, at 1B.
Richard L. Berkowitz, M.D., Should Refusal to Undergo A Cesarean Section Be A Criminal Offense? 140 AM. J. OBSTET. & GYNECOL. 1220 (2004).
See State v. McKnight, 352 S.C. 635; 576 S.E.2d 168 (2003).
State v. Ferguson, 2004, Don Jacobs, Baby’s mother sought; Woman faces murder charge after son stillborn from her alleged cocaine use, KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL, June 10, 2004, at B1; Bryan Mitchell, Baby to be laid to rest; mom arrested, KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL, June 12, 2004, at B2.
State Briefs, THE DAILY OKLAHOMAN (Oct. 6, 2004) at 4A (“Oklahoma City police are investigating the death of a stillborn girl as a homicide - marking the second time in less than a month that a mother could be charged with murder. . .”).
State v. Bedgood, Wilson County, Case no. 05CR53615 (2005)
State v. Stephens, Horry County, No. 01-GS-26-2964 (Oct. 17, 2001); Arrest Warrant No. F-872732 (Feb. 18, 1999).
Richard L. Berkowitz, M.D., supra n.51.
“The March of Dimes believes that targeting substance-abusing pregnant women for criminal prosecution is inappropriate and will drive women away from treatment.” MARCH OF DIMES, STATEMENT ON MATERNAL DRUG ABUSE (1990); “Pregnant women will be likely to avoid seeking prenatal or other medical care for fear that their physicians’ knowledge of substance abuse or other potentially harmful behavior could result in a jail sentence rather than proper medical treatment.” American Medical Association Board of Trustees, Legal Interventions During Pregnancy, 264 JAMA 2663, 2667 (1990); “The American Academy of Pediatrics is concerned that [arresting drug addicted women who become pregnant] may discourage mothers and their infants from receiving the very medical care and social support systems that are crucial to their treatment.” American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Substance Abuse, Drug Exposed Infants, 86 PEDIATRICS 639, 641 (1990); The American Public Health Association’s Policy recognizes that: . . . that pregnant drug-dependent women have been the object of criminal prosecution in several states, and that women who might want medical care for themselves and their babies may not feel free to seek treatment because of fear of criminal prosecution related to illicit drug use . . . [the Association] recommends that no punitive measures be taken against pregnant women who are users of illicit drugs when no other illegal acts, including drug-related offenses, have been committed. Am. Pub. Health Ass’n, Public Policy Statement No. 9020, Illicit Drug Use by Pregnant Women, 8 AM. J. PUB. HEALTH 240 (1990); “[The American Nurses Association] recognizes alcohol and other drug problems as treatable illnesses. The threat of criminal prosecution is counterproductive in that it prevents many women from seeking prenatal care and treatment for their alcohol and other drug problems.” AMERICAN NURSES ASSOCIATION, POSITION STATEMENT ON OPPOSITION TO CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF WOMEN FOR USE OF DRUGS WHILE PREGNANT AND SUPPORT FOR TREATMENT SERVICES FOR ALCOHOL AND DRUG DEPENDENT WOMEN OF CHILDBEARING AGE (1991); “Criminal prosecution of chemically dependent women will have the overall result of deterring such women from seeking both prenatal care and chemical dependency treatment, thereby increasing, rather than preventing, harm to children and to society as a whole.” American Society of Addiction Medicine, PUBLIC Policy Statement on Chemically Dependent Women and Pregnancy 47 (1989).
See e.g., Associated Press, Woman Given Labor Sedative Loses Custody of Children, THE SACRAMENTO B

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NY: AdvocacyGroups Tackle Challenge Educating Prisoners on Voting Rights

The right to not remain silent
Advocacy groups tackle challenge of educating inmates on voting rights

By KATE GURNETT, Staff writer
First published: Thursday, October 13, 2005

SCHENECTADY -- A cluster of men in blaze orange stand outside their cells at the Schenectady County Jail, studying another inmate at a table. Like them, he is not yet 25. He is signing an absentee ballot.
Betsy Forkas, inmate services coordinator, remembers watching the scene. "It was a very quiet, still moment. It was clear that they sensed the importance of it."

Though Forkas had spent weeks registering inmates to vote, she hadn't realized the power of the ballot. Not just to enfranchise. But to rehabilitate.

At the moment, the young man "was showing his best self," Forkas, 66, recalled. "He was doing a community act that made him part of the mainstream."

There are no voting booths inside area county jails. But hundreds of locally incarcerated men and women are eligible to cast ballots. Few sign up.

Now, the League of Women Voters and the Center for Law and Justice hope to link a disenfranchised population to civic life.

"It's the thing to do," said Preston Jernigan, 33, on his tier at the Schenectady County Jail. "Anybody in their right mind wanna vote. If you don't vote, you can't complain."

Voting is a key democratic right, said Dan Salvin, an attorney with the Center for Law and Justice in Albany, a civil rights advocacy group.

But confusion among convicts and election officials about eligibility keeps many prisoners from casting ballots, he said.

"There are some people who think that if you've committed a crime, that voting is one of the things you lose," Forkas added. "The Constitution says that's not true."

"A lot of people don't know they have the option," said Moses Jackson, 23, a parole violator at the Schenectady County Jail. "That's what I thought until I read that, there," he said, pointing to a pamphlet that Forkas gave him.

Roughly 4.7 million Americans can no longer vote, according to The Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., a research and advocacy group promoting alternatives to incarceration. More than 50 percent of current state and federal prisoners are nonviolent and drug offenders.

Black and Latino voters are highly effected, Salvin said. Up to a third of the next generation of black men in America may become disenfranchised, he said.

A state Senate bill introduced this year would require local jails to facilitate voting, which is done by absentee ballot. Under New York law, the only criminals who can't vote are those serving time or on parole for a felony conviction. Inmates awaiting trial or serving time for misdemeanors are eligible.

Voting rights for accused and convicted criminals might not be popular.

But "it's a good idea," the bill's co-sponsor Sen. Neil Breslin, D-Albany, said. These days "people are less and less interested in voting. Why don't we try to assist them and educate them about their right to vote? If they pay their debt to society we should have programs that make them aware of their civic duties."

Local registration campaigns in Albany, Rensselaer and Schenectady counties are finding mixed success.

Albany County Sheriff James Campbell denied the league's request to make a 10-minute presentation to inmates in the jail's general equivalency diploma (GED) class, despite a support letter from Breslin.

As an elected official, Campbell "should understand the importance of voting rights," Salvin said. "He has exclusive control of 800 people that probably won't vote unless he improves access. He just wasn't receptive at all."

"I can't," Campbell said. "I've got so much going on there with other programs," from alcohol and drug rehabilitation to parenting, life skills and family education programs, adolescent employability skills classes and religious services. "This all goes on during the day. I don't want to use the word disruptive, but to have another program in there" would mean cutting back on something else, he said.

Campbell offered to hand out registration forms to prisoners through inmate services. "We can handle it ourselves if they would give us the brochures."

It's up to the inmates in Saratoga County as well.

There, about 148 prisoners can get registration forms if they ask, said Lt. Peter Arpei, of the county sheriff's office. "They would have to approach us with it. That is their right. Just because they're in jail doesn't mean they don't have any rights."

How many ask? None this year, Arpei said.

With so few Americans voting these days, even passing out pamphlets "realistically, doesn't get people to register," Salvin said. Certain people need assistance.

State law requires agencies serving the disabled, such as the Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse, to help them register to vote, he said.

Jails aren't included. "We're working with a similar population, they have drug addiction and other special needs," Salvin said. "They really need assistance."

Rensselaer County's jail Superintendent Robert Loveridge said he passed out instruction packets and ballot applications to all 260 inmates. Next year, the Center for Law and Justice hopes to distribute an informational video to inmates statewide.

About 36 inmates registered in Schenectady County last year, after Forkas went cell to cell with pamphlets, forms and ballots. Her goal this year: 50.

In an overheated dorm area, men in white T-shirts shuffle cards and play chess when Forkas arrives. She slips an application under the wire fence to a prisoner.

"Anyone wanna vote?" one inmate calls out.

"Is it really gonna matter?" another asks.

"They say every vote counts, man," another calls.

"I'm only one in a million," someone adds.

The conversation represents America's modern ambivalence about voting.

"I live (outside) and almost none of my neighbors vote," said jail Sgt. Art Everetts. "It's really disheartening."

Ruel Torak, who faces misdemeanor charges, disagrees. "I think voting is a conspiracy," the 19-year-old inmate said when asked if he need an application. "There's someone out there deciding who's gonna be president,and they just let us think that we have a part in it."

Inmate Matthew Potter, 20, disagreed. "It's the only right I really have left," he said. "I vote in every election there is."

"I'm really excited about it," said Charles Carey, 54, an inmate who quit voting after he was convicted of a felony in his 20s.

Forkas said she created interest in the upcoming election "just by walking the floors. They were saying, 'Oh, man I wish I could vote.' I said: 'You will.' "

This month she'll spend time answering questions about paperwork "holding their hand and helping them through it."

Some inmates are more familiar with voice votes and street verdicts than completing an absentee ballot or registration.

But now, some are volunteering to help others with the paperwork, Forkas said. "It's one of the things we can do to help them feel like they're part of society."

All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2005, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.

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

October 20, 2005

Crack, Congress and the Million Man March

Crack, Congress and the Million Man March
by Nkechi Taifa

The 10th anniversary of the Million Man March also marks the 10th anniversary of a missed opportunity to dramatically reduce the number of African Americans in prison.

Bill Clinton, jokingly referred to as the “first black president,” could have made the decisive difference a decade ago by remedying one of the most notorious illustrations of disparity in the criminal justice system – the singling out of crack cocaine offenders for harsher punishment than powder cocaine offenders.

Issue 155 - October 20 2005
Black Commentator
This sentencing law treats possession of just five grams of crack cocaine (the weight of five packets of sweet and low) the same as the trafficking of 500 grams of powder cocaine (about the weight of a one pound bag of sugar). In other words, one receives the same five year mandatory sentence for 5 grams of crack as for 500 grams of powder. But because powder cocaine can very easily be converted to crack, to punish crack cocaine offenses at a quantity ratio 100 times greater than its original powder form, is irrational.

Despite prevalent stereotypes, the majority of documented crack users are white. The “war on drugs,” however, has been primarily fought in inner-city black communities. This law enforcement policy has caused a disproportional number of low-level black drug abusers to be herded to prison under the crack laws, serving unreasonably harsh sentences.

On October 16, 1995, not coincidentally the day of the Million Man March, then President Clinton eloquently appealed for “fairness and equality” in a riveting address on race relations on a college campus, in which he stressed the need to “root out racism” from the criminal justice system.

Ironically, two days after that speech, the justice and equality that a million black men had marched to the steps of the Capitol to demand, was deferred. Congress voted against equalizing the quantities for the sentencing of crack and powder cocaine offenses.

This vote was suspect because lawmakers rejected the wisdom of their own bipartisan Sentencing Commission, which had meticulously researched and analyzed cocaine and federal sentencing policy over a two-year period. The Commission had come to the unanimous conclusion that the sentences for crack cocaine were too great and must be changed. Shamefully, out of over 500 recommendations submitted by the expert Commission since its inception, this was the first one Congress chose to ignore.

The ball was then in Mr. Clinton’s court. Congressional Black Caucus members pointedly appealed to the president to eradicate the disparity in cocaine sentencing. This was the first “test,” they declared, in the wake of the Million Man March, to prove he would “root out” unjust policies and practices. A coalition of civil rights groups at that time declared that eliminating this unjust law would have been “as easy as the stroke of a pen.” Unfortunately, Mr. Clinton failed to turn his eloquently delivered words on race relations into deeds, instead siding with the congressional majority and disregarding rationally based reform. And prisons continued to be built – and filled – throughout the 1990s.

Ten years have come and gone. Nearly a million black people are now in prison – largely because the harsh crack cocaine laws have remained unchanged. Politics, however, must not continue to drive sentencing policy. Now is the time for progressives and conservatives to join together to rectify the missed opportunity of the past. Congress must listen to the advice of its own Sentencing Commission, which concluded that revising this one law “would better reduce the gap [in sentencing between African Americans and other racial groups], and it would dramatically improve the fairness of the federal sentencing system.”

During the past decade the historic Million Man March has spawned several other national marches, including this past weekend’s Millions More Movement, pulling together not just men, but women, youth, and families as well. But the continuation of harsh and irrational sentencing laws is tearing these very families apart. These laws have thrust unprecedented numbers of women into the criminal justice system, subsequently terminating parental rights to their children. They have resulted in the warehousing of youth for prison terms at the beginning of their adulthood, creating in the process an epidemic of physical, mental, and public health issues. And those who manage to return to communities at the conclusion of decades-long sentences are confronted with staggering barriers to successful reintegration into society, oftentimes causing renewal of the same harmful cycles that put them in prison in the first place.

It is time that crack cocaine laws change. Policymakers must have the courage to rationally reform them, and to directly confront issues of racial disparity. Perhaps the Millions More Movement can be the beginning of a grassroots catalyst that encourages those on Capitol Hill and in the White House to mend this “crack” in our justice system.

Nkechi Taifa, Esq., is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Open Society Institute and an Adjunct Professor at Howard University School of Law.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/155/155_think_crack_congress_mmm.html

Posted by lois at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)

Prison Health: Forum Held on Special Journal of Public Health Issue

Forum Held on Special American Journal of Public Health Issue on Prison Health Care

American Journal of Public Health Details Broken Cycle of Care

Washington, D.C., Sept. 28, 2005—The U.S. could conservatively save $3 billion a year by improving its ineffective and at times inhumane prison health system, David Satcher, MD, PhD, Interim President of the Morehouse School of Medicine and 16th U.S. Surgeon General said today at the release of the October 2005 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The issue of the Journal focuses on prison health, and its release here is co-sponsored by the Community Voices Initiative of the National Center for Primary Care, Morehouse School of Medicine, and the American Public Health Association.

“The results released in today’s American Journal of Public Health should lead any medical professional to realize a prescription for change needs to be written. For the American taxpayer, its time to ask for increased accountability and expect a better return on a $60 billion investment,” said Satcher. The $3 billion a year savings in prison health could be achieved by a five percent reduction in persons incarcerated due to health-related reasons.

Satcher was joined at this event by The Honorable Judge Greg Mathis of Michigan’s 36th District Court and host of the nationally syndicated television court show, Judge Mathis; Georges C. Benjamin, M.D., FACP, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association; Nicholas Freudenberg, DrPH, Distinguished Professor of Urban Public Health at Hunter College, City University of New York; Marguerite Johnson, Vice President for Health Programs at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation; Steven Leifman, JD, Associate Administrative Judge in the Miami-Dade County Court; Henrie M. Treadwell, Ph.D., Senior Social Scientist and Associate Director of Development at the National Center for Primary Care, Morehouse School of Medicine; and Lester N. Wright, MD, MPH, Deputy Commissioner/Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Corrections Services, New York.

“Prison bars are not a barrier against disease. Health problems don’t disappear when someone is sent to jail, and they don’t stay in jail once someone is released,” said Dr. Benjamin. “Of the over 2 million prisoners incarcerated last year, more than half a million will be released back into our communities this year. Many will leave jail with compromised health and most with no access to comprehensive health care services.”

The overwhelming majority of these inmates are men, particularly men of color. “America’s prisons are ground zero for racial and health disparities,” Dr. Satcher said.

The Journal contains 15 articles on prison health. Findings include:

The prevalence of infectious disease is on average four to 10 times greater among prisoners than among the rest of the U.S. population, and the prevalence of chronic disease is even greater.

One in six people in the criminal justice system lives with a mental illness.

The rapid spread of tuberculosis and HIV infection among inmates in the 1990s coincided with patterns of mass incarceration.

No federal Medicaid funds can be used to pay for health care services to “inmates of a public institution.”

Community Voices of the National Center for Primary Care at the Morehouse School of Medicine is a W.K. Kellogg Foundation initiative working to make health care available to all, by helping ensure the survival of safety-net providers and strengthening community support services. For more information, please visit www.communityvoices.org.

The American Public Health Association, publisher of the American Journal of Public Health, is the oldest, largest and most diverse organization of public health professionals in the world. The association works to protect all Americans and their communities from preventable, serious health threats. More information is available at www.apha.org.

A webcast of this event will be provided by kaisernetwork.org, a free service of the Kaiser Family Foundation and available after 12 p.m. ET, on Thursday, September 29, 2005 at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/healthcast/apha/28sep05. Along with the webcast, a transcript and related resources will also be available.

Posted by lois at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

Study: Blacks Have Less Access to Painkillers

VISIT THIS PAGE ONLINE for accompanying web links and resources: http://www.jointogether.org/y/0,2521,578468,00.html
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October 19, 2005

Study: Blacks Have Less Access to Painkillers

People who need prescription pain medication are far less likely to find the drugs in pharmacies located in black neighborhoods, according to a study by University of Michigan Medical School researchers.

The Washington Post reported Oct. 16 that the study found that the disparity was evident in both rich and poor black neighborhoods, diluting the argument that the issue has less to do with race than income (rich white communities were more likely to stock the opiate painkillers than those in poor white neighborhoods, however).

"The pharmacies in minority areas generally say they stock limited amounts of pain medication because the demand is not there," said lead researcher Carmen Green. "But the low-demand barrier does not ring true for me. We know that minorities are more at risk of suffering chronic pain, and maybe they don't come to local pharmacies because they've come to expect they won't carry the medicines they need."

Previous studies have found that doctors are less likely to prescribe painkillers to blacks than whites.

"There is no plausible explanation that makes sense," said healthcare expert Ashish Jha of the Harvard School of Public Health. "It's hard to know what gets us there, but if pharmacies are stocking (narcotic
painkillers) at substantially lower levels for black people, what is clear is that there's no good clinical reason for it."

A spokesperson for the American Pharmaceutical Association said that heavy-handed drug enforcement by the DEA, which keeps an eye on illegal diversion of prescription drugs, could contribute to a reluctance by pharmacies to stock the drugs in certain neighborhoods.

The study was published in the October 2005 issue of the Journal of Pain.

Green C. R., Ndao-Brumblay S. K., West B., and Washington T. (2005) Differences in Prescription Opioid Analgesic Availability: Comparing Minority and White Pharmacies Across Michigan. The Journal of Pain, 6(10), 689-699.

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Visit http://www.jointogether.org for complete news and funding coverage, resources and advocacy tools to advance effective drug and alcohol policy, prevention and treatment.

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

Shelia Jackson Lee Proposes 100,000 spaces added at detention sites

Oct. 17, 2005, 11:21PM

Jackson Lee proposes stronger border security
Congresswoman wants 100,000 spaces added at detention sites
By EDWARD HEGSTROM
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee joined the border security debate Monday by offering her own proposal to beef up Rio Grande patrols and add 100,000 spaces at detention centers.

The Houston Democrat, best known for supporting immigrants, says a recent tour of the border left her convinced the federal government is not doing enough to secure the borders from drug runners and terrorists.

"This government, the federal government, has failed," she said at a press conference attended by T.J. Bonner, the head of the National Border Patrol Council.

Jackson Lee is not the first Democrat to criticize the Bush administration on the national security issue. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, both Democrats, declared states of emergency earlier this year because of drug-related violence on their respective borders.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, offered his own proposal last week, which would spend $9.7 million to put sheriff's deputies to work stopping the flow of drugs across the Rio Grande.

But Jackson Lee said patrolling the border needs to be left to the federal government, which can provide the proper training for officers, leaving local police available to look for "child molesters and bank robbers."

Her bill, called the Rapid Response Border Protection Act, calls on the government to train enough new recruits so that 1,000 Border Patrol agents could be mobilized to respond during an emergency on a particular stretch of the border. She also proposes equipping the agents with better helicopters, boats, trucks, computers, radios and night-vision goggles.

The addition of 100,000 detention beds would allow the government to hold and then deport more illegal immigrants. Currently, some illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico are released because the government doesn't have anywhere to detain them.

The bill offers benefits such as relocation bonuses and student loans to Border Patrol agents. Jackson Lee's bill would allow union employees to regain their right to collective bargaining, which they lost in the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

No cost estimate was immediately available for the bill.

Jackson Lee said the proposal does not represent a departure from her long-standing position as an advocate for immigrants, including illegal immigrants. Experts estimate there are 11 million illegal immigrants now in the country, and Jackson Lee said it would be impractical for the government to deport all of them. She has proposed offering them "earned access to legalization," which would allow them to become U.S. citizens over time.

Opponents of illegal immigration don't like Jackson Lee's proposal to legalize those now in the country, which they consider an amnesty. But some of them say they were pleasantly surprised to see the details from Jackson Lee's new border security legislation.

"It's a good bill," said Rosemary Jenks, who tracks legislation for NumbersUSA, a Washington, D.C., group pushing to reduce immigration levels.

Jenks said Democrats would be smart to take up the issue of border security.

"This White House has been an absolute disaster on enforcement," she said. "If (the Democrats) are serious, they're onto something. This is something that resonates with the public."

Still, Jenks gave the bill little chance of going anywhere.

"It's a Republican-controlled Congress, and they're not going to move a Sheila Jackson Lee bill," she said.

edward.hegstrom@chron.com

Posted by lois at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2005

US Supreme Court Clears Way for Woman Who is Incarcerated to Have An Abortion

ROBERT PATRICK AND JO MANNIES
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Monday, Oct. 17 2005
The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for a Missouri inmate to receive an abortion that was delayed for weeks by a new prison policy.
In an unsigned, two-sentence order, the court ended a temporary delay that was issued late Friday night by Justice Clarence Thomas.
After a telephone conference with state officials and lawyers for the inmate Monday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple ordered prison officials to transport the inmate, known in the suit as Jane Roe, for the procedure on or before Friday.

Citing "safety, security and privacy concerns," a Department of Corrections official and one of Roe's lawyers said they would not release the planned date, time or location of the abortion.
Jim Felakos, one of Roe's lawyers, declined to make her available for an interview, but the ACLU released a prepared statement from her.

"This process has been very stressful," she said. "Tell everyone that's supporting me that I appreciate from the bottom of my heart all their support. I ask that everyone work to change these laws so that other people don't have to go through what I have. I hope my case will protect other people here . . ."
Felakos said Roe, who is in the women's prison in Vandalia, decided to have an abortion "after considerable thought."

A doctor will have to decide whether the procedure would take one or two days, Felakos said. If it takes more than one day, Felakos said, officials will make arrangements for her to get overnight care.
Roe was originally convicted of possession of methamphetamine, Department of Corrections spokesman John Fougere said. She successfully completed 120 days of "shock" time and was placed on probation but violated it by going to California without permission, he said. She could serve as long as four years for the violation, he said.

Earlier this year, Missouri officials amended prison rules to prohibit trips for abortions, funerals and visits to ill relatives - citing costs and security concerns. The state had not paid for prisoner abortions but previously provided transportation for them.

In court filings last week, Roe's lawyers said she was 16 to 17 weeks pregnant and at that point had been trying for six weeks to get permission to be taken to St. Louis for an abortion.

Judge Whipple twice ordered officials to take her to a St. Louis clinic. Representing the prison, the Missouri attorney general's office first appealed to the 8th U.S. Court of Appeals and lost. Then came the unsuccessful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a statement, Gov. Matt Blunt said he was "extremely disappointed" in the Supreme Court's refusal of the case. "The decision is highly offensive to traditional Missouri values and is contrary to state law," Blunt said.
But state officials said they would not defy the court.
"We are going to follow the law and comply with the court order," Fougere said Monday.
Both sides will now argue in federal court whether the new department policy banning elective abortions should be overturned.
Felakos said Missouri's policy was unique in the nation - the only state prison system with a blanket ban on abortions. He said the policy was in conflict with past appellate court decisions and "contrary to Missouri's long-standing policy on inmate access to health care."
Lawyers representing the Department of Corrections were aware of past court cases, Fougere said, but also were concerned that they were in violation of a state law that bans the use of public money to perform or assist in abortions.
"We could not be totally 100 percent sure that we were not in violation of the statute," Fougere said.
He said security issues and staffing costs were also major concerns.
Such a dispute has arisen locally before.
In December 2002, a woman in the St. Louis County Jail on a probation violation sought an abortion.
Then-County Executive George R. "Buzz" Westfall's administration objected to transporting her to Reproductive Health Services in the Central West End to get one. Westfall was an abortion opponent, although his staff said at the time that that had nothing with their stance. At issue, they said, was the use of county resources.
"It was settled before litigation ensued," Felakos said.
Private money was used to pay for the procedure.
Paula Gianino, chief executive of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, said her organization had taken care of a variety of medical concerns for female prisoners, including abortions, family-planning services or gynecological care. Gianino said Planned Parenthood also had treated male prisoners suffering from sexually transmitted diseases.
In all such cases, she said, "The state is duty-bound to transport prisoners if they need medical care beyond what the state medical facilities can provide."
Roe is too poor to pay for an abortion, according to court filings, and will borrow money from friends or family.

Posted by lois at 08:53 PM | Comments (0)

Impact of 3 Strikes--no direct link between harsh sentencing and crime reduction

Impact of 3-Strikes Law Still Unclear
More than 10 years after the law was enacted, the latest study finds no direct link between the harsher sentencing and crime reduction. By Jenifer Warren Times Staff Writer

October 19, 2005

SACRAMENTO - The landmark "three-strikes" sentencing law passed by California voters in 1994 costs the state $500 million annually in prison expenses - far less than originally predicted - but there remains no consensus on whether it has made the streets safer, according to a study to be released Thursday.

Prepared by the nonpartisan legislative analyst's office, the study found that one-quarter of the state's prisoners - or about 40,000 men and women - are serving time for a second or third strike. Most are in prison for nonserious or nonviolent crimes, the report's author, Brian Brown, said Tuesday.

Brown also confirmed earlier studies showing significant differences in how often California's 58 counties apply the law to criminal defendants. That reflects the discretion criminal justice officials are allowed under the law, he said, and "differences in prosecutorial practices."

The study is the latest attempt to assess the impact of the three-strikes measure, by far the toughest among the 25 such laws in effect around the country.

Passed first by the Legislature and then as a ballot initiative, the law was an effort to target repeat offenders and came after the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma, who was snatched from her home during a slumber party.

Under the law, a defendant convicted of a third felony can be sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. The measure also raised the punishment for "second-strikers," requiring that the usual sentence be doubled and that at least 80% of the time be served before parole may be considered.

Critics have made numerous attempts to modify the law since its passage, but it remains popular with politicians and the public. During the last five years, legislators - most notably, Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles) - have pushed four bills seeking to amend the law but found little support among colleagues.

Critics are most unhappy about a provision that permits any felony - not just a serious or violent crime - to be charged as a third strike. As a result, a shoplifter can be sentenced to 25 years to life if the thief has prior convictions.

Last year, an effort was made to amend three strikes at the ballot box, with Proposition 66. Among other things, it would have allowed a life sentence only if a person was convicted of a third felony that is violent or serious. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger campaigned heavily against it.

Though more than a decade has passed since its passage, three strikes continues to spark spirited disagreements among backers, who insist it is a significant deterrent for would-be criminals, and others, including many criminologists, who say the effect is negligible.

The legislative analyst's study does not resolve that debate, reflecting instead the difficulty of isolating a cause-and-effect relationship between punishment and crime prevention.

Brown, a policy analyst, said that although crime rates have fallen in California since passage of the three-strikes law, crime also has declined in states without such laws.

"It's also true that the crime rate was falling prior to the implementation of three strikes," Brown said. "So the question is, how do you isolate the effect of three strikes? Did it make that drop steeper or longer? We don't know yet."

One result that can be documented is the cost associated with incarcerating inmates convicted of a second or third strike. The study found that the longer sentences are adding about $500 million to the annual corrections budget, which is $7.1 billion this year.

In 1994, the legislative analyst's office predicted that those additional costs would reach $3 billion by 2003.

Still, one scholar who has studied three strikes said the heaviest costs of the measure remain to be seen. Franklin Zimring, a law professor at UC Berkeley, said that rising prison health costs will only be exacerbated as the cohort of third-strike inmates - who now number about 7,700 - age.

"The first parole hearing for any of these guys is not until 2019," Zimring said, "so we're going to see big-time geriatric expenses."

At the same time, he added, "the benefits of crime prevention through incapacitation get very low," because criminal tendencies decline sharply with age.

The legislative analyst's office report will be available Thursday online at http://www.lao.ca.gov .

*

Times staff writer Nancy Vogel contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-strikes19oct19,1,7199845.story?coll=la-h
eadlines-california
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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

CO: Helping Women Addicted to Drugs Stay Clean but Prisons Programs Face Cuts

Facing their demons
Helping addicts stay clean pays, but prison programs fear another round of cuts

By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News
October 19, 2005

"I was born a heroin baby," says Amber Diecidue, now a 27-year-old drug addict in the state women's prison in Denver.

Her mother was an inmate, who eventually did 22 years behind bars, thanks to drugs, she said. Diecidue grew up in foster homes and juvenile detention, or at home where "all my aunties were needle users."

Diecidue says she became addicted to drugs at age 12.

It was the drugs, she says, that led her to a five-year sentence in the Denver Women's Correctional Facility on a charge of attempted second-degree assault.

But she's finally getting treatment for the demons that cause her to do drugs. She's clean, vivacious and determined to change her life and become a good mother to her four children.

If she continues treatment on the outside, her chances are excellent. The Department of Corrections says addicts who complete intensive treatment inside the prison and continue with follow-up treatment outside have only an 8 percent chance of returning to prison, compared with 45 percent for those who don't.

The cost of this treatment behind bars? $10 per day per inmate.

Putting an inmate back in prison costs $77 per day.

But despite evidence that treating inmates for their addictions pays off financially, Colorado legislators facing stark shortfalls in revenue cut state funding for drug and alcohol treatment inside prisons by around 40 percent in 2003.

Colorado now can provide treatment to just 15 percent of its inmates - though it says 80 percent are plagued by addictions.

Faced with these cuts, the five staffers in the program helping Diecidue change her life doubled their workload, to help 72 inmates instead of 36, said Joe Stommel, who runs treatment programs for the prisons.

"It's put a lot of demands on the staff," he said.

Stommel says he needs funding to treat twice as many of the 900 inmates at the women's prison.

He knows he's not likely to get it.

Instead, if Referendums C and D aren't approved by the voters, Stommel fears the entire program for treating inmate addictions could be eliminated. That's because there's little else to target in Corrections. Legislators, he is certain, are not going to slash funding for guards.

Addiction shows up everywhere.

Another DWCF inmate, Carolynn Padilla, 32, looks like she still belongs in her Columbine neighborhood in Littleton, carting her four children from school to sports.

But she and her fellow housewives were bored, and the crowd turned to drinking and drugs.

Padilla says she began a slide into wild drug use and promiscuity that ended in fraud, forgery and a four-year prison sentence.

The treatment program that Diecidue and Padilla are taking is intense, with group counseling, anger management and strict commitments to change.

Diecidue said it's working for her because "I allowed it to get deep down into where my pain is and why I get high."

And she's learning that "I can't control my husband, or my history. I can only control Amber, and what Amber is doing today."

Padilla said it took time for treatment to take. "I was very grandiose. I was so mad, and 'Who are you to tell me?' "

Three of the four women in the program interviewed by the Rocky Mountain News said it was their addictions that led them to crime.

Blue DeHerrera said she started using meth. Then, she turned to manufacturing it - first for herself, then for sale.

All four said they didn't succeed on their first try at treatment.

DeHerrera, 31, and Jessica Sanchez, 21, said they were ordered into the prison's treatment program, but walked off its separate floor back into the general population after seeing how hard it was.

Both have returned.

Sanchez, who said she was doing cocaine when she was arrested for transporting drugs, returned to the program because "I seen that it changed a lot of people that I know.

"I don't want to come back to prison," said the mother of two.

Expecting inmates to go to treatment only after they leave prison won't work, Diecidue said.

Spending years in the general prison population would be like "marinating" in criminal behavior - drugs, fighting and sex, she said.

Going directly from that atmosphere to the outside, she said, "We'd be thinking about the first Corona we're going to buy - and finding some businessman."

If a parole officer ordered her abruptly into treatment, she thinks she would be furious at being told what to do, after years of such orders behind bars.

In short, if Colorado cuts more substance abuse treatment in prison, "You would just have more animals," she said.

Refs C and D at a glance

• Referendum C would allow the state to keep an estimated $3.7 billion in revenue over five years that otherwise would have to be refunded under spending limits of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights. The state estimates the average taxpayer would give up $490 over five years, or $100 a year, and might lose some tax credits.

• Referendum D, which takes effect only if voters approve it and Ref C, would allow the state to issue bonds to borrow against the expected revenues and devote money immediately to roads, schools, and the police and firefighter pension funds.

• This is what the state says it would do with the money.
30% for K-12 schools: For such things as textbooks, libraries, kindergarten

30% for health care: For such things as programs for elderly, low-income and disabled people, programs to lower health insurance costs

30% for community colleges and state colleges: For such things as need-based financial aid, merit-based financial aid, College Opportunity Fund Program, which applies $2,400 a year per student toward college funding

10% Repayment of Referendum D bonds, which break down as follows:

• ROADS AND BRIDGES

Work on 55 projects approved by the Colorado Department of Transportation:

$1.7 billion

• K-12 SCHOOLS

Capital funds to repair dilapidated buildings in the poorest school districts. Typically, each $2 of these funds are matched with $1 by local districts, which means $220 million in total improvements:

$147 million

• HIGHER EDUCATION

Improvements and repairs to facilities at universities, colleges and community colleges:

$50 million

• FIREFIGHTER AND POLICE PENSION FUND

Colorado's share of the state-local match to the pension fund, which the state has deferred for several years because of the budget crunch:

$175 million

More online

• To read previous stories in the series;

• To calculate an estimate of the TABOR refunds you would give up under Ref C and the tax credits you might give up,

URL: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/election/article/0,1299,DRMN_36_4168560,00.html

Copyright 2005, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.

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

CA: San Francisco City Supervisors Urge Deletion of Question About Prior Felonies

A Call to Let Felons Start Fresh
San Francisco supervisors urge deletion of the question about prior felonies from public job applications.
By Lee Romney
Times Staff Writer

October 12, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO — Elected leaders here Tuesday took a step unusual for politicians: They sided with felons.

With no debate, supervisors unanimously urged the city and county to delete the question about prior convictions from public employment applications.

The resolution is not binding. And it does not prevent employers from conducting criminal background checks or asking about prior felonies during job interviews.

"It's very important, because it gives you an opportunity to sell yourself to the employer," Robert Bowden, 42, an ex-convict who has been out of prison for seven years, said after the vote. "It gives you another option other than going back to what you did…. If they want us to be productive members of society, they've got to let us back into society."

In introducing the measure two weeks ago, Supervisor Tom Ammiano stressed that it would broaden the city's pool of qualified applicants while reinvesting in ex-convicts who are working to rehabilitate themselves.

The resolution prompted more than 160 letters from members of a San Francisco political action committee concerned that potential changes would hamstring city hiring managers and inappropriately allow certain classes of felons into sensitive positions.

Others nationwide watched with interest: With the vote, San Francisco became the first municipality in the state — and possibly the country — to grapple with what advocates say is employment discrimination against a swelling population of ex-prisoners.

Increasing security concerns since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have led to a sharp rise in criminal background checks by employers: Eighty percent conducted them in 2003, up from 51% in 1996, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. The trend has further weeded former offenders from the workplace and prompted some employers to fire otherwise stable workers who lied about criminal pasts, advocates say.

"If they can get their foot in the door so that at least they can be considered … I think that's extremely important," said former Clinton administration pardon attorney Margaret Colgate Love, who recently completed a study for the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project of state laws that affect felons after their release.

The vote by the supervisors came the same day that San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris unveiled a "reentry" program to provide job training, education and other guidance to ex-offenders in an attempt to reduce steep recidivism rates among California parolees.

Dozens of ex-felons packed the supervisors' chambers late last month to support the employment application measure. Activists hope the San Francisco resolution will become a blueprint for others across the state. One spoke of fruitlessly seeking rental housing when his only identification was a prison ID.

Linda Walker, 47, a Contra Costa County employee who works securing child support payments, talked of suffering eternally for crimes she had long ago done the time for. Although the former heroin addict with a petty theft conviction managed to find a sympathetic manager and land a good job, she said she feared having to reveal her felon status each time she sought advancement.

"There have been many times I didn't apply for a position because of that box," she told supervisors when the measure was introduced. "There are so many of us who do not seek housing, jobs, loans and the opportunity to advance because we don't want to answer that question — because we've already paid."

Driving the measure is a Bay Area-based group of ex-convicts called All of Us or None. Leader Dorsey Nunn has urged public officials to view the application checkbox issue as one hurdle in a broader civil rights movement for the formerly incarcerated.

The scene was more subdued Tuesday as two members of the group showed up to watch their measure succeed. Bowden, convicted of drug dealing, now works security for St. Anthony's Foundation. He believes he secured the job only because the application did not inquire about his felony status and he could explain his past in person. He never received a call back after checking the felon box on 40 other applications, he said.

The debate comes as the public policy problem of a vast felon underclass is capturing attention nationwide. There are an estimated 12 million people in the U.S. with felony convictions — about 8% of the working-age population, and more than 600,000 offenders are being released from prisons yearly, said Devah Pager, a Princeton University sociologist who researches employment discrimination against felons.

Pager hired groups of African American and white young men with identical resumes and experience to pose as job applicants. Some were told to say they had a drug felony. Her study found that checking the felony box on applications reduced the white applicants' chance of an interview by 50% and the black applicants' by two-thirds.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-felon12oct12,1,2068369.story?coll=la-headlines-california

Posted by lois at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2005

MA: Hampden County--more men and women incarcerated than ever before

Tuesday, October 18, 2005
By MARLA A. GOLDBERG
SPRINGFIELD - The population in Hampden County's correctional facilities swelled to a record 2,093 about two weeks ago, and has prompted Sheriff Michael J. Ashe Jr. to ask the state for an extra $2.63 million.
The medium-security Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow, which opened in 1992 to house 962 inmates, held 1,604 on Sept. 30, said Ashe spokesman Richard J. McCarthy.

"It reflects what's going on in the streets and the attempt to deal with it," McCarthy said.
More inmates now have to share cells, McCarthy said. "Facilities are taxed," he said. However, he said the jail is not at the point where it would be forced to release people early.

Questions remain about why the inmate population is growing, as arrests in Springfield haven't risen during the last year. Ashe said the greatest increase is in convicts rather than suspects awaiting trial. He said prosecutors and the courts may be processing cases faster.

State police senior crime analyst Debra J. Piehl said local and state police have made 5,248 arrests in Springfield so far this year, slightly less than the 5,272 made in the same period last year. In July, August and September there were 1,713 arrests, down from 1,858 in 2004.
Ashe said that last year, the average jail sentence in Hampden County was 11 months, but he believes longer sentences are being handed down this year, due to seriousness of offenses.

Probation and parole violators may be under greater scrutiny, Ashe said, while there are increased efforts in Holyoke and elsewhere to find suspects with outstanding warrants.

The number of women in the system rose about 28 percent during the last 12 months, Ashe said. Yesterday, the facilities held 1,860 men and 190 women, while 130 to 140 women was more typical in prior years.

State Department of Corrections spokeswoman Kelly A. Nantel said the number of state prison inmates has risen over 10,000, after having dipped closer to 9,000 a few years ago.
Hampden County District Attorney William M. Bennett and Springfield Police Sgt. John M. Delaney said the growing numbers probably reflect heightened law enforcement.
Bennett cited major drug busts as possible contributors. "There's been a lot of very big arrests," he said.
Delaney said police have stepped up their efforts. "The narcotics division has done a tremendous job in the last month, targeting areas that are frequented by gang members."
Acting Police Commissioner William J. Fitchet developed a task force of officers from the street crime, narcotics and juvenile divisions whose sole responsibility is to respond to city trouble spots, he said.
Ashe wrote Oct. 12 to Secretary for Administration and Finance Thomas Trimarco, citing an "alarming" 16.3 percent increase in inmates between March and late September.
Eight units at the jail now house 107 inmates each, Ashe said, and an extra correctional officer is required for each unit during certain shifts. Meanwhile, expenses for food, medicine and supplies are growing.
"Since becoming a state agency, I have never asked for supplemental funding," Ashe wrote, adding, "Now, I have no choice, I need your help!"
Ashe asked Trimarco for $1.35 million for 30 correctional officers and $1.28 million for food and medical expenses. Trimarco's office did not return a call yesterday.
The Hampden County Sheriff's Department budget stands at $55.16 million. However, Ashe said he expects a $533,000 increase in expenses this year for gas, electricity and fuel.
Yesterday's correctional system population was 2,050.
©2005 The Republican

Posted by lois at 07:13 PM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2005

Schools Discipline Black Students More Than Others

Mon, Oct. 17, 2005
EDUCATION STUDY
Schools discipline blacks more than others
Black students are arrested, suspended and expelled at a higher rate than are other students, a study found.
BY PETER BAILEY

Racial profiling permeates South Florida classrooms, as black students face suspension, expulsion and arrest at the hands of color-coded justice, a study says.

Citing a recent report from the Advancement Project, a civic group based in Washington, officials say that black students are disproportionately suspended, expelled and arrested in comparison to white classmates.

Last year, Miami-Dade school police arrested about 2,500 students, an increase of 50 percent from two years ago. More than 50 percent of those arrested were black, even though black students make up only 28 percent of county enrollment.
In the 2003-2004 school year, black elementary students were five times more likely to be suspended than their white classmates.

NAACP officials say the numbers show a school system stained by racism.

''There's an institutionalized racism at work,'' said state NAACP President Adora Obi Nweze. ``The bottom line is that the NAACP will take the lead and expose this for what it is.''

The local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is holding public hearings in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties throughout the week. A team of lawyers from the NAACP, NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Advancement Project will offer legal representation to students who contend they were wrongfully penalized.

The group has already held hearings in Hillsborough and Duval counties. ''There is a difference in the way they treat African-American children as opposed to the way they treat white children for the same offenses,'' Nweze said.

Miami-Dade officials admit that disparities exist and that schools Police Chief Gerald Darling, Associate Superintendent Freddie Woodson and Superintendent Rudy Crew, all of whom are black, are sensitive to the issue.

''No one is more troubled by this data than Dr. Crew. We have an African-American associate superintendent of school operations and an African-American schools police chief,'' district spokesman Joseph Garcia said. ``There is a high degree of sensitivity to these numbers.''
Garcia said Darling is trying to foster a cultural change in the police force by implementing a philosophy of community policing where students interact with officers.
Crew, Darling, and Woodson declined to comment on the report's findings.
Broward school officials said they are aware of the problem. ''We have disparities among the suspension rates and we have a ways to go to decrease those disparities, but we are making progress,'' Broward Superintendent Frank Till said.
In the 2003-2004 school year, black elementary students were six times more likely to be suspended than their white classmates, the study showed.
The district has assigned a diversity committee to analyze disciplinary measures and plans to implement more teacher-training initiatives.
Miami-Dade and Broward school officials said that suspension rates have decreased in both districts.
In its report, Advancement Project officials said the disciplining disparity was not limited to South Florida.
They point out the recent case involving 5-year-old Ja'eisha Scott, who was arrested in her classroom by police after throwing a tantrum at an elementary school in St. Petersburg. The videotape of officers handcuffing Ja'eisha in March garnered national attention.

''This is clearly a case involving the violation of the civil rights of a child. When racism rears its ugly head, we want to be there to knock it down,'' said Willie Gary, one of two attorneys representing the girl.
Gary says he hopes the St. Petersburg case will evoke change. ''We want to bring about change, we want to say we've played some part in stamping out discrimination, especially when it comes to children,'' he said.
Educators across the country have placed harsher penalties on students who bring guns and other dangerous weapons to school.
''There has been an increase in zero-tolerance measures and we make no excuses for it. We're entrusted with the safety of students when they're in our care,'' Garcia said.
But the report showed that less than 15 percent of the 2,500 Miami-Dade students arrested last year were charged with weapons- or drug-related offenses. About 10 percent of those arrested were under age 12.
Judith Browne, a senior attorney with the Advancement Project, said teachers are overreacting to minor offenses, especially with black males, who are viewed as a threat.
''They're seen as a criminal waiting to happen,'' she said.
© 2005 Herald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.miami.com

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

Behind Bars--Let Those Dopers Be

BEHIND BARS
Let those dopers be
A former police chief wants to end a losing war by legalizing pot, coke, meth and other drugs By Norm Stamper Norm Stamper is the former chief of the Seattle Police Department. He is the author of "Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing" (Nation Books, 2005).

October 16, 2005

SOMETIMES PEOPLE in law enforcement will hear it whispered that I'm a former cop who favors decriminalization of marijuana laws, and they'll approach me the way they might a traitor or snitch. So let me set the record straight.

Yes, I was a cop for 34 years, the last six of which I spent as chief of Seattle's police department.

But no, I don't favor decriminalization. I favor legalization, and not just of pot but of all drugs, including heroin, cocaine, meth, psychotropics, mushrooms and LSD.

Decriminalization, as my colleagues in the drug reform movement hasten to inform me, takes the crime out of using drugs but continues to classify possession and use as a public offense, punishable by fines.

I've never understood why adults shouldn't enjoy the same right to use verboten drugs as they have to suck on a Marlboro or knock back a scotch and water.

Prohibition of alcohol fell flat on its face. The prohibition of other drugs rests on an equally wobbly foundation. Not until we choose to frame responsible drug use - not an oxymoron in my dictionary - as a civil liberty will we be able to recognize the abuse of drugs, including alcohol, for what it is: a medical, not a criminal, matter.

As a cop, I bore witness to the multiple lunacies of the "war on drugs." Lasting far longer than any other of our national conflicts, the drug war has been prosecuted with equal vigor by Republican and Democratic administrations, with one president after another - Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush - delivering sanctimonious sermons, squandering vast sums of taxpayer money and cheerleading law enforcers from the safety of the sidelines.

It's not a stretch to conclude that our draconian approach to drug use is the most injurious domestic policy since slavery. Want to cut back on prison overcrowding and save a bundle on the construction of new facilities? Open the doors, let the nonviolent drug offenders go. The huge increases in federal and state prison populations during the 1980s and '90s (from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980 to 482 per 100,000 in 2003) were mainly for drug convictions. In 1980, 580,900 Americans were arrested on drug charges. By 2003, that figure had ballooned to 1,678,200. We're making more arrests for drug offenses than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape and aggravated assault combined. Feel safer?

I've witnessed the devastating effects of open-air drug markets in residential neighborhoods: children recruited as runners, mules and lookouts; drug dealers and innocent citizens shot dead in firefights between rival traffickers bent on protecting or expanding their markets; dedicated narcotics officers tortured and killed in the line of duty; prisons filled with nonviolent drug offenders; and drug-related foreign policies that foster political instability, wreak health and environmental disasters, and make life even tougher for indigenous subsistence farmers in places such as Latin America and Afghanistan. All because we like our drugs
- and can't have them without breaking the law.

As an illicit commodity, drugs cost and generate extravagant sums of (laundered, untaxed) money, a powerful magnet for character-challenged police officers.

Although small in numbers of offenders, there isn't a major police force - the Los Angeles Police Department included - that has escaped the problem: cops, sworn to uphold the law, seizing and converting drugs to their own use, planting dope on suspects, robbing and extorting pushers, taking up dealing themselves, intimidating or murdering witnesses.

In declaring a war on drugs, we've declared war on our fellow citizens. War requires "hostiles" - enemies we can demonize, fear and loathe. This unfortunate categorization of millions of our citizens justifies treating them as dope fiends, evil-doers, less than human. That grants political license to ban the exchange or purchase of clean needles or to withhold methadone from heroin addicts motivated to kick the addiction.

President Bush has even said no to medical marijuana. Why would he want to "coddle" the enemy? Even if the enemy is a suffering AIDS or cancer patient for whom marijuana promises palliative, if not therapeutic, powers.

As a nation, we're long overdue for a soul-searching, coldly analytical look at both the "drug scene" and the drug war. Such candor would reveal the futility of our current policies, exposing the embarrassingly meager return on our massive enforcement investment (about $69 billion a year, according to Jack Cole, founder and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition).

How would "regulated legalization" work? It would: 1) Permit private companies to compete for licenses to cultivate, harvest, manufacture, package and peddle drugs.

2) Create a new federal regulatory agency (with no apologies to libertarians or paleo-conservatives).

3) Set and enforce standards of sanitation, potency and purity.

4) Ban advertising.

5) Impose (with congressional approval) taxes, fees and fines to be used for drug-abuse prevention and treatment and to cover the costs of administering the new regulatory agency.

6) Police the industry much as alcoholic beverage control agencies keep a watch on bars and liquor stores at the state level. Such reforms would in no way excuse drug users who commit crimes: driving while impaired, providing drugs to minors, stealing an iPod or a Lexus, assaulting one's spouse, abusing one's child. The message is simple. Get loaded, commit a crime, do the time.

These reforms would yield major reductions in a host of predatory street crimes, a disproportionate number of which are committed by users who resort to stealing in order to support their habit or addiction.

Regulated legalization would soon dry up most stockpiles of currently illicit drugs - substances of uneven, often questionable quality (including "bunk," i.e., fakes such as oregano, gypsum, baking powder or even poisons passed off as the genuine article). It would extract from today's drug dealing the obscene profits that attract the needy and the greedy and fuel armed violence. And it would put most of those certifiably frightening crystal meth labs out of business once and for all.

Combined with treatment, education and other public health programs for drug abusers, regulated legalization would make your city or town an infinitely healthier place to live and raise a family.

It would make being a cop a much safer occupation, and it would lead to greater police accountability and improved morale and job satisfaction.

But wouldn't regulated legalization lead to more users and, more to the point, drug abusers? Probably, though no one knows for sure - our leaders are too timid even to broach the subject in polite circles, much less to experiment with new policy models. My own prediction? We'd see modest increases in use, negligible increases in abuse.

The demand for illicit drugs is as strong as the nation's thirst for bootleg booze during Prohibition. It's a demand that simply will not dwindle or dry up. Whether to find God, heighten sexual arousal, relieve physical pain, drown one's sorrows or simply feel good, people throughout the millenniums have turned to mood- and mind-altering substances.

They're not about to stop, no matter what their government says or does. It's time to accept drug use as a right of adult Americans, treat drug abuse as a public health problem and end the madness of an unwinnable war.

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

Posted by lois at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Behind Bars--Those Jampacked Joints Don't Make You Safe

By Joe Domanick
Joe Domanick, author of "Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America's Golden State," is senior fellow in criminal justice at USC Annenberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism

October 16, 2005, LA Times

IN THE LAST 25 years, the United States has responded to citizens' legitimate fears of murder, muggings and addiction with mindless wars on crime and drugs. Pandering politicians, a sensationalist media and a public content only with tough-guy approaches have compounded the problem. As a result, our prisons are bulging with young, poor blacks and Latinos, nonviolent addicts, alcoholics, petty thieves and the mentally ill. Some are serving life sentences for buying a macadamia nut disguised as a $5 rock of cocaine from an undercover cop.

"We've been engaged in a prison buildup that's a uniquely 20th and 21st century American phenomenon, one without parallel elsewhere in the world," says professor Todd Clear, head of doctoral studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York.

The number of prisons in the nation has grown quickly, and California is representative. In 1980, there were 12 prisons in the state. Today, there are 33.

Between 1982 and 2001, arrests in the United States increased by 13%, yet the number of inmates in federal and state prisons surged 228%. The total number of Americans in prison, jail, on probation or on parole soared from 400,000 in 1970 to 1.8 million in 1980 and to 6.7 million in 2002. About 13 million Americans have served time for a felony conviction. Although the U.S. contains 4% of the world's population, it houses one-quarter of all the imprisoned people on Earth.

Incarceration costs have correspondingly exploded. Twenty years ago, the nation annually spent $36 billion on police, courts and incarceration. Today, it's $167 billion.

It was during the late 1960s and the 1970s that government - state and federal - concluded that the only way to deal with rising crime and addiction was more cops and prisons and far tougher punishment. In the 1980s and '90s, thousands of laws were passed to put this approach into practice. Drug offenses carried penalties as severe as those for violent crimes.

Several factors accounted for the turn to punishment. Then-available social science data showed that many prison rehab programs weren't working. As a result, prison officials abandoned most of them. Underpinning and reinforcing this development was the belief that people behaved criminally because they lacked moral scruples. A big stick and longer prison terms were therefore the best guarantors of social control - and petty criminals, crack-heads and junkies should be treated no differently than rapists, robbers and murderers. California lawmakers were so taken with this view of human nature that, in 1977, they changed the state's penal code to read that the purpose of imprisonment was not rehabilitation but punishment.

Paralleling the philosophical shift was the emergence of the criminal justice industry as a political player. Its 2.3 million members include highway patrol officers, sheriffs and deputies, district attorneys and prison and jail guards (747,000). Add law enforcement's natural allies - prison construction firms, police equipment manufacturers, the National Rifle Assn. and victims' rights groups - and you have a lobbying force capable of advancing legislation that maximizes sentencing and incarceration.

With more criminals serving longer sentences, the crime rate has dramatically dropped. Experts say increased incarceration explains 15% to 25% of the decline. But it's only part of the story. Texas' prison population rose by 168% from 1992 to 2001, but the state's violent crime rate fell by just 14%. Conversely, New York's prison population jumped 9%, but its violent crime rate fell by 52%, which suggests other factors have played a larger role in crime reduction, such as a stronger national economy, the end of the crack cocaine wars, more street cops, computerized crime-tracking strategies and a smaller population in the prime crime-prone ages of 18 to 34.

Nevertheless, violent crime remains rampant in many of the United States' poorest neighborhoods, where young men and women are sucked into an intergenerational cycle of crime, imprisonment, release and reimprisonment. About 40% of U.S. prisoners are black. If incarceration trends continue, 1 in 3 black males born today will do time in state prison. About 7 million children have a parent somewhere in the corrections system, and they are five times more likely to be incarcerated than kids whose parents have not been imprisoned.

The economic costs of a criminal justice system that emphasizes punishment and incarceration at the expense of rehabilitation and the potential for recovery are unsustainable. Nowhere is this more evident than in California, whose corrections system spends $7.3 billion annually and "has little accountability, no uniformity [or] transparency Š too much political interference, too much union control and too little management courage," according to a report commissioned by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In California and in other states, governors are turning away from their exclusive reliance on incarceration and reintroducing rehabilitation as a less costly way to deal with some criminals. A return to a criminal justice policy that balances punishment and rehab could save billions of dollars and reclaim hundreds of thousands of lives.

Two things must happen to reform the U.S. corrections system. Law enforcement leaders need to abandon their fiefdoms and work with reform-minded corrections officials such as Rod Hickman, head of California's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, to develop rehab programs to help prisoners reenter society successfully. And the public needs to understand that criminal behavior is not simply caused by a failure of moral willpower, but results from a constellation of factors, including dysfunctional schools, poor healthcare, single-parent households and the lack of economic opportunity.

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

Posted by lois at 05:08 PM | Comments (0)

Prisons: If we build them, we'll fill them

By Debbie Reyes
October 15, 2005
This month, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation CDCR) announced plans to reopen two shuttered private prisons in Bakersfield and McFarland in Kern County.

The claim? That this move is necessary to ease overcrowding.

The cost? A $6.8 million no-bid contract with a Massachusetts-based CiviGenics private prison company.

The stench? The deal was facilitated by two former state prison administrators who work for CiviGenics but are still effectively "on call" back in Sacramento.

The real problem? Increasing bed capacity can't solve anything.

Opening prisons to ease crowding seems logical, but it is part of a long history of misdirection and mismanagement by the corrections department. Consider the addition of "rehabilitation" to the department's new name.

As the new letterhead went up earlier this year, rehabilitation spending dropped by more than $40 million. At CDCR, "rehabilitation" begins with slashing rehabilitation funding.

This prison expansion plan comes from the playbook. The plan to solve overcrowding will, in fact, exacerbate it.

For 20 years, the CDCR and prison guard's union pushed California into the biggest prison expansion in history. The fact that we now can lock up 176,500 prisoners, more than any prison system in the country, strongly suggests that lack of prison cells isn't the problem.

The problem is that we send too many people to prison. Take parole, for example. Last year, California sent more than 58,000 parolees back to prison on "technical violations," meaning they were not charged with committing new crimes, but had missed meetings with their agents or otherwise violated one of their parole rules.

California sends parolees back to prison at twice the national average. We're so far behind the curve that the Bureau of Justice Statistics now calculates the national recidivism rate both with and without California.

The prison population is determined by bed space, not the other way around. "You build 'em, you fill 'em" is the first rule of prison economics and public-safety politics. Other factors matter, but at the end of the day, you can't put prisoners in beds that don't exist, and beds that exist don't go unfilled.

Simple addition

History shows that adding 2,000 beds will increase the prison population by that same number. The new Delano II prison's 5,000 new beds haven't dented the overcrowding crisis - and won't, in today's political climate. Back in 1880, the new Folsom State Prison was built to address overcrowding at San Quentin - and both are full to this day. The CDCR proposal jeopardizes public safety by squandering more dollars on prisons and adding to the stresses faced by the communities where prisoners come from.

The CDCR says that the failure of the "new parole model" is responsible for the population spike. But what really happened? For 18 months, the department dithered and deflected, refusing to implement the new model or explain why it couldn't. Eventually, Crime Victims United, a front group for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, slapped together a fancy attack ad campaign, giving the CDCR the out it was looking for.

The department phoned in the implementation of an ambitious reform, and then knowingly chose to return to a program that keeps the revolving door of prison whirling - and the prison population growing. The new parole model didn't have a chance to fail; it was sabotaged.

On top of all this, remember that this isn't good news for us in the Valley. Counties and towns without prisons grow faster than towns that get them and suffer fewer negative environmental impacts. The myth that prisons are economic drivers is just that - a myth. Look around us: at Delano, Chowchilla, Avenal, Coalinga, Wasco and others. If ever we had a boom that wasn't, the prison boom is it.

Add it up: The department yanked a promising alternative when special interests demanded it, blamed that alternative for the failures of the existing program and is now attempting a "solution" that has never worked in more than 120 years of the California prison system by giving millions to a private, out-of-state company under a cloud of ethical questions.

Effective policy

This situation won't change itself. We must demand a policy more effective than blind incarceration.

We need to give alternatives the political support, financial resources and benefit of time to begin to undo what the last generation of prison building has wrought.

Debbie Reyes is an organizer with the California Prison Moratorium Project, and La Union del Pueblo Entero.

http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/valley_voices/story/11354136p-12100710c.html

Posted by lois at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)

October 16, 2005

SD: Ex-Lawmaker on Probation Seeks License

Too bad everyone doesn't get the same consideration
October 15, 2005
Ex-Lawmaker on Probation Seeks License
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, NY Times
PIERRE, S.D., Oct. 14 (AP) - Former Representative Bill Janklow, still on probation for a fatal car crash, said Friday that he was sorry and asked the State Supreme Court to restore his law license.

Mr. Janklow, who is also a four-term governor, said that his manslaughter conviction for the 2003 crash did not affect his ability to be a lawyer and that he wanted to serve the public again.

The State Bar of South Dakota recommended that his law license be restored on Feb. 15. If the court agrees, Mr. Janklow could resume practicing law about a year before his three-year probation ends. He asked for reinstatement immediately, but the court's decision will be issued later.

"I can tell you that I'm sorry for what happened," Mr. Janklow, 66, said at the hearing.

His law license was automatically suspended after he was convicted in December 2003 in the death of Randy Scott, 55, of Hardwick, Minn. Mr. Janklow was speeding and had just run a stop sign at a rural intersection near Trent when he collided with Mr. Scott's motorcycle.

Mr. Janklow, a Republican, resigned Jan. 20, 2004, just a year after taking his House seat.

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

October 14, 2005

Vivian Malone Jones, 63, Dies; First Black Graduate of the Univ. of Alabama

October 14, 2005

By DOUGLAS MARTIN, NY Times
Vivian Malone Jones, who on a blisteringly hot June day in 1963 became one of two black students to enroll at the University of Alabama after first being barred at the door by the defiant governor, George C. Wallace, died yesterday in Atlanta. She was 63.

The cause was a stroke, her sister Sharon Malone told The Associated Press.

Her entrance to the university came as the civil rights struggle raged across the South. On June 12, the day after Ms. Jones and James Hood were escorted into the university by federalized National Guard troops, the civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot to death in Jackson, Miss.

On May 30, 1965, Ms. Jones became the first black to graduate from the University of Alabama in its 134 years of existence, earning a degree in business management with a B-plus average.

The performance of Governor Wallace, who stood at the doorway of Foster Auditorium flanked by state troopers, fulfilled a campaign pledge stop integration at "the schoolhouse door."

But historians have written that his defiance was scripted and came with a promise to federal authorities that he would be brief and would soon comply.

At the time, The Tuscaloosa News wrote contemptuously that the governor "squeezed every suspenseful moment of drama from the occasion."

The students waited in a car, as Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, deputy attorney general of the United States, avoided a direct confrontation. He said to Mr. Wallace: "From the outset, Governor, all of us have known that the final chapter of this history will be the admission of these students."

Only after the federalized guard troops arrived, four and a half hours after Mr. Wallace's initial refusal, were the students admitted. Mr. Wallace read a second statement challenging the constitutionality of the court order, then briskly left.

The students entered Foster Hall, registered, went to their dormitories, ate in the cafeteria and experienced no further incidents that day.

The first African-American at the university, founded in 1831, was Autherine Lucy, who arrived in February 1956 to pursue a master's degree in library science. But after experiencing three days of threats Ms. Lucy was suspended, ostensibly for her own safety, and later expelled.

More than 35 years later, she earned a master's degree in elementary education at Alabama.

Mr. Hood left the university after two months, saying he wanted to avoid "a complete mental and physical breakdown." He transferred to Wayne State University in Detroit and graduated with a bachelor's degree, having studied political science and police administration.

Mr. Hood. returned to the University of Alabama and earned a doctorate in higher education in 1997.

Vivian Juanita Malone grew up in Mobile, Ala., where she was a member of the National Honor Society in high school.

She earned a bachelor's degree at Alabama A & M, a predominantly black university, but it lost its accreditation. To get an accredited degree, she applied to the University of Alabama's School of Commerce and Business Administration and was admitted as a junior.

One night at midnight, someone knocked on her dormitory door and told her there was a bomb threat. No bomb materialized, but that November, there were three bomb blasts at the university, one of them four blocks from her dormitory.

After Mr. Evers was killed, Ms. Jones said she felt even more determined not to give up.

"I decided not to show any fear and went to classes that day," she said in an interview with The Post Standard of Syracuse in 2004.

In the same interview, she said one of her strongest memories of Alabama was that she often smiled at white students, but got no response.

The university hired a driver for her, a student at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa named Mack Jones. They later married, and he became an obstetrician. He died last year.

Ms. Jones is survived by her son, Michael A. Jones; her daughter, Monica Jones Shareef; three brothers; four sisters; and two grandchildren.

After graduating from Alabama, Ms. Jones worked for the United States Justice Department in its civil rights division. She also worked at the Environmental Protection Agency as director of civil rights and urban affairs and director of environmental justice before retiring in 1996 to sell life insurance.

In 1996, former Governor Wallace presented the Lurleen B. Wallace Award for Courage, named for his late wife, to Ms. Jones. He told her that he made a mistake 33 years earlier and that he admired her. They discussed forgiveness.

In a speech to University of Alabama graduates in 2000, Ms. Jones suggested one lesson that might be taken from her historic experience: "You must always be ready to seize the moment."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)

Hurricane Katrina: Courts' Slow Recovery Begins at Train Station

October 14, 2005
NY Times
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
The inmates, bleary from trying to sleep on a fenced-in chunk of pavement outside the bus and train station in New Orleans, parade upstairs to the makeshift courtroom, their hands in white plastic cuffs. The prosecutor hustles up from his office - a k a the Taste of New Orleans gift shop - where his file folders now share the display window with bottles of hot sauce and plastic ladles that say "Cooking with Jazz."

The magistrate judge, Gerard J. Hansen, is making do behind an old desk, briskly setting bail for some of the 1,100 people arrested in the metropolitan area since Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29.

When one man steps up, accused of looting an odd mix of boat batteries, a drill, antifreeze, 23 bags of coffee and 53 bottles of alcohol, all found in his car, the judge greets him with a touch of sympathy and $25,000 in bail. "I can understand the alcohol," the judge says, but he adds, "I don't think you were taking all that out of your house, sir."

The bail hearings, which began at "Camp Amtrak" recently, are the first step toward reviving one of the nation's busiest criminal justice systems, a crucial component to bringing residents and tourists back to a city with a potent subculture of guns, drugs and crime.

But it could be weeks before the city's jails, police headquarters and courthouses are repaired, before witnesses can be found and jury trials begin again.

Even then, problems will remain. Floodwaters deluged evidence rooms, destroyed the police crime laboratory and wiped out courthouse computer systems. Officials have had to reconstruct from thick printouts the charges lodged against more than 6,000 inmates before they were evacuated in small boats and scattered among 39 state prisons. Judges say about 800 who were in jail on minor charges, including some who normally would have been held for just a night or two for public drunkenness, were held for two to three weeks amid the confusion.

Court officials have suspended speedy-trial rules and delayed all but the most urgent proceedings until at least Oct. 25. And the city has said it can no longer pay its share of the operating expenses for the courts and the local prosecutor, forcing both to lay off dozens of workers.

"People say 'come hell or high water,' but both came for us," Judge Calvin Johnson, the senior judge on the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, said in an interview.

Even when trials resume, the first will be simple cases in which defendants are willing to be tried by a judge and police officers are the main witnesses. One big problem, judges say, is picking a jury that is a cross-section of this city when no one knows who will move back and who will not.

"That is a big question mark," said another criminal court judge, Frank A. Marullo Jr., who took his turn on the temporary bench the other day wearing a bright red polo shirt and a dark windbreaker, a far cry from judicial robes. "The city we used to have is not the city we have anymore."

Human Rights Watch said Thursday that many inmates were being treated unfairly. But many awaiting trial are being patient, said Tilden H. Greenbaum III, the director of the Orleans Indigent Defender Program.

"Sooner or later, we're going to have to start making noise about it," Mr. Greenbaum said. "But given the magnitude of what everybody's been through, now is not the time to push."

Law enforcement officials say they are moving as quickly as possible, because they recognize that keeping order in the streets is as critical to bringing residents and tourists back to New Orleans as restoring electricity and cleaning toxic residues.

The spasm of looting in the days after Hurricane Katrina focused the nation's attention on a harsh side of New Orleans. Away from the gaudy mirth on Bourbon Street and the graceful homes in the Garden District, many of the city's poor neighborhoods have a desperate quality, with more than one-quarter of the city's 450,000 people living in poverty.

"It's like two different worlds," said Charles E. Smith, a supervisory special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who grew up in a New Orleans housing project. "When we need a break, we make plans to go to an island or take the family to Disney World. But a majority of these people can't get away, so they get away with alcohol and drugs."

Police officers say the drugs and the multitude of guns often lead to brazen crimes. A few days after the storm, one looter shot another in the head in a fight over a flashlight in a dark clothing factory, officers say. And federal authorities have indicted a man for shooting at a rescue helicopter, one of several incidents in which emergency workers were fired on.

"We do have our hard-core criminal element that is not afraid of dying, that is not afraid of prison," Eddie Jordan, the Orleans Parish district attorney, said in an interview.

That is still true after the storm. Some of those arrested for violating the city's post-Katrina curfew have been found with marijuana and cocaine in their cars. The police SWAT team recently arrested two men driving around with an AK-47 semiautomatic rifle - and papers indicating they had just returned from a shelter in Houston.

Burl Cain, the warden at the Angola state prison who is in charge at the temporary jail, said that when officials arrived for their first look at the station in early September, they had to chase away looters trying to crack into the Greyhound and Amtrak safes. The 1,100 people from the metropolitan area who have passed through the jail include nearly 450 arrested in New Orleans for minor offenses and about 200 for serious crimes.

Inmates are held in chain-link pens behind the station, under a canopy where the buses once pulled up. Each cell has a portable toilet, like those at construction sites. Inmates eat packaged military meals - "Sometimes we make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for them," Mr. Cain said - and sleep on the pavement. Each day, buses haul most of them to a state prison near Baton Rouge, where they either make their bail or wait for a court date.

On Wednesday, Robert Davis, the man who was videotaped being beaten by police officers, was at the temporary courtroom, pleading not guilty to charges including public intoxication and resisting arrest.

Fears of further looting have swelled the jail population. Talking angrily through the jail fence one afternoon, Charles Johnson, 17, said he had been arrested outside his grandmother's house for driving without a license.

"The officer was going to let me go, but then he saw a brand-new printer in the car," Mr. Johnson said. "I'd gotten it out of the house. I have a lot of computer stuff, but he figured I'd stolen it."

In the temporary court the next morning, Municipal Judge Paul N. Sens assigned Mr. Johnson a hearing date in January and released him. About 15 others were sentenced to community service for curfew violations, trespassing or public intoxication. "You have an opportunity to help the city recover," Judge Sens told them.

Judge Sens said in an interview that when Hurricane Katrina hit, 800 of the city's 6,200 inmates were serving time for or awaiting trial on minor offenses. He said he was able to release 130 on Sept. 15 and most of the rest over the next week.

The senior municipal and criminal court judges have sought help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in salvaging some flooded evidence and in repairing the damaged courts. Marlin N. Gusman, the Orleans Parish criminal sheriff, said he hopes to have the first two of his 10 jails repaired by Oct. 17, though more than half of his 1,100 employees have not returned to work.

Mr. Jordan, the district attorney, and the judges said the city's failing finances pose another threat. The city normally supplied about one-third of the prosecutor's budget and split court expenses with the state. But city officials have said they cannot provide any money for the rest of the year.

Mr. Jordan said he has already laid off 37 people from his support staff and he might have to let some of his 90 prosecutors go.

"It's a Catch-22," Judge Marullo said. "We need people to come back. But in order to bring people back, and to have people visit New Orleans, we've got to have all the elements of the system, from the police to the courts, working to keep them safe."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 01:13 PM | Comments (0)

NY Times Editorial: Voting Rights, Human Rights

: October 14, 2005
The United States has the worst record in the democratic world when it comes to stripping convicted felons of the right to vote. Of the nearly five million people who were barred from participating in the last presidential election, for example, most, if not all, would have been free to vote if they had been citizens of any one of dozens of other nations. Many of those nations cherish the franchise so deeply that they let inmates vote from their prison cells.

Published Courts outside this country are actually expanding the rights of prison inmates to cast ballots, on the theory that the right to vote is a basic human right that should be abridged only after careful deliberation and under the rarest circumstances. That message was underscored last week in a strong ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which has jurisdiction in the nations that are parties to the European Convention, a rights charter drafted more than a half-century ago.

The European court overturned a British law that banned all convicted prison inmates from voting. The British law, however, is far less onerous than laws in the United States, which imprisons people at five times the rate of Britain and disenfranchises millions, many of them permanently.

The European court recognized that nations have the right to limit voting in some cases, but it condemned blanket prohibitions as unacceptable. This ruling includes a clear warning to the dozen other European Convention countries that prohibit voting for convicted prisoners or have no provisions for allowing inmates to participate in elections. Laws that deny citizens access to the polls should be employed only after painstaking deliberation - if at all - and never in a fashion that bars an entire class of people from the polls.

This issue deserves a full hearing in the United States, which shows less regard for the rights of prisoners and ex-offenders than just about any of its peers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/14/opinion/14fri4.html

Posted by lois at 10:41 AM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2005

Thousands of Children Sentenced to Life Without Parole

Thousands of Children Sentenced to Life without Parole
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International
http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us1005/
Wednesday 12 October 2005
There are at least 2,225 child offenders serving life without parole (LWOP) sentences in US prisons for crimes committed before they were age 18, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a new joint report published today.

While many of the child offenders are now adults, 16 percent were
between 13 and 15 years old at the time they committed their crimes. An estimated 59 percent were sentenced to life without parole for their first-ever criminal conviction. Forty-two states currently have laws allowing children to receive life without parole sentences.

The 157-page report, The Rest of Their Lives: Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States, is the first national study examining the practice of trying children as adults and sentencing them to life in adult prisons without the possibility of parole. The report is based on two years of research and on an analysis of previously uncollected federal and state corrections data. The data allowed the organizations to track state and national trends in LWOP sentencing through mid-2004 and to analyze the race, history and crimes of young offenders.

"Kids who commit serious crimes shouldn't go scot-free," said Alison
Parker, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, who authored the report for both organizations. "But if they are too young to vote or buy cigarettes, they are too young to spend the rest of their lives behind bars."

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are releasing The Rest of Their Lives at a critical time: while fewer youth are committing serious crimes such as murder, states are increasingly sentencing them to life without parole. In 1990, for example, 2,234 children were convicted of murder and 2.9 percent sentenced to life without parole. By 2000, the conviction rate had dropped by nearly 55 percent (1,006), yet the percentage of children receiving LWOP sentences rose by 216 percent (to nine percent).

"Untie the hands of state and federal judges and prosecutors," said Dr. William F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). "Give them options other than turning the courts into assembly lines that mass produce mandatory life without parole sentences for children, that ignore their enormous potential for change and rob them of all hopes for redemption."

In 26 states, the sentence of life without parole is mandatory for anyone who is found guilty of committing first-degree murder, regardless of age. According to the report, 93 percent of youth offenders serving life without parole were convicted of murder. But Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found that an estimated 26 percent were convicted of "felony murder," which holds that anyone involved in the commission of a serious crime during which someone is killed is also guilty of murder, even if he or she did not personally or directly cause the death.

For example, 15-year-old Peter A. was sentenced to life without parole for felony murder. Peter had joined two acquaintances of his older brother to commit a robbery. He was waiting outside in a van when one of the acquaintances botched the robbery and murdered two victims. Peter said,

"Although I was present at the scene, I never shot or killed anyone."
Nevertheless, Peter was held accountable for the double murder because it was established during the trial that he had stolen the van used to drive to the victims' house.

The human rights organizations also said that widespread and unfounded fears of adolescent "super-predators" - violent teenagers with long criminal histories who prey on society - prompted states to increasingly try children as adults. Ten states set no minimum age for sentencing children to life without parole, and there are at least six children currently serving the sentence who were age 13 when they committed their crimes. Once convicted, these children are sent to adult prisons and must live among adult gangs, sexual predators and in harsh conditions. For more state-by-state statistics
please see the State-by-State Summary (available online at:
http://hrw.org/us/us100605.pdf).

According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, there is no correlation between the use of the LWOP sentence and youth crime rates. There is no evidence it deters youth crime or is otherwise helpful in reducing juvenile crime rates. For example, Georgia rarely sentences children to life without parole but it has youth crime rates lower than Missouri, which imposes the sentence on child offenders far more frequently.

"Public safety can be protected without subjecting youth to the harshest prison sentence possible," said Parker.

Nationwide, black youth receive life without parole sentences at a rate estimated to be ten times greater than that of white youth (6.6 versus 0.6). In some states the ratio is far greater: in California, for example, black youth are 22.5 times more likely to receive a life without parole sentence than white youth. In Pennsylvania, Hispanic youth are ten times more likely to receive the sentence than whites (13.2 versus 1.3).

The United States is one of only a few countries in the world that
permit children to be sentenced to LWOP. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by every country in the world except the United States and Somalia, forbids this practice, and at least 132 countries have rejected the sentence altogether. Thirteen other countries have laws permitting the child LWOP sentence, but, outside of the United States, there are only about 12 young offenders currently serving life sentences with no possibility of parole.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also challenged the
presumption that the youth offenders are irredeemable, which is implicit in the sentence they have received."Children who commit serious crimes still have the ability to change their lives for the better," said David Berger, attorney with the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers and Amnesty International's researcher for this report. "It is now time for state and federal officials to take positive steps by
enacting policies that seek to redeem children, instead of throwing them in prison for the rest of their lives."

The organizations called on the United States to end the practice of
sentencing child offenders to life without parole. For those already serving life sentences, immediate efforts should be made to grant them access to parole procedures.

Posted by lois at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

NY Campaign for Telephone Justice- MCI Boycott

NY Campaign for Telephone Justice/CCR/666 Broadway/ 212.614.6421/www.telephonejustice.org
Tuesday, 10/18 @ 7:00 pm. Family member conference call: for prison family members from throughout the State to call in to stay involved with the progress of the campaign, and to share their input. Call Marion 212.614.6421 or email info@telephonejustice.org for the TOLL FREE NUMBER.

Friday, 11/11 - 3 pm to 10 pm - Pre-Rally PARTY. We'll be making signs, etc. Refreshments will be served. Come through and show your creative side (and if you don't have one, you are still welcome!)

Wednesday, 11/16 - 12 noon - Boycott MCI! Rally & March.

· RALLY: 12 NOON @ Bryant Park (41st St. & 6th Ave, NYC)

· MARCH: 12:30 pm along 42nd Street to Governor Pataki's office at 633 Third Ave. (41st St) to deliver the $175 million dollar check paid by families to New York State in kickbacks from the MCI/NYSDOCS telephone contract since 1996.

· CALL GOVERNOR PATAKI @ 212-681-4580 and 518-474-8390
and tell him to Stop the Contract!

· CALL MCI @ 1-800-955-0925 and tell them to Stop the Contract! (and change from MCI to another long distance telephone provider)

· REJECT ALL PHONE CALLS FROM NYS PRISONS (on 11/16/05)

HOST A TEACH-IN or CANDLELIGHT VIGIL in your community or school

EVERY FRIDAY NIGHT until the boycott @ 8:30 pm Bus Outreach: at various bus departure sites in NYC, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Call Marion at 212.614.6421 or 646.667-9417 to coordinate. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Posted by lois at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2005

Family Members and Prisoners Share Nightmare After Katrina

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 11, 2005

FAMILY MEMBERS AND PRISONERS SHARE NIGHTMARE AFTER KATRINA

Broad Coalition Calls for Independent Investigation of OPP Evacuation, Amnesty and Real Public Safety Models for New Orleans

WHAT: A JOINT PRESS CONFERENCE called by Critical Resistance, Families & Friends of Louisiana s Incarcerated Children, People s Hurricane Relief Committee, and the Southern Center for Human Rights
WHERE: Orleans Parish Prison
2800 Gravier street
WHO: Ortegas Coleman, who was imprisoned at the Greyhound Bus Station
Ms. Miranda Smith, whose son was evacuated from Orleans Parish Prison
Althea Francois, whose daughter was evacuated from Orleans Parish Prison, People's Hurricane ReliefCommittee
Xochitl Bervera, Friends and Families of Louisiana s Incarcerated Children
Vanita Gupta, NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Lisa Kung, Southern Center for Human Rights
Nick Trenticosta, New Orleans Civil Rights Attorney
Tamika Middleton, Critical Resistance
Members of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus will attend

WHEN: 11:00 am, Wednesday, October 12, 2005

NEW ORLEANS, LA They won’ t let my daughter out of prison, even though she was supposed to have been released weeks ago, says Althea Francois. This is a long time for us to be separated I m worried sick about her. And I know there are thousands of families in the same situation.

Stories like Ms. Francois have galvanized a broad coalition of human rights organizations, community groups, Orleans Parish prisoners, and their families, who will gather on Wednesday in front of the now infamous Orleans Parish Prison (OPP). The press conference will take place during Critical Resistance s Delegation on Safety and the Status of Prisoners, which is calling attention to charges that prisoners were left to drown in locked jail cells, hundreds more were arrested for the crime of trying to feed themselves after Katrina, and thousands have had their cases thrown into legal limbo post-Katrina.

The press conference will share personal stories of prisoners left to rising floodwaters without food or water in locked jail cells at Orleans Parish Prison, of arrest and imprisonment at the makeshift jail now set up at the New Orleans Greyhound bus station, and of individuals who would have been released from jail or prison but for Katrina.

Members will demand an independent investigation into the evacuation of OPP and amnesty for those arrested for trying to feed and clothe themselves post-Katrina, while calling for real public safety in a rebuilt New Orleans. Rising from the devastation of Katrina, we have an amazing opportunity to rebuild a truly new and genuine system of public safety for New Orleans, said Xochitl Bervera, Co-Director of Families and Friends of Louisiana s Incarcerated Children.

Along with lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Southern Center for Human Rights, the press conference will include personal stories from mothers whose children were left to drown in chest-high water at Orleans Parish Prison, and Ortegas Coleman, who was one of hundreds imprisoned at the makeshift jail set up in the New Orleans Greyhound Bus Station.

Pointing to additional recent accounts of police beatings, Katrina s aftermath reflects the was we as a nation increasingly deal with social ills: police and imprison primarily poor Black communities for crimes that are reflections of poverty and desperation, said Tamika Middleton,

New Orleans-based Organizer with Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization whose mission is to end society’s use of imprisonment as an answer to social problems.

Louisiana has had the highest rate of incarceration of any state in the U.S. Blacks are grossly over-represented, making up 72% of the state prison population, while only representing 35% of the total population This emphasis on law and order has historically had a devastating impact on the people of New Orleans, Middleton continued. Locking people up in this crisis is cruel mismanagement of city resources and counters the outpouring of the world support and concern for all survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

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

October 11, 2005

Liberal Hopes Ebb in Post Storm Poverty Debate

Beware! Infuriating to read.
October 11, 2005

By JASON DePARLE
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 - As Hurricane Katrina put the issue of poverty onto the national agenda, many liberal advocates wondered whether the floods offered a glimmer of opportunity. The issues they most cared about - health care, housing, jobs, race - were suddenly staples of the news, with President Bush pledged to "bold action."

But what looked like a chance to talk up new programs is fast becoming a scramble to save the old ones.

Conservatives have already used the storm for causes of their own, like suspending requirements that federal contractors have affirmative action plans and pay locally prevailing wages. And with federal costs for rebuilding the Gulf Coast estimated at up to $200 billion, Congressional Republican leaders are pushing for spending cuts, with programs like Medicaid and food stamps especially vulnerable.

"We've had a stunning reversal in just a few weeks," said Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal advocacy group in Washington. "We've gone from a situation in which we might have a long-overdue debate on deep poverty to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that low-income people will be asked to bear the costs. I would find it unimaginable if it wasn't actually happening."

Mr. Greenstein's comments were echoed by Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut: "Poor people are going to get the short end of the stick, despite all the public sympathy. That's a great irony."

But many conservatives see logic, not irony, at work. If the storm exposed great poverty, they say, it also exposed the problems of the very policies that liberals have supported.
"This is not the time to expand the programs that were failing anyway," said Stuart M. Butler, a vice president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research and advocacy group influential on Capitol Hill.

While the right has proposed alternatives including tax-free zones for businesses and school vouchers for students, Mr. Butler said, "the left has just talked up the old paradigm: 'let's expand what's failed before.' "

Doubt about the effectiveness of some programs is only one factor shaping the current antipoverty debate. Another is political muscle: poor people do not make campaign contributions. Many do not even vote.

A third factor is the federal deficit, which leaves little money for new initiatives. And a fourth is the continuing support for tax cuts, including those aimed at the wealthiest Americans, which further limits spending on social programs.

Indeed, even as he was calling for deep spending cuts last week, Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, who leads the conservative caucus, called tax reductions for the prosperous a key to fighting poverty.

"Raising taxes in the wake of a national catastrophe would imperil the very economic growth we need to bring the Gulf Coast back," Mr. Pence said. "I'm mindful of what a pipe fitter once said to President Reagan: 'I've never been hired by a poor man.' A growing economy is in the interest of every working American, regardless of their income."

Economic growth is crucial to reducing poverty, but the effect of tax rates is less clear. In 1993, President Bill Clinton raised taxes on upper-income families, the economy boomed and poverty fell for the next seven years. In 2001, President Bush cut taxes deeply, but even with economic growth, the poverty rate has risen every year since.

In 2004, about 12.7 percent of the country, or 37 million people, lived below the poverty line, which was about $19,200 for a family of four. The figure was 7.8 percent among whites, 24.7 percent among blacks and 21.9 percent among Hispanics.

Hurricane Katrina gave those figures a face as no statistic can.

"As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this region," with "roots in a history of racial discrimination," President Bush said in a Sept. 15 speech from New Orleans. Using the language of the civil rights movement, Mr. Bush pledged "not just to cope, but to overcome."

But liberal critics say his policies will have the opposite effect.

The week before his speech, Mr. Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, a 1931 law that prohibits federally financed construction jobs from paying wages less than a local average. The administration argued that the suspension, which applied only to storm areas, would benefit local residents by stretching financial resources.

Critics said the savings would come at the expense of needy workers.

Likewise, the president suspended rules requiring federal contractors to file affirmative action plans, which his allies called cumbersome.

"He talks about lending a helping hand to the poor and disadvantaged," Jared Bernstein, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research and advocacy group in Washington, said of Mr. Bush. "But these policies push the other way, toward lower wages and less racial inclusion."

In another dispute, the president has taken on a senior member of his own party, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Mr. Grassley wants to expand Medicaid to cover all the poor who survived Hurricane Katrina, including many adults who did not previously qualify. The expansion would last five months, though it could be extended, and the federal government would cover the costs.

While most Democrats support the measure, the Bush administration strongly opposes it, arguing that evacuees would be served faster through more modest changes in existing state programs.

In part, the dispute has the feel of a proxy war about the larger fate of the program, which the administration has sharply criticized.

A similar proxy war has played out in housing policy after the Senate voted to house evacuees through the Section 8 program, which offers poor people subsidies for private housing. Critical of the program's cost, the administration instead created a parallel voucher program for hurricane evacuees.

In budget battles, the storm had one immediate effect: delaying the $35 billion in spending cuts ordered in last spring's Congressional budget resolution. About $10 billion over five years was expected to come from Medicaid and about $600 million from food stamps.

The delay occurred after some lawmakers said it was wrong to cut safety net programs with so many storm survivors seeking aid.

But the pendulum is swinging the other way. Concerned about the storm's costs, a group of 100 House conservatives released a list of suggested spending cuts totaling $370 billion over five years.

And President Bush weighed in last week, saying, "Congress needs to pay for as much of the hurricane relief as possible by cutting spending."

The chairman of the House Budget Committee, Representative Jim Nussle, Republican of Iowa, wants to increase the cuts in the budget bill to $50 billion, from the $35 billion agreed on last spring. Senate leaders are also talking of new cuts, though they have not announced a numerical goal.

As they search for spending cuts, neither chamber has turned away from the $70 billion package of tax reductions authorized last spring. Mr. Greenstein, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says those tax cuts come on top of two others, passed in 2001, that are scheduled to take effect in January and that benefit the wealthiest Americans.

Mr. Greenstein argues that the logic of shared sacrifice requires the tax cuts to be reconsidered. But most Congressional Republicans disagree, including Mr. Pence, the conservative leader.

"To allow tax cuts to lapse is a tax increase," Mr. Pence said, "and the economy would suffer."

Some conservatives say the storm, in exposing the depth of poverty, gives them a chance to push their own solutions to the problem, like school vouchers or subsidies to help poor people accumulate assets.

"What we've done for the poor hasn't worked," said Robert L. Woodson, president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, a conservative policy group. "People are going to say, 'How did these people get into this circumstance in the first place?' It gives us an opportunity to really turn over a new leaf."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2005

CA: Governor Signs Bill to End Shackling of Women During Labor and Delivery

10 Oct 2005

Assemblywoman Sally J. Lieber's (D-San Jose) continuing effort to improve health care for all women in California's prisons was affirmed when the Governor signed Assembly Bill 478 into law yesterday afternoon.

A.B. 478 makes it illegal to deny inmates prenatal and postpartum care, including access to vitamins and a basic dental cleaning, and bans the shackling of women during labor, delivery, and recovery. These inmates typically give birth in a locked hospital ward with armed guards-measures that are more than adequate to protect public safety or to prevent escape.

"The United Nations has established minimum rules for treatment of prisoners and California has not been following them," stated Lieber, adding, "California's regulations concerning medical, dental, and food needs of women in prison need to be updated." In addition to the benefits of adequate pre-natal care, Lieber also commented on the importance of the bill's other provisions noting "It is inconceivable in this day and age, that human beings would be shackled while giving birth."

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists stated, "Physical restraints have interfered with the ability of physicians to safely practice medicine by reducing their ability to assess and evaluate the physical condition of the mother and the fetus, and have similarly made the labor and delivery process more difficult than it needs to be; thus, overall putting the health and lives of the women and unborn children at risk."

This concern was echoed by the California Medical Association, stating, "Prenatal care has consistently been shown to be a cost-effective tool in preventing birth defects and protecting the health of the infant and the mother. Additionally, shackling of a prisoner during childbirth may be unnecessarily uncomfortable and dangerous for the female inmate, while providing little additional public safety protections."

"The California Commission on the Status of Women applauds Assemblywoman Lieber for bringing forward this long-overdue legislation on behalf of incarcerated pregnant women", states Vicki Atwood, Legislative Coordinator for the Commission, "Not only will it establish essential minimum standards of medical care, it will most notably prohibit the archaic, inhumane, and potentially dangerous practice of shackling women during labor."

A.B. 478 passed the Senate and Assembly on votes of 25-11 and 56-22 respectively. The bill also received support from Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, California Medical Association, American Civil Liberties Union, National Association of Social Workers, California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, Planned Parenthood, California Catholic Conference, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, California Association for Nurse Practitioners, Family Council, Friends Committee on Legislation, and California National Organization for Women.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=31786

http://www.asm.ca.gov

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

October 08, 2005

MA: Recidivism Rates Support Accelerated Sealing of CORI

By James Hannon

Public access to criminal offender record information (CORI) is designed to allow potential employers and other interested parties to make informed decisions about employing and associating with individuals with criminal records. CORI negatively affects anyone with a criminal record, especially those with a felony conviction and prison experience. Open CORIs offer some protection for society but simultaneously limit the options for those ex-prisoners who want to secure honest employment and live a law-abiding life. The important policy decisions are whether and when the crime-producing effects of open CORIs outweigh the public safety benefits of an informed public.

Another way of viewing the trade-off between positive and negative effects of CORI is the question of false positives and false negatives. A false positive is someone treated as a high risk for recidivism although he is actually completely committed to avoiding future criminal behavior and has the psychological resources to meet that commitment. Treating him inaccurately as a high risk may limit his legitimate opportunities and push him into criminal behavior despite his good intentions.

A false negative is someone wrongly considered safe to operate in society in terms of parole considerations or sealing his record. If this individual recidivates, the error of the initial judgment becomes obvious. One of the difficulties in weighing the risks of parole or a sealed record is that false negatives are visible and attract great public attention. False positives are invisible but are also problematic because of the increased costs of incarceration or other intense supervision and because of the unnecessary constraints that restrict opportunities for the individual and his family.

We can make our best judgment about how to minimize false positives and false negatives by studying the determinants of recidivism. For the purpose of CORI legislation, the most important question is the relationship between time of last offense (or release from prison) and likelihood of recidivism. Recidivism can be measured in several ways, but in terms of public safety issues, recidivism is best measured by an additional felony conviction.

It is widely understood that ex-inmates who recidivate are most likely to do so shortly after release from custody. There is a predictable curve that charts recidivism rates over time—rates are high in the first two years post-release, significantly lower in the third year, and approach zero risk by year five.

There is not a lot of research on recidivism rates beyond three years post-release, but the existing studies are clear. In 2001 the Florida Department of Correction conducted a seven-year follow-up study of inmates released since 1993. The recidivism rate approached zero for those who were six years post release.1 The Illinois Department of Correction conducted a three-year follow-up study of inmates released in 1998. Twenty-eight percent were re-incarcerated for a new conviction within two years; in year 3, only an additional 7% were incarcerated with a new conviction.2 These data compare closely with the Florida data for years 1-3. A 2001 national study by the Solicitor General of Canada found a five-year recidivism rate of 17%. For the next five years only an additional 4% of the original sample were convicted and re-incarcerated.

These studies suggest strongly that after 5-7 years post-prison release, ex-offenders who have not recidivated pose an extremely low risk of recidivating in the future. Although the risk of recidivism in the early years after release (false negatives) is greater than the risks associated with false positives, after five to seven years the situation is reversed and barriers to employment and reintegration with society are arguably much more likely to cause crime than to prevent it.

The most cautious analysis of the evidence supports sealing CORI at seven years after release from prison or from the time of felony conviction if there was no prison sentence or one shorter than seven years. Rep. Byron Rushing has proposed legislation that is absolutely consistent with the research. House Bill 973 (“Accelerating the Sealing of Conviction Criminal Offender Record Information”) would provide for the automatic sealing of felony convictions seven years after the end of an ex-offender’s sentence, instead of the current fifteen years (see CJPC newsletters of December, 2004, and April and July, 2005, for information on related and equally appropriate proposed legislation). The passage of this legislation would be another step toward a more effective, just and humane criminal justice policy.

James Hannon is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, Anna Maria College, Paxton, MA and a member of the Board of CJPC.

Criminal Justice Policy Coaltion.563 Massachusetts Ave., Boston, MA 02118 www.cjpc.org / email:admin@cjpc.org

1.www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/recidivism/2001/curves.html (accessed 9/3/05)

http://www.idoc.state.il.us/subsections/reports/statistical_presentation_2002/part2.shtml (accessed 9/3/05)

Posted by lois at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)

John van Hengel Dies, Set Up First Food Bank in the U.S.

October 8, 2005

By DOUGLAS MARTIN
John van Hengel, who set up the nation's first food bank, in Phoenix, to distribute unmarketable food to the hungry and then a national organization, Second Harvest, to spread the concept, died Wednesday at a hospice in Phoenix. He was 83.

Cynde Cerf, spokeswoman for St. Mary's Food Bank, Mr. van Hengel's initial enterprise, said Mr. van Hengel had had several strokes and Parkinson's disease. Second Harvest grew into one of the nation's largest and most respected nonprofit organizations, and last year distributed nearly two billion pounds of food to more than 50,000 local charitable agencies. These, in turn, operate 94,000 programs, including soup kitchens, pantries and after-school programs that provide emergency food assistance to 23 million Americans each year.

The United States Department of Agriculture estimates that 10 percent of Americans rely on this nonprofit distribution chain for their nutritional needs. The idea is simple: much edible food that is wasted can be collected and redirected to feed the hungry.

A central depository, or food bank, makes the task doable. One measurement of Second Harvest's effectiveness is Forbes magazine's calculation that 98 percent of all product and financial donations go to hungry people, not administration or fund-raising.

In Phoenix in the 1960's after a divorce and other personal problems, Mr. van Hengel was struggling to rebuild his life. One day in 1967, he found himself conversing with a woman who had 10 children and a husband on death row. For all her hardships, she said food was no problem.

As Mr. van Hengel later recounted, the woman explained that she shopped in refuse bins at the rear of a nearby grocery store. Mr. van Hengel went to the bins and found frozen food that was still frozen and edible, loose carrots and stale bread.

"The woman had healthy kids who obviously didn't eat bad at all," he said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 1992.

Mr. van Hengel then visited the store manager and in a back room found other things being thrown out. A case of ketchup with one broken bottle was tossed. So were cans with dents.

Mr. van Hengel, who had recently been moved by a documentary about hunger in Africa, asked if he could have the discarded items. The answer was yes, as it was with other stores.

A man searching for purpose had found one.

"It's amazing how many people are being fed because of this crazy little thing we started," Mr. van Hengel told The Times. (His "we" referred to a grandmother and two disabled volunteers, then his only helpers.)

"We're feeding millions, and it's not costing anyone anything," he continued. "But it scares me to look back because I just had no idea it would grow into this."

John van Hengel was born in Waupun, Wis., the son of a nurse and the town's pharmacist. After graduating from Lawrence College with a government degree, he moved to Southern California and became a self-described "first-rate beach bum."

He grew more focused, and studied broadcasting at the University of California, Los Angeles. His jobs included driving a beer truck in Beverly Hills, designing plastic rainwear, being a sales manager for an archery company and working as a magazine publicist.

He married a model, and when she divorced him in 1960, he felt crushed. He returned to Wisconsin, where he worked in a limestone quarry for $1.50 an hour. His legs were partly paralyzed in a barroom fight, and a doctor sent him to neurology hospital in Phoenix.

A lifelong Roman Catholic, he got a job at the Immaculate Heart Church in Phoenix driving the bus, coaching sports and helping out in the busy soup kitchen. On his own, he bought a broken-down milk truck to pick up surplus citrus fruit to give to charity missions.

The parish council of St. Mary's Church gave him an abandoned bakery to store his citrus, as well as $3,000. When he met the women who shopped in supermarket trash, he already had the beginnings of an infrastructure.

That woman came up with the name "food bank." The first year, Mr. van Hengel, who outfitted himself at thrift shops, and his three helpers at St. Mary's collected and distributed 250,000 pounds of food. Soon, they had enlisted manufacturers and wholesalers and were handling things like 200 semitruckloads of surplus grapefruit juice.

In 1971, they started giving out Emergency Food Boxes, which contained balanced foods for nine meals for families who ran out of food between paychecks.

Five years later, Mr. van Hengel established Second Harvest with a federal grant. The name came from the biblical story of Ruth, who gleaned grain left by reapers.

In 1983, Mr. van Hengel left Second Harvest to spread food-banking to Canada and Europe. Three years later, he set up a food-bank consulting firm, devoting more and more of his time to initiatives in South America and Africa, where hunger had first alarmed him.

Mr. van Hengel is survived by two sons, Thomas, of Scottsdale, Ariz., and John, of Kansas City, Kan.

Drawing on Jesus' words about the poor, the motto of Mr. van Hengel's initial soup kitchen sums up his life's mission: "The poor we shall always have with us. But why the hungry?"

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2005

UK Prisoners Should Get the Right to Vote, European Court Rules

Simon Jeffery
Thursday October 6, 2005 , The Guardian, London
Laws setting out who can and cannot take part in elections are to be rewritten after the European court of human rights today ruled in favour of giving British prisoners the right to vote.
Ruling in the case of a former prisoner against the United Kingdom, the Strasbourg court said the disenfranchisement of 48,000 convicts in British jails violated the European convention on human rights.

It said that with the exception of the right to liberty, lawfully detained prisoners continued to enjoy all the rights guaranteed in the convention - including political rights and freedom from inhumane and degrading punishment.

Britain is among 13 signatories to the human rights convention who prevent prisoners from voting, according to a government survey. The only exceptions in Britain are those in jail for non-payment of debts, contempt of court or on remand.
A further 14 signatories to the convention limit the right of prisoners to vote, while another 18 impose no restriction at all. The court's ruling could see prisoners across all states belonging to the 46-member Council of Europe, the court's parent body, given the right to vote.

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said the court's ruling confirmed "people are sent to prison to lose their liberty, not their identity or their citizenship".

Speaking for the Tories, the shadow attorney general, Dominic Grieve, said giving convicted murderers and rapists the vote would "bring the law into disrepute and many people will see it as making a mockery of justice".

A spokesman for the Department for Constitutional Affairs said it was giving the judgment urgent consideration and would bring forward proposals in due course.

The former prisoner who brought the challenge, John Hirst, 54, pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility after killing his landlady Bronia Burton with an axe.

He was sentenced to discretionary life imprisonment on February 11 1980 and released from Rye Hill prison, Warwickshire, on May 25 2004.

After his application to vote from prison was turned down, Mr Hirst took his case to the high court and lost. A seven-judge chamber of the Strasbourg court backed him, ruling that blocking the right to vote was disproportionate, and awarded him £8,000 in costs and expenses.

The government then appealed to a 17-judge "grand chamber" of the human rights court, arguing that Mr Hirst would be barred from voting even if the law was reformed to restrict the democratic rights of those who had committed only the most serious offences.

Mr Hirst's lawyers argued that blocking the right to vote was inconsistent with the stated rehabilitative aim of prison and that there was no proven link between removal of the vote and prevention of crime.

The court - on a majority ruling of 12-5 - said an article in the convention guaranteeing the "free expression of the opinion of the people in choosing a legislature" was not absolute but in a 21st century democracy the presumption should be in favour of inclusion.

Two of the judges said in an additional written ruling that the ban was applied to those in prison but neglected that a judge's decision to send a defendant to prison or hand down a suspended sentence or fine could depend on his or her health, age and family situation and not just the gravity of the crime.

Now living in Hull, Mr Hirst said his challenge had been about breaking the link between crime and the right to take part in the democratic process.

"The human rights court has agreed with me that the government's position is wrong - it doesn't matter how heinous the crime, everyone is entitled to have the basic human right to vote."

A bar on prisoners voting is made in the 1983 Representation of the People Act but the substance dates back to the 1870 Forfeiture Act, which in turn reflects earlier laws limiting the rights of criminals from the reign of Edward III.

The five dissenters - Judges Wildhaber, Costa, Lorenzen, Kolver and Jebens - said in a joint written opinion that the Strasbourg court should be careful not to assume legislative functions. They said states should have the right to restrict voting based on nationality, age, residence and other factors.

The court was set up in 1950 to hear citizens' complaints under the human rights convention and is independent of the European Union.

Posted by lois at 02:45 PM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2005

NY Times: Serving Life, With No Chance of Redemption

October 5, 2005
Serving Life, With No Chance of Redemption
By ADAM LIPTAK
LIVINGSTON, Tex. - Minutes after the United States Supreme Court threw out the juvenile death penalty in March, word reached death row here, setting off a pandemonium of banging, yelling and whoops of joy among many of the 28 men whose lives were spared by the decision.

But the news devastated Randy Arroyo, who had faced execution for helping kidnap and kill an Air Force officer while stealing his car for parts.

Mr. Arroyo realized he had just become a lifer, and that was the last thing he wanted. Lifers, he said, exist in a world without hope. "I wish I still had that death sentence," he said. "I believe my chances have gone down the drain. No one will ever look at my case."

Mr. Arroyo has a point. People on death row are provided with free lawyers to pursue their cases in federal court long after their convictions have been affirmed; lifers are not. The pro bono lawyers who work so aggressively to exonerate or spare the lives of death row inmates are not interested in the cases of people merely serving life terms. And appeals courts scrutinize death penalty cases much more closely than others.

Mr. Arroyo will become eligible for parole in 2037, when he is 57. But he doubts he will ever get out.

"This is hopeless," he said.

Scores of lifers, in interviews at 10 prisons in six states, echoed Mr. Arroyo's despondency. They have, they said, nothing to look forward to and no way to redeem themselves.

More than one in four lifers will never even see a parole board. The boards that the remaining lifers encounter have often been refashioned to include representatives of crime victims and elected officials not receptive to pleas for lenience.

And the nation's governors, concerned about the possibility of repeated offenses by paroled criminals and the public outcry that often follows, have all but stopped commuting life sentences.

In at least 22 states, lifers have virtually no way out. Fourteen states reported that they released fewer than 10 in 2001, the latest year for which national data is available, and the other eight states said fewer than two dozen each.

The number of lifers thus continues to swell in prisons across the nation, even as the number of new life sentences has dropped in recent years along with the crime rate.

According to a New York Times survey, the number of lifers has almost doubled in the last decade, to 132,000. Historical data on juvenile offenders is incomplete. But among the 18 states that can provide data from 1993, the juvenile lifer population rose 74 percent in the next decade.

Prosecutors and representatives of crime victims applaud the trend. The prisoners, they say, are paying the minimum fit punishment for their terrible crimes.

But even supporters of the death penalty wonder about this state of affairs.

"Life without parole is a very strange sentence when you think about it," said Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law School. "The punishment seems either too much or too little. If a sadistic or extraordinarily cold, callous killer deserves to die, then why not kill him? But if we are going to keep the killer alive when we could otherwise execute him, why strip him of all hope?"

Burl Cain, the warden of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, which houses thousands of lifers, said older prisoners who have served many years should be able to make their cases to a parole or pardon board that has an open mind. Because all life sentences in Louisiana are without the possibility of parole, only a governor's pardon can bring about a release.

The prospect of a meaningful hearing would, Mr. Cain said, provide lifers with a taste of hope.

"Prison should be a place for predators and not dying old men," Mr. Cain said. "Some people should die in prison, but everyone should get a hearing."

Television and Boredom

In interviews, lifers said they tried to resign themselves to spending down their days entirely behind bars. But the prison programs that once kept them busy in an effort at training and rehabilitation have largely been dismantled, replaced by television and boredom.

The lot of the lifer may be said to be cruel or pampered, depending on one's perspective. "It's a bleak imprisonment," said W. Scott Thornsley, a former corrections official in Pennsylvania. "When you take away someone's hope, you take away a lot."

It was not always that way, said Steven Benjamin, a 56-year-old Michigan lifer.

"The whole perception of incarceration changed in the 1970's," said Mr. Benjamin, who is serving a sentence of life without parole for participating in a robbery in 1973 in which an accomplice killed a man. "They're dismantling all meaningful programs. We just write people off without a second thought."

As the years pass and the lifers grow old, they sometimes tend to dying prisoners and then die themselves. Some are buried in cemeteries on prison grounds by other lifers, who will then go on to repeat the cycle.

"They're never going to leave here," said Mr. Cain, the warden at Angola, of inmates he looks after. "They're going to die here."

Some defendants view the prospect of life in prison as so bleak and the possibility of exoneration for lifers as so remote that they are willing to roll the dice with death.

In Alabama, six men convicted of capital crimes have asked their juries for death rather than life sentences, said Bryan Stevenson, director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama.

The idea seems to have its roots in the experience of Walter McMillian, who was convicted of capital murder by an Alabama jury in 1988. The jury recommended that he be sentenced to life without parole, but Judge Robert E. Lee Key Jr. overrode that recommendation and sentenced Mr. McMillian to death by electrocution.

Because of that death sentence, lawyers opposed to capital punishment took up Mr. McMillian's case. Through their efforts, Mr. McMillian was exonerated five years later after prosecutors conceded that they had relied on perjured testimony. "Had there not been that decision to override," said Mr. Stevenson, one of Mr. McMillian's lawyers, "he would be in prison today."

Other Alabama defendants have learned a lesson from Mr. McMillian.

"We have a lot of death penalty cases where, perversely, the client at the penalty phase asks to be sentenced to death," Mr. Stevenson said.

Judges and other legal experts say that risky decision could be a wise one for defendants who are innocent or who were convicted under flawed procedures. "Capital cases get an automatic royal treatment, whereas noncapital cases are fairly routine," said Alex Kozinski, a federal appeals court judge in California.

David R. Dow, one of Mr. Arroyo's lawyers and the director of the Texas Innocence Network, said groups like his did not have the resources to represent lifers.

"If we got Arroyo's case as a non-death-penalty case," Mr. Dow said, "we would have terminated it in the very early stages of investigation."

Mr. Arroyo, who is 25 but still has something of the pimply, squirmy adolescent about him, said he already detected a certain quiet descending on his case.

"You don't hear too many religious groups or foreign governments or nonprofit organizations fighting for lifers," he said.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas signed a bill in June adding life without parole as an option for juries to consider in capital cases. Opponents of the death penalty have embraced and promoted this alternative, pointing to studies that show that support for the death penalty dropped drastically among jurors and the public when life without parole, or LWOP, was an alternative.

"Life without parole has been absolutely crucial to whatever progress has been made against the death penalty," said James Liebman, a law professor at Columbia. "The drop in death sentences" - from 320 in 1996 to 125 last year - "would not have happened without LWOP."

But some questioned the strategy.

"I have a problem with death penalty abolitionists," said Paul Wright, the editor of Prison Legal News and a former lifer, released in Washington State in 2003 after serving 17 years for killing a man in a robbery attempt. "They're positing life without parole as an option, but it's a death sentence by incarceration. You're trading a slow form of death for a faster one."

Mr. Arroyo shares that view.

"I'd roll the dice with death and stay on death row," he said. "Really, death has never been my fear. What do people believe? That being alive in prison is a good life? This is slavery."

Murder Follows a Kidnapping

Mr. Arroyo was convicted in 1998 for his role in the killing of Jose Cobo, 39, an Air Force captain and the chief of maintenance training at the Inter-American Air Forces Academy in Lackland, Tex. Mr. Arroyo, then 17, and an accomplice, Vincent Gutierrez, 18, wanted to steal Captain Cobo's red Mazda RX-7 for parts.

Captain Cobo tried to escape but became tangled in his seat belt. Mr. Gutierrez shot him twice in the back and shoved the dying man onto the shoulder of Interstate 410 during rush hour on a rainy Tuesday morning.

Although Mr. Arroyo did not pull the trigger, he was convicted of felony murder, or participation in a serious crime that led to a killing. He contends that he had no reason to think Mr. Gutierrez would kill Captain Cobo and therefore cannot be guilty of felony murder. "I don't mind taking responsibility for my actions, for my part in this crime," he said. "But don't act like I'm a murderer or violent or that this was premeditated."

That argument misunderstands the felony murder law, legal experts said. Mr. Arroyo's decision to participate in the carjacking is, they say, more than enough to support his murder conviction.

Captain Cobo left behind a 17-year-old daughter, Reena.

"I miss him so much it hurts when I think about it," she said of her father in a victim impact statement presented at trial. "I know he is in heaven with my grandmother and God is taking care of him. I want to see the murderers punished not necessarily by death. I feel sorry that they wasted theirs and my father's life."

Ms. Cobo declined to be interviewed.

Mr. Arroyo said he was not eager to leave death row, and not just because of dwindling interest in his case.

"All I know is death row," he said. "This is my life. This is where I grew up."

His lawyer sees reasons for him to be concerned about moving off death row.

"He's going to become someone's plaything in the general population," Mr. Dow said. "He's a small guy, and the first time someone tries to kill him they'll probably succeed."

That kind of violence is not the way most lifers die. At Angola, for instance, two prisoners were killed by fellow inmates in the five years ended in 2004. One committed suicide, and two were executed. The other 150 or so died in the usual ways.

The prison operates a hospice to tend to dying prisoners, and it has opened a second cemetery, Point Lookout Two, to accommodate the dead.

On a warm afternoon earlier this year, men in wheelchairs moved slowly around the main open area of the prison hospice. Others lounged in bed.

The private rooms, for terminal patients, are as pleasant as most hospital rooms, though the doors are sturdier. The inmates have televisions, video games, coffeepots and DVD players. One patient watched "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider."

Robert Downs, a 69-year old career bank robber serving a 198-year term as a habitual felon, died in one of those rooms the day before. In his final days, other inmates tended to him, in four-hour shifts, around the clock. They held his hand and eased his passage. "Our responsibility," said Randolph Matthieu, 53, a hospice volunteer, "is so that he doesn't die there by himself. We wash him and clean him if he messes himself. It's a real humbling experience."

Mr. Matthieu is serving a life sentence for killing a man he met at the C'est La Guerre Lounge in Lafayette, La., in 1983.

At Point Lookout Two the next day, there were six mounds of fresh dirt and one deep hole, ready to receive Mr. Downs. Under the piles of dirt were other inmates who had recently died. They were awaiting simple white crosses like the 120 or so nearby. The crosses bear two pieces of information. One is the dead man's name, of course. Instead of the end points of his life, though, his six-digit prison number is stamped below.

The sun was hot, and the gravediggers paused for a rest after their toil.

"I'm hoping I don't come this way," said Charles Vassel, 66, who is serving a life sentence for killing a clerk while robbing a liquor store in Monroe, La., in 1972. "I want to be buried around my family."

The families of prisoners who die at Angola have 30 hours to claim their bodies, and about half do. The rest are buried at Point Lookout Two.

"It's pretty much the only way you leave," said Timothy Bray, 45, also in for life. Mr. Bray, who helped beat a man to death for falling behind in his debts, tends to the horses that pull the hearse on funeral days, placing white and red rosettes in their manes.

Wary of a Transformed World

Not all older lifers are eager to leave prison. Many have grown used to the free food and medical care. They have no skills, they say, and they worry about living in a world that has been radically transformed by technology in the decades that they have been locked up.

Wardens like Mr. Cain say that lifers are docile, mature and helpful.

"Many of the lifers are not habitual felons," he added. "They committed a murder that was a crime of passion. That inmate is not necessarily hard to manage."

What is needed, he said, is hope, and that is in short supply. "I tell them, 'You never know when you might win the lottery,' " Mr. Cain said. "You never know when you might get a pardon. You never know when they might change the law.'"

Up the road from Point Lookout Two, near the main entrance, is the building that houses the state's death row. Lawyers for the 89 men there are hard at work, trying to overturn their clients' convictions or at least convert their death sentences into life terms. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, eight Louisiana death row inmates have been exonerated in the last three decades. More than 50, prison officials said, have had their sentences commuted to life.

But those hard-won life sentences, when they come, do not always please the prisoners.

"I have to put a lot of these guys on suicide watch when they get off death row," said Cathy Fontenot, an assistant warden, "because their chances have gone down to this."

She put her thumb and forefinger together, making a zero.

Janet Roberts contributed reporting for this series. Research was contributed by Jack Styczynski, Linda Amster, Donna Anderson, Jack Begg, Alain Delaquérière, Sandra Jamison, Toby Lyles and Carolyn Wilder.

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October 04, 2005

MA: Jury Slaps Down Overreaching DA in "School Zone" Bust

Drug War ChronicleIssue #405, 9/30/05
Denied: Massachusetts Jury Slaps Down Overreaching District Attorney in "School Zone" Bust
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/405/denied.shtml
A Massachusetts jury Tuesday refused to send Kyle Sawin, 18, to prison for a minimum of two years after he was caught selling small amounts of marijuana in a drug sting designed to allow prosecutors to use enhanced "school zone" penalties. The verdict, which came after nine hours of deliberation, was a slap in the face to Berkshire County District Attorney David Capeless, who ignored a chorus of community complaints in seeking such stiff penalties for small-time pot law violations.

Sawin and six other Taconic High students were arrested after complying with repeated requests from an undercover police officer to sell them marijuana at a parking lot. The parking lot was within a thousand feet of a church with a pre-school program, which enabled Capeless to charge the local youngsters under the school zone enhancement. That enhancement carries a mandatory minimum two-year prison sentence. Sawin was, and the six remaining defendants are all first-time, nonviolent defendants.

This was the second slap-down for Capeless in his effort to send the young man to prison. An earlier trial resulted in a hung jury.

"I am so grateful that this young man and his family can finally return to their normal lives, and Kyle's plans for the future," said Judy Knight, Sawin's attorney, in a statement after the verdict. "Charges brought against an individual should fit the facts of the case and the goal of the criminal justice system is not to just blindly apply or stack sentences regardless of individual case circumstance. Nobody would have won if Kyle was found guilty of the school zone charges and sent to jail for two years."

The sting perpetrated against the Taconic High School students and Capeless' repeated statements that he would seek to bring enhanced school zone charges against all possible defendants resulted in a firestorm of criticism of the drug-fighting DA. It also sparked the formation of Concerned Citizens for Appropriate Justice, a local group that includes former prosecutor Ira Kaplan.

"A prosecutor's job is to seek justice, not to exact the maximum potential penalty," Kaplan told DRCNet in a June interview. "You are paid by the state and the taxpayers to do the right thing, and sending a 17-year-old to jail for two years for selling a couple of joints does not seem like the right thing."

It seems the jurors of Berkshire county agreed. No word yet on whether Capeless, in the face of citizen protests and juror rebellion, will continue to attempt to exact mandatory minimum prison sentences on small-time teenage defendants. But now he is on notice.

"Had the District Attorney prevailed he would have unnecessarily ruined a young man's life, splintered a family and achieved no benefit for Berkshire County in terms of addressing drug abuse," said Concerned Citizens spokesman Peter Greer. "DA Capeless should cease this outdated, ineffective wasteful policy and join the vast majority of his constituents and national trends to use his discretion and seek appropriate, rational and effective alternatives to prison. The jury has spoken, and we hope he heard them loud and clear."

If not, there's always the ballot box. Earlier this year, Concerned Citizens warned that if Capeless didn't change his ways, he could face an electoral challenge.

Posted by lois at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)

Quote

Today's Quote

It’s important the people should know what you stand for. It’s equally important that they know what you won’t stand for.

-Mary H. Waldrip
sent by inmateresource@aol.com

Posted by lois at 04:13 PM | Comments (0)

October 03, 2005

Katrina- Evacuated Inmates at One Prison Allege Abuse by Guards

Evacuated Inmates at One Prison Allege Abuse by Guards
By Henry Weinstein
Times Staff Writer

October 2, 2005

Louisiana legislators have asked state officials to investigate charges that prisoners who were evacuated to a rural facility due to Hurricane Katrina are being physically abused by guards. Many of the evacuees have been awaiting trial or are being held on misdemeanor charges.

Spokeswoman Pamela LaBorde of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections said the agency took the allegations "very seriously" and would send staffers to the north-central Louisiana prison Monday to start an inquiry.

State Rep. Karen R. Carter of New Orleans said in a telephone interview Saturday from Baton Rouge that she had been assured by the head of the Louisiana State Police, Col. Henry Whitehorn, that he would conduct a thorough internal investigation of the situation at Jena.

Carter said she and another legislator called Whitehorn on Friday night and Saturday after getting reports of inmate abuse at Jena. The reports were relayed by Ted Shaw, chief lawyer for the legal defense fund of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. Shaw was in Louisiana meeting with lawmakers about a host of civil rights concerns after the hurricane.

Simultaneously, a group of veteran Louisiana defense lawyers has asked the Justice Department to investigate the situation at Jena and to transfer inmates out to protect them.

"The inmates who are now being housed at the Jena facility appear to be in severe and immediate danger of being seriously injured or killed by the guards at that facility," said attorney Phyllis Mann of Alexandria, La., in a statement sent Friday to the Justice Department.

Mann, a leader in the Louisiana Criminal Defense Lawyers Assn., and four other attorneys said they had sent detailed statements to Justice's civil rights division describing interviews they had conducted with hundreds of inmates in recent days at Jena.

The lawyers said the inmates told of being beaten, subjected to racial invective, having their heads rubbed in mace and vomit, and being taunted by guards who told them there was nothing they could do about their treatment because they were living under martial law. A state of emergency — not martial law — has been declared in Louisiana.

Maj. Brad Rogers, who is in charge at Jena, had no comment Saturday on the allegations.

Shaw, the NAACP lawyer, who heard about Jena from Mann, said that if the inmates' allegations were true, "this is an extraordinarily serious violation of constitutional civil rights."

The defense attorneys who interviewed inmates individually at Jena in recent days said the stories seemed credible. "The stories the inmates related to me were very consistent and very disturbing," said David Park, an attorney with the Innocence Project of New Orleans.

Christine Lehman of the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center interviewed prisoners for two days last week. "Of all the inmates I interviewed … almost all said that they had been physically abused themselves or had seen others physically abused."

Mann, who has visited evacuated inmates at several prisons, said a number expressed disgruntlement about issues including an inability to reach family members. However, she said, Jena was the only facility where serious abuse was alleged.

She and the other defense lawyers said they saw evidence of beatings and abuse — such as swollen eyes, bruised heads, welts and deep handcuff marks.

Mann said she had been unaware that Jena was in use until Sept. 20, when inmates at a prison in Winn told her about it. She was participating in an effort by the Defense Lawyers Assn. to locate the 8,500 inmates from New Orleans and the surrounding parishes who had been taken to 38 facilities around the state after Katrina.

At the Winn prison, Mann said, she met nearly two dozen men who had been moved there from Jena and "a frightening narrative began to emerge." The spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections said that 60 prisoners were moved to Winn on Sept. 2 after "an inmate disturbance" at Jena.

Mann received permission from state officials to send attorneys to Jena on Tuesday.

Attorney Rachel I. Jones, who interviewed more than 100 inmates, said many asked her whether they had any rights under the "martial law" that Jena officials had allegedly told them was in effect.

Jones said the vast majority of those evacuated from the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center to Jena were pre-trial detainees. Dozens are being held on municipal charges, such as public intoxication, attachments for failure to pay court fees and minor traffic violations. Many are being held on misdemeanor charges, past their predetermined release dates, or on charges never accepted by a district attorney.

Some inmates "slipped desperate notes into my hand," she said.

A Justice Department spokesman in Washington said he did not know whether any department official had received the Louisiana lawyers' reports.

For many years, Jena was used to house juveniles, but the facility was closed in 2000 after a federal lawsuit revealed serious abuse of the youths kept there.

LaBorde said the facility was being used now because of the emergency and was staffed by Louisiana corrections officials and volunteers from other states.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-prisons2oct02,1,7420887.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Posted by lois at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

IN: Evan Bayh--"No Indiana politician did more to undermine prisoners' rights and interests"

In case any of you are interested in knowing more about presumed-presidential-candidate Evan Bayh, the following article may be of interest. No Indiana politician did more to undermine prisoners' rights and rehabilitation than Bayh during his 8 years as governor.
The above was written by a prison reform advocate from IN.

September 18, 2005
Russ Pulliam
Easing inmates back into society
September 18, 2005
Now set for execution in 10 days, Alan Matheney had an unfortunate impact on the state's prison and criminal justice system.
In beating his ex-wife to death in 1989, Matheney spooked a new governor, Evan Bayh, into shutting down the state's work release programs and curbing attempts to find alternatives to prison.
The result was a boom in the state's prison population in the 1990s, running the number of inmates to more than 20,000 and causing a major increase in prison costs for taxpayers.

Bayh's response was understandable in the political atmosphere of the times. ["Understandable" only if you expect governors to be completely self-serving) He had just become governor, at age 33, and clearly carried the presidential ambitions he is still nurturing as a prominent U.S. senator.
He was the first Democrat elected governor in 20 years. Nationally, the older George Bush had just defeated Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis for the presidency. One of the main raps against Dukakis had been that he was soft on crime. He was blamed for the furlough program that freed Massachusetts inmate Willie Horton to commit more crime. Dukakis added to his problems by refusing to meet with Horton's crime victims and his presidential campaign never overcame the soft-on-crime label.
Bayh got the message loud and clear. Never mind the details. Matheney was free on a weekend pass. That was different from work release and prison alternatives, which were aimed at nonviolent offenders. Bayh could see that such technical distinctions wouldn't count for much in a heated debate.
In his own campaign for governor, Bayh had added to his dilemma by implying that Republicans had been soft on crime in the management of the state's work-release programs. He seemed to be trying to run to the right of Republicans, to be tougher on crime just in case anyone might assume he had Dukakis' soft touch.
Yet in a debate with his Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. John Mutz, Bayh showed little familiarity with the state's prisons and criminal justice system. His training would come on the job. He got it fast and furiously when Matheney killed his former wife, Lisa Bianco, after receiving a weekend pass from a state prison in Pendleton.
"Evan just immediately backed off from work release because he didn't want to be blamed for a Willie Horton thing," recalled state Rep. Peggy Welch, D-Bloomington. A probation officer at the time, she had run the Monroe County Community Corrections program.
She looks at the Matheney case as part of a natural swing on the pendulum in criminal justice issues, from being hard on criminals to a recognition of the need for some way of transition for inmates back to society. "How did Matheney play in that?" she asks. "He swung the pendulum to the other side -- put them in jail and throw away the key."
The state may be ready to begin a swing in the other direction. Gov. Mitch Daniels has brought in a new corrections commissioner, David Donohue, who has shown a readiness to renew the work-release concept, on grounds that most inmates won't be locked up forever and need to make the transition to freedom. Donohue also is experimenting with a faith-based wing in a Pendleton prison, based on similar efforts in other states that seem to reduce repeat offenders.
Daniels and Donohue are not going soft on crime. But they are keeping in mind the state constitutional mandate for a criminal justice system that provides reformation instead of vindictive justice.

Posted by lois at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

August Wilson

October 3, 2005
August Wilson, Theater's Poet of Black America, Is Dead at 60
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
August Wilson, who chronicled the African-American experience in the 20th century in a series of plays that will stand as a landmark in the history of black culture, of American literature and of Broadway theater, died yesterday at a hospital in Seattle. He was 60 and lived in Seattle.

The cause was liver cancer, said his assistant, Dena Levitin. Mr. Wilson's cancer was diagnosed in the summer, and his illness was made public last month.

"Radio Golf," the last of the 10 plays that constitute Mr. Wilson's majestic theatrical cycle, opened at the Yale Repertory Theater last spring and has subsequently been produced in Los Angeles. It was the concluding chapter in a spellbinding story that began more than two decades ago, when Mr. Wilson's play "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" had its debut at the same theater, in 1984, and announced the arrival of a major talent, fully matured.

Reviewing the play's Broadway premiere for The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote that in "Ma Rainey," Mr. Wilson "sends the entire history of black America crashing down upon our heads."

"This play is a searing inside account of what white racism does to its victims," Mr. Rich continued, "and it floats on the same authentic artistry as the blues music it celebrates."

In the years since "Ma Rainey" appeared, Mr. Wilson collected innumerable accolades for his work, including seven New York Drama Critics' Circle awards, a Tony Award, for 1987's "Fences," and two Pulitzer Prizes, for "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson," from 1990.

"He was a giant figure in American theater," the playwright Tony Kushner said yesterday. "Heroic is not a word one uses often without embarrassment to describe a writer or playwright, but the diligence and ferocity of effort behind the creation of his body of work is really an epic story.

"The playwright's voice in American culture is perceived as having been usurped by television and film, but he reasserted the power of drama to describe large social forces, to explore the meaning of an entire people's experience in American history. For all the magic in his plays, he was writing in the grand tradition of Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, the politically engaged, direct, social realist drama. He was reclaiming ground for the theater that most people thought had been abandoned."

To honor his achievements, Broadway's Virginia Theater is to be renamed the August Wilson Theater. The new marquee is to be unveiled Oct. 17.

With the exceptions of "Radio Golf" and "Jitney," a play first produced in St. Paul in 1981 and reworked and presented Off Broadway in 2000, all of the plays in the cycle were ultimately seen on Broadway, the sometimes treacherous but all-important commercial marketplace for American theater. Although some were not financial successes there, "Fences," which starred James Earl Jones, set a record for a nonmusical Broadway production when it grossed $11 million in a single year, and ran for 525 performances. Together, Mr. Wilson's plays logged nearly 1,800 performances on Broadway in a little more than two decades, and they have been seen in more than 2,000 separate productions, amateur and professional.

Each of the plays in the cycle was set in a different decade of the 20th century, and all but "Ma Rainey" took place in the impoverished but vibrant African-American Hill District of Pittsburgh, where Mr. Wilson was born. In 1978, before he had become a successful writer, Mr. Wilson moved to St. Paul, and in 1994 he settled in Seattle, where he died. But his spiritual home remained the rough streets of the Hill District, where as a young man he sat in thrall to the voices of African-American working men and women. Years later, he would discern in their stories, their jokes and their squabbles the raw material for an art that would celebrate the sustaining richness of the black American experience, bruising as it often was.

In his work, Mr. Wilson depicted the struggles of black Americans with uncommon lyrical richness, theatrical density and emotional heft, in plays that gave vivid voices to people on the frayed margins of life: cabdrivers and maids, garbagemen and side men and petty criminals. In bringing to the popular American stage the gritty specifics of the lives of his poor, trouble-plagued and sometimes powerfully embittered black characters, Mr. Wilson also described universal truths about the struggle for dignity, love, security and happiness in the face of often overwhelming obstacles.

In dialogue that married the complexity of jazz to the emotional power of the blues, he also argued eloquently for the importance of black Americans' honoring the pain and passion in their history, not burying it to smooth the road to assimilation. For Mr. Wilson, it was imperative for black Americans to draw upon the moral and spiritual nobility of their ancestors' struggles to inspire their own ongoing fight against the legacies of white racism.

In an article about his cycle for The Times in 2000, Mr. Wilson wrote, "I wanted to place this culture onstage in all its richness and fullness and to demonstrate its ability to sustain us in all areas of human life and endeavor and through profound moments of our history in which the larger society has thought less of us than we have thought of ourselves."

Mr. Wilson did not establish the chronological framework of his cycle until after the work had begun, and he skipped around in time. Although "Radio Golf," the last play to be written, was set in the 1990's, "Gem of the Ocean," which immediately preceded it in production (it came to Broadway in the fall of 2004), was set in the first decade of the 20th century.

His first success, "Ma Rainey," which took place in a Chicago recording studio in 1927, depicted the turbulent relationship between a rich but angry blues singer and a brilliant trumpet player who also wants to succeed in the white-dominated world of commercial music. From there Mr. Wilson turned to the 1950's, with "Fences," his most popular play, about a garbageman and former baseball player in the Negro leagues who clashes with his son over the boy's intention to pursue a career in sports. His next play, "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," considered by many to be the finest of his works, was a quasi-mystical drama set in a boardinghouse in 1911. It told of a man newly freed from illegal servitude searching to find the woman who abandoned him.

The other plays in Mr. Wilson's theatrical opus are "The Piano Lesson," set in 1936, in which a brother and sister argue over the fate of the piano that symbolizes the family's anguished past history; "Two Trains Running," concerning an ex-con re-ordering his life in 1969; "Seven Guitars," about a blues musician on the brink of a career breakthrough in 1948; "Jitney," a collage of the everyday doings at a gypsy cab company in 1977; and "King Hedley II," in which another troubled ex-con searches for redemption as the Hill District crumbles under the onslaught of Reaganomics in 1985.

As the cycle developed, Mr. Wilson knit the plays together through overlapping themes and characters. Many of the primary conflicts concern the dueling prerogatives of characters poised between the traumatizing past and the uncertain future. The central character in "Radio Golf" is the grandson of a character in "Gem of the Ocean." The guiding spirit of the cycle came to be Aunt Esther, a woman said to have lived for more than three centuries, who was referred to in several plays and who appeared at last in "Gem." She embodied the continuity of spiritual and moral values that Mr. Wilson felt was crucial to the black experience, uniting the descendants of slaves to their African ancestors.

A Fruitful Partnership

Mr. Wilson's career was closely linked with that of Lloyd Richards, who became the first black director to work on Broadway when he staged the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway, Lorraine Hansberry's "Raisin in the Sun," in 1959. Ms. Hansberry's warmhearted but clear-eyed play about the struggles of a black family to move up the economic ladder in Chicago shares with Mr. Wilson's work a focus on the daily lives of black Americans, relegating the oppressions of white culture to the background.

Mr. Richards, the dean of the Yale School of Drama and the artistic director of Yale Repertory Theater from 1979 to 1991, was also the head of the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference in Connecticut when Mr. Wilson submitted "Ma Rainey" to the program. ("Jitney," begun in 1979, had been submitted and rejected twice.) When it was accepted, Mr. Richards helped refine the work of the then-unknown writer and first produced and directed it at Yale Rep, where its success instantly established Mr. Wilson as an American playwright of singular talent, perhaps the greatest American stage poet since Tennessee Williams.

Mr. Richards would help shape and direct the next five plays in Mr. Wilson's cycle, ending with "Seven Guitars," which arrived on Broadway in 1996. Each play was refined through a series of productions at Yale and other regional theaters before moving to New York. (Most grew significantly shorter along the way: Mr. Wilson's work was most often criticized for excessive length and sometimes belaboring its ideas. In a celebratory review Mr. Rich wrote when "Joe Turner" opened on Broadway, he nevertheless noted, "As usual with Mr. Wilson, the play overstates its thematic exposition in an overlong first act.")

This formula replicated in a noncommercial arena the tryout circuit that had once been commonplace for plays aiming for Broadway, a method of development that ran aground as the costs of theater skyrocketed. The process, which also involved Mr. Wilson's longtime producer, Benjamin Mordecai, the managing director of Yale Rep during much of Mr. Richards's tenure, was important in defining a healthy and mutually beneficial relationship between the country's not-for-profit regional theaters and its Broadway-centered commercial establishment. (Mr. Mordecai, who was involved with all of Mr. Wilson's plays in one capacity or another, died earlier this year.) More significantly, the collaboration between Mr. Richards and Mr. Wilson was the most artistically fruitful in American theatrical history since Elia Kazan's association with Arthur Miller and Williams.

An Atypical Education

Mr. Wilson was born Frederick August Kittel on April 27, 1945, in Pittsburgh. He was named for his father, a white German immigrant who worked as a baker, drank too much and had a fiery temperament his son would inherit. He was mostly an absence in Mr. Wilson's childhood, and it was his African-American mother, Daisy Wilson, who instilled in her six children a strong sense of pride and a limited tolerance for injustice. (She once turned down a washing machine she had won in a contest when the company sponsoring the event tried to fob off a secondhand item on her.) Mr. Wilson legally adopted her last name when he set out to become a writer.

Eventually Mrs. Wilson divorced Mr. Wilson's father and remarried, and the family moved to a largely white suburb. As the only black student in his class at a Roman Catholic high school, Mr. Wilson gained an awareness of the grinding ugliness of racism that would inform his work. "There was a note on my desk every single day," he told The New Yorker in 2001. "It said, 'Go home, nigger.' " Mr. Wilson attended two more schools but gave up on formal education when a teacher accused him of plagiarizing a paper on Napoleon. At 15, he chose to continue - but essentially to begin - his education on his own, spending his days at the local library absorbing books by the dozen.

Mr. Wilson acquired an equally valuable education outside the library walls, hanging out and listening to the Hill District denizens pass the time on stoops, in coffee shops and at Pat's Place, a local cigar store. Eventually the voices he absorbed while hanging loose with retirees and sharpies in his 20's would re-emerge in his plays, sometimes with little artistic tampering.

Mr. Wilson acquired his first typewriter with $20 he had earned writing a term paper for one of his sisters at college. But he preferred to write in public places like bars and restaurants and had a particular affinity for composing on cocktail napkins. Only when he settled into his career as a playwright did he become comfortable writing at home, in longhand on yellow notepads.

By the time he was 20, Mr. Wilson had decided he was a poet. He submitted poems to Harper's and other magazines while supporting himself with odd jobs, and began dressing in a style that raised eyebrows among his peers. While most of the young men of the time were dressing down, Mr. Wilson was always meticulously turned out in jackets, ties and white shirts selected from thrift shops. Later he would be known for his trademark porter's cap.

Inspired by the Black Power movement then gaining momentum, Mr. Wilson and a group of fellow poets founded a theater workshop and an art gallery, and in 1968 Mr. Wilson and his friend Rob Penny founded the Black Horizons on the Hill Theater. Mr. Wilson was the director and sometimes an actor, too, although he had no experience, and learned about directing by checking a how-to manual out of the library. The company was without a performance space and staged shows in the auditoriums of local elementary schools. Tickets were sold, for 50 cents a pop, by chatting up people on the streets right before a performance.

But Mr. Wilson's aspirations as an author were still being channeled into poetry; after an abortive effort to write a play for his theater, he set aside playwriting for almost a decade. He came home to drama almost by happenstance. Mr. Wilson moved to St. Paul in 1978 and started working at the Science Museum of Minnesota. His task: adapting Native American folk tales into children's plays.

Homesick for the Hill District and growing more comfortable with the playwriting process, he started channeling the Hill voices haunting his memories as a way of keeping the connection alive. "Jitney," begun in 1979, was the result. It was produced in Pittsburgh in 1982, the same year that "Ma Rainey" was accepted at the O'Neill Center. (Mr. Wilson's first professional production was of a prior play adapted from a series of his poems, "Black Bart and the Sacred Hills," staged by St. Paul's Penumbra Theater.)

In a 1999 interview in The Paris Review, Mr. Wilson cited his major influences as being the "four B's": the blues was the "primary" influence, followed by Jorge Luis Borges, the playwright Amiri Baraka and the painter Romare Bearden. He analyzed the elements each contributed to his art: "From Borges, those wonderful gaucho stories from which I learned that you can be specific as to a time and place and culture and still have the work resonate with the universal themes of love, honor, duty, betrayal, etc. From Amiri Baraka, I learned that all art is political, although I don't write political plays. From Romare Bearden I learned that the fullness and richness of everyday life can be rendered without compromise or sentimentality." He added two more B's, both African-American writers, to the list: the playwright Ed Bullins and James Baldwin.

Although his plays achieved their success in the white-dominated theater world, Mr. Wilson remained devoted to the alternative culture of black Americans and mourned its gradual decline as the black middle class grew and adopted the values of its white counterpart. He once lamented that at convocation ceremonies at black universities, the music would be Bach, not gospel.

When a Hollywood studio optioned "Fences," Mr. Wilson caused a ruckus by insisting on a black director. In a 1990 article published in Spin magazine and later excerpted in The Times, he said, "I am not carrying a banner for black directors. I think they should carry their own. I am not trying to get work for black directors. I am trying to get the film of my play made in the best possible way. I declined a white director not on the basis of race but on the basis of culture. White directors are not qualified for the job. The job requires someone who shares the specifics of the culture of black Americans." (The film was not made.)

He was a firm believer in the importance of maintaining a robust black theater movement, a viewpoint that also inspired a public controversy when Mr. Wilson clashed with the prominent theater critic and arts administrator Robert Brustein in a series of exchanges in the pages of American Theater magazine and The New Republic, and later in a formal debate between the two staged at Manhattan's Town Hall in 1997, moderated by Anna Deavere Smith.

The contretemps began when Mr. Wilson delivered a keynote address to a national theater conference in which he lamented that among the more than 60 members of the League of Regional Theaters, only one was dedicated to the work of African-Americans. He also denounced as absurd the idea of colorblind casting, asserting that an all-black "Death of a Salesman" was irrelevant because the play was "conceived for white actors as an investigation of the specifics of white culture." Mr. Brustein referred to Mr. Wilson's call for an independent black theater movement as "self-segregation."

At the sold-out debate at Town Hall the friendly antagonists essentially restated their positions publicly. "Never is it suggested that playwrights like David Mamet or Terrence McNally are limiting themselves to whiteness," Mr. Wilson said. "The idea that we are trying to escape from the ghetto of black culture is insulting."

A Legacy of Stars

Mr. Wilson was dedicated to writing for the theater, and resisted many offers from Hollywood. (His only concession: adapting "The Piano Lesson" for television.) He didn't even see any movies for a stretch of 10 years.

But the list of well-known television and film actors who first came to prominence in one of Mr. Wilson's plays is lengthy. Charles S. Dutton scored his first success as the trumpeter Levee in the original production of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," a role he reprised nearly 20 years later when the play was revived on Broadway in 2003, with Whoopi Goldberg in the title role. S. Epatha Merkerson, now known as Lt. Anita Van Buren on "Law & Order," appeared opposite Mr. Dutton in "The Piano Lesson" on Broadway.

Other notable actors who appeared in one or more of Mr. Wilson's plays include Angela Bassett, Roscoe Lee Browne, Phylicia Rashad, Courtney B. Vance, Laurence Fishburne, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Keith David, Viola Davis, Delroy Lindo, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Leslie Uggams and Brian Stokes Mitchell.

Mr. Wilson's first two marriages, to Brenda Burton and Judy Oliver, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Constanza Romero, a Colombian-born costume designer he met when she worked on "The Piano Lesson"; and two daughters, Sakina Ansari (from his first marriage) and Azula Carmen Wilson (from his third). He is also survived by his siblings Freda Ellis, Linda Jean Kittel, Richard Kittel, Donna Conley and Edwin Kittel.

Mr. Wilson did not write plays with specific political agendas, but he did believe art could subtly effect social change. And while his essential aim was to evoke and ennoble the collective African-American experience, he also believed his work could help rewrite some of those rules.

"I think my plays offer (white Americans) a different way to look at black Americans," he told The Paris Review. "For instance, in 'Fences' they see a garbageman, a person they don't really look at, although they see a garbageman every day. By looking at Troy's life, white people find out that the content of this black garbageman's life is affected by the same things - love, honor, beauty, betrayal, duty. Recognizing that these things are as much part of his life as theirs can affect how they think about and deal with black people in their lives."

In describing his own work, Mr. Wilson could be analytical or offhand. A soft-spoken man whose affability masked a sometimes short temper, he was a connoisseur of the art of storytelling offstage and on. Here's the story behind all his characters' stories, in his own words: "I once wrote a short story called 'The Best Blues Singer in the World' and it went like this: 'The streets that Balboa walked were his own private ocean, and Balboa was drowning.' End of story. That says it all. Nothing else to say. I've been rewriting that same story over and over again. All my plays are rewriting that same story. I'm not sure what it means, other than life is hard."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)

October 02, 2005

NY Times: To More Inmates, Life Term Means Dying Behind Bars

October 2, 2005
By ADAM LIPTAK
HARRISBURG, Pa. - In the winter woods near Gaines, Pa., on the day before New Year's Eve in 1969, four 15-year-olds were hunting rabbits when Charlotte Goodwin told Jackie Lee Thompson a lie. They had been having sex for about a month, and she said she was pregnant.

That angered Jackie, and he shot Charlotte three times and then drowned her in the icy waters of Pine Creek.

A few months later, Judge Charles G. Webb sentenced him to life in prison. But the judge told him:
"You will always have hope in a thing of this kind. We have found that, in the past, quite frequently, if you behave yourself, there is a good chance that you will learn a trade and you will be paroled after a few years."

Mr. Thompson did behave himself, learned quite a few trades in his 35 years in prison - he is an accomplished carpenter, bricklayer, electrician, plumber, welder and mechanic - and earned a high school diploma and an associate's degree in business.

So exemplary is his prison record that when Mr. Thompson, now 50, asked the state pardons board to release him, the victim's father begged for his release, and a retired prison official offered Mr. Thompson a place to stay and a job.

"We can forgive him," said Duane Goodwin, Charlotte's father. "Why can't you?"

The board turned Mr. Thompson down.

Tom Corbett, the state attorney general, cast the decisive vote.

"He shot her with a pump-action shotgun, three times," Mr. Corbett said. "This was a cold-blooded killing."

Just a few decades ago, a life sentence was often a misnomer, a way to suggest harsh punishment but deliver only 10 to 20 years.

But now, driven by tougher laws and political pressure on governors and parole boards, thousands of lifers are going into prisons each year, and in many states only a few are ever coming out, even in cases where judges and prosecutors did not intend to put them away forever.

Indeed, in just the last 30 years, the United States has created something never before seen in its history and unheard of around the globe: a booming population of prisoners whose only way out of prison is likely to be inside a coffin.

A survey by The New York Times found that about 132,000 of the nation's prisoners, or almost 1 in 10, are serving life sentences. The number of lifers has almost doubled in the last decade, far outpacing the overall growth in the prison population. Of those lifers sentenced between 1988 and 2001, about a third are serving time for sentences other than murder, including burglary and drug crimes.

Growth has been especially sharp among lifers with the words "without parole" appended to their sentences. In 1993, the Times survey found, about 20 percent of all lifers had no chance of parole. Last year, the number rose to 28 percent.

The phenomenon is in some ways an artifact of the death penalty. Opponents of capital punishment have promoted life sentences as an alternative to execution. And as the nation's enthusiasm for the death penalty wanes amid restrictive Supreme Court rulings and a spate of death row exonerations, more states are turning to life sentences.

Defendants facing a potential death sentence often plead to life; those who go to trial and are convicted are sentenced to life about half the time by juries that are sometimes swayed by the lingering possibility of innocence.

As a result the United States is now housing a large and permanent population of prisoners who will die of old age behind bars. At the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, for instance, more than 3,000 of the 5,100 prisoners are serving life without parole, and most of the rest are serving sentences so long that they cannot be completed in a typical lifetime.

About 150 inmates have died there in the last five years, and the prison recently opened a second cemetery, where simple white crosses are adorned with only the inmate's name and prisoner ID number.

A Growing Reliance on Life Terms

American enthusiasm for life sentences reflects an uneasy societal consensus. Such sentences are undeniably tough, pleasing politicians and prosecutors, but they also satisfy opponents of capital punishment.

"If you are punishing a heinous criminal who has committed a violent murder, it is appropriate to use severe sanctions," said Julian H. Wright Jr., a lawyer in North Carolina and the author of a study on life without parole. "It has the advantage of achieving a harsh penalty and keeping a violent offender off the streets. And you don't take a human life in the process. Indeed, if you mess up and do it wrong, you haven't taken someone's life."

But the prison wardens, criminologists and groups that study sentencing say the growing reliance on life terms also raises a host of questions.

Permanent incarceration may be the fitting punishment for murder. Few shed tears for Gary L. Ridgway, the Green River killer, who was sentenced to 48 consecutive life terms in Washington State, one for each of the women he admitted to killing.

But some critics of life sentences say they are overused, pointing to people like Jerald Sanders, who is serving a life sentence in Alabama. He was a small-time burglar and had never been convicted of a violent crime. Under the state's habitual offender law, he was sent away after stealing a $60 bicycle.

Fewer than two-thirds of the 70,000 people sentenced to life from 1988 to 2001 are in for murder, the Times analysis found. Other lifers - more than 25,000 of them - were convicted of crimes like rape, kidnapping, armed robbery, assault, extortion, burglary and arson. People convicted of drug trafficking account for 16 percent of all lifers.

Life sentences certainly keep criminals off the streets. But, as decades pass and prisoners grow more mature and less violent, does the cost of keeping them locked up justify what may be a diminishing benefit in public safety? By a conservative estimate, it costs $3 billion a year to house America's lifers. And as prisoners age, their medical care can become very expensive.
At the same time, studies show, most prisoners become markedly less violent as they grow older.

"Committing crime, particularly violent crime, is an activity of the young," said Richard Kern, the director of the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission.

Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group that issued a report on life sentences last year, said that about a fifth of released lifers were arrested again, compared with two-thirds of all released prisoners.

"Many lifers," Mr. Mauer said, "are kept in prison long after they represent a public safety threat."

In much of the rest of the world, sentences of natural life are all but unknown.

"Western Europeans regard 10 or 12 years as an extremely long term, even for offenders sentenced in theory to life," said James Q. Whitman, a law professor at Yale and the author of "Harsh Justice," which compares criminal punishment in the United States and Europe.

Michael H. Tonry, a professor of law and public policy at the University of Minnesota and an expert on comparative punishment, said life without parole was a legal impossibility in much of the world.

Mexico will not extradite defendants who face sentences of life without parole. And when Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981, was pardoned in 2000, an Italian judge remarked, "No one stays 20 years in prison."

Some developing and Islamic nations mete out brutal sanctions, including corporal punishment and mutilation. But if the discussion is limited to very long prison sentences, Professor Tonry said, "we are vastly more punitive than anybody else."

The reasons for this gap are hard to pinpoint. Professor Whitman detects an American appetite for harsh retribution. Professor Tonry locates that appetite in a Calvinist tradition.

"It's the same reason we're not a socialist welfare state," he said. "You deserve what you get, both good and bad."

That sort of talk struck M. L. Ebert Jr., a former president of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association and the district attorney of Cumberland County, Pa., as a little fancy.

"Is it too much to ask that people don't kill people?" he said. "I can't tell you the devastation it causes families, who never forget. If you kill somebody, life means life without parole."

The Crime and the Victim

"My anger broke loose, and I shot her," Mr. Thompson said recently, recalling for the millionth time the day he killed Charlotte Goodwin. He was afraid, he said, that her pregnancy would get him kicked out of his foster home, his fourth in five years and the first one that he liked.

Mr. Thompson is a slight, almost elfin man, with receding, wispy, unkempt salt-and-pepper hair, a casual mustache, breath that smells of cigarettes and moody brown eyes in a heavily creased face.

He is serving his time at the Rockview Correctional Institution near Bellefonte, just up the road from Pennsylvania State University. It is a soaring and forbidding mass of granite, a piece of Gotham City plunked down in the rolling hills of rural Pennsylvania.

He used his friend Dennis Ellis's pump-action shotgun, Mr. Thompson said, and he shot Charlotte at close range three times. He tried to explain the repeated shots.

"You have to pump each time," he said. "It is true. Dennis and I, we always had a habit of going out in the woods with a gun and see how fast we could empty a gun. That's where the second and third shots come from."

Charlotte's wounds were not immediately fatal. The youths had the idea, Mr. Thompson said, of putting her in a nearby creek. But she bobbed to the surface. So the three teenagers slid her body under the ice that covered a part of the creek, drowning her.

"You should have seen how stupid we was," Mr. Thompson said. "I wish I could change that."

Mr. Thompson grew up as a slow and confused child, with a slight speech impediment. He had 13 brothers and sisters, "and that's not counting the half ones," he said.

"Three or four of them have died so far," he said. His mother died when he was 10, he added, "I'm told of cancer."

Mr. Thompson recalled his younger self.

"That 15-year-old kid was so scared. He was a special-ed kid. Special-ed kids get teased a lot. I was small. I kept running away. Here was a kid who was always scared to death, picked on, possibly beat up."

"Looking back," he said, "I wish someone would have grabbed hold of me and kicked my butt. I wasn't a bad kid."

He met Charlotte Goodwin at the foster home.

"I didn't get to know her that well," Mr. Thompson said. "At that age, boys are after one thing. A girl can talk all she wants and you ain't listening to her. You're thinking of only one thing."

Duane Goodwin, Charlotte's father, remembered a cheerful child.

"She was just happy-go-lucky," Mr. Goodwin said of her. "If there was any kind of music on, she'd move to it."

Jackie confessed to killing Charlotte, and Judge Webb sentenced him to life. At that time, 1970, in Pennsylvania, a life sentence usually meant fewer than 20 years.

Dorothy D. Quimby was the clerk of the Orphans Court of Tioga County at the time and she knew him as "a gentle, good boy who had suffered a lot of hurt."

"I also knew Judge Webb very well," she wrote to the pardons board, "and know that his intentions were not to have Jackie incarcerated for any great length of time."

A few months ago, Mr. Goodwin, 78, traveled 100 miles to speak up for his daughter's killer before the pardons board, which meets in an ornate courtroom of the State Supreme Court here, under a stained-glass cupola and a dozen frescoes attesting to the majesty of the law.

Mr. Goodwin, a retired glass factory worker with a gray goatee and a hearing aid, is a small man with erect posture, alert eyes and quick laugh, but he gets a little overwhelmed by public speaking. He spoke softly and haltingly.

"He was just a scared little kid," Mr. Goodwin said of Jackie. "If he ever gets out, he's got a good education, and I think he'll use it."

Kenneth Chubb, a retired facilities manager at the prison in Camp Hill, told the board that he had a proposal.

"My wife and I would both like to offer, if needed, a place for him to stay," Mr. Chubb said, his voice choking with emotion. "Plus, my son, who has a plumbing business, will offer him a job."

That drew a low whistle of surprise from a former prison official in the audience.

"For a corrections person to embrace an inmate is just incredible," the official, W. Scott Thornsley, said.

A few days before the hearing, Mr. Corbett, the state attorney general, met with Mr. Thompson.

"I walked out of the room thinking and feeling that he was going to say yes," Mr. Thompson later said. "He was not coldhearted. He wasn't drilling me. He gets to the point. He's a decent man."

But in the end, that visit, Mr. Goodwin's pleas and Mr. Chubb's offer were not enough to sway Mr. Corbett, the one dissenting vote on the five-member parole board.

"I am not prepared," Mr. Corbett said, "at this time to vote in the affirmative."

John F. Cowley, the district attorney in Tioga County, where the killing took place, agreed that Mr. Thompson should never be free.

"At the end of the day, in Pennsylvania life means life," Mr. Cowley said. "I come down on the side - not firmly - but I come down on the side that there should be no pardon. It's a tough case. The only reason is the age at the time of the crime. Everything else is way beyond ugly."

In lawsuits around the country, lifers are complaining that the rules were changed after sentencing. In some cases, they have the support of the judges who sentenced them.

A survey of 95 current and retired judges by the Michigan state bar released in 2002 found that, on average, the judges had expected prisoners sentenced to life with the possibility of parole to become eligible for parole in 12 years and to be released in 16 years. In July, a Michigan appeals court echoed that, saying that many lawyers there used to assume that a life sentence meant 12 to 20 years.

"This belief seems to have been somewhat supported by parole data," the court said in rejecting a claim from a prisoner who claimed that recent changes in the parole system had worked to his disadvantage. "For example, between 1941 and 1974, 416 parole-eligible lifers were paroled, averaging 12 per year."

In the last 24 years, by contrast, a New York Times analysis found that while the number of lifers shot up, the number of lifers who were paroled declined to about seven per year - even using the most liberal of definitions.

In 2002, for instance, a Michigan judge tried to reopen the case of John Alexander, whom he had sentenced to life with the possibility of parole for a seemingly unprovoked street shooting in 1981.

The judge, Michael F. Sapala, said he had not anticipated the extent to which the parole board "wouldn't simply change policies but, in fact, would ignore the law" in denying parole to Mr. Alexander. "If I wanted to make sure he stayed in prison for the rest of his life, I would have imposed" a sentence "like 80 to 150 years," the judge said.

An appeals court ruled that the judge no longer had jurisdiction over the case.

Executive Clemency Wanes

In Louisiana, which, like Michigan and Pennsylvania, has a large number of lifers, "it was common knowledge that life imprisonment generally means 10 years and 6 months" in the 1970's, the state's Supreme Court said in 1982.

Since 1979, all life sentences there have come without the possibility of parole, and the governor rarely intervenes.

"The use of executive clemency has withered, as it has all over the country, especially with lifers," said Burk Foster, a recently retired professor of criminal justice at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

The federal appeals court in California is considering whether the parole board there may deny parole to lifers based on the nature of the original crime, which, prisoners say, is a form of double jeopardy. The plaintiff in the case, Carl Merton Irons II, shot and stabbed a housemate, John Nicholson, in 1984 after hearing that Mr. Nicholson was stealing from their landlord. Mr. Irons was sentenced to 17 years to life for second-degree murder.

The parole board refused for a fifth time to release him in 2001, saying that the killing was "especially cruel and callous."

The prosecutor who sent Mr. Irons away spoke up for him at a hearing the next year, to no avail. "If life would have it that Carl Irons was my next-door neighbor or I heard he was going to move next door to me," the prosecutor, Stephen M. Wagstaffe said, "my view to you would be that I'm going to have a good neighbor."

Mr. Irons filed a lawsuit challenging the board's decision. A federal district judge agreed, ordering him paroled. The federal appeals court is expected to rule soon.

The state has 30,000 lifers, of whom 27,000 will eventually become eligible for parole. As a practical matter, parole for lifers is a two-step process: the parole board must recommend it, and the governor must approve it. Neither step is easy. In a 28-month period ending in 2001, according to the California Supreme Court, the board considered 4,800 cases and granted parole in 48. Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, reversed 47 of the decisions.

Governor Davis had run on a tough-on-crime platform. In five years as governor, he paroled five lifers, all murderers.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who succeeded Mr. Davis in late 2003, has been more receptive to parole. He has paroled 103 lifers, 89 of them murderers.

"Even though he is letting out more than Davis, it is still just a trickle," said Don Spector, executive director of the Prison Law Office, a legal group concerned with inmate rights and prison reform. "The victims' rights groups are used to seeing nothing, so to them, it seems like there's been a flood of releases."

Reginald McFadden is the reason lifers no longer get pardons in Pennsylvania.

Mr. McFadden had served 24 years of a life sentence for suffocating Sonia Rosenbaum, 60, during a burglary of her home when a divided Board of Pardons voted to release him in 1992. After Gov. Robert P. Casey signed the commutation papers two years later, Mr. McFadden moved to New York, where he promptly killed two people and kidnapped and raped a third. He is now serving another life sentence there.

Lt. Gov. Mark Singel had voted to release Mr. McFadden. When news of the New York murders broke, Mr. Singel was running for governor and was well ahead in the polls. The commutation became a campaign issue, and Mr. Singel was defeated by Tom Ridge, who did not commute a single lifer's sentence in his six years in office.

Ernest D. Preate Jr., the state attorney general at the time, was the sole dissenting vote in Mr. McFadden's case.

Then, it took only a majority vote of the board to recommend clemency. Mr. Preate worked to change that, and in 1997 Pennsylvania voters passed a constitutional amendment requiring a unanimous vote in cases involving the death penalty and life sentences. The amendment also changed the composition of the board, substituting, for instance, a crime victim for a lawyer.

Mr. Thornsley, a former corrections official who now teaches at Mansfield University, said the amendment made a sensible change. "It took a unanimous vote to convict somebody," he said. "It should take a unanimous vote to send a case to the governor. If you're going to have a sentence, it should be served out in its entirety."

The McFadden experience in Pennsylvania is a representative one, said Michael Heise, a law professor at Cornell.

"Around World War II, governors were giving away clemency like candy," Dr. Heise said. "Ever since Governor Dukakis and Willie Horton and President Clinton and Marc Rich, executive officers have been far, far more reticent to exercise their power. The politics are pretty clear: they don't want to get burned."

As recently as 30 years ago, pardons for lifers were common in Pennsylvania. In eight years in the 1970's, for instance, Gov. Milton Shapp granted clemency to 251 lifers. Since 1995, even as the number of lifers has more than doubled, three governors combined have commuted a single life sentence.

These days, Mr. Preate is on the other side of the issue, working to overturn the amendment that he himself set in motion. He said his change of heart came after he spent a year in prison on a mail fraud conviction in the mid-90's. Meeting older lifers convinced him that the current system could be unduly punitive, he said.

"That got me involved in the fight against the amendment I helped create and supported," he said.

Mr. Preate now supports legislation that would allow a parole board to consider the cases of lifers who have served 25 years and are at least 50. "I never foresaw the politicization of this process," he said, "and the fear that has crept into the process."

Mr. Thompson entered prison in an era when its goal was rehabilitation, even for people serving nominal life terms. These days, he works as a prison carpenter, earning 42 cents an hour building cabinets and fixing things up around the prison, which houses about 1,800 inmates, more than 180 of whom are lifers.

"It helps pay the cable and gets you a little bit of commissary," he said. "It might be strange to say, but coming to jail helped me. I got an education. Would I have got that out there? I probably would have quit like my brothers and most of my sisters. Would I have an associate's degree? Would I have job training?"

He has a cell to himself, with a television and a guitar. He plays "the old rock, the classics" and said he was partial to Bob Dylan. He has started playing sports.

"Softball season started up again and the young boys talked me in to playing again, and I'm pretty good," he said several months ago. He plays second base.

A lifer entering the system today would have few of Mr. Thompson's advantages. Programs have been cut back, and those that still exist are often reserved for prisoners serving short sentences.

Mr. Thompson sounded resigned when he talked about being turned down by the pardons board.

"A lot of guys in here really thought I was going to make it, staff and inmates, to give a little hope to the lifers," he said wearily. "I didn't cry this time. I committed a crime. Even though I think I've been punished enough, I'm to the point where I'm worried about my people, my supporters, because it really does take a toll on them."
The Data on Lifers

Janet Roberts of The Times's computer-assisted reporting unit contributed reporting for this series. She was assisted by Jack Styczynski, Donna Anderson, Linda Amster, Jack Begg, Alain Delaqueriere, Sandra Jamison, Toby Lyles and Carolyn Wilder.

www.nytimes.com/2005/10/02/national/02life.web.html?hp&ex=1128312000&en=17172d95c2609b85&ei=5094&partner=homepage

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