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December 31, 2005

Editorial: NY Times: VA: A Light on Justice Denied

December 31, 2005

Editorial

A Light on Justice Denied
A harrowing postscript to official justice is taking place in Virginia, where the discovery of a forgotten generation's blood samples in old forensic files has led to modern DNA tests that have already cleared five inmates convicted of rape, with hundreds of other felony cases to be examined.

As cheering as the recognition of their innocence has been for the five, who together lost about 90 years behind bars, a sad truth is emerging about the frequency of wrongful convictions in the criminal justice system. The two latest proofs of innocence emerged from a random sampling of just 29 old rape cases from the 1970's and 80's. Back then, Mary Jane Burton, a meticulous state serologist who died six years ago, bothered to retain evidence scraps that are now proving weighty in the modern era of forensic DNA tests.

The pity is that Ms. Burton's extra step of quiet professionalism is unusual - the procedures still current in much of the nation's justice system would have led to the destruction of such evidence by now.

Faced with the startling trove of resurrected evidence, Gov. Mark Warner has done the only thing he could do in good conscience: he has ordered the state to backtrack through hundreds of past convictions that may overlap with the Burton files and to let the DNA chips fall where they may.

Commendably, Governor Warner has made Virginia the first state to begin such a sweeping review without waiting for court challenges from convicted felons.

The Virginia experience evolved from the prodding of the Innocence Project, the legal appeals group that mounts DNA-based challenges on behalf of the wrongfully convicted. The state's look back is especially relevant as forensic lab methods become a target of increasing doubt and criticism across the nation. To "Burton" a case is already a fresh term of art in Richmond, one that deserves to spread through the criminal justice system.
Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

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

NY: Crime Numbers Keep Dropping Across the City

December 31, 2005

Crime Numbers Keep Dropping Across the City
By AL BAKER

Crime has fallen across New York City for the 17th consecutive year, with subway crime down by more than 5 percent from last year and the number of recorded murders virtually certain to be the fewest in any single year since 1963, new Police Department statistics show.

As of yesterday, there had been 537 killings in the city, according to the department's latest marking-period reports that are issued weekly. That is down from 566 in the same period last year. And it is down from 649 in all of 2001, when joblessness surged, anxiety from Sept. 11 was present and a budget crisis prompted a reduction in numbers of city police officers. In that year, some citizens and criminal justice experts predicted a bottoming out of the crime downturn as the police force took on new counterterrorism responsibilities.

New York reported its greatest number of murders in 1990, when 2,245 people lost their lives by violence.

In 2005, in addition to murders, numbers for rape, felony assault, burglary and grand larceny all fell, the department said.

Auto theft, which, like murder, is considered a reliable indicator of crime patterns because there is little discretion in how to classify it and little reluctance in reporting it, fell by nearly 12 percent.

"When you get eight million people together, you will have some crime," said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. "But is the city improving? And, is quality of life improving? Most believe that and believe that cops are doing a great job and crime is coming down."

New York's continuing decline is in contrast to some other cities across the nation. After years of falling crime, Boston is now experiencing a surge in homicides. Houston has seen more killings in 2005. In Philadelphia, murders are outpacing last year's rate. Some law enforcement officials have attributed rising murder rates outside of New York to use of the drug methamphetamine.

David M. Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, said, "Nobody else, anywhere, has been able to generate either the huge reductions in violent crime or sustain those reductions without reversal for 10 years, which is what New York has now done."

In the view of some critics, the overall numbers seem too good to be true. Officials in the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the main police union, charged last year that precinct commanders felt such pressure to drive down crime that they "cook the books," reducing the severity of crimes on paper to avoid recording them and reporting them to the F.B.I.

But the department has an internal auditing system, said Michael J. Farrell, the deputy commissioner for strategic initiatives. Since that system was put in place in the early 1990's, the error rate has gone to 1.5 percent from 4.4 percent, he said.

"The aspect of it that reassures us are the audits that we do, which are very substantial, in terms of the number," Mr. Farrell said. "Every precinct is audited randomly, twice a year."

Of course, on any given day in the city, the streets can feel dangerous.

Arrests for guns are up, heading into the last week of this year. Two police officers have been killed in the line of duty in recent weeks, and more officers were shot this year, 8, the highest number since 1997, when 10 were shot and one was killed. The 2005 murder tally could still increase by midnight tonight or when some 2005 deaths because of unknown causes are finally determined by the medical examiner.

Shootings, a crime statistic the department has tracked for the last 12 years, were up by 3.2 percent, to 1,508 from 1,461. And the number of victims wounded in those shootings rose to 1,808 from 1,755. The shootings, though, were concentrated in a handful of precincts, and they have now started to fall. This year could well wind up with the second-lowest number of shootings since 1993.

The precinct with the greatest number of incidents of gunfire in 2005 was the 75th Precinct, in East New York, Brooklyn, which recorded 92. The most gun arrests, 225, happened there, too.

The citywide dips in five of the major crime categories was followed by roughly proportional dips in arrests for those crimes. But the number of robberies increased, by 0.8 percent, and, consequently, robbery arrests mushroomed to nearly 11 percent as the police focused on the problem.

Or, as Mr. Farrell put it, to "re-inoculate" a new generation of criminals "who may not have gotten that vaccine."

Put in context, the rise in robberies, to 23,948 from 23,746, comes in a category of crime that is a mere shadow of its former self: their number peaked at 100,280 in 1990, said Thomas A. Reppetto, a police historian and executive director of the Citizens Crime Commission, a group that monitors police policies in New York.

In all, the numbers collected, computerized and crunched by the New York Police Department reveal all manner of trends and developments.

In 2005, eight precincts in the city recorded not a single murder - vast parts of the city that included Central Park and the 94th Precinct in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where there were four murders last year, and in 1990 there were eight.

Five precincts, including one covering the Long Island City section of Queens and another, in the Fordham and Bedford Park sections of the Bronx, recorded some of the highest numbers of violent crimes this year. There were 229 robberies in the 108th Precinct in Queens, for instance. But even with those high numbers, it was those very precincts that recorded the greatest reductions when set against last year. For example, robberies in the 108th were down by 16 percent.

Perception can be as much a measure of crime as reported statistics. In 1963, as today, some sensational cases made headlines for weeks. Then, it was the so-called Career Girl murders, the double homicide of a Newsweek researcher and a teacher on the Upper East Side. There were a total of 548 homicides that year. Now, it is Peter Braunstein, a writer suspected of posing as a firefighter in an Oct. 31 sex assault in Chelsea.

Commissioner Kelly, for his part, said no floor for any crime is acceptable. The department tracks crime in "real time," he said, and maps it down to street corners.

The manpower for Operation Impact, a program started by Mr. Kelly to flood problem areas with Police Academy recruits accompanied by more experienced officers, will be doubled next month to include 1,200 officers. A strategy of splitting the most violent precincts into thirds, Operation Trident, will be put in place in the 44th and 46th Precincts, he said.

Many people, however, including Andrew Karmen, a criminologist who has analyzed the factors affecting the city's crime, have wondered just how long this trend - what Dr. Karmen calls a "crime crash" - can last.

"I think there is room for even further progress because in other large cities around the world, such as London and Tokyo, people get along even better with each other than we do," said Dr. Karmen, who wrote the book, "New York Murder Mystery" (N.Y.U. Press, 2000), about declining crime rates in the 1990's.

Dr. Karmen said that most criminologists attribute New York's falling crime rate to both criminal justice and broader societal factors, including smarter police work, tougher sentencing, improved job opportunities and the perception of an improved economy.

Mr. Kennedy said: "The controversy remains. Is it something that law enforcement did, or isn't it? My thought is, you can't explain it without a very large contribution from law enforcement."

Heading into his second term, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the record bodes well for the future.

"Every year, experts say we can't drive crime down any further, but happily the N.Y.P.D. proves them wrong and breaks another record," Mr. Bloomberg said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/31/nyregion/31crime.html?hp&ex=1136091600&en=10df13f49ff8773a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Posted by lois at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

NY: Bedford Hills--A Tough Life All About Drugs & Sister Elaine

December 31, 2005
The City Life
Well-Spent Prison Time
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
A two-time loser nicknamed Sexy - so dubbed in her earliest years at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for women - was dying in the prison ward. Old friends, both inmates and keepers, were stopping by, anguished that radiation treatments had taken Sexy's beautiful head of hair. "What really upset her was she lost her teeth, not her hair, and she would die that way on the inside," recalled her chaplain, Sister Elaine Roulet. The nun smiled, singling out Sexy to make a point about the thousands of women convicts - murderers, drug addicts and courier "mules," prostitutes and thieves - she grew close to in 47 years of service at Bedford Hills, a New York prison.

"A tough life for Sexy - all about drugs," the nun recalled, speaking from her supposed retirement at one of the nine homey shelters she created across the city over 25 years for the women she regards as her larger community of sisters: Bedford Hills prison alumnae who have done their time. "But Sexy was always elegant, and she wanted to die that way."
Vanity behind bars is more than an acceptable vice in the subversive catechism of Sister Elaine, who broke out of parochial school teaching early in her career to become a reading teacher for imprisoned women. From there, things took off: she discovered that maternity, not literacy, was the big problem.
She focused on programs that allowed felons to mother their infants on the inside for the first year, to stay close to their children through creative visitor programs in the years that followed, and eventually to find a year's shelter with their children at one of her Providence House shelters in converted convents and rectories. She is so busy in retirement that she could not resist starting another program, called Our Journey, for quick spiritual retreats in the city where the women encourage one another and watch their children grow.
"Something new - there's nothing worse than old ritual," the nun warned, digging through piles of family prison pictures she keeps in a lockbox she got from a longtime friend, Ruth Brown. " 'Ma' Brown - the last woman to escape the electric chair," Sister Elaine said. "She died inside." Sexy's last rites turned out to be special. "The very kind prison dentist said, 'Look, we can't make her false teeth - she'll be dead soon,' " Sister Elaine said. "But he made a plaster mold on his own, and we ran around to dentists, begging them, and one directed me to this guy, some kind of dental mechanic, who finally laughed and made a set for nothing." Sexy loved her new teeth, smiling as much as possible with them before her death, her chaplain recounted. "And the point of this story is you don't do anything alone, in prison or outside: look at all the people who got Sexy her teeth," the nun said, enumerating the half-dozen who had nudged the search along to the final touch of ritual elegance for Sexy. FRANCIS X. CLINES

Posted by lois at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)

December 30, 2005

NY: Jail Unit for Gay Men Set to Close at Rikers Island

December 30, 2005
New York Set to Close Jail Unit for Gays
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
For at least three decades, gay and transgender inmates had their own housing unit inside Rikers Island's sprawling jail complex. To be admitted, all a new inmate had to do was declare homosexuality, or appear to be transgender, and ask to be kept out of Rikers's main jails.

The idea, city correction officials said, was to protect vulnerable inmates who might otherwise become victims of discrimination or sexual abuse in the rough world of the general inmate population. The only other metropolitan jail to separate gay and transgender inmates is Los Angeles County Jail. Gay inmates there, however, are forced to live separately from other inmates.

But at Rikers Island, gay housing, as it is called by New York correction officials, is about to end. On Nov. 28, the Correction Department stopped admitting new inmates to the unit. In a few weeks, the unit, which still holds about 50 people, will be no longer.

Under the new rules, gay or transgender inmates who want protection from general-population inmates must apply for it in a special hearing, correction officials said. If granted, the protective custody requires inmates to be held in individual cells for 23 hours a day, just as inmates punished for disciplinary reasons are held.

Martin F. Horn, the city correction commissioner, said gay housing was ending as part of a larger reorganization of inmate housing to improve security. The change of policy, he said, will increase jail safety among gay and transgender inmates.

Though originally intended to promote safety, gay housing became a dangerous wing at Rikers because it mixed weaker inmates seeking protection with violence-prone inmates seeking to prey on them, Mr. Horn said. Some inmates who were not gay, he added, would request to be placed in the unit as a way to avoid their enemies in the general population, or to take advantage of a group they perceived as weak.

"It was the only area of the department where inmates could choose where they wanted to live," irrespective of the security classification each inmate receives upon entering the jail system, Mr. Horn said in an interview. "What we ended up with was this housing unit where people were predatory and people were vulnerable. The very units that should be the most safe, in fact, had become the least safe."

The elimination of special housing for gay and transgender inmates has outraged some critics, who say that Mr. Horn's new policy essentially punishes pretrial detainees, who have not been convicted of any crime, for their sexual orientation. It also forces these inmates, their advocates say, to choose between the possibility of being abused in the general population or being locked up alone for 23 hours a day.

"This is not a change for the benefit of the prisoners, this is a change for the benefit of the administration," said Carrie Davis, a social worker at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in New York, whose clients include former Rikers inmates. "What they're saying is, people who by virtue of immutable physical characteristics are going to be put in 23-hour lockdown," she added. "Does that sound fair?"

Other inmate advocates say the new policy contravenes city regulations and at least one state court ruling. In 1982, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, Second Department, ruled, in Schipski v. Flood, that Nassau County's policy of holding protective-custody jail inmates in lockdown 22 hours a day was unconstitutional. The new policy also violates regulations created by the City Board of Correction, a jail oversight agency, that stipulate which type of inmates can be placed on lockdown, said D. Horowitz, a lawyer with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a Manhattan-based group that represents transgender clients.

Thomas Antenen, a spokesman for the Correction Department, said that department lawyers believed the 1982 case was different because it involved a blanket rule for protective-custody inmates. New York City, he said, assigns protective custody case by case. Hildy J. Simmons, the board's chairwoman, did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.

Matt Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said his organization and about 15 others were seeking a meeting with Mr. Horn to come up with an alternative method of separating vulnerable gay or transgender inmates. "Our hope is that this decision can be modified significantly," Mr. Foreman said.

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

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

December 29, 2005

NJ: Passaic Jail Ends Housing Immigrant "Detainees"

Passaic Jail ends housing immigrant detainees

Thursday, December 29, 2005

By KAREN KELLER
HERALD NEWS

ThePassaic County Jail will no longer house federal immigration detainees, markingthe end of several years of controversy about the jail's treatment of thosedetainees. It alsowill mark the end of a revenue source that brought millions of federal dollarsinto the county. Thejail's current 110 detainees are leaving the jail at the rate of 10 to 20 aweek, sheriff's spokesman Bill Maer confirmed Wednesday. In an e-mail, Maersaid Sheriff Jerry Speziale's decision to end the program was based mainly onconcern about the amount of effort spent to manage the detainee population. The movecomes as the Department of Homeland Security prepares to release a report inFebruary on conditions and treatment of detainees.

Aspokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees thedetainees, said Wednesday that the Sheriff's Department made the call. "Theydid recently notify us that they want to withdraw from the [Inter-GovernmentalService Agreement], so we stopped sending detainees," said Mike Gilhooley,the ICE spokesman. Spezialewould not comment. Thedetainees, most of whom are being held for violations of civil immigrationlaws, will be shipped to other sites in New Jersey,New York or Pennsylvania, Gilhooley said. The Passaic jail served asone of the major immigration detention facilities in the wake of 9/11, with itspopulation climbing to 386 from 40, according to Ron Fava, the sheriff at thetime. The jail eventually held almost 500 detainees. Alongwith the increase in detainees came protests and hunger strikes about crowding,poor conditions and mistreatment. InDecember 2001, seven detainees staged a hunger strike. In March 2002, AmnestyInternational issued a report saying detainees held in jails, including Passaic, had been abused.The same month, U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine, now the governor-elect, toured the jailand wrote a commentary, condemning the prolonged imprisonment of detainees asviolating the basic right of due process. Asrecently as Dec. 13, immigrant advocates charged that jail guards beat anEgyptian detainee - a charge the Sheriff's Department denied. More than90 detainees signed a petition Dec. 17, asking that Homeland Security end itscontract with Passaicbecause of "very poor and health risk conditions at this jail." Heung WahWong, an immigration detainee who passed through Passaic County Jail but is nolonger there, detailed what life was like there in a memo sent to HomelandSecurity. There was one urinal for 58 men, Wong said, and grease floating ontop of the milk served to the detainees. "Weare humans that made a mistake along one of life's long roads," Wongwrote. "We are seen as the waste of America, but we are not!" Haitian-bornJean Alexander, 37, who spent six months at Passaic County Jail before beingreleased Nov. 23, said conditions were worse for an immigrant. "Theystart trouble with us," Alexander said of the guards. AfterNational Public Radio reported in November 2004 that dogs were being used onimmigration detainees in Passaic County Jail, the federal government forbadethat practice and launched an investigation. But theaudit ran into trouble in July, when Speziale ejected the federal auditors,saying they behaved arrogantly. Theauditors were allowed to finish their work after Speziale met with HomelandSecurity officials in Washington, D.C., in August. Theimmigration detainees brought in hefty federal payments to the Sheriff'sDepartment that ranged from an estimated $12 million in 2003 to an expected$6.9 million this year. To offsetthat loss, the Sheriff's Department jail is accepting prisoners from the stateand the U.S.Marshals Service, Maer said. TheMarshals Service pays $77 a day per prisoner, the same amount as Immigrationand Customs Enforcement, while state prisoners are less lucrative, at $62 a dayper prisoner. Passaic has the highestnumber of Marshals Service prisoners of any county jail in the state, with 375prisoners currently, said Jim Tlousis, the U.S.marshal for New Jersey.
http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2ODQ3MzY5

Posted by lois at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)

Hometown Snubs Schwarzenegger Over Execution of Stanley Tookie Williams

December 27, 2005
Hometown Snubs Schwarzenegger Over Death Penalty
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
BERLIN, Dec. 26 - For years the quaint Austrian town of Graz trumpeted its special relationship with its outsize native son, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Born in a village nearby and schooled in Graz, Mr. Schwarzenegger was an honorary citizen and holder of the town's Ring of Honor. Most conspicuously, the local sports stadium was named after him.
But early on Monday, under cover of darkness, his name was removed from the arena in a sort of uncontested divorce between the California governor and the town council, which had been horrified that he rejected pleas to spare the life of Stanley Tookie Williams, former leader of the Crips gang, who was executed by the state of California two weeks ago.

The 15,000-seat stadium had been named after Mr. Schwarzenegger in 1997 as an act of both self-promotion and fealty toward the poor farmer's son and international celebrity, who has always identified Graz as his native place.
But when he declined to commute Mr. Williams's death penalty, the reaction was swift and angry in Graz, which, like most places in Europe, sees the death penalty as a medieval atrocity.
"I submitted a petition to the City Council to remove his name from the stadium, and to take away his status as an honorary citizen," Sigrid Binder, the leader of the Green Party, said in a recent interview. "The petition was accepted by a majority on the council."
Before a formal vote was taken on the petition, however, Mr. Schwarzenegger made a kind of pre-emptive strike, writing a letter to Siegfried Nagl, the town's conservative mayor, withdrawing Graz's right to use his name in association with the stadium.
There will be other death penalty decisions ahead, he wrote, and so he decided to spare the responsible politicians of Graz further concern."It was a clever step," Ms. Binder said. "He took the initiative," she continued, and then suggested a bit of the local politics that had entered into the matter. "It was possible for him to do so," she said, "because the mayor didn't have the courage to take a clear position on this point."
Needless to say, Mr. Nagl, a member of the conservative People's Party, who opposed the name-removal initiative, does not agree.

He is against the death penalty, he said in an interview, and on Dec. 1, he wrote a letter to Mr. Schwarzenegger pleading for clemency for Mr. Williams. But he blames the leftist majority on the City Council - consisting of Greens, Social Democrats and two Communists - for trying to score some local political points at Mr. Schwarzenegger's and, he believes, Graz's own expense.
"One stands by a friend and a great citizen of our city and does not drag his name through the mud even when there is a difference of opinion," Mr. Nagl said in a letter he wrote to Mr. Schwarzenegger. "I would like to ask you to keep the Ring of Honor of the City of Graz."
The heated nature of the debate revealed how much a relatively small place like Graz, certainly a place with no military might or diplomatic power to speak of, wants to play a role as a sort of moral beacon, waging the struggle for what it considers the collective good.
Graz, a place of old onion steeples, museums and Art Nouveau architecture, designated itself five years ago, with a unanimous vote of the City Council, to be Europe's first official "city of human rights." While the designation has no juridical meaning, it provides a sort of goal to live up to.
"We are against the death penalty, not only in word, but really against the death penalty," said Wolfgang Benedek, a professor of international law at Graz University.
He said the council's reaction reflected the special circumstances surrounding Mr. Williams: a man who had written a children's book aimed at steering young people away from violence, he had already spent many years in jail, and seemed, to Europeans at least, to have reformed himself.
"Many people around the world pleaded with Mr. Schwarzenegger to show mercy in this case, and when he didn't, the city had somehow to react," Mr. Benedek said.
Mr. Benedek allows that there is an element of elite versus popular opinion on this matter. A poll by the local newspaper found that over 70 percent of the public opposed removing Mr. Schwarzenegger's name from the stadium.
This adds to a practical consideration very much on Mr. Nagl's mind: that Graz will no longer be able to count on using its special relationship with the governor to promote its image.
"We had the great classical culture on the one side," Thomas Rajakovics, the mayor's spokesman, said, referring to other important figures who are associated with Graz, from the astronomer Johannes Kepler to the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger, to the conductor Karl Böhm. "And on the other, we had Arnold Schwarzenegger and the popular culture. These were the two poles for us, but we're not allowed to use his name any more."
The Schwarzenegger name has, as it were, been erased. The new name is now simply Stadion Graz-Liebenau (a district of Graz), though there were other proposals. One was to name the stadium after the Crips, the gang that Mr. Williams founded, but that idea did not get widespread support. Another was to name it Hakoah, after a Jewish sports club that was banned after Hitler annexed Austria in 1938.
But the first "city of human rights" did not seem quite ready for that either. It is not that there was vocal opposition but, as Ms. Binder put it, Austrians do not generally want a daily reminder of the terrible wartime past.
Meanwhile, city officials are holding on to Mr. Schwarzenegger's honorary citizenship ring, which arrived from the governor during the holidays. Mr. Rajakovics said they would keep it for him in the hope that one day he would take it back.
Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/international/europe/27austria.html

Posted by lois at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)

MI: State Replaces Male Guards at Women's Prisons

State replaces male guards at women's corrections facilities 12/28/2005

The Associated Press

LANSING, Mich. (AP) ‹ Male guards have been replaced by women in the living units at two of Michigan's three corrections facilities for women.

The change has been made at the Robert Scott Correctional Facility in Plymouth and the Huron Valley Complex in Ypsilanti in response to allegations of sexual abuse by male corrections officers. It comes six years after former Corrections Director Bill Martin first proposed removing male guards from such units.
More than 1,500 women are held at the two sites.

Also, male officers on morning and afternoon shifts have been replaced by females at the Camp Brighton boot camp near Pinckney that houses about 400 women. Three men still working the midnight shift will soon be replaced, Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlin told The Detroit News for a Wednesday story.

"They are finally taking steps toward ensuring the safety of women in their care," said Deborah LaBelle, an Ann Arbor lawyer involved in lawsuits against the corrections department. "I hope they will continue to take steps to end the degrading treatment of women in our prisons."

Patricia Caruso, director of the state Department of Corrections, has said staffing changes were required as part of an agreement reached with the U.S. Justice Department in 1999. The agreement came after the state was sued based on a Justice Department investigation into sexual abuse complaints.

The staffing changes at the three facilities involve 50 positions.

Marlin said 120 corrections officers, 75 of them women, will complete a training program in February and are to make up the new personnel.

A pending class-action lawsuit alleging sexual mistreatment was filed against the Corrections Department nine years ago and now includes more than 450 complaints from former and current inmates. Two additional lawsuits were filed this fall.

In 1999, the state paid $3.8 million to 36 women who filed a similar suit.

A group of corrections officers had filed a lawsuit challenging the staffing changes. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear their case in October.

___

Information from: The Detroit News, http://www.detnews.com

http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/michigan/index.ssf?/base/news-30/113576784325
0110.xml&storylist=newsmichigan

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

MI: Should Aging Men & Women be Freed?

The Detroit News

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Should aging inmates be freed?
Medical care saps Mich. prisons
Number of inmates older than 60 has jumped 62 percent in six years

Francis X. Donnelly / The Detroit News

Criminologists say many geriatric jailbirds can be released from prison without posing a threat to society. Should aging inmates be freed?

COLDWATER -- The elderly grandfather can't do much with his right arm or leg. Withered by a heart attack and stroke, John Richmond has trouble walking and getting out of bed. Once considered dangerous, he's sometimes overwhelmed by chairs that won't release him from their clutches. Old cons like Richmond, 73, sentenced up to 30 years at Lakeland Correctional Facility, are quickly becoming the face of prisons in Michigan and the United States. The number of inmates older than 60 has jumped 62 percent in six years.

Their medical costs are eating up an already strapped Michigan budget, preventing the state from spending on schools and other needs. Health care for Michigan prisoners has jumped 50 percent in six years, from $120 million to $181 million.

But the financial hemorrhaging is avoidable, say criminologists. They said many geriatric jailbirds can be released from prison without posing a threat to society.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who has worked with elderly prisoners, said study after study has shown that age is the best criteria to determine whether parolees will return to crime. A federal Justice Department report found in 1990 that 2 percent of men paroled after age 55 return to prison. For men ages 18-24, the figure was 22 percent.

"You're facing a serious crisis," Turley said. "Most states will hit a demographic wall, and they're not prepared."

Despite the soaring costs of locking up the elderly, the state has little inclination to release them.

And victims' advocates said convicted felons like Richmond, who sexually assaulted a woman in 1990, don't deserve a single day of freedom.

"If they did something horrendous to my family, I wouldn't want them out," said Gail Beasley, who began a Detroit bereavement group in 1989 after her brother was murdered. "They have to be accountable for their actions."

Richmond, a retired Air Force flight engineer with a white buzz cut, was sentenced to eight to 30 years. He became eligible for parole in 1998 but has been turned down every year.

And so he spends most of his time in his dormitory-like room, sleeping and watching soap operas on his black-and-white TV. He takes a dozen medications and shuffles about with a walker.

"There is nothing I could do to hurt someone," he said.
But few people were listening.

'It's the same as dying'

The geriatric unit at Lakeland Correctional offers a glimpse into the future of Michigan prisons. It looks like an old folks' home surrounded by uniformed guards and concertina wire.

It has rooms instead of cells, beds instead of bunks, ramps instead of steps. The doors have automatic-opening buttons, and the showers have seats. Handrails snake around the florescent-lit hallways.

The H-shaped unit, which has medical facilities in the middle, has 96 male prisoners who were assigned there because of poor health. The most seriously ill are held at a prison hospital in Jackson.

The unit sits inside the larger prison, a former mental health facility surrounded by a barren, frozen landscape evocative of the community's name. It doesn't feel like prison so much as a hospice, said inmate Al Albertson. "It's the same as dying," he said. "It's capital punishment in a non-capital-punishment state."

Albertson, 74, who has been locked up 40 years for killing a bar owner, was whisked by ambulance from the facility in May after a heart attack. As Albertson spoke last week, he stood outside a rec room where a man was playing solitaire and another assembling a thousand-piece puzzle. A stationary bike went unused.

Each week, the unit has bingo, wheelchair aerobics and handicraft classes, where men knit and crochet. Lines for medication form at 8 a.m., noon, and 4-8 p.m. When inmate Eli Rossell looks in the mirror, he sees a stranger who is wrinkled and plain worn out.

Aches and pains make it difficult for the onetime college football player to move about. Visitors stopped coming a long time ago.

"I know my life is over," he said. "My family and friends are either dead or so old they're not the people I used to know."

Rossell, 82, who has served 34 years for killing a woman, found the geriatric unit so gloomy and death-scented that he moved back into the more dangerous larger prison several years ago.

"Most people talked as if they had one foot in the grave," he said.

Tough parole board

The Michigan Parole Board became one of the toughest in the nation during the 1990s, said criminologists.

Then-Gov. John Engler pushed for members who took a dim view of rehabilitation.

In 1992, the board required inmates with life sentences to serve 15 years before becoming eligible for parole and to wait five years for each subsequent review.

In 1998, the state passed a law requiring inmates to serve at least their minimum sentences.

Neither Gov. Jennifer Granholm or Corrections Director Pat Caruso, who appoints the parole board, has shown much interest in softening Engler's stance.

"I expect the parole board to be tough," Caruso said. "That's their job." "They're responsible to a wide range of groups, from taxpayers to the public, the community, the victims, the prisoners they consider for parole, all of us."

Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland have released elderly inmates through a program founded by Turley, the law professor. Law school students cull inmates' records to find the best candidates for release based on age, crime, behavior in prison and other factors.

The students then argue the cases in front of the parole board. They've won the release of 100 inmates, and none has returned to prison.

In Michigan, the state's toughness with inmates comes with a price. The number of Michigan prisoners older than 60 has risen from 960 in 1999 to 1,557 this year. The overall population increased 11 percent during that time.

Inmates over age 50 account for 13 percent of the prison population. At the geriatric unit, the oldest inmate is 85. Some have been in prison since the Korean War.

It's a bald battalion armed with bifocals and hearing aides, propelled by a battery of canes and walkers. So many residents wield wheelchairs that few chairs are necessary in the cafeteria.

Wobbly fingers prevent the buttoning of shirts. Some, baby-like, need to have their food chopped up. They're helped by younger prisoners who work as aides.

"It leaves a lot of stroke victims dealing with shoestrings and buttons," said Doc McBee, 68, who has served 35 years for murder.

Financial costs soar

Inmate Joe Bennett has the face of an aging leprechaun but, unlike the mischievous elves of Irish folklore, his capture didn't net anyone a crock of gold. Instead, it's costing the state one.

He takes 10 medications twice a day for arthritis, a hernia, poor breathing, swollen legs and high blood pressure.

The annual cost of jailing an elderly inmate is three times higher than a younger one, $69,000 vs. $22,000, according to the National Center of Institutions and Alternatives, a Baltimore group that studies alternatives to prison. If the inmates were released, they could be eligible for Medicare or Medicaid, transferring the financial responsibility from the state to the federal government.

Bennett, 79, who is serving up to 40 years for sexually abusing a girl, keeps his legs elevated by sticking books and clothes under his mattress. Until, that is, he has to urinate, half a dozen times a night.

"What good can come of holding an 80-year-old in prison?" he asked. "Most aren't able to tie our own shoes."

It's not just an old con's lament. His ailments aren't the most expensive for the state to treat.

The prison's health roll call would challenge any nursing home's: diabetes, epilepsy, cancer, amputations, HIV, Parkinson's, hepatitis C, Lou Gehrig's disease, kidney and liver failure.

"Our ailments?" said inmate George Hall. "Pick a card."

Hall, 70, once worked at the geriatric unit as an aide. Now he's a resident. Like most of the inmates, he dreams of walking away from prison one day. He imagines living in a simple house in the country, being able to fetch cold milk from his refrigerator in the middle of the night.

But Hall knows the odds are against him. The convicted murderer, who has been in prison for 30 years, was passed over for parole last year. His next chance is 2009.

"Longevity 101 will tell you I can't do many of those," he said on his birthday.

Hall said he no longer poses a threat to anyone, but that's not why he's still in prison, serving a slow death sentence.

"The real reason is punishment," he said. "Only my death will pay the debt. Society wants my life and nothing is going to change that."
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051228/METRO/512280332

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

December 27, 2005

NY Times Editorial: Phantom Voters, Thanks to the Census

Phantom Voters, Thanks to the Census
New York Times Editorial Board, December 27, 2005

The first Constitution took for granted that enslaved people could not vote, but counted each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of apportioning representation in Congress. This inflated the voting power of slaveholders and gave them much more influence in legislative matters than their actual numbers warranted. No American would knowingly tolerate such an arrangement today. But a glitch in the census that inflates the populations of some state legislative districts - thus exaggerating their voting power - has led to a contemporary version of that problem. It involves counting prison inmates in the district where they are confined rather than where they actually live. The Census Bureau could fix this problem in a heartbeat, so it needs to get a move on.

The culprit is a provision in the census that counts prison inmates as "residents" of the institutions where they are held, often for relatively short periods of time. Denied the right to vote in all but 2 of the 50 states, the inmates are nonetheless treated as voters when the State Legislatures draw up legislative districts. This practice mattered little 30 years ago, when the prison population was tiny. But with about 1.4 million people in prison today, it can be used to shift political power from one part of the state to another.

A startling analysis by Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Initiative found seven upstate New York Senate districts meeting the population requirements only because inmates were included in the count. The Republican Party in New York relies on its large upstate delegation for its majority in the State Senate - and for its political power statewide. New York is not alone. The Prison Policy Initiative's researchers found 21 counties nationally where at least 21 percent of so-called residents lived behind bars.

By counting these nonvoting inmates as residents, the prison counties offend the principle of one person one vote, while siphoning off political power from the home districts to which the inmates will return as soon as they are released. Since inmates are jobless, their presence also allows prison districts to lower their per capita incomes, unfairly increasing their share of federal funds earmarked for the poor. Congress, which has just caught on to this, recently gave the Census Bureau 90 days to file a report on the feasibility of counting inmates at their homes of record rather than in prison. At the same time, a committee overseen by the National Academy of Sciences has been studying the residency issue and is expected to make its final report this spring. But why does the bureau need another study to decide whether it wants to uphold the one-person-one-vote principle? The bureau should get to work immediately on procedures that would allow it to count inmates where they actually live - and get those procedures locked in place by the 2010 census.

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

December 25, 2005

If Alito had been on Supreme CT in January, Ronald Rompilla Might Well Be a Dead Man

25, 2005
In Criminal Cases, a Court Nominee Hews to Rules
By JONATHAN D. GLATER
If Samuel A. Alito Jr. had been on the Supreme Court back in January, Ronald Rompilla might well be a dead man.

That month the Supreme Court heard an appeal of a decision, written by Judge Alito for a panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, that upheld Mr. Rompilla's sentence for a murder committed in 1988. The Supreme Court, finding that Mr. Rompilla's lawyers had been ineffective representatives December at trial, later reversed the ruling in a 5-to-4 vote.

Mr. Rompilla's appeal offers a study of how Judge Alito, President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, has handled criminal cases that have appeared before him.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the judge, a former federal prosecutor, has often - though far from uniformly - ruled against defendants. But it is not clear that he stands out: In appeals of criminal convictions generally, defendants face a steep uphill battle. Nationally, just 5.6 percent of such appeals result in some kind of reversal, according to the federal Office of Court Administration.

Judge Alito's opinions in criminal cases are meticulously written, with careful deference to the findings of trial court judges and juries and scrupulous determination to fit his decisions into the framework built by past cases. He hews to the rules.

"The perception is, he's coming from an extremely conservative point of view," said George Newman, a defense lawyer in Philadelphia who has argued cases before the judge. "He's not a good defense judge."

In his appeal, Mr. Rompilla argued that his trial lawyers had provided inadequate representation, saying they failed to investigate his background thoroughly by interviewing family members carefully and reviewing medical, police, school and prison records. As a result, his new lawyers said, they did not uncover evidence that he had limited mental capacity, was neglected as a child and suffered other problems.

Had evidence of his traumatic life experiences been presented at trial, the lawyers argued, then jurors would not have sentenced him to death.

Judge Alito did not agree with these arguments.

"Trial counsel conducted an extensive investigation for mitigating evidence," he wrote. "According to their testimony, trial counsel got to know Rompilla well during the course of their representation and established a good relationship with him. Rompilla was questioned about his background but provided no useful information or leads."

What is most striking is Judge Alito's close application of rules established by prior cases on what standard of competence a lawyer must meet, without regard to the success of the lawyer's efforts. The focus was on the process they followed, not the result they achieved.

For example, he wrote, "With the benefit of hindsight, we know that these records contain useful information about Rompilla's childhood home environment, his mental problems and his problems with alcohol." But, he said, "trial counsel had grounds for believing that if there was any mitigating evidence of this sort to be found, at least a hint of its availability would be disclosed in the interviews with Rompilla and his family members or in the testing and evaluations performed by the three mental health experts whom they retained."

Judge Dolores K. Sloviter, who dissented from the decision by Judge Alito and Judge Walter K. Stapleton, strongly criticized the majority's reasoning. Judge Sloviter said it did not matter whether the explanation offered by Mr. Rompilla's lawyers for their failure to conduct further investigation was reasonable. What mattered, she said, was whether the failure to investigate was itself reasonable.

It is a distinction that the Supreme Court emphasized as well.

In an opinion concurring with the ruling in favor of Mr. Rompilla, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor - whom Judge Alito has been nominated to replace - wrote: "In the particular circumstances of this case, the attorneys' failure to obtain and review the case file from their client's prior conviction did not meet standards of 'reasonable professional judgment.' "

The criminal cases that came before Judge Alito in his 15 years on the appellate court raised a range of issues. Several concerned sentences meted out to convicted criminals. In a 2004 case involving a pastor convicted of participating in a scheme to steal from his church, he wrote that the lower court judge was correct not to reduce the pastor's 51-month sentence because of his charitable work.

It is "only when an individual goes well beyond the call of duty and sacrifices for the community that a downward departure may be appropriate," Judge Alito wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. "The defendant's net charitable and civic contributions - taking into account both the good and bad that he did in his capacity as a member of the clergy - cannot be considered as so extraordinarily positive as to warrant a downward departure."

Other cases involved substantive legal questions about, for example, the legitimacy of a particular wiretap or search. In the case of an International Boxing Federation official convicted of taking bribes, Judge Alito ruled that a video recording of the hotel room in which bribes were paid was properly taken - a view that, a dissenting judge commented, would "gulp down the Fourth Amendment."

The boxing official, Robert W. Lee, argued that the videotaping had violated the Fourth Amendment because it was conducted without a warrant. But Judge Alito wrote that because one of the people in the room had consented to the taping and could have testified to anything said, Mr. Lee had "no legitimate expectation of privacy." The judge added, "Although Lee had an expectation of privacy in the hotel suite so long as he was alone there," once he allowed someone else to enter, that expectation vanished.

Sometimes the judge's meticulously logical approach and exacting standards worked in favor of a defendant. In a case decided in 2003, for example, Judge Alito wrote a unanimous opinion for a three-judge panel that concluded that Ronald A. Williams, a black man convicted of murder, should be given a chance to show that a juror hearing his case had concealed racist views.

Although courts are reluctant to inquire into jury deliberations, Judge Alito wrote, the woman who claimed to have heard a racist comment by a juror was not herself a member of the jury and she heard the comment outside the jury room. Therefore, excluding the woman's testimony "for the purpose of determining whether a juror lied during voir dire cannot be sustained," the judge wrote.

In a 2001 case, the judge also sided with a man challenging a murder conviction, this time after finding that the lower court judge had improperly rejected one of the man's arguments. The lower court had correctly dismissed claims that were not properly made, the judge wrote, but incorrectly lumped with them additional claims that the defendant, Robert E. Wenger Jr., should have been allowed to make.

Again, Judge Alito's reasoning was tight, technical and focused on procedure rather than outcome - as he wrote in the unanimous opinion of a three-judge panel. "Needless to say," he said, "we express no view regarding the merits of the claim."

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

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U.S., Citing Abuse in Iraqi Prisons, Holds Detainees

December 25, 2005
U.S., Citing Abuse in Iraqi Prisons, Holds Detainees
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON, Dec. 24 - The commander of American-run prisons in Iraq says the military will not turn over any detainees or detention centers to Iraqi jailers until American officials are satisfied that the Iraqis are meeting United States standards for the care and custody of detainees.

"Bottom line, we will not pass on facilities or detainees until they meet the standards we define and that we are using today," the commander, Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner of the Army, said in a telephone interview this week from Iraq.

The comments by General Gardner come in the aftermath of two recent raids of Iraqi government detention centers that uncovered scores of abused prisoners. They also follow calls by American officials for the Iraqi government to bar militias from dominating the security forces. American military experts have joined Iraqi officials in inspecting Iraqi detention centers.

The general's remarks also come at a time when three of the main American-operated prisons in Iraq remain severely overcrowded despite a $50 million expansion that is nearly finished and when Americans are training Iraqis to take over detention duties.

Pentagon and military officials say that Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, has expressed frustrations over the heavy burden of guarding and caring for a detainee population that is growing far faster than inmates can be processed and turned over to Iraqi authorities.

The number of violent detainees has grown to more than 14,000 from about 8,000 in January. The crowding has been compounded by a growing backlog of prisoners, now about 3,100 people, who are waiting for Iraq's fledgling judicial system to hear their cases.

General Gardner, who took command on Nov. 30, expressed optimism that the inspections of Iraqi detention sites would not unduly delay the American goal of delivering Iraqi detainees to the Iraqi government. Military officials said they had a tentative target of turning over American-run prisons to the Iraqis by the end of 2006, although no exact timetable has been approved. But other senior military officials said turning over all Iraqi prisoners to the Iraqis could stretch into 2007.

One Pentagon official described the Iraqi detainee population as a "millstone" that sapped personnel who otherwise could be assigned to other pressing missions. About 3,700 American personnel are assigned to detention operations, the equivalent of one full brigade out of the 17 American brigades now in Iraq, a figure that is scheduled to drop to 15 early next year.

Pentagon and military officials say the huge number of prisoners under American control is a constant source of tension with ordinary Iraqis two years after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal came to light.

General Gardner said that he was painfully aware of the legacy of Abu Ghraib, but insisted that conditions at the American-run prisons in Iraq had improved strikingly. "Abu Ghraib was criminal and I was appalled," he said. "We've come a long way since then."

The issue of Iraqi detainees raises complex legal and diplomatic questions. The United States has pledged to conduct itself in keeping with international conventions, including one regarding torture that precludes handing prisoners to any country where they would face the likelihood of torture. Iraq is not a signatory to that treaty, and it is hard for the United States at this point to certify that some of these prisoners would not be tortured if put under the control of Iraqi jailkeepers.

The influx of detainees has swelled the population at the major American-run prisons to 119 percent of their ideal capacity, General Gardner said. As of this week, the military is holding 14,055 detainees in four prisons, a military spokesman, Lt. Aaron J. Henninger, said. In addition, 535 are being held at the brigade or division level around the country.

At Abu Ghraib, where crowding contributed to the worst of the prisoner abuses that occurred in late 2003, there are 4,924 detainees, nearly 40 percent over what the military considers ideal capacity.

At the largest center, Camp Bucca, in the south, the prison has been divided into compounds of about 150 people instead of 600 or more, to allow guards to maintain better control. There are 7,795 detainees there.

Camp Cropper, at the Baghdad airport, holds 140 prisoners, including dozens of so-called high-value detainees. Fort Suse, a 1980's Russian barracks in northern Iraq, was turned into a prison in October and holds 1,196 detainees.

The increase in the number of imprisoned foreign fighters - to 465 from 391 in June - underscores the shifting profile of insurgents taken into custody recently. These fighters come mainly from Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Jordan, the command said. In a survey taken in October, of the more than 3,500 new detainees in American-operated prisons in Iraq since January, about 87 percent were deemed to pose a "high risk" or "extremely high risk" to American personnel, about twice the percentage from late last year, military officials said. American officials this week were reclassifying all detainees as either low, medium or high-risk prisoners.

Many of the new prisoners are considered so dangerous that two review boards, each staffed by six Iraqi and three allied officials, are now ordering them released in only 35 to 40 percent of the cases, General Gardner said, down from 60 percent last year. Each panel reviews about 400 cases a week, he said.

Under rules put in place in June 2004, the United States must release detainees held in American custody after 18 months unless the Iraqi prime minister and General Casey agree to continue to hold them for a specified period, said Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, another military spokesman. About 130 detainees face hearings under this process in January and a similar number in February, he said in an e-mail message.

The transfer of the American-run detention centers will require training and equipping Iraqis to operate the prisons.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, director of the Coalition Press Information Center in Baghdad, said via an e-mail message that the transition plan had four basic steps.

First is instruction on the basics of how to be a prison guard, a course taught by visiting American Justice Department instructors. So far, about 300 guards designated to work side by side with American jailers at internment centers run by American forces have completed the program, Colonel Johnson said. Another 450 guards are currently in the course, and the next session is expected to include approximately 150 Iraqi guards.

The second step involves Iraqi guards actually working alongside guards at detention centers under American control. The 300 guards who completed the classroom instruction in October are now working at the Fort Suse center with American guards, Colonel Johnson said.

Camp Bucca is scheduled to receive 150 Iraqi guards this month, and Fort Suse will receive another 150 Iraqi guards before the New Year, bringing the total to 450. Early next year, Camp Bucca will receive an additional 300 Iraqi guards, also bringing the total there to 450, Colonel Johnson said.

Step three, he said, involves Iraqi guards taking the lead of detention operations under the supervision of the American forces.

"This will allow us to work continually with them to ensure all standards of humane treatment and quality of care are maintained," Colonel Johnson said. "This process mirrors what we are doing for security transition across the country."

In the final stage, he said, "oversight will be reduced until the Iraqis are ready to completely assume control."

No specific timetable for the final transition has been set. "The transition will be based on meeting standards, not on a timeline," he said.

Copyright 2005The New York Times Compan

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December 24, 2005

Comic Books from the Real Cost of Prisons Project

Comic Books from the Real Cost of Prisons Project

These comic books are being created loosely based on each of the Real Cost of Prisons workshops. The stories and statistical information in each comic book are thoroughly researched and the research is cited.

Comic books will be sent free of charge to organizations who submit a one page email or letter explaining how you will use the comic books in your organizing, community education and outreach work.

Your letter should include contact name, mailing address, phone number,email address and brief description of your organization or program. Please specify how many comic books you can use. Organizations/groups can receive up to 300 copies of each comic book depending on your needs. Due to demand, we cannot guarantee you will receive the number you request but we will try to meet your request.

Each comic book is 16 pages with a four color cover and black and white interior pages.

Send your letter to: Real Cost of Prisons Project, 5 Warfield Place,
Northampton, MA 01060

Or email: info@realcostofprisons.org .

For those interested in copies of the Real Cost of Prisons comics for their personal use, they can be purchased through AK Press at akpress.org

Prison Town: Paying the Price by Kevin Pyle and Craig Gilmore. The comic book tells the story the ways in which the financing and siting of prisons and jails effects the people of rural communities in which prison are built. It also tells the story of the how mass incarceration effects the people of urban communities where the majority of people who are incarcerated come from. Included in the comic book are alternatives to the current system.

As an extension of our comic book series, we have developed a number of the one page handouts that feature pages from the comics. Please feel free to print them out and use them in your work.
From Prison Town: Paying the Price by Kevin Pyle and Craig Gilmore

How Prisons Are Paid For (and who really pays)
"Map" of the U.S. on prison building and siting
The Cost of a Cage

Prisoners of the War on Drugs by Sabrina Jones, Ellen Miller-Mack and Lois Ahrens. The comic book includes: the history of the war on drugs, mandatory minimums and how racism creates harsher sentences for people of color; stories on how the war on drugs works against women, three strikes, obstacles to coming home after incarceration; how mass incarceration destabilizes neighborhoods. Alternatives to the present system.

From Prisoners of the War on Drugs by Sabrina Jones, Ellen Miller-Mack and Lois Ahrens

Consider These Alternatives
Meet the Builders of the Drug Prison Boom
Cycles of Exile
Free at Last (available in spanish Libra Al Fin)
Three Strikes and You Are Out

Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children by Susan Willmarth, Ellen Miller-Mack, and Lois Ahrens. The comic book includes stories about: women trapped by mandatory sentencing and the War on Drugs, the "costs" of
incarceration for women and their families. A two page story details the trial and sentencing of Regina McKnight. Also included are "Change is Possible" alternatives to the present system, a glossary and footnotes. 20 pages with a four color cover.

From Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children by Susan Willmarth, Ellen Miller-Mack, and Lois Ahrens .

1 Out of Every 109 Women In America
The Story of Regina McKnight (poster size)
The Story of Regina McKnight (consecutive pages)
Change is Possible
Glossary

Posted by lois at 07:35 PM | Comments (0)

December 23, 2005

The Myths of Addiction Are Slowly Crumbling as Arizona Moms Rebuild Their Families

EAST VALLEY TRIBUNE, DEC 22, 2005, AZ
M E T H and motherhood
The myths of addiction are slowly crumbling as Arizona moms rebuild their families
By MARY K. REINHART

The preschooler snuggles close to her mother on the couch, limp like the blanket that covers the two of them. "She’s got a fever," the mother whispers as she strokes her daughter’s hair. Not such an unusual sight, unless you consider that the mother is a recovering methamphetamine addict, she’s pregnant with her second child, and this little family lives with more than 20 other women and their kids in a residential drug treatment program. The Center for Hope in Mesa is the only place in the East Valley that takes drug-addicted pregnant women and their kids, and one of only a few in the state. But that may change in the coming years as growing support for methamphetamine prevention and treatment takes hold.

Though methamphetamine has been on the scene for decades, federal and local policymakers have focused mainly on busting large labs and reducing access to the drugs used in its manufacture. Meanwhile, politicians, police and others have promulgated several meth myths, making the drug sound impossible to kick and demonizing its users, particularly those who have children.

"The myth that needs to be debunked is that treatment doesn’t work. It works," says Rob Evans, director of the governor’s office of substance abuse policy. "But treatment capacity is always an issue. It’s sort of a constant effort to be able to fill those gaps, and the gaps are pretty big."

Gov. Janet Napolitano recently called for coalitions in every county to devise plans to combat meth in anticipation of a two-day conference on the drug in February. The state’s behavioral health system has put out its first contracts for methspecific treatment, and state Child Protective Services is working with treatment experts to find ways to keep families together or at least reunify them sooner.

The Arizona Parents Commission is spending about $1.6 million in state alcohol tax money for the conference and technical support to anti-meth coalitions.

"What we’re trying to do now is educate the population that meth is a serious problem, but you need to look at it differently," says Frank Scarpati, CEO of Community Bridges, a substance-abuse treatment center that opened Center for Hope in January. "People don’t destroy their brain and their body by choice." Scarpati’s agency has one of the first state contracts to develop meth-specific treatment using a model that includes behavioral therapy, time management, drug testing, family involvement and positive reinforcement.

"I think it’s harder to treat a pot smoker than a meth addict, because it’s harder to make them see that it’s hurting them. It’s not hard for a meth addict to see that their life is out of control," says Kimberly Craig, who researched meth treatment under a federally funded program in Montana before opening the Center for Hope in January.

"The truth is, many of these women had very successful lives at one point. They were working, they were part of the community, they came from good families," she says. "This is the devastation of drug addiction."

NEW RESEARCH

Long in the cross hairs of law enforcement and child welfare agencies, methamphetamine addicts had been given up as lost causes. The hype surrounding the drug and the children of meth users has rivaled that of the 1980s crack cocaine problem and "crack babies." Hospitals are testing mothers for drug use, and CPS has put their newborns into foster care.

In a July letter to national newspapers and network TV stations, more than 90 medical doctors, scientists, psychologists and treatment experts implored the media to stop using terms like "meth babies" and not to rely on non-experts for information about treatment or the effects of prenatal drug exposure, and to stop labeling babies as "addicted" to meth since no symptoms of addiction have been found among babies whose mothers used drugs while pregnant.

"We are concerned that policies based on false assumptions will result in punitive civil and child welfare interventions that are harmful to women, children and families rather than in the ongoing research and improvement and provision of treatment services that are so clearly needed," the letter said.

In states such as South Carolina, drug-abusing mothers have been jailed for child abuse. Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas plans to push legislation that would allow his prosecutors to do the same after placing the newborn in state custody.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, would make it a crime for a mother to give birth to a baby who tested positive for illegal drugs or showed an injury within a year of birth that resulted from the mother’s drug use. It also would require
health care workers to notify police when they believe a baby has been exposed to drugs. "A condition would most likely be that they have to undergo courtordered treatment," says Yarbrough. "The goal is to change the behavior, so that the next baby is not going to suffer the same harm that this one did."

Yarbrough says he’s met with Scarpati and is impressed with Center for Hope, but believes the law is necessary to force women into such programs. "We have a shared goal," he says. "We may have a different perspective on how to get there." But critics say such laws prevent women from seeking prenatal care and getting off drugs. At the same time, because few treatment programs accept children or pregnant women, addicted mothers must choose between their children and their addiction.

"There’s no way to protect children without protecting mothers and families," says Lynn Paltrow, a lawyer and director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a New York City-based nonprofit organization. "We claim to be a country that cares about families, and yet so many of our policies actually split up families," she says. "The notion that people can just go out and get the drug treatment they need is absurd."

To be sure, methamphetamine packs a powerful combination — highly addictive, cheap, long-lasting and easily accessible — and it has taken its toll on children and families. Meth was the most popular drug among parents entering Child Protective Services’ substance-abuse program, the vast majority accused of child neglect, not abuse. About 1,200 parents who participated in the Arizona Families FIRST program had more than 2,000 children placed in foster care, according to the most recent evaluation of Arizona Families FIRST.

"The drug and the type of addiction that comes with it does pose a risk to kids, particularly when there’s not another caretaker in the home," says Steve Sparks, who oversees Arizona Families FIRST for the state Department of Economic Security’s Division of Children, Youth and Families. "That’s particularly true with very young children, infants and toddlers, who require 24-hour attention." But Sparks says that not all parents who use meth are the same, and not all of their children should be taken into foster care. Treatment programs that allow families to stay together have proved effective. "It isn’t just the substance, in and of itself. It’s what is the effect of the drug on the parent’s ability to provide proper care to their children."

Center for Hope’s first graduate made that decision herself, sending her three boys to live with their father in Michigan when she realized her meth addiction had taken over. The center insists that the women and their families not be identified. Articulate and attractive, the newly divorced, working mother of three said she started using meth because "it gave me energy. I thought it made me perform better."

But over the next two years, she would lose her job and her apartment, become pregnant and deliver a girl who tested positive for meth, and become pregnant again, this time landing at the Center for Hope in time to kick the addiction and deliver a drug-free boy in April. She left the Mesa treatment center earlier this month, clean, confident, gainfully employed and devoted to her children.

"Life does go on without drugs," she says. "You can be happy. You can be a better mom. You can work and be part of society again, and feel like you’re important and not just an addict." A total of 24 women, either pregnant or with their new babies, plus up to eight toddlers live and recover together at the center. Roughly three-quarters are addicted to meth. Some are sent by judges, and some are referred from other programs in the community. Their first several days are spent sleeping, eating and getting cleaned up — "we just let her know that she’s safe, that she can take a deep breath," Craig said.

Another of Center for Hope’s residents comes from a close-knit Mormon family in Gilbert and had been using meth for about five years. Her mother brought her to the center in May after she moved back home, pregnant and addicted. The buoyant, artistic 22-year-old brunette is due to deliver a baby boy any day. "The place is a miracle," says the young woman’s mother. "I really believe it is the length of the program . . . and dealing with every aspect of what these girls have been through."

She visits often and has gotten to know many of the women at the center. Like her daughter, they have lived through much in their short lives. Unlike her daughter, though, most don’t have such solid family support. "People need to be forgiving and have much more understanding about how this drug works," says the mother. "None of them just went out and wanted to be bad. "The things that they’ve been through, they really hardly had a chance. And now, they have one."

Posted by lois at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)

MA: Harshbarger Resigns from the Harshbarger Prison Reform Commission

Harshbarger, Barrios resign from prison reform panel

By Denise Lavoie, AP Legal Affairs Writer | December 8, 2005, Boston Globe
BOSTON --More than two years after the prison killing of defrocked priest John Geoghan, not enough has been done to reform the state's prison system, a report released Thursday concludes.
The slow progress on suggested reforms prompted the resignation of former Attorney General Scott Harshbarger from the committee that reviewed the system, and prompted him to accuse Gov. Mitt Romney of neglecting the issue of prison reform and failing to support the Department of Correction.
A second member of the panel, state Sen. Jarrett Barrios, D-Cambridge, also resigned from the panel in a resignation letter dated Nov. 21, four days after Harshbarger resigned. In his letter, Barrios said it was the right time for him to step down because the council's final report was complete. But later in the letter, he echoes Harshbarger's concern that progress on reforms was not being made quickly enough.

"In my view, the commission and council have made considerable progress in turning around the beleaguered Department of Corrections using the mission and authority it has been given. But we are at a crossroads: we can proceed to implement the much needed changes, or we can blink," Barrios said in the letter.
A spokesman for Barrios said he would not comment on his resignation.
However, at least two members of the panel -- Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz and Essex County Sheriff Frank Cousins Jr. -- say they are satisfied with the progress made so far, noting that prisons are institutions that take time to change.

The advisory committee was formed by Gov. Mitt Romney following the August 2003 death of defrocked priest John Geoghan, who was slain in prison allegedly by a fellow inmate. The slaying raised questions about prison security and the ways inmates were classified that determined where they were placed.

Harshbarger said too little has been done since Geoghan, who was serving time for molesting a 10-year-old boy, was strangled and beaten to death in his maximum-security prison cell. The DOC was criticized after Geoghan's death for housing him with hardened criminals and prompted Harshbarger's group to call for changes in the inmate classification system as well as numerous other prison reforms.

State Correction Commissioner Kathleen M. Dennehy declined to discuss Harshbarger's criticisms. She did say that Romney, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey and Secretary of Public Safety Secretary Edward A. Flynn support the Department of Correction and its reform efforts.
The department has "made demonstrable progress" since Geoghan's death, Dennehy told the AP.

Harshbarger, a Democrat who lost the race for governor in 1998, said he submitted his resignation last month because he felt a "lack of commitment" on both the part of the state Legislature and Romney, who is considering a possible presidential bid.
"For whatever reason, there appears to be a loss of focus and a lack of urgency on the part of the executive and the Legislature, who are major players in the system," he said.

"I believe the governor is ... obviously focused on other things, and when he focuses on other things, other people focus on other things," Harshbarger told The Associated Press Thursday.

Romney has been considering a run for president, but the governor denied Thursday that his political ambitions had led to inactivity on the prison reform effort.

"I think there may be some people who want to read that into what
(Harshbarger) said," the governor told reporters during a Statehouse news conference.
A 15-member panel spent eight months visiting prisons before recommending in June 2004 18 major changes, including better prerelease job training and counseling, changes in prison guard contracts, an independent inspector general, and changes to mandatory minimum sentences for some crimes.

Three months later, after an inmate was strangled by another prisoner at the Bridgewater State Hospital, Romney appointed Harshbarger to head a new panel, with many of the same members, to ensure the recommendations were put in place.

In the report, the advisory council said overclassification can be a barrier to the reduction of recidivism because inmates in maximum-security prisons do not receive the same rehabilitative programs and services as prisoners held in minimum- and maximum-security prisons.

Dennehy said a revamped classification system developed with the help of the National Institute of Corrections is being implemented. It is a massive effort that requires a tremendous amount of staff training and follow up, she said.
"This isn't just something that you just roll out and say you are done," Dennehy said.

Leslie Walker, executive director of the Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, said the re-entry issue is critical if the state hopes to reduce the number of inmates who continue to commit crimes after they are released.

"If you are sent behind the wall to a high-security prison, where you are living in a very tense, violent atmosphere for a number of years, you receive no job training, very little education, no alcohol or drug treatment, and then you are released directly to the street, then you're a public safety hazard. You are a crime waiting to happen," Walker said.

AP Political Writer Glen Johnson contributed to this report.

Posted by lois at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)

December 22, 2005

Families Against Mandatory Miniums: End of Year Roundup on Federal Sentencing Legilslation

End of the year roundup on federal sentencing legislation and predictions for 2006

End of the year roundup on federal sentencing legislation and predictions for 2006.

Booker Fix:

2005. The big news of the year in federal sentencing legislation is what did not happen: 2005 did not see the introduction of serious legislation to "fix" the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Booker. Following the court's split opinion that declared the sentencing guidelines unconstitutional and then advisory, rumors flew that the Justice Department and Congress were preparing to quickly introduce legislation to restore mandatory guidelines. Indeed, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), chair of the House Judiciary Committee introduced a radical drug sentencing bill (H.R. 1528) that included, besides a host of new mandatory sentences and the elimination of the Safety Valve, a section that would have hardened the guidelines But his proposal was roundly condemned and he decided to forego even bringing it to a vote in his own committee. Opinions were nearly unanimous that everyone should wait to see what the courts would do with their newfound freedom. It appears they are doing much as before. (

The bottom line: H.R. 1528 (link to our reports on it here) lies dormant and we understand it will not be taken up by the House Judiciary Committee or the full House. The Senate does not have a comparable bill.

Prediction: We understand the Department of Justice is finalizing a legislative proposal to reinstate mandatory guidelines. Colloquially known as soft-top guidelines, they would make the tops of the guidelines advisory but not the bottoms. That would make it very difficult for judges to sentence below a guideline range while permitting judges to increase sentences.

The other Booker-fix: mandatory minimums everywhere

While Booker-fix legislation was not considered in 2005, sentencing conservatives in the House of Representatives used the vacuum to introduce a series of bills that included many new mandatory minimums and some new crimes. According to one Republican, Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va), who introduced a harsh anti-gang measure, the Supreme Court's decision in Booker made the many and increased mandatory minimums in his bill necessary. If the guidelines are not mandatory, he said, then there must be mandatory minimums to fill the gap.

Here are some of the bills we saw this session:

H.R. 1279, the Gang Prevention and Community Protection Act of 2005, created many new federal crimes, raised existing mandatory minimums, created 24 new ones and rewrote the definitions of "crime of violence" and criminal street gang" in ways designed to radically alter the federal criminal code. Though 21 Republicans joined many Democrats to defeat the bill, it passed the House.

Meanwhile, the Senate was preparing to consider S. 155, The Gang Prevention and Effective Deterrence Act of 2005, which contained fewer but nonetheless serious new mandatory provisions. Before the Senate Judiciary Committee could take it up, the bill was essentially withdrawn by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Ca) who then sought to develop support for a substitute measure.

The bottom line: Congress did not pass new gang legislation this year.

Prediction: We expect to see a new gang bill introduced in the Senate that while not as harsh as the current bill, will contain changes we will oppose.

H.R. 1751, Secure Access to Justice and Court Protection Act, was introduced in response to high profile attacks against judges. It contained new mandatory penalties for a variety of threatening and harmful acts. The House passed the bill after several Republican members were successful in removing some of the mandatory penalties. The Senate's bill, S. 168, the Court Security Improvement Act, contains none of the mandatory sentencing provisions of the House version. It has not been voted on by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The bottom line: Congress did not pass a court security bill this year.

Prediction: The Senate may take up a court security bill in the New Year, but it is likely to be very different from the House version.

H.R. 3132, Protecting Children's Safety Act of 2005, included many new mandatory penalties for a variety of crimes against or involving children and included new minimum penalties for other conduct, such as failure to register as a sex offender and internet offenses. The House approved H.R. 3132 and sent it to the Senate.

The Senate Judiciary Committee was considering several similar bills before finally settling on S. 1086, including Title III, the Jetseta Gage Prevention and Deterrence of Crimes Against Children Act of 2005, containing many mandatory minimums for violent crimes and sex offenses against children but fewer than in the House bill. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send the bill to the Senate floor. It has not been voted on.

The bottom line: Congress did not pass new sex crimes legislation this year.

In the meantime, Chairman Sensenbrenner introduced a bill containing leaner versions of the gang, court security and sex crimes bills that the House had already passed. A number of the mandatory minimums called for in the original bills were removed from the omnibus bill, presumably to make it more palatable for the Senate, which does not have the same propensity for mandatory minimums. It was believed by some that the House might take up H.R. 4472, the Child Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act, before it adjourned for the year. However, the House of Representatives had too much other business to take care of.

The bottom line: The House did not vote on H.R. 4472.

H.R. 3889, the Methamphetamine Epidemic Elimination Act of 2005, rode the wave of methamphetamine hysteria sweeping the country. In its original form, the bill would have changed current penalties so that a mere three grams of methamphetamine would trigger a five-year sentence and five grams a 10-year one. A bi-partisan effort on the House Judiciary Committee, however, produced a much-improved, though not perfect bill. The compromise did not contain any new mandatory minimums. It passed the Judiciary Committee and instead of going to the floor, was "attached" with the Senate Judiciary's concurrence, to the Patriot Act. The new Patriot Act was not passed by Congress this year; instead the current Patriot Act, without the methamphetamine section, was reauthorized for six months.

The bottom line: Congress did not vote on a methamphetamine bill.

H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, emerged suddenly in the House Judiciary Committee, sponsored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner in the final weeks of the year. The bill was extremely controversial, not due to its mandatory sentencing provisions that would have targeted not only those illegally in the country, but those who helped them, even for the best of reasons. Instead Republicans and Democrats were internally divided over the breadth of the bill, and its failure to address the status of current migrants or provide for a guest worker or status adjustment program. Nonetheless, the House passed the bill (see here) in the final days of the session but the Senate did not take it up. The Senate considered no immigration bill of its own this year.

The bottom line: Congress did not pass immigration reform.

Prediction: The Senate will hold hearings about immigration reform in the spring; however, it will not produce a bill even remotely like the House bill.

Conclusion: 2005 was a remarkable year in Congress as the Supreme Court struck down mandatory guidelines and the House responded with a host of bills laden with mandatory minimums. Some House Republicans played an important role in ameliorating some of the harshest provisions. 2006 is already shaping up to be interesting as we wait to see what the Justice Department plans to do about Booker.

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

Profs, Activists Assail Spying

Profs, activists assail spying - Locals cite earlier actions

BY TOM MARSHALL STAFF WRITER, Daily Hamphsire Gazette, 12-31-05
Northampton, MA

The nation was at war, and the president had backed a massive domestic intelligence-gathering operation to ferret out protesters and civil rights workers who might pose a threat to national security.

The existence of that long running FBI program, code-named COINTELPRO, stunned the nation when it was revealed in 1970 by Christopher Pyle a young graduate student and ex-Army intelligence officer. He later helped craft groundbreaking federal laws designed to restrict the ability of U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on American citizens.

This week, it was Pyle's turn to be stunned.

Now a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College and a civil liberties expert, Pyle said President Bush's admission he authorized the National Security Agency in 2002 to eavesdrop on the international telephone conversations and emails of U.S. citizens without consulting a special intelligence court was a clear violation of federal law.

'In so doing, the president became the first president in history to admit to a felony,' he said Tuesday. 'It is an extraordinary, breathtaking assertion, (and) not one I think the Supreme Court will accept.'

Across the Valley, academics and activists described the growing scandal - along with recent reports of Pentagon surveillance of domestic anti-war groups - as a potential turning point for a war-weary American public.

'It will help people understand how little we've had in terms of checks and balances in recent years,' said Nancy Talanian, co-director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee of Northampton. 'I think it will enrage and engage all sorts of people.

'Mission creep'

Under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, electronic spying may be conducted on U.S. soil only with permission from a secret, 11-member court. That law is the 'sole authority' for such activities, said Pyle, who testified and served as a consultant for the Church Committee, a special Congressional panel that held hearings on intelligence reform in the late 1970s.

The law includes a provision allowing the government to conduct surveillance for up to three days before gaining a warrant from the court. That aspect of the law was a nod to arguments the government must act quickly to gather national security intelligence.

'I testified against the statute, but that was the compromise that was worked out,' he said.

Pyle said he would have preferred a constitutional amendment to authorize such activities. 'The focus was going to be on foreign spies, that was what we were assured,' he said.

But recent revelations show intelligence agencies have gone beyond that mandate in tracking anti-war groups and listening to American telephone conversations without showing a court any evidence of spying, in a classic case of 'mission creep,' Pyle said. 'The question is, can the president override a statute of Congress?'

Bush administration officials this week said another federal law passed in 2001 - the single-sentence authorization 'to use all necessary and appropriate force' against nations, organizations or individuals determined to have been connected to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - included the authority to engage in domestic electronic surveillance.

But the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that officials had also expressed concerns over the legal standard established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

The secret court created by that act requires the government to show 'probable cause' the target is working for a foreign power or involved in terrorism. Officials spoke of the 'inefficiencies' of that approach, and opted in 2002 for a less stringent standard in which National Security Agency officers would decide whether they had a 'reasonable basis' to suspect terrorist links, the paper said.

Area legal experts said the administration took an ill-advised legal shortcut in bypassing the FISA Court.

'These are, to put the best possible spin on it, creative arguments,' said David Mednicoff, an assistant professor of legal studies at the University of Massachusetts.

Mednicoff said Congress had neither discussed nor explicitly endorsed expanded domestic surveillance powers when it granted the president the authority to use force in the war on terrorism.

Sheldon Goldman, a professor of political science at UMass, said the framers of the Constitution never envisioned a system in which one branch of the government could be granted autonomy over the other two. He said the news of domestic surveillance without explicit Congressional or court authority shows a fundamental imbalance of powers that could lead to a constitutional crisis.

'Of course, there are enemies, there are terrorists,' Goldman said. 'But (domestic surveillance) is not the battlefield, and even on the battlefield, there are certain rules.'

Dirty tricks

For Ekueme Michael Thelwell of Pelham, a former civil rights worker who served in the 1960s as field coordinator for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, this week's news recalled his first experience with government surveillance.

FBI agents went far beyond wiretapping between 1956 and 1971 under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, with agents planting false media stories and documents in an effort to discredit activists and instigate violence with the civil rights movement, Thelwell said, citing COINTELPRO documents.

'I know there's an FBI file (on me,)' said Thelwell, now a UMass professor of Afro-American studies and an editor of Stokely Carmichael's autobiography. 'I have seen documents in which my name was mentioned. And always inaccurately.'

He said he'd seen no evidence of a 'dirty tricks' campaign in the Bush administration's current surveillance program, but said its decision to circumvent the FISA Court - as well as its flawed justification for the war in Iraq - suggested a similar level of carelessness.

'It's less wickedness than it is incompetence,' Thelwell said. 'But to have that kind of incompetence in this government is a terrifying prospect.'

More than 35 years later, the lessons of that 1970 scandal are still relevant, said Thomas Hilbink, assistant professor of legal studies at UMass.

'What was so scandalous about COINTELPRO was that the FBI was ignoring the law,' he said. 'What the Bush Administration is arguing now is that it should never have to go to a judicial authority (for wiretapping warrants.)'

Lois Ahrens of Northampton, an activist who protested U.S. military involvement in Central America in the 1980s, sued the federal government in 1990 in an attempt to see her FBI file after she discovered the agency had apparently infiltrated her group.

But a federal magistrate ruled that national security concerns, or possibly the identity of an FBI agent or source, forbade its release. Ahrens has never learned the contents of the file, or the reasons for her surveillance.

'They were afraid of jeopardizing their sources, who are probably people who are known to us,' she said. The government never accused her of illegal acts. 'At the time, we were standing on the street corner and leafleting, things that were boring, really.'

For Ahrens, this week's news served as a reminder of a turning point in her life, when she learned her government considered her a threat.

'To me, it has never stopped,' she said. 'Since then, I'm aware that this is part of my political history, my personal history.'

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

December 21, 2005

Justice Reinvestment in Louisville

Thursday, December 15, 2005
Louisville to help former prisoners
Social-services plan targets Newburg
By Kay Stewart
The Courier-Journal

http://www.soros.org/resources/articles_publications/publications/ideas_20040106 (link to the OSI Paper on Justice Reinvestment)

Louisville Metro Councilwoman Barbara Shanklin doesn't need a study to tell her that the Newburg neighborhood is shouldering more than its share of Jefferson County's growing population of ex-prisoners.

She says her constituents have provided all the evidence she needs -- calling in recent weeks to complain and voice fears about unsupervised groups of ex-prisoners living together in houses and walking the streets at all hours.
"It's a problem, and there's a need for something to happen," Shanklin said.

A recent study by the city echoes that sentiment and recommends a new plan of attack -- bringing together government, nonprofit and faith-based groups to monitor and provide ex-prisoners in Newburg with services such as drug testing and treatment and job training, starting from the time they are sentenced.

If approved and funded, the Newburg pilot program, proposed in the city's "Justice Reinvestment Project" study, would be the first of its kind in Kentucky, according to local and state officials.

And it would be among only a few similar efforts in the country to address the rapidly increasing numbers of prisoners returning to communities, according to Susan Tucker, director of an after-prison initiative at The Open Society Institute, a New York-based foundation.

Tucker said states are being forced to focus on ways to help ex-prisoners succeed because of their growing numbers, the enormous costs of incarcerating them again and the toll their repeated crimes take on communities. If the pilot program in Newburg could reduce the number of repeat offenders and reduce crime, Louisville officials say it would be expanded to other neighborhoods -- and Tucker said it "could end up being a model" for the nation.

While operational details aren't set and funding must be arranged, city officials said they are optimistic the pilot program can begin, at least in part, next year.

Kim Allen, secretary of the city's Public Protection Cabinet, said the city plans to seek an unspecified amount of funding from The Open Society Institute, which provided $50,000 last year for the study.

Need highlighted

President Bush, in his 2004 inaugural address, highlighted the need to help ex-offenders successfully return to their communities, and a number of faith-based organizations also are focusing on the issue.
Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson said prisoner re-entry is "something talked about at every U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting."

That's due, in large part, to the fact that nationwide, 650,000 prisoners are released each year, a 350 percent increase over 20 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

In Kentucky, which leads the nation in the rate of growth of prisoners on probation, 10,308 prisoners were released in 2003, a 67 percent increase in eight years, according to the city's study.

Each year, about 1,850 released state prisoners return to Jefferson County, including 700 who served their entire sentence and are not under state supervision. Based on the most recent figures cited in the report, about 400 Jefferson County residents are released each year from the county jail system after serving 90 days or more for a misdemeanor offense.

The city study, which looked at inmates released to the county from January 2002-December 2004, drew conclusions that mirror national reports showing that the majority of ex-prisoners are under-educated, lack job skills and family support, and have a substance abuse problem.
More than a third of released prisoners in Kentucky also eventually are sent back to prison, according to the study.

Pockets of ex-prisoners

Like other metropolitan areas, ex-prisoners in Louisville also tend to live in concentrated areas, the study found.

In December 2004, nearly half of the parolees lived in six ZIP codes -- 40203, 40211, 40218, 40216, 40210 and 40212 -- that house only 22 percent of the county's population.

Those ZIP codes are primarily in western Louisville, including Russell, Portland, Chickasaw, Parkland, Park DuValle, California and Shelby Park neighbors. Parts of Shively southwest of downtown, and Newburg south of downtown also have relatively large numbers of ex-prisoners, the study said.

In three of those areas -- Newburg, Shelby Park and California -- the study found that ex-prisoners differed in some ways from most of the ex-prisoner population. Shelby Park, for example, had a higher percent of women and white ex-offenders, while California and Newburg had a higher percentage of African-American ex-prisoners. Ex-offenders in Newburg also tended to be younger, with nearly 46 percent under age 30.

The study recommends Newburg for a pilot program because it said ex-inmates there seem to be at a higher risk of repeating a crime, and the area is not near many services. The program would serve Newburg-area inmates who serve time in the state system or who were sentenced to 90 days or more in a county corrections facility.

Lennie Pendleton Marshall, 60, a retired school teacher and neighborhood block watch leader in Newburg, said she is concerned about the large number of ex-offenders there, and she is skeptical about the proposed program.

By returning to Newburg, she said, "it's easier for them to go right back into the same thing."

The Rev. Roosevelt Ligtsy, assistant pastor at Community Missionary Baptist church in Newburg, said it's clear that something needs to be done.

Finding ways to help ex-offenders succeed "is a win-win proposition for us all," he said, adding, "When they don't receive the necessary support, it places all of us in jeopardy."

The city study included interviews with 13 former prisoners, who were not named. The interview reports chronicle a daunting array of needs among families for whom crime is a way of life, often beginning at a young age.

One 26-year-old man from Newburg, for example, was on parole for robbery and wanton endangerment convictions, crimes he committed when he was 18. He reported that he began using drugs and drinking at age 15 and that he had not seen his father for years. He told interviewers that his mother had been jailed several times for drug-related charges and was also on probation. He quit high school his junior year but obtained an equivalency degree in prison. "He has no skill or trade and employment has been sporadic through temporary agencies," a report on his interview said.

John D. Rees, commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Corrections, who participated in the study, said the challenge is getting service providers better organized to address the needs of such people.

A network of organizations that work with ex-offenders -- the Offender Reentry Task Force -- would play a key role in the local effort, and is already developing plans for coordinating services, said the Rev. Suzanne Siebold, executive director of Prodigal Ministries, an ecumenical organization that operates two transitional homes for ex-prisoners.

"There are big needs in Louisville that are not being addressed," said Siebold, a former chaplain at the state's Luther Luckett Correctional complex.

Posted by lois at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)

NY: Women who were incarcerated faced with hardship, cold society

November 30, 2005
Amsterdam News, NY
"Female ex-prisoners faced with hardship, cold society"
Samantha Obas

It will be a long time before the standard Equal Opportunity Employment disclaimer reads, company X does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, color, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, national origin or former incarceration.

But that's what female ex-prisoners - they're not called ex-cons anymore - want in their quest for a new chapter in their lives after spending years locked up behind bars.

When [employers] hear you've been incarcerated, they automatically think you're a cheat, a liar, a thief, a burglar, so they don't want to give you the opportunity said Sharon White, who completed a 13-year sentence at the Bedford Correctional Facility in upstate New York last November. You hear Governor Pataki and them say, "Oh, we're getting rid of the criminals and we're cleaning up these streets." But what about the ones that are coming home? What about the ones that are going to do the right thing and who aren't given a chance?'

White is not alone. She and other women at a recent conference at Long Island University said they face many challenges, particularly blatant discrimination, as they try to reintegrate into society. The most necessary things in life are now obstacles they continually try to overcome: obtaining an education, a job and housing. The question tens of thousands of these women ask is how they can get these things after paying their debt to a society that then bars them from such services as public housing. Most female ex-offenders return to the same neighborhoods that helped them get into trouble in the first place.

Yolanda Johnson-Peterkin, the Women's Prison Association (WPA) program director of reentry services, who 16 years ago completed 21 months of a two-and-a-half-to-five-year sentence for selling $10 worth of crack, recalls that when she was released, she couldn't immediately move in with her mother and son. She had to live with her sister in the same neighborhood in which she'd sold drugs. 'There was no support and no big programs to help,' she said.

What sets the plight of formerly incarcerated women apart from men is they must navigate around the tangles of the legal and foster care system, or relatives, to get their children back, regain their parental rights and get to know their kids all over again " in some cases, as adults. I had to deal with meeting my children on their terms," said Tina Reynolds, an ex-offender, who co-founded WORTH (Women on the Rise Telling Herstory), an association of women who have been affected by the criminal justice system. "It wasn't like me coming back and saying, I'm the mom, listen to me. I had to deal with them not wanting to talk to me, being angry at me and not even wanting to be in the same space with me."

Reynolds lost one of her children due to a law passed in 1997 called the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) that allows states to begin proceedings to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for more than 15 months. The average sentence for a woman who commits a nonviolent crime is 19 months.

Peggy Arroyo, senior director of Alternative to Incarceration and Family Services programs at the Fortune Society, said that a woman imprisoned is more damaging to the family fabric than a man.
When you incarcerate a man, you incarcerate a man, she said. But when you incarcerate a woman, you incarcerate the whole family.
The stigma of being convicted is difficult for women since, traditionally, men dominate the prison rolls.

Women are incarcerated in prisons that were designed for men, Arroyo said. "Our needs are different. Men could deal with isolation, but women - we feel, we communicate. A man - you can lock him up and he can stay by himself," she explained.

And with a huge crop of women being released - 70,000 annually since 2001, according to the WPA - many have to rely on shelters and be legally barred from jobs that come with healthcare.
Female ex-offenders don't qualify for Pell Grants, the primary source of education funding for prison-based education until the passage of the 1993 Crime Bill.

"These women return to our community hurt, angry and full of resentment," Johnson-Peterkin said. "We're the community. We should provide a system to help them integrate into society."

White agrees. Though she received her college degree at Bedford and is now a case manager at Exodus Transitional Community for Formerly Incarcerated Men and Women in East Harlem, she said, "My issue when I got out was straight employment."

Sixty percent of female ex-prisoners are unemployed, according to the WPA. Statistically, for every woman in prison with a college degree, there are 32 without, and of the 78 percent of formerly incarcerated women without a high school diploma, 16 percent will receive a GED while in prison.

However, some organizations are addressing these problems by educating the masses. "A lot of employers have their own biases, and a lot of times don't want to take the risk," said Roberta Meyers-Peeples, co-director of the Washington, DC-based Legal Action Centers National HIRE (Helping Individuals with Criminal Records Reenter Through Employment) Network. "We're responsible for educating employers to get them to understand that people who have criminal records are people, too."

Meyers-Peeples added, "There is no one walking this earth who hasn't made a mistake," She travels across the U.S. educating employers and advocating for former inmates, to get policies changed regarding employment.
Shamicka Frantz can attest to making mistakes. A self-proclaimed former career criminal, the 28-year-old has been working hard to regain a sense of normalcy in her life after growing a rap sheet too long to recount.
"Now I look at my rap sheet, I realize I was young, dumb and thought I would be able to get over, and now I'm struggling to battle my rights over things I did as a kid," she said. "It's so hard."

Meyers-Peeples said indeed it is hard, since it is the law in New York State that a person's criminal record is never sealable. People are stigmatized for the rest of their lives [here], she said. Just getting arrested without conviction can affect a person long-term, Meyers-Peeples pointed out.
Imagine having to explain every time you sit down in front of an employer and they do a background check and receive that information, Meyers-Peeples said.
WPA reported that if women ex-offenders are faced with joblessness and homelessness in their attempts to change their lives, the likelihood is they will turn to illegal activities again.
Often times, women don't see what it is they can attain after incarceration, said Reynolds, who has been out of prison for 12 years and values her activism work helping other women.
"Unless the woman is offered the opportunity to receive the skills [and has] the knowledge that there are services that will help her regain her life, then she will go back."

Posted by lois at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)

The War on Drugs and the War on Abortion = War on Women

Dear NAPW Friends and Allies:

We are happy to use this occasional NAPW update to let you know about some recent victories and to provide you with an example of effective public education action. In addition to supporting NAPW, you can help challenge drug war misinformation and help prevent pregnant and parenting women and their families from being punished by disseminating the open letter attached to this e-mail. If you read or hear a news story about “meth babies” or learn that there is new punitive legislation being introduced in response to meth misinformation, please send the attached letter with a note urging the news-breakers or policymakers to base their stories and policies on science not stigma.

Below is a description of some cases, our education action, and links to news stories about this work. Our next e-mail will update you on our work in South Dakota and elsewhere to reframe the abortion debate and protect all women from attacks made in the name of both the war on drugs and the war on abortion.

On November 29th the Supreme Court of Hawaii unanimously overturned Tayshea Aiwohi's conviction for manslaughter. NAPW has been involved in the case from the beginning. When Ms. Tayshea Aiwohi’s newborn son died shortly after he came home from the hospital, she was not supported in her grief; instead, she was arrested based on a scientifically unsupported claim that the methamphetamine problem she was working hard to overcome caused the death of her son. NAPW worked extensively with local and national advocates to oppose this prosecution. In order to avoid a trial, however, Ms. Aiwohi plead guilty to manslaughter but challenged the legitimacy of the charge. NAPW, with the support of the Drug Policy Alliance, and the extraordinarily talented attorney David Goldberg, filed a public health amicus brief on behalf of over 60 public health, child welfare and drug treatment organizations and experts challenging the conviction. We also worked with Ms. Aiwohi’s attorney helping to prepare him for oral argument. Although some of the reasoning of the main opinion leaves something to be desired, this is an important victory adding another state Supreme Court to the list of appellate courts rejecting the idea that continuing a pregnancy to term in spite of a drug problem is a crime.

To read about the decision:
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051130/NEWS20/511300342/1001/NEWS

To read the Hawai‘i Supreme Court ruling: www.courts.state.hi.us/page_server/LegalReferences/73DFB8859867A628EAE7AB3DC5.html

NAPW’s work has also helped to get charges dropped or dismissed in cases in Oregon, Wyoming, Wisconsin and Washington State. Yesterday we received a joyful e-mail from James Rennicke, an attorney in Burnett County, Wisconsin saying in part, “Good Morning, Lynn Drum roll please! Case dismissed!! Due to the brilliant memorandum by James Rennicke, and help from your office, many thanks!!!! case will be dismissed tomorrow.”

Recently, NAPW had the privilege of working with the Maryland Public Justice Center to file an amicus brief on behalf of more than 40 public health, drug treatment and child welfare organizations opposing the prosecution of Kelly Lynn Cruz. Amici are asking for a clear judicial statement that the felony “reckless endangerment of another” cannot be used to punish women for becoming pregnant and giving birth in spite of a drug or other health problem. We just learned that the Maryland Court of Appeals granted cert in the case, meaning that they will review the unjust and unconstitutional prosecution in this case.

NAPW is also proud that we have influenced the media and policy makers across the nation by organizing over 90 medical experts and scientific researchers to speak out against the myth of the “meth baby.” Throughout the 1980’ s and 90’s alarmist claims about so called “crack babies” fueled fetal rights arguments, new punishment of pregnant women and mothers, and ever more punitive drug laws. NAPW recognized that public anxiety regarding a new threat, “meth babies,” could result in a new wave of attacks on pregnant women. As a result, we reached out to experts and helped them to organize a public letter to the media and policy makers warning them not to create a new myth of “meth babies.” This letter was distributed nation wide, in both English and Spanish and has had a significant impact on journalists, child welfare workers and others. The letter has been picked up a referred to in a wide variety of news stories, (see links to stories below) and a commentary by Dr. Barry Lester that we solicited and became the basis for a series of ads in leading political magazines including National Review, the New Republic, the American Prospect, The Nation, Reason Magazine, and the Progressive. (See link to ads below)

ß One hit of meth enough to cause news defects
http://www.jointogether.org/sa/news/features/reader/0,1854,578073,00.html
.
ß Another “Drug Baby Media” Scare? http://www.csdp.org/publicservice/dejavumeth.htm

ß Meth and Myth: Top Doctors, Scientists, and Specialists Warn Mass Media on "Meth Baby" Stories 7/29/05 http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/397/methandmyth.shtml

ß An Inconceivable Solution? Barbara Harris Has an Answer to the Problem of Drug-Addicted Babies—Pay the Mothers to Stop Having Kids, Portland Mercury, by Katie Shimer http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Content?oid=35535&category=34029

ß The Meth Epidemic: Hype vs. Reality: The facts about how the drug affects child welfare and how agencies have coped http://www.youthtoday.org/youthtoday/oct05/story2_10_05.html

ß Crack Then, Meth Now, What the press didn't learn from the last drug panic http://www.slate.com/id/2124885/

www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.org

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

MA: State Opens Non-Prison Detox for Women

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=117993

State opens non-prison detox for women
By Laura Crimaldi
Wednesday, December 21, 2005

After a decade of sending drug and alcohol-addicted women to a prison hospital for detox, state officials yesterday announced the opening of a new treatment facility for women who have been ordered by a civil court to seek help.
³There are certain things that are not, in fact, done by the criminal justice system and one of those is drug treatment for women who are civilly committed,² Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey said yesterday during a news conference.

From 1995 to the present, the number of women treated annually for alcoholism or substance abuse at the women¹s prison in Framingham grew from nine to 157, Healey said. The women were sent to the prison infirmary for detox after a civil court imposed a Section 35 order under the state civil commitment law. The women do not face criminal charges.

Highpoint, a behavioral health services agency, was awarded a four-year contract for $1.8 million to fund the program at a new 60-bed facility in New Bedford. The facility, which will start welcoming civilly committed female patients in April, will house 25 detox beds and 35 ³step-down² beds.

There are currently four women at MCI-Framingham under the state civil commitment statute. Typically, women spend 14 to 16 days at the prison for medical treatment and do not mix with the prison¹s general population.

The new program is being funded from $20 million in state and federal money set aside for substance abuse services.

³Women who are civilly committed for substance abuse should not be housed in a prison, but in a community-based treatment program like Highpoint,² said state Department of Correction Commissioner Kathleen M. Dennehy.

From the Massachusetts Criminal Justice Policy Coalition----

A growing number of women are finding themselves in custody at MCI Framingham without having been charged with, or convicted of, any crime. They are addicts and alcoholics who have been involuntarily committed for detox and treatment following a civil court determination that they pose a danger to themselves or others because of their addiction and/or alcoholism. The problem is complex and goes beyond current economic concerns, highlighting societal assumptions and prejudices about substance abuse.

Women going to Framingham for detox is nothing new, but the number of women so committed, and the length of time they spend in prison, is increasing. Under Massachusetts General Law chapter 123, section 35, the statute governing civil commitments, men and women can be ordered into treatment, men being committed to MCI Bridgewater, as a matter of course, and women going to MCI Framingham when beds are not available in other detox facilities. The commitment can be for up to 30 days, following a civil procedure that need not involve any criminal charges, although in many cases criminal charges accompany the commitment. The procedure may be initiated by any police officer, physician, spouse, blood relative, guardian, or court official.

The Institute for Health and Recovery (IHR) in Cambridge is the agency charged with placing women once they are committed. IHR Director Norma Finklestein explains that the goal has always been to keep women out of prison, but that in the past, when beds are unavailable elsewhere, women might spend a couple of days there before being placed elsewhere. Within the last six to seven months, however, the number of detox beds available to section 35 commitments has decreased by about 50 percent statewide. This, coupled with other health insurance payer problems, has caused a sharp increase in the number of women going to MCI Framingham under civil commitment.

Nadeene Platt, the section 35 coordinator at IHR, reports that between July 2002 and July 2003 a total of 50 women passed through Framingham before being placed in some other detox facility. As of November 7, 2003, 51 women had been to Framingham following civil commitments since this July. These numbers represent women sent to Framingham on pure civil commitments, with no related criminal charges pending or adjudicated.

Historically, women have not stayed long at the prison following civil commitment, but with the current shortage of detox beds statewide, the stay is increasing. What had been a couple of days, has become week or more. In one recent case, a woman stayed in prison for a full month following a civil commitment, according to Finklestein. And in some cases, staying for more than a day or two will foreclose any chance of getting the woman into another detox, as the private facilities will not take a woman who has already “detoxed.”

The prison is not equipped to handle many of these cases. Women going in on pure civil commitments, without any pending criminal charges, are isolated in the prison’s health care unit, without access to the substance abuse recovery program. The program, “First Step,” is intended for the criminally convicted prison population. Under state law, the prison’s civil and criminal population cannot mix, and the facility is unable to segregate the two populations for purposes of accessing the program. According to Finklestein, some judges understanding this complexity, will revoke bail on small offenses (if available) in order to get the women into Framingham under a “dual status,” and therefore eligible for the First Step program. However, that doesn’t always help, as the First Step program is apparently full, with a waiting list.

In some cases, the public does not understand the shortage of beds and some desperate addicts and alcoholics attempt to use the civil commitment procedure to get around the shortage of available detox beds elsewhere. In a recent case, according to Finklestein, a 68-year old woman, desperate to get into a detox, mistakenly thought that if she subjected herself to civil commitment, she’d be “guaranteed” a bed somewhere by the state. She and her family went through the procedure, and on a Friday, she was taken in handcuffs to the prison, searched, and sat for the weekend, eventually spending four days in prison.

In short, the problem is one of funding. According to a recent Boston Phoenix article, the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services expects detox programs to receive $27.9 million in FY04 ($21 million from Medicaid, and $6.9 million from the DPH), considerably less than the $54.5 million spent on substance-abuse treatment in FY03. Also, because the DPH acts as payer-of-last-resort — funding detox beds for the uninsured — the elimination of MassHealth Basic has made its mission especially difficult, with just $7.2 million currently slated for detox services.

However, cuts in the budget may reflect ideology. Some believe that legislators have chosen to deny medical benefits to an unsympathetic population - drug addicts and alcoholics simply do not elicit the same empathy as other mental health patients. Jane Manchester, Department of Public Health Assistant Regional Manager for the southeast, notes that alcoholics and addicts simply do not have the same advocates as other mental health patients.

Manchester also sees a discrepancy between the way mental health and substance abuse patients are viewed and treated under the controlling statutes, as well as once they are committed. A civil commitment for a mental health patient, without a substance abuse issue, allows lock-up for a maximum of 5 days, versus the 30 days allowed under section 35. Manchester sees this a problematic, as some judges read section 35 as providing a mandatory 30 days, rather than a maximum of 30 days, which may not be appropriate in a given case. Mental health commitments, according to Manchester, also receive a faster follow-up and reassessment than substance abuse commitments, and in many cases, individuals are going into the system under section 35 with underlying mental health problems that could be better served if they were treated as mental health patients. The problem, according to Manchester is one of inconsistent assessment. The DPH hopes that continued education of the public, as well as judges and other
officials, will help.

Some are hopeful that the situation will improve as the new “MassHealth Essential” program kicks in, and would-be substance patients regain access to care outside prison. MassHealth Essential replaced MassHealth Basic, which was eliminated in April. However, the new program did not begin until July, and many previous recipients do not know that a new program is available. According to Manchester, many previous recipients have ‘disappeared,’ and although the DPH would like to see them re-enrolled, resources for public education about the new program are short.

Posted by lois at 09:56 PM | Comments (0)

Legal Action Center-- Toolkits for Advocating Against Roadblocks for people with Criminal Records

The Legal Action Center and our National H.I.R.E. Network are delighted to announce that we have constructed and posted on our web site (www.lac.org) a series of toolkits that organizations and individuals all over the country can use to advocate for removal of unfair roadblocks facing individuals with criminal records.

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

Wall Street Journal: States Attempt To Cut Prison Bill, -Cost Nears $35 Billion a Year

Course Corrections
To Cut Prison Bill, States Tweak Laws, Try Early Releases Cost Nears $35
Billion a Year, Driving Programs to Keep
Prisoners From Returning Some Over 65 Get Paroled
By GARY FIELDS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 21, 2005; Page A1

When Theresa Lantz took over as Connecticut's corrections commissioner in early 2003, the state's prison and jail population had hit a high of 19,320 inmates. Prisons were so crowded that 500 state inmates were being housed in Virginia -- at an annual cost of $12 million -- and an additional 2,000 were about to be shipped.

Less than three years later, the state's prison and jail population is down 6.2%, and state inmates are all housed in Connecticut. Ms. Lantz credits a state law that promoted the release of less-dangerous offenders -- for example, by letting those accused of minor crimes stay home while awaiting trial.

Connecticut is one of many states taking steps to reduce its prison population. That has little to do with any change in tough-on-crime thinking and a lot to do with dollars and cents. Housing criminals is
expensive: The average cost was $22,650 a year per person in 2001, the last year for which figures are available.

Strict adherence to tough sentencing laws "became incredibly expensive without necessarily enhancing public safety," says Ms. Lantz.

The two-decade trend of severe penalties has led to a surge in corrections spending. In fiscal year 2006, states are expected to spend $34.6 billion, up 24% from five years earlier, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Only Medicaid has grown faster in the past decade among state budget items. "Something has got to give," says Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers.

Raising taxes to pay for more prisons or repealing mandatory minimum sentences would ease crowding, but neither step is politically palatable in most states. As a result, corrections officials and some politicians are looking at other ways -- none of them magic bullets
-- to ease the financial pain:

Re-Entry Programs

Recidivism is one of the largest contributors to overcrowding. The storyline is familiar: A convict gets released but has no job, no skills, no money and no place to live so he resorts to crime and pretty soon is locked up again. Of the estimated 650,000 inmates released annually, two-thirds are re-arrested within three years and more than half end up behind bars again, according to the Department of Justice.

Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, has introduced a bill this session that would provide $200 million to help inmates readjust to society. The bill has bipartisan support but is pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It would provide grants to state and local governments to fund programs including mentorship, housing, education and job training and engagement with community colleges. It also would include grants for programs to help families of inmates.

Mr. Brownback's state has one of the most promising re-entry programs. It started as a pilot project in Shawnee County three years ago and now is expanding statewide. The program identifies inmates who are due to be released within 18 months and assesses their education, job skills, addictions and living arrangements. It also tries to pinpoint industries where workers are needed.

Before release, each inmate is given an individualized re-entry program and a counselor who helps them obtain housing, find a job and reconnect with their families. In one-to-one and group sessions at the prison, counselors also teach emotional and interpersonal skills
-- for example, how to negotiate for what you need without resorting to underhanded tactics.

One of the biggest hurdles facing ex-convicts is getting identification. As a result, parole officers in Kansas are certified by the motor-vehicle department to administer the written driver's license exam inside the prison. A police officer does a background check to determine if the inmates have outstanding fines and citations that might prevent them from getting driver's licenses.

"That sounds real basic but when you dig into the issue you find a lot of the men and women have suspended licenses or outstanding tickets" that prevent them from getting licenses, said Margie Phelps, state director of re-entry programs.

Also as part of the program, housing and credit specialists determine if there are debts and bills in arrears that would stop the prisoners from getting apartments.

The initial results from the program are encouraging. Officials have tracked a group of 29 of the state's highest-risk ex-convicts who took part in the program when it first began in Shawnee County three years ago. The recidivism rate is 13.7%, says Ms. Phelps, far better than the 80% that's typical for such a group.

Releasing Older Prisoners

Lengthier sentences have led to a surge in the number of older inmates, who tend to pile up larger health-care bills. In 2004, there were 67,200 prisoners aged 55 or older nationwide, up from 19,160 in 1990. That's still a small fraction of the 1.4 million state and federal inmates, but it's a number that is expected to rise sharply. State inmate health-care costs rose to $3.7 billion in 2003, up 42% in one year.

Many criminologists and corrections officials believe that prisoners get significantly less dangerous after the age of 40 or so, although the reasons aren't well-understood. Inmates themselves sometimes talk about "criminal menopause."

Virginia revised its laws in 2001 to allow prisoners who are at least 65 years old and have served at least five years in prison to apply for parole on the basis of their age. Prisoners who are 60 or older and have served 10 years also may apply to the board. Inmates serving time for capital murder aren't eligible.

Only 400 of the system's 30,729 inmates were eligible to apply as of Dec. 15, so the process hasn't led to much change in the prison population so far. "Down the line you will get people who may have been 25 or 30 when they committed their crimes and then when you're looking at them at 60 or 65, it will be a different situation than we're seeing now," says Helen Fahey, the chairwoman of the Virginia parole board.

Some states also have mechanisms for releasing critically ill prisoners. Washington state will release inmates with serious medical conditions if there is a cost savings for the prison and it's safe to let them out. Under a Mississippi law passed in 2004, an ill prisoner can be released if a medical official certifies that the illness is permanent with no chance of recovery and the state would incur unreasonable medical costs by keeping the inmate locked up.

Tweaking the Laws

Connecticut's experience shows that major statutes don't need to be tossed out to reduce prison overcrowding.

Like many states, Connecticut has truth-in-sentencing laws that require inmates to serve at least 85% of their sentence. A study commissioned by state legislators found in 2003 that hundreds of inmates were serving more than 85% of their sentences even when there was no compelling reason to hold them longer. It projected that 850 prison beds could be freed up with a rule change to get inmates out more quickly. This discovery and others prompted tweaks that reduced crowding and allowed out-of-state inmates to be brought home.

A major change was to reduce the number of people incarcerated for technical violations of probation and parole. Those violations include flunking a drug test or failing to appear before the parole officer. A law passed in 2004 mandated that the department develop a system to cut those violations by 20%. The state now allows offenders to remain free for violations such as changing residence without permission.

The legislature also allowed sentencing judges to divert some offenders into treatment for alcohol and drug addictions instead of sending them away for mandatory minimum sentences. And it gave the state corrections department -- which also runs local jails in Connecticut -- authority to release those charged with less serious crimes while they are awaiting trial.

"You want to reserve prison beds and jail beds for those individuals who constitute a threat to the public. You don't want somebody in a jail bed who can be appropriately supervised in the community," says Ms. Lantz, the state corrections commissioner.

The state prison and jail population has fallen by more than 1,000 inmates since March 2003 and stood at 18,103 as of last week. Meanwhile, Federal Bureau of Investigation crime statistics show the violent crime rate in Connecticut is also down. That suggests the people being released aren't committing many new crimes, says Ms. Lantz. "It is a philosophical and cultural shift" from the "confinement model which was to lock people up their entire sentence," she says.

Restoring Parole

One of the simplest ways to reduce the prison population is parole. But at the federal level, there is no parole for people sentenced after 1987. And at the state level, parole is increasingly unpopular because officials don't want to take the blame for releasing someone who later commits a crime as a parolee.

Between 1995 and 2004, the number of people under the supervision of corrections officials -- in jail, prison, probation or parole -- rose 31% to seven million, but the parole population rose only 13% over the same period to 765,355, according to the Department of Justice.

"Truth in sentencing is always construed as lengthy sentencing but inmates should be able to earn good time if they aren't considered a threat," says Richard Stalder, president of the National Association of State Correctional Administrators and secretary of corrections and public safety in Louisiana.

In June 2003, Alabama's inmate population was at 28,440, forcing the corrections department to send hundreds of inmates out of state while hundreds more languished in local jails, unable to move into state prisons because of overcrowding. Gov. Bob Riley and the state Legislature created a second parole board to look at a special docket of nonviolent inmates to determine if they could be paroled earlier than anticipated. The state hired more than two dozen parole officers to handle the added caseload.

More than 4,000 nonviolent offenders were released that year through the second parole board, bringing the population down to 26,220 by October 2004, a decrease of 7.8%. The state's corrections department spokesman says the drop allowed the state to move all of its out-of- state prisoners back to Alabama and cleared the overflow of state inmates being held in local jails.

This year, the state's tough sentencing laws have pushed the population back up to 27,842. Still, all the inmates are being housed within the state. Mr. Riley recently received recommendations from an 11-member panel on prison crowding that suggested lighter punishment for technical parole violators. Those offenders could report to a halfway-house-type facility. The governor is calling on the state legislature to take up the recommendations next month.

Write to Gary Fields at gary.fields@wsj.com1

URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113513004658628063.html

Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) mailto:gary.fields@wsj.com
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Posted by lois at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)

2005: Disenfranchisement: Year in Review from the Sentencing Project

December 21, 2005 Disenfranchisement: Year in Review
The Sentencing Project
2005 marked another year of progress toward removing restrictions on the right to vote for people with felony convictions. National and local advocacy in the areas of legislative change, litigation, public education, and voter outreach all contributed to heightened awareness of the issue and progress on reform.

LEGISLATION

Two states – Nebraska and Iowa – enacted significant reforms to their disenfranchisement practices. In Nebraska, longstanding efforts led by State Senator DiAnna Schimek were aided by a state task force’s recommendation to remove the lifetime ban on people with felony convictions. As a result, the legislature voted – and then overturned a gubernatorial veto – to repeal the ban and replace it with a two-year post-sentence restriction on the right to vote. In Iowa, Governor Tom Vilsack took the courageous step of issuing an executive order on July 4th to automatically reinstate voting rights for all people who had completed a sentence, thus adding an estimated 50,000 people as potential voters. At the federal level, the Count Every Vote Act of 2005 introduced by Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer contains a provision that would permit voting by non-incarcerated people in federal elections even if they are barred from voting in state elections. A companion bill was introduced in the House by Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones.

LITIGATION

Progress in the courts during the year was mixed. Despite documentation of a compelling history of racial dynamics in Florida’s disenfranchisement practices, the longstanding case of Johnson v. Bush challenging the state’s lifetime voting ban was decided in favor of the state in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and the plaintiff’s request for cert review by the U.S. Supreme Court was denied in November. In the Second Circuit, the cases of Hayden v. Pataki and Muntaqim v. Coombe were consolidated, and an en banc hearing was held in June as a result of the plaintiffs’ appeal from an earlier judgment of dismissal by the lower court; the plaintiffs are still awaiting a ruling. There was good news in Washington state, where trial is now scheduled to begin in March 2006 in the case of Farrakhan v. Locke, following a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the plaintiffs may introduce evidence of unwarranted racial disparities in the criminal justice system that contribute to disproportionate rates of disenfranchisement.

In state based litigation, the case of NAACP v. Harvey, which challenges New Jersey’s disenfranchisement of persons on probation and parole, is currently awaiting appeal to the state Supreme Court from a lower court ruling against the plaintiffs. New litigation was filed this year by the ACLU of Colorado which challenges the state’s statutory ban on voting while on parole as violating the state Constitution, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund is supporting the voting rights of citizens in Alabama who have not been convicted of a crime of "moral turpitude," as defined by an Attorney General's opinion.

STATE-BASED ADVOCACY

State and local advocates nationwide continued to creatively expand their outreach efforts, aided by the national Right to Vote Campaign’s technical and networking support. The Florida Coalition for Restoration of Voting Rights gained high level Republican support for its legislative goals, assessed the prospects for a constitutional amendment in the coming years, and continued its aggressive advocacy in use of the gubernatorial clemency process. In Rhode Island, a growing campaign has led to a ballot initiative for November 2006 that will ask voters to end the state’s prohibition on voting for persons on probation or parole. Advocates in New Jersey, Tennessee, Kentucky, Minnesota and other states have been engaged in legislative and policy efforts regarding restrictions on voting for various categories of people under supervision, and a concerted coalition effort in Pennsylvania was able to defeat a measure to prohibit voting while on parole. Successful campaigns to expand the number of registered voters have been launched in Alabama, New York, Colorado, Oregon, and Texas, and a coalition has come together to encourage outgoing Virginia Governor Mark Warner to sign an executive order restoring voting rights to people who have completed their sentences.

RESEARCH

New research continues to inform the national debate and to provide tools for organizing. Alec Ewald’s A 'Crazy-Quilt' of Tiny Pieces documented how state and local election officials routinely misinterpret felon disenfranchisement legal provisions and The Sentencing Project’s Barred for Life found that few people have successfully regained their voting rights through executive action in permanent disenfranchisement states. Voting While Incarcerated, produced by the ACLU and the Right To Vote campaign, provides a road map for gaining access to local jails for the purpose of disseminating registration materials and absentee ballots to eligible voters. And Margaret Love’s state-based guide to relief from the consequences of a felony conviction provides a comprehensive overview of the complex laws that govern these practices.
The burgeoning scholarship on disenfranchisement will continue in early 2006, with the publication of three new books on disenfranchisement. Jeff Manza’s and Christopher Uggen’s book, Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (Oxford University Press) brings together these researchers' important data and political analysis to examine the impact of disenfranchisement on democratic life. The Disenfranchisement of Ex- Felons (Temple University Press) by Elizabeth Hull provides a historical and political examination of these policies, and Sasha Abramsky’s Conned (The New Press) looks at local organizing work that is challenging restrictive practices around the country.

MEDIA/POLICYMAKER SUPPORT

High-level national media and editorial support continued throughout the year. Columnist Derrick Jackson in the Boston Globe asked “Where are voting rights for ex-felons?”, while The New York Times called for “Extending Democracy to Ex-Offenders” and the Christian Science Monitor supported “Voting Rights for Ex- Felons.” The prestigious Commission on Federal Election Reform co-chaired by Jimmy Carter and James Baker joined with other bodies in issuing a recommendation calling for the “Re- Enfranchisement of Ex-Felons,” as did former Republican vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp in a recent Congressional hearing.

INTERNATIONAL

Looking abroad, a historic decision by the European Court of Human Rights struck down a blanket restriction on the right to vote while in prison in the United Kingdom. As a follow-up to the decision, the government in Ireland has just introduced a measure to facilitate absentee voting among incarcerated people.

Posted by lois at 09:47 PM | Comments (0)

PA: county Jails Encounter Major Problems

PA county jails no escape from big-prison problems

MARK SCOLFORO, Associated Press
Posted on Tue, Dec. 20, 2005 http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/local/13450549.htm

HARRISBURG, Pa. - By any measure, the Lawrence County Prison has
encountered serious problems in the past two years, a string of troubles out of proportion to the 300-bed facility's size.

One inmate died of a drug overdose. Another attempted suicide by jumping headfirst from a 12-foot-high walkway. A third suffered a severe brain injury in a beating by another prisoner. And the work-release program had to be suspended after inmates were accused of smuggling drugs into the jail.

The problems didn't develop overnight, but the prison board was unaware
of just how badly things were spinning out of control, said board
chairwoman Mary Ann Reiter, the elected controller in the county of
95,000.

"It was like their own little island over there," she said.

The board replaced the warden and things have started to improve at the
facility in New Castle, near the Ohio border. It's a community with a
limited tax base that has found no easy solutions.

Pennsylvania's county jails, it turns out, are no escape from big-prison
problems, jail inspection reports and incidents over the past two years
show. Even short time can mean hard time for county jail inmates, most
serving sentences of under two years or awaiting trial.

By their nature, the county prisons and jails are magnets for trouble,
and much of it is never publicized. The state requires counties to
report within 48 hours all "extraordinary occurrences" such as murders,
suicides, escapes and outbreaks of infectious disease, but the contents
of the reports are not released, only the numerical totals.

Across the state each year, about 1,500 extraordinary occurrences are
reported - about two per month for the average jail. Most common are
assaults by inmates on each other or prison staff - more than 2,500 have
occurred since January 2001.

Wardens have a self-interest in not reporting the true extent of the
problems they encounter, said William M. DiMascio, executive director of
the Pennsylvania Prison Society, an advocacy group for prisoners.

"It's their careers on the line, basically," he said. "So it's in their
best interests to make sure that the operation looks as good as it
possibly can. And oftentimes it's, '(Let's) not let out what's bad,
let's not make an issue of things, let's keep them under cover.'"

Many wardens declined to provide The Associated Press their 2003 and
2004 inspection reports, and those that did often redacted significant
portions. When the Corrections Department reversed its previous policy
and released a complete set of the reports - also with certain material
blacked out - it was against the wishes of many wardens and county
prison boards.

Prison administrators say they don't want to release anything that might
compromise security or privacy.

Donnie Moore, president of the 1,800-person union that represents
Philadelphia correctional officers, said one problem is a lack of
training - especially of supervisors.

"They give them a week and they throw them in the lion's den," Moore
said.

At the Lackawanna County Prison in Scranton, criminal charges are
pending against the ex-warden and other administrators for allegedly
misusing prison labor. In a separate case, four guards are awaiting
trial on charges that they beat prisoners.

In Lancaster, a man who was briefly held in the Lancaster County
Prison - before police concluded he had been falsely accused in a
shooting - was severely injured in June in an attack by other inmates.
He has alleged that guards provoked the assault.

At the Mifflin County Correctional Facility in Lewistown, state police
are investigating a September incident in which a restrained 19-year-old
maximum-security prisoner was shocked with an "electronic
body-immobilizing device" by a guard. The guard was fired for what the
warden described as poor judgment and violation of prison policies.

The Harrisburg office of the American Civil Liberties Union maintains a
thick file of inmate complaints about the Dauphin County Prison that
dates back three or four years. They include an untreated spider bite
that turned into a baseball-sized sore, "rampant" vermin and insects,
long untreated plumbing problems that flooded cells and caused toilets
to overflow with feces, access to barbers once per six months and
sadistic behavior by guards. The warden denies that there is any pattern
of problems.

The Huntingdon County Board of Commissioners' insurance carrier paid
$14,000 earlier this year - without admitting guilt or liability - to
settle a sex offender's lawsuit that claimed guards at the county prison
in Huntingdon did not intervene when other prisoners abused him,
including forcing him to brush his teeth with a brush that had been
inserted into another body cavity.

"It was inhuman and barbaric," said Mark C. Frailey of State College, a
former police officer who said he witnessed the alleged abuse in 2004
while jailed on a corruption-of-minors charge. "What the guards allowed
to happen to this kid boggles my mind."

Warden Duane I. Black said the allegations were unfounded - no employees
have been disciplined - but the county settled to avoid costly
litigation.

The state's biggest local jail scandal in recent years was in Somerset
County, where alleged hazing beatings with rubber shower shoes and other
violence led to criminal charges in March against seven current or
former inmates. The investigation of guards and inmates is continuing,
and there is evidence that 30 to 50 inmates were assaulted.

Authorities said most of the assaults were committed by longer-term
inmates against people serving shorter sentences, generally for less
serious offenses, as part of what Somerset Police Chief Randy Cox called
"a culture in which strength prevails."

A former inmate named Brian Young, who claims a June 2003 beating at the
jailhouse put him in the hospital, has filed a federal lawsuit against
the county, the warden and four guards, saying they "sanctioned,
condoned or acquiesced in" the beatings.

What most disturbs Cox about what happened in the Somerset County Jail
is that it occurred in relatively small, 138-bed county lockup, not in a
state prison where more hardened inmates are concentrated.

"It's easy to dismiss the significance and the importance of the
assaults that took place inside the jail by saying, 'Well, they were all
criminals anyway.' But when you stop to think, it could be someone who,
through a series of mix-ups or bad decisions, would get arrested," he
said.

"It could be anyone's son or daughter."

Posted by lois at 09:45 PM | Comments (0)

PA: 68 county jails in PA Struggle to meet minimum "standards"

PA county prisons struggle to meet standards

MARK SCOLFORO, Associated Press
Posted on Tue, Dec. 20, 2005 http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/local/13450548.htm

CAMP HILL, Pa. - Each year, more than 100,000 Pennsylvanians pass
through the state's local jails - some to await trial and others to
serve time for everything from misdemeanor drug and driving violations to felonies.

Conditions at the 68 jails can vary greatly. Some are by-the-book models of cleanliness and safety; others are poorly supervised institutions where lax security and poor sanitation expose prisoners and staff to violence and disease.

These locally funded and managed jails operate with little public
scrutiny. They are not required to make public their annual state
inspections or the reports they file on unusual occurrences, from inmate beatings to suicides and murders. What's more, county officials would like to shut out the state's inspectors.

But an Associated Press review of two years of state inspection reports, obtained under a Right-to-Know request filed with the Pennsylvania Corrections Department, found many local jails are struggling to meet even minimum standards for safety, housing, food quality and medical care.

The reports provide a window on a system that has endured a string of
recent scandals - inmates accused of brutally beating new arrivals
(Somerset County), jailers charged with abusing prison labor
(Lackawanna) and work-release inmates accused of smuggling drugs back
into prison (Lawrence).

They also raise questions about whether system-wide reforms are needed.

Last year, inspectors found female inmates at Fayette County Prison in Uniontown housed in areas where they were given no privacy from male inmates. The Northumberland County Prison in Sunbury, with four showers for 177 inmates, failed more inspection categories in 2003 than it passed. And maintenance problems at the Lackawanna County Prison in Scranton last year included graffiti, rust, mold, flies and the use of sheets as cell carpeting.

In one county, a jail might offer dozens of programs to reintegrate
inmates into society, while a neighboring community's prison may be
nothing more than a "lock-and-feed" operation.

"Ninety-six percent of the people going into the jails and prisons are coming out, they're coming back onto the street, and so we as a society have to decide what's really important, and what's most cost-effective," said Jim Barbee of the U.S. Justice Department's National Institute of Corrections, which provides corrections training and other support.

The prisoner population of the state's county jails stands at about
30,000 at any given time. But the actual number of inmates who pass
through the jails each year is much higher - sometimes 10 times greater than a jail's average daily population.

Nationally, about 12 million people are admitted to 3,200 local jails
annually, according to the American Jail Association.

The Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, one of the largest county jails under one roof on the East Coast, houses about 2,400 inmates at any given time but nearly 35,000 prisoners spent at least some time there last year.

County lockups house a diverse group of prisoners including defendants accused of murder and rape, convicted drunken drivers and child-support delinquents. Some are serving sentences - the vast majority less than two years - while many others are awaiting trial.

Joe Kramer, a Hummelstown carpet installer, served nearly four months in the Dauphin County Prison last year for assault and violating probation on a marijuana-possession conviction. Before going in, he said, "I just did not care at all about what it was like. But when I went to prison my whole view of prison and the people in prison changed."

Kramer claimed he was assaulted by guards, found himself eating meals
two feet from his cell's toilet and witnessed "pathetic" medical care.

Warden Dominick L. DeRose defends his operation. He said he can't
remember the last time the District Attorney's Office found an inmate's assault complaint was justified. But for Kramer, the stay there had a lasting effect.

"I still think about it to this day," Kramer said. "I've had nightmares, and waking up in the middle of the night."

William M. DiMascio, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison
Society, which advocates for improved prison conditions, said the public should realize that many people who spend time in county jails are not going to be convicted.

"So they're innocent people who are now made to live in these kinds of conditions. We ought to be up in arms about this," he said.
DiMascio said tougher sentencing laws, particularly in drug cases, are behind the surge in the jail population - which has quadrupled over the last two decades."The fact of the matter is that we don't treat, in any meaningful way, this addiction problem," he said. "You have addictive behavior; going to jail isn't going to stop it."

Other societal problems are also concentrated in jails, including
infectious disease, mental illness, illiteracy and racism.

"The transiency of the population, it presents problems that are hard to understand," said Tom Schlager, one of two Corrections Department
inspectors who crisscross the state each year, inspecting county jails for compliance with 25 categories. "You're dealing with people that you don't have a whole lot of information about."

Even with significant redactions by the Corrections Department, the
2003-04 inspection reports show that more than half the state's county jails did not fully meet state standards for housing and food.

"It's the basic, it's the minimum standards," Schlager said. "These
aren't some lofty goals."

Fourteen jails scored a perfect 100 by complying with state standards in all 25 categories last year, up from 12 the year before.

Some categories were passed by nearly every jail, including prisoner
hygiene, mail handling and access to legal resources.

Pennsylvania is one of more than 30 states that require local jail
inspections. A failed inspection does not result in state penalties,
although poor reports can raise liability-insurance premiums or be used in lawsuits as evidence administrators neglected problems.

"If you have an inspection report that continues to show that you're not complying, or you're not making any effort to correct those issues, absolutely it would be fuel for litigation," said Julio M. Algarin, warden of the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Eagleville and
president of the Pennsylvania County Prison Wardens Association.

Angus R. Love, a lawyer with the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, has won landmark court rulings in lawsuits over prison conditions. He said most problems are due to a lack of resources.

"To be fair, they're really being asked to do more and more and more,
and every county has responded differently to this tremendous surge in population," Love said. Jail operations currently consume about 9
percent of a typical Pennsylvania county's budget.

The role crowding plays in a jail's operations was vividly illustrated last year after Clinton County opened a 138-bed expansion. Before that, its state inspection score was a 64 out of 100; afterward, it received a 92.

But new construction is expensive. The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania estimates that counties have poured about $1 billion over the past decade into building, renovating or expanding their jails, and some counties are starting to look for ways to cut their populations.

A statewide task force studying county jails found that about half are overcrowded or at imminent risk of overcrowding, and many counties don't collect basic information about inmates that might help them lower prisoner populations through better management.

"We've seen some need for infrastructure improvement, and of course
there's a better way to manage the existing resources they have," said retired Monroe County commissioner Jim Cadue, the study's program manager.

Some wardens use the inspection reports as a blueprint for improving
their jails. But others complain that the inspections create an unfunded state mandate that hands ammunition to lawyers and can unfairly embarrass their workers.

In August, the County Commissioners Association passed a resolution
asking for the ability to have some other entity perform the
inspections. The resolution described relations between inspectors and
"many" county jails as adversarial.

"We tend to shoot the messenger," said the Corrections Department's
Schlager, formerly a jail warden in three Pennsylvania counties.
"Sometimes when we hear what the realities are, we don't like it."

The Corrections Department has been drafting revisions to the jail
inspection law. Potential changes include giving the department greater authority to evaluate poorly performing jails.

Experts say citizens hold contradictory views about incarceration - they want more offenders locked up and for longer periods, but often balk at paying for it.

"It's nicer to build parks and recreation areas than it is jails," said William J. Laughner, the recently retired warden at Armstrong County Jail, which last year had a perfect inspection score. "And it certainly is expensive to run jails. But if you didn't have them, what would you have? Anarchy."

Posted by lois at 09:36 PM | Comments (0)

MI: County to Replace Jail for 98 with one with 244

The Saginaw News
County asks city to rezone land for new jail
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
MIDLAND -- The county is seeking city rezoning of 30 acres on Fast Ice Drive for a new jail.

Developers Nicholas and Elaine Rapanos will donate the land, but the county must provide $800,000 to assist the Rapanoses in building a road at the site.

County officials say the existing downtown jail, remodeled in 1957, is functionally obsolete.

They also say the Courthouse, constructed in 1926, will undergo renovations once the new jail opens.

"This property gives us space needed to serve Midland County's jail needs for years," said Board of Commissioners Chairman Roland Weaver.

Commissioners followed recommendations of the Jail Site Selection Advisory Committee and selected the Fast Ice site Nov. 1. Negotiations then began with the Rapanos family.

"The plan completes development of Fast Ice Drive and should result in commercial development that can spur job growth in the corridor," Weaver said.

Commissioner James Stamas, a member of the jail search committee, said the new facility will allow the county to expand its rehabilitation services and perhaps reduce the percentage of returning inmates.

"Today's jail is badly overcrowded, and we've had record numbers in the 98-bed jail. This year we were forced to spend $300,000 to board out inmates," he said.

Plans call for the new jail to have 244 beds, with provisions for two more expansions.

The Rapanoses have joined the county in seeking the rezoning, which likely will take up to four months. The city provides for correctional and jail facilities in its community zone. v
http://www.mlive.com/news/sanews/index.ssf?/base/news-17/1133968806291960.xm
l&coll=9

Posted by lois at 09:33 PM | Comments (0)

CA: State Agrees to End Segregation of Prisoners by Race

State agrees to desegregate prisons
Inmates had been assigned cellmates based solely on race
- Cicero A. Estrella, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 20, 2005

The state prison system has agreed to end the segregation of prisoners by race, a policy that was implemented more than 20 years ago to stem gang violence in the prisons.

Following a legal settlement that was finalized Monday, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said it no longer will assign cellmates by race at reception centers, the temporary holding areas where inmates are kept during the first 60 days of imprisonment or following a transfer.

The department will also design a plan to desegregate the entire prison system within two years, department spokeswoman Terry Thornton said.

The new policy states "that race is not to be used as the sole determining factor in housing the offender population," Thornton said. "The goal is to ensure the implementation of racial desegregation in a manner that maximizes institutions' safety."

The settlement stemmed from a lawsuit filed by an inmate, Garrison Johnson, who challenged the state's desegregation policy.

Johnson, a convicted murderer, had been transferred a number of times since entering prison in 1987. With each transfer, he was paired at reception centers only with other African Americans.

In February, the U.S. Supreme Court all but banned segregation in prisons, declaring that it should be allowed only in extraordinary circumstances such as to avoid potential conflicts between gangs.

"By insisting that inmates be housed only with other inmates of the same race, it is possible that prison officials will breed further hostility among prisoners and reinforce racial and ethnic divisions," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in the majority decision.

The high court then remanded the case to the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco to observe if racial classifications can be justified in some contexts.

"The parties agreed to mediation then," Thornton said.

California had argued that the policy was necessary because of the threat of violence from prison gangs divided along racial lines.

The new reception center policy, which takes effect in March, will consider an inmate's age, reason for incarceration and other criteria to determine an appropriate cellmate.

The department will then address in phases the issue among the general inmate population, with full desegregation scheduled for March 2008, said Thornton.

"California is now going to have a prison system that is like that of the other states and the federal government," said attorney Bert Deixler, who represented Johnson in the lawsuit that challenged the state's policy. "Integration means people won't be coming off buses (into prisons) and have the color of their skin determine their cellmate."
Page B - 5
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/12/20/BAG72GAQ291.DTL

©2005 San Francisco Chronicle

Posted by lois at 09:30 PM | Comments (0)

Executive Order: Improving Agency Disclosure of Information--FOIAs

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
December 14, 2005

Executive Order: Improving Agency Disclosure of Information

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to ensure appropriate agency disclosure of information, and consistent with the goals of section 552 of title 5, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Policy.

(a) The effective functioning of our constitutional democracy depends upon the participation in public life of a citizenry that is well informed. For nearly four decades, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has provided an important means through which the public can obtain information regarding the activities of Federal agencies. Under the FOIA, the public can obtain records from any Federal agency, subject to the exemptions enacted by the Congress to protect information that must be held in confidence for the Government to function effectively or for other purposes.

(b) FOIA requesters are seeking a service from the Federal Government and should be treated as such. Accordingly, in responding to a FOIA request, agencies shall respond courteously and appropriately. Moreover, agencies shall provide FOIA requesters, and the public in general, with citizen-centered ways to learn about the FOIA process, about agency records that are publicly available (e.g., on the agency's website), and about the status of a person's FOIA request and appropriate information about the agency's response.

(c) Agency FOIA operations shall be both results-oriented and produce results. Accordingly, agencies shall process requests under the FOIA in an efficient and appropriate manner and achieve tangible, measurable improvements in FOIA processing. When an agency's FOIA program does not produce such results, it should be reformed, consistent with available resources appropriated by the Congress and applicable law, to increase efficiency and better reflect the policy goals and objectives of this order.

(d) A citizen-centered and results-oriented approach will improve service and performance, thereby strengthening compliance with the FOIA, and will help avoid disputes and related litigation.

Sec. 2. Agency Chief FOIA Officers.

(a) Designation. The head of each agency shall designate within 30 days of the date of this order a senior official of such agency (at the Assistant Secretary or equivalent level), to serve as the Chief FOIA Officer of that agency. The head of the agency shall promptly notify the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB Director) and the Attorney General of such designation and of any changes thereafter in such designation.

(b) General Duties. The Chief FOIA Officer of each agency shall, subject to the authority of the head of the agency:

(i) have agency-wide responsibility for efficient and appropriate compliance with the FOIA;

(ii) monitor FOIA implementation throughout the agency, including through the use of meetings with the public to the extent deemed appropriate by the agency's Chief FOIA Officer, and keep the head of the agency, the chief legal officer of the agency, and the Attorney General appropriately informed of the agency's performance in implementing the FOIA, including the extent to which the agency meets the milestones in the agency's plan under section 3(b) of this order and training and reporting standards established consistent with applicable law and this order;

(iii) recommend to the head of the agency such adjustments to agency practices, policies, personnel, and funding as may be necessary to carry out the policy set forth in section 1 of this order;

(iv) review and report, through the head of the agency, at such times and in such formats as the Attorney General may direct, on the agency's performance in implementing the FOIA; and

(v) facilitate public understanding of the purposes of the FOIA's statutory exemptions by including concise descriptions of the exemptions in both the agency's FOIA handbook issued under section 552(g) of title 5, United States Code, and the agency's annual FOIA report, and by providing an overview, where appropriate, of certain general categories of agency records to which those exemptions apply.

(c) FOIA Requester Service Center and FOIA Public Liaisons. In order to ensure appropriate communication with FOIA requesters:

(i) Each agency shall establish one or more FOIA Requester Service Centers (Center), as appropriate, which shall serve as the first place that a FOIA requester can contact to seek information concerning the status of the person's FOIA request and appropriate information about the agency's FOIA response. The Center shall include appropriate staff to receive and respond to inquiries from FOIA requesters;

(ii) The agency Chief FOIA Officer shall designate one or more agency officials, as appropriate, as FOIA Public Liaisons, who may serve in the Center or who may serve in a separate office. FOIA Public Liaisons shall serve as supervisory officials to whom a FOIA requester can raise concerns about the service the FOIA requester has received from the Center, following an initial response from the Center staff. FOIA Public Liaisons shall seek to ensure a service-oriented response to FOIA requests and FOIA-related inquiries. For example, the FOIA Public Liaison shall assist, as appropriate, in reducing delays, increasing transparency and understanding of the status of requests, and resolving disputes. FOIA Public Liaisons shall report to the agency Chief FOIA Officer on their activities and shall perform their duties consistent with applicable law and agency regulations;

(iii) In addition to the services to FOIA requesters provided by the Center and FOIA Public Liaisons, the agency Chief FOIA Officer shall also consider what other FOIA-related assistance to the public should appropriately be provided by the agency;

(iv) In establishing the Centers and designating FOIA Public Liaisons, the agency shall use, as appropriate, existing agency staff and resources. A Center shall have appropriate staff to receive and respond to inquiries from FOIA requesters;

(v) As determined by the agency Chief FOIA Officer, in consultation with the FOIA Public Liaisons, each agency shall post appropriate information about its Center or Centers on the agency's website, including contact information for its FOIA Public Liaisons. In the case of an agency without a website, the agency shall publish the information on the Firstgov.gov website or, in the case of any agency with neither a website nor the capability to post on the Firstgov.gov website, in the Federal Register; and

(vi) The agency Chief FOIA Officer shall ensure that the agency has in place a method (or methods), including through the use of the Center, to receive and respond promptly and appropriately to inquiries from FOIA requesters about the status of their requests. The Chief FOIA Officer shall also consider, in consultation with the FOIA Public Liaisons, as appropriate, whether the agency's implementation of other means (such as tracking numbers for requests, or an agency telephone or Internet hotline) would be appropriate for responding to status inquiries.

Sec. 3. Review, Plan, and Report.

(a) Review. Each agency's Chief FOIA Officer shall conduct a review of the agency's FOIA operations to determine whether agency practices are consistent with the policies set forth in section 1 of this order. In conducting this review, the Chief FOIA Officer shall:

(i) evaluate, with reference to numerical and statistical benchmarks where appropriate, the agency's administration of the FOIA, including the agency's expenditure of resources on FOIA compliance and the extent to which, if any, requests for records have not been responded to within the statutory time limit (backlog);

(ii) review the processes and practices by which the agency assists and informs the public regarding the FOIA process;

(iii) examine the agency's:

(A) use of information technology in responding to FOIA requests, including without limitation the tracking of FOIA requests and communication with requesters;

(B) practices with respect to requests for expedited processing; and

(C) implementation of multi-track processing if used by such agency;

(iv) review the agency's policies and practices relating to the availability of public information through websites and other means, including the use of websites to make available the records described in section 552(a)(2) of title 5, United States Code; and

(v) identify ways to eliminate or reduce its FOIA backlog, consistent with available resources and taking into consideration the volume and complexity of the FOIA requests pending with the agency.

(b) Plan.

(i) Each agency's Chief FOIA Officer shall develop, in consultation as appropriate with the staff of the agency (including the FOIA Public Liaisons), the Attorney General, and the OMB Director, an agency-specific plan to ensurethat the agency's administration of the FOIA is in accordance with applicable law and the policies set forth in section 1 of this order. The plan, which shall be submitted to the head of the agency for approval, shall address the agency's implementation of the FOIA during fiscal years 2006 and 2007.

(ii) The plan shall include specific activities that the agency will implement to eliminate or reduce the agency's FOIA backlog, including (as applicable) changes that will make the processing of FOIA requests more streamlined and effective, as well as increased reliance on the dissemination of records that can be made available to the public through a website or other means that do not require the public to make a request for the records under the FOIA.

(iii) The plan shall also include activities to increase public awareness of FOIA processing, including as appropriate, expanded use of the agency's Center and its FOIA Public Liaisons.

(iv) The plan shall also include, taking appropriate account of the resources available to the agency and the mission of the agency, concrete milestones, with specific timetables and outcomes to be achieved, by which the head of the agency, after consultation with the OMB Director, shall measure and evaluate the agency's success in the implementation of the plan.

(c) Agency Reports to the Attorney General and OMB Director.

(i) The head of each agency shall submit a report, no later than 6 months from the date of this order, to the Attorney General and the OMB Director that summarizes the results of the review under section 3(a) of this order and encloses a copy of the agency's plan under section 3(b) of this order. The agency shall publish a copy of the agency's report on the agency's website or, in the case of an agency without a website, on the Firstgov.gov website, or, in the case of any agency with neither a website nor the capability to publish on the Firstgov.gov website, in the Federal Register.

(ii) The head of each agency shall include in the agency's annual FOIA reports for fiscal years 2006 and 2007 a report on the agency's development and implementation of its plan under section 3(b) of this order and on the agency's performance in meeting the milestones set forth in that plan, consistent with any related guidelines the Attorney General may issue under section 552(e) of title 5, United States Code.

(iii) If the agency does not meet a milestone in its plan, the head of the agency shall:

(A) identify this deficiency in the annual FOIA report to the Attorney General;

(B) explain in the annual report the reasons for the agency's failure to meet the milestone;

(C) outline in the annual report the steps that the agency has already taken, and will be taking, to address the deficiency; and

(D) report this deficiency to the President's Management Council.

Sec. 4. Attorney General.

(a) Report. The Attorney General, using the reports submitted by the agencies under subsection 3(c)(i) of this order and the information submitted by agencies in their annual FOIA reports for fiscal year 2005, shall submit to the President, no later than 10 months from the date of this order, a report on agency FOIA implementation. The Attorney General shall consult the OMB Director in the preparation of the report and shall include in the report appropriate recommendations on administrative or other agency actions for continued agency dissemination and release of public information. The Attorney General shall thereafter submit two further annual reports, by June 1, 2007, and June 1, 2008, that provide the President with an update on the agencies' implementation of the FOIA and of their plans under section 3(b) of this order.

(b) Guidance. The Attorney General shall issue such instructions and guidance to the heads of departments and agencies as may be appropriate to implement sections 3(b) and 3(c) of this order.

Sec. 5. OMB Director. The OMB Director may issue such instructions to the heads of agencies as are necessary to implement this order, other than sections 3(b) and 3(c) of this order.

Sec. 6. Definitions. As used in this order:

(a) the term "agency" has the same meaning as the term "agency" under section 552(f)(1) of title 5, United States Code; and

(b) the term "record" has the same meaning as the term "record" under section 552(f)(2) of title 5, United States Code.

Sec. 7. General Provisions.

(a) The agency reviews under section 3(a) of this order and agency plans under section 3(b) of this order shall be conducted and developed in accordance with applicable law and applicable guidance issued by the President, the Attorney General, and the OMB Director, including the laws and guidance regarding information technology and the dissemination of information.

(b) This order:

(i) shall be implemented in a manner consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations;

(ii) shall not be construed to impair or otherwise affect the functions of the OMB Director relating to budget, legislative, or administrative proposals; and

(iii) is intended only to improve the internal management of the executive branch and is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE,

December 14, 2005.

Posted by lois at 09:27 PM | Comments (0)

Is the Meth "Epidemic" Real

House OKs Meth Bill; Measure Includes Treatment Component
12/16/2005
Special Report: The Federal Response to Methamphetamine
By Bob Curley
Part One of Two
A measure passed by the U.S. House of Representatives as part of the renewal of the Patriot Act would tighten controls on chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine, toughen penalties on traffickers, and authorizes funding for drug courts and treatment for pregnant and parenting women.

The "Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005" represents the marriage of a bill proposed by Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and another cosponsored by Sens. Jim Talent (R-Mo.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). If approved by the Senate, the measure would require drugs containing pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and phenylpropanolamine -- including well-known cold medicines like Sudafed -- to be stored behind pharmacy counters and would require buyers to show ID and sign a logbook.

Daily purchase limits also would be imposed. The bill would mandate these steps for states that have not previously passed their own anti-meth legislation, but would not supersede tougher state laws.
"The heart of this legislation is a strong standard for keeping pseudoephedrine products out of the hands of meth cooks," said Feinstein. "We know this approach works -- in Oklahoma there was an immediate 80 percent drop in meth labs seized. It is a good, tough bill that strikes the right balance and will give law enforcement the tools they need to confront the epidemic."
The measure also authorizes the Justice Department to award up to $20 million annually in grants to aid children who are exposed to methamphetamine at home, as well as an unspecified sum of money for addiction treatment grants targeting pregnant and parenting female meth users involved in the criminal-justice system.
An additional $70 million is authorized for drug courts that conduct drug testing of offenders and use graduated sanctions for those who fail drug tests; also included in the bill is a call for a study on the feasibility of using drug courts for drug offenders in the federal system. Law-enforcement agencies in meth "hot spots" would receive $99 million annually for investigating meth trafficking and cleaning up meth labs.

"This bill was originally full of draconian mandatory minimums and contained no money for drug treatment, but after an exhausting fight, the mandatory minimums were killed and money for drug treatment was added," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance.

Andrew Kessler, director of government relations for NAADAC: the Association for Addiction Counselors -- which endorsed the bill -- praised Souder and other legislative sponsors for "giving law enforcement a fighting chance to do their job fighting methamphetamine." But he also called for Congress, which has dozens of other meth-related bills currently under consideration, to support more meth treatment and prevention. "The [Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act] has a law-enforcement slant, and although that's an important part of the puzzle, we'd like to see other legislation follow," Kessler said.

Piper was critical of a provision that adds up to 20 years in prison for selling or making methamphetamine in a home where a child resides, and said that restricting the sale of cold medicines "won't reduce the availability of methamphetamine or the harms associated with methamphetamine abuse." Some local law-enforcement officials, for example, have reported an increase in imported meth from Mexican "superlabs" after crackdowns on locally available drug ingredients shut down smalltime meth labs in their communities.

Supporters of the meth legislation attached the measure to the House and Senate versions of the Patriot Act to ensure action during this session of Congress. The renewal of the Patriot Act -- considered a "must-pass" bill -- was approved by the House but is running into trouble in the Senate, with some Senators opposing provisions allowing roving wiretaps and government access to private medical records and information on library activity.
The meth legislation received strong support in both houses of Congress despite initial opposition from the pharmaceutical industry, which raised concerns about restricting over-the-counter sales of popular cold medications.

In Part Two: Is the Meth 'Epidemic' Real?
We ask researchers, policy advocates and government officials
December 20, 2005

Is the Meth 'Epidemic' Real?
Special Report: The Federal Response to Methamphetamine
By Bob Curley
Part Two of Two

Politicians from states hard-hit by methamphetamine abuse -- notably Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) -- have called meth use a national 'epidemic' that demands more attention from the federal government. The Indiana conservative has been harshly critical of the Bush administration for failing to focus adequate attention and resources on meth, calling the Office of National Drug Control Policy's (ONDCP) approach to meth "pathetic" and demanding the resignation of agency staff members.

Souder's anger was piqued by the Bush administration's FY2006 budget plan, which proposed cutting funding for local anti-drug task forces. Lawmakers from states heavily impacted by meth use were also taken aback by statements from federal drug officials, who insisted earlier this year that meth was more of a regional problem than a national epidemic. Deputy drug czar Scott Burns was excoriated by lawmakers in July for saying that police in the Northeast would "laugh if we told them there was a meth epidemic" because their primary drug of concern is heroin.
In July, a National Association of Counties survey of law-enforcement agencies found that a solid majority considered meth their biggest problem. "Methamphetamine is the worst drug I've encountered in my nearly 20 years in public life," said Rep. Jim Talent (R-Mo.) as he recently joined drug czar John Walters in unveiling a new public-service campaign focusing on meth. Souder has called meth "the most dangerous drug in America," while Rep. Tom Osborne (R-Neb.) called the drug "the biggest threat to the United States, maybe even including al-Qaida."

At the PSA unveiling in November, Walters said, "The methamphetamine challenge has touched communities across this Nation differently, but its devastating consequences are borne by all Americans." A Nov. 14 ONDCP press release noted that, "Once a threat largely in the Southwest, use and production of methamphetamine has moved steadily eastward, with especially severe impact on the Midwest, Northwest, and portions of the South."

But does all of that make make for a meth 'epidemic'? At the same press conference, ONDCP also stressed that overall meth use in the U.S. is declining, a contention echoed in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's 2004 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). The annual survey found that less than one percent of Americans -- about 583,000 people -- were current users of meth, while 4.9 percent of survey respondents said they had tried the drug at least once.

"You can clearly see that we do not have something that is growing," a SAMHSA source familiar with the report findings told Join Together, adding that while meth is dangerous and driving up demand for treatment services in some states, "the number of people using meth is not as large as the number of people using other drugs." For example, the NSDUH noted, 5.6 million Americans used cocaine last year, and about 2.2 million used inhalants.
Overall, meth-use numbers are much closer to heroin prevalence, the survey said; about 398,000 Americans were current users of heroin in 2004, according to SAMHSA.

"When you look at the data, meth use has either fallen or remained steady over the last three years. Also, most people who use meth never develop any problems," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. "The flattening (or decreasing) of meth-use rates, combined with the fact that only a fraction of meth users are threats to themselves or others, suggests that we don't have the kind of crisis that requires radical steps, like violating people's civil liberties or increasing sentences for nonviolent drug offenses."
But Andrew Kessler, director of government relations for NAADAC: The Association for Addiction Counselors, told Join Together that "NAADAC believes there is a methamphetamine epidemic in the U.S., and it's getting out of control," pointing to statistics showing that seizures of meth labs have increased in most states over the past few years.

Kessler said that not only are counselors treating more methamphetamine addicts, programs are being challenged by a drug that is "far more addictive than most of the other drugs they deal with." At least 90 percent of meth clients relapse, he said, and the drug causes brain damage that requires an extended recovery period even after meth use is discontinued.

"Yes, there really is an epidemic of meth," said epidemiologist Raul Caetano, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. "For one reason or another that we do not understand very well, it has spread and is affecting a lot of rural areas. Maybe growth has to do with easiness of preparation of the drug, which can be made from medication sold over the counter and thus without any control."

"The numbers don't suggest an 'epidemic' in the sense that we usually use that word, but the impact of meth use has been enormous," added James Copple, formerly the head of Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America and currently a senior policy analyst for the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.
Copple, who in recent years has run 16 separate summit meetings on meth for state policymakers, as well as a pair of governor's conferences, said that methamphetamine has wrought economic and environmental damage far out of proportion to the raw number of drug users. He chided the Bush administration for continuing to minimize the scope of the drug problem, saying that ONDCP should be spending less money and effort on marijuana and more on meth.

"Marijuana has negligible mortality and morbidity compared to methamphetamine," Copple said. "My position is that methamphetamine is our number-one drug problem."
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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.
Join Together is a project of the Boston University School of Public Health. This information may be freely reproduced and distributed, provided that attribution is made to Join Together Online (www.jointogether.org). (Mail ID: 379229)

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

CA: Alternatives to Youth Prisons Designed

Alternatives to youth prisons designed
Wednesday, December 21, 2005, Davis Enterprise
By Sharon Stello/Enterprise staff writer

For their final project, UC Davis landscaping students designed a rehabilitation center as an alternative to the state's troubled youth prison system.
The class of 130 students was tasked with working individually or in groups to design a small rehabilitation center, hypothetically located on the farmland previously proposed for Covell Village.

The course, Landscape Meaning, provides an overview of natural and planned landscapes as well as an introduction to landscape architecture and design methods. The final assignment is a design project. In past years, students have created plans for the Mace Ranch neighborhood and the UCD Center for Child and Family Studies.
This year, lecturer Jocelyn Zanzot wanted students to design a proposed cohousing site within Covell Village, but then voters rejected the development at the polls in November.

So, she switched gears. She received an e-mail from Architects, Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility in Berkeley calling for ideas to redesign the state's juvenile correction facilities. Interested in the issue, she attended a conference in Sacramento sponsored by nonprofit groups pushing for change in the system.

Zanzot learned about problems in the Division of Juvenile Justice - formerly called the California Youth Authority. The division, in the newly formed Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, is undergoing reorganization as required by a court agreement and the Legislature after criticism of conditions at the youth prisons.

Last year, four wards died in these facilities. Recidivism has reached a rate of 90 percent. An atmosphere of intimidation, fear and violence pervades. And solitary confinement is used all too often.

The state Office of the Inspector General reported in January 2005 that some wards are confined to cells 23 hours per day with little access to education and counseling services.

“It's a despicable system. “The system is just not working,” Zanzot said.

In some ways, she said, the current system's failure is an architecture problem.

“You can't take care of people in a warehouse,” she said.

Reform plans call for an emphasis on smaller living units and treatment options for youth offenders. Older prisons built to house large populations would be replaced by new buildings.

But critics say the proposal recently submitted by the governor's administration doesn't go far enough to transform the system and takes too long to make changes. Some favor dismantling the system altogether in favor of establishing small, community-based rehabilitation centers. A few states, including Missouri and Texas, have done just that with great success, Zanzot says.

At UCD, Zanzot asked her students to develop designs for these types of centers, with the hope that California might opt for such an alternative system. And why not, she said, create the conceptual design on a Davis site?

The students created several different designs with similar elements. They incorporated living and dining areas, classrooms, libraries, security and space for recreation and gardening, which can be therapeutic for incarcerated youth. Some also proposed a transitional living apartment and other innovative ideas.

“A variety of issues such as overcrowding of wards, deteriorating buildings and dehumanizing environments have created strife for the staff and the wards in the correction system,” wrote students Josh Schwartz, Laura Potolsky, Zohreh Golshani and Brendan Ehlermann in their project. “ California juvenile rehabilitation centers need to be redesigned to ensure the success of our youths re-entering the community as balanced, healthy and contributing members.”

The project was a class assignment, but Zanzot hopes it goes further. She encouraged students to forward their designs to the governor and other political leaders working on the issue. Perhaps, she said, if the state decides to pursue this alternative approach, Davis could be the first city to house such a facility.

“If we're going to need these, we as citizens of Davis should make space for it,” Zanzot said. “It needs to find a home somewhere. Š We want to contribute to a new model.”

Zanzot said this is just the type of problem that a university should tackle. Perhaps the students' ideas will lead the state to take a bold new approach that would make California's system a model for others.

“I wanted to show the students that you can make contributions and change through design work,” Zanzot said.
- http://www.davisenterprise.com/articles/2005/12/21/news/010new2.txt

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Posted by lois at 09:17 PM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2005

FBI Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show

December 20, 2005
F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show
By ERIC LICHTBLAU, NY Times
WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show.

F.B.I. officials said Monday that their investigators had no interest in monitoring political or social activities and that any investigations that touched on advocacy groups were driven by evidence of criminal or violent activity at public protests and in other settings.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.

But the documents, coming after the Bush administration's confirmation that President Bush had authorized some spying without warrants in fighting terrorism, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest.

One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The documents, provided to The New York Times over the past week, came as part of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. For more than a year, the A.C.L.U. has been seeking access to information in F.B.I. files on about 150 protest and social groups that it says may have been improperly monitored.

The F.B.I. had previously turned over a small number of documents on antiwar groups, showing the agency's interest in investigating possible anarchist or violent links in connection with antiwar protests and demonstrations in advance of the 2004 political conventions. And earlier this month, the A.C.L.U.'s Colorado chapter released similar documents involving, among other things, people protesting logging practices at a lumber industry gathering in 2002.

The latest batch of documents, parts of which the A.C.L.U. plans to release publicly on Tuesday, totals more than 2,300 pages and centers on references in internal files to a handful of groups, including PETA, the environmental group Greenpeace and the Catholic Workers group, which promotes antipoverty efforts and social causes.

Many of the investigative documents turned over by the bureau are heavily edited, making it difficult or impossible to determine the full context of the references and why the F.B.I. may have been discussing events like a PETA protest. F.B.I. officials say many of the references may be much more benign than they seem to civil rights advocates, adding that the documents offer an incomplete and sometimes misleading snapshot of the bureau's activities.

"Just being referenced in an F.B.I. file is not tantamount to being the subject of an investigation," said John Miller, a spokesman for the bureau.

"The F.B.I. does not target individuals or organizations for investigation based on their political beliefs," Mr. Miller said. "Everything we do is carefully promulgated by federal law, Justice Department guidelines and the F.B.I.'s own rules."

A.C.L.U officials said the latest batch of documents released by the F.B.I. indicated the agency's interest in a broader array of activist and protest groups than they had previously thought. In light of other recent disclosures about domestic surveillance activities by the National Security Agency and military intelligence units, the A.C.L.U. said the documents reflected a pattern of overreaching by the Bush administration.

"It's clear that this administration has engaged every possible agency, from the Pentagon to N.S.A. to the F.B.I., to engage in spying on Americans," said Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the A.C.L.U.

"You look at these documents," Ms. Beeson said, "and you think, wow, we have really returned to the days of J. Edgar Hoover, when you see in F.B.I. files that they're talking about a group like the Catholic Workers league as having a communist ideology."

The documents indicate that in some cases, the F.B.I. has used employees, interns and other confidential informants within groups like PETA and Greenpeace to develop leads on potential criminal activity and has downloaded material from the groups' Web sites, in addition to monitoring their protests.

In the case of Greenpeace, which is known for highly publicized acts of civil disobedience like the boarding of cargo ships to unfurl protest banners, the files indicate that the F.B.I. investigated possible financial ties between its members and militant groups like the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front.

These networks, which have no declared leaders and are only loosely organized, have been described by the F.B.I. in Congressional testimony as "extremist special interest groups" whose cells engage in violent or other illegal acts, making them "a serious domestic terrorist threat."

In testimony last year, John E. Lewis, deputy assistant director of the counterterrorism division, said the F.B.I. estimated that in the past 10 years such groups had engaged in more than 1,000 criminal acts causing more than $100 million in damage.

When the F.B.I. investigates evidence of possible violence or criminal disruptions at protests and other events, those investigations are routinely handled by agents within the bureau's counterterrorism division.

But the groups mentioned in the newly disclosed F.B.I. files questioned both the propriety of characterizing such investigations as related to "terrorism" and the necessity of diverting counterterrorism personnel from more pressing investigations.

"The fact that we're even mentioned in the F.B.I. files in connection with terrorism is really troubling," said Tom Wetterer, general counsel for Greenpeace. "There's no property damage or physical injury caused in our activities, and under any definition of terrorism, we'd take issue with that."

Jeff Kerr, general counsel for PETA, rejected the suggestion in some F.B.I. files that the animal rights group had financial ties to militant groups, and said he, too, was troubled by his group's inclusion in the files.

"It's shocking and it's outrageous," Mr. Kerr said. "And to me, it's an abuse of power by the F.B.I. when groups like Greenpeace and PETA are basically being punished for their social activism."

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

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

MA: Chain Gang Sherriff Goes Green

12/20/2005
Prison goes green
Gregg M. Miliote , Herald News Staff Reporter

DARTMOUTH -- Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson is seeking to cut electricity costs at the Bristol County House of Correction and help the environment by entering into a Power Purchase Agreement to buy three wind turbines.
Hodgson recently entered into the agreement with McKenzie Bay International’s WindStor Power Co.

Upon local, state and federal approval, the county will purchase electricity generated by WindStor at a fixed rate for the next 15 years.

Company officials say the environmentally friendly renewable energy source will provide massive savings to county taxpayers who foot the bill for the sprawling facility’s electricity.

WindStor, according to Hodgson, will build, operate and maintain the wind turbines at no expense to the county.

Hodgson estimated the switch to wind-powered electricity at the count jail will save the county at least $100,000 per year while also helping to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The current cost of energy at the facility is about $300,000 per year, meaning the installation of wind turbines could reduce costs by 33 percent annually.

The veteran sheriff called the wind turbines a "perfect solution," adding that he is gratified to know he will be the first sheriff in the Bay State to use wind generation technology.

"The biggest advantage is there is no upfront cost to the taxpayer," Hodgson said. "But this is also clean energy. So both taxpayers and the environment win."

Hodgson also said he hopes his use of alternative energy will start a trend in Massachusetts for prisons and other large facilities like schools.

If the project receives all necessary approvals, Hodgson said, the turbines should be up and running by May or June 2006.

The turbines, Hodgson said, make very little noise and are shaped like giant 162-foot whisks.

They will be placed in an area of open space on a hill adjacent to the prison.

Officials with WindStor Power Co. said they are excited to prove the worthiness of their product.

"We are very pleased that our first Massachusetts agreement is an opportunity to showcase the benefits of buying WindStor-generated electricity to urban commercial, industrial and governmental ratepayers," said McKenzie Bay President Gary L. Westerholm. "WindStor was designed for operation in very harsh environments, easily exceeding all requirements for safe operations in urban environments."

©The Herald News 2005

Posted by lois at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

December 19, 2005

Now--"meth"prisons"

Special Reports
Legislative Special Session
December 19, 2005
State seeks solutions to meth problem

By ED KEMMICK
Of The Gazette Staff, Billings Montana

As early as next fall, the state Department of Corrections is hoping to become a big player in the treatment of methamphetamine addiction. Not everyone is convinced that is a good thing, but department Director Bill Slaughter sees it as something that needs to be done.

The state is asking private contractors to submit proposals by Jan. 10 to build a lockdown meth treatment center, with 80 beds for men and 40 for women. Among those preparing a proposal is David Armstrong, administrator of Alternatives Inc., a prerelease center in downtown Billings.

He's hoping to house the 40 female meth offenders in a building that would also house an expanded number of prerelease offenders in Billings. The state's request for proposals allows contractors to design separate centers for men and women.

With meth being involved in the crimes of more than half the women in prison in Montana, and in something like 35 percent of the cases involving male prisoners, 120 beds seems like a bare minimum, Slaughter said.

"What we're trying to avoid there is simply piling people up in prison just because a community program was not available to them," he said.

He said the department wants to treat meth addiction in hopes of getting offenders out of the cycle of committing crimes and going to prison over and over. Treatment is more expensive than incarceration, he said, but it will result in a huge savings if people are steered into law-abiding lives. People sentenced to the meth treatment center would also go for nine months, much less than some standard prison sentences.

The 2005 Legislature authorized a 40-bed meth-treatment prison, but before the plan was put out for proposals, the Department of Corrections tripled its size, using money allocated for regional prisons and counties that hold state inmates in county jails while they await an opening in a state prison. Mona Sumner, chief operations officer of the Rimrock Foundation, an addiction-treatment provider in Billings, is critical of the plan. In general terms, she said, the state would be better off spending money on treatment programs administered by agencies and contractors with proven records, not giving the money to contractors whose expertise is in corrections.

People are treated most effectively if they can be diverted into treatment before they're sent to prison, she said.

"If we don't do that, we will not incarcerate our way out of our drug addiction problem," she said. "We're putting our money in the wrong end of the funnel. It's a no-brainer, except nobody's talking about it." Sumner also objected to Corrections' plan to use the "therapeutic community" model - what she called "the latest, one-size-fits-all model" - at the meth prison. It involves a round-the-clock regimen that emphasizes the inmate's responsibility to his treatment family.

That form of treatment can be effective for certain types of people, particularly those who are extremely anti-social, Sumner said, but that is a specific diagnosis that does not apply to most meth addicts. In the case of female addicts it is even less applicable, she said.

Sumner said the basis for any successful treatment is establishing trust between counselors and clients. In a prison program, it is difficult to build trust because the patients will be afraid that information they divulge will be used against them, she said.

"A punitive setting doesn't promote a therapeutic setting," Sumner said. "They think that by hiring someone who's a licensed addictions counselor, that somehow makes a program."

Slaughter said you could talk to addictions counselors all across the country and you wouldn't hear a consensus on what is the most effective form or treatment, but the therapeutic community model is highly regarded. And it has already worked at the state hospital in Warm Springs, where a program based on that model has been treating alcoholics since 2000.

Warm Springs Addiction Treatment and Change was set up to treat and supervise offenders after their fourth and subsequent DUI felonies. The 140-bed facility offers a six-month program. When it opened, Slaughter said, the department would have been happy if 50 percent of the offenders successfully completed the program.

"We're 72 percent successful," he said. "I'm sorry, Mona. We ought to have a parade."

A new state law will allow judges to sentence people convicted of their second and subsequent meth-related felonies to the new treatment prison. Because of the nature of meth addiction, the program was expanded to nine months, rather than the six months at Warm Springs.

Slaughter said the therapeutic community model relies on a lot of peer pressure, forcing inmates to live in a family-like setting and deal with details of family life. But exactly how the program is run is open to adjustment, he said, and the department is willing to consider whatever works. Again, though, he said, the department is impressed with how well it has worked with DUI offenders.

"It's been very successful in a very tough population," he said. Sumner said Rimrock is not submitting a proposal for the meth treatment prison because it doesn't want to be forced to use the state's preferred treatment method. She said it was also clear to her, after speaking with Corrections officials, that their intention all along was to contract with agencies like Alternatives Inc., with which it already has a relationship. "Do you ever talk to someone who you know doesn't want you? That's what this was," she said. Her biggest concern is that the Legislature, having spent so much money on treatment through the Department of Corrections, will think it has done enough, ignoring the needs of other addiction-treatment programs. Slaughter said he would still like to work with the Rimrock Foundation and similar entities. A request for proposals is by its nature an invitation to talk about various possibilities, he said, and the state would like to hear Rimrock's ideas.

"The more people that answer our RFP, even if they just want to come in and discuss how we want to do this, the better," he said.

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.phpid=1&display=rednews/2005/12/19/build/state/25-meth.inc

Posted by lois at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

Groups Speak Out Against ICE Initiative Operation: Community Shield

For Immediate Release: December 19, 2005
Contact: Rocio Santa Cruz, Homies Unidos (213) 383-7484
Paromita Shah, National Immigration Project (617) 227-9727 ext. 1

Groups Speak Out against ICE Initiative Operation
Community Shield and Similar Programs

When: Tuesday December 20, 2005

Location: outside LAPD Headquarters, Parker Center, 150 N. Los Angeles St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
Time: 10:00 a.m.

On December 20, 2005, in honor of International Migrants Day, several immigrant community organizations and legal service organizations across the country will speak out against a series of law enforcement actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that target alleged gang members.

Despite the drastic drop in crime related to gang violence, the gang problem has been portrayed as a national crisis. No one disputes the need to respond to violent crime. However, overbroad dragnet enforcement policies that do not respect the interests of communities, families, and refugees are ineffective, unjust, and violate human rights.

Operation Community Shield, a joint venture between local and state police and ICE, has resulted in the apprehension and deportation of 1,600 alleged gang members. These numbers don’t include local ICE dragnet actions, like Operation Mission Possible, a joint action by ICE and the San Francisco Police Department. Many of these individuals were deported within days of their arrest, foreclosing any meaningful assessment as to their eligibility for relief from deportation. We have examples of individuals being targeted who do not fit the profile of a “violent gang member.” Some have been rehabilitated and engage in gang rehabilitation work, others are lawful permanent residents with extensive ties to family in the U.S., and others are fleeing violence in their home countries. Gang violence is a community problem. Making deportation and detention leading strategies to combat gang violence will not end it.

Speakers from legal and community organizations will speak about the impact of these policies on our clients, our youth, and their families. Growing collaboration between local law enforcement and ICE has a detrimental effect on community policing and public safety. We demand information from our local police about their involvement in Operation Community Shield and similar programs.

A press kit with stories of individuals affected by these dragnet policies will be provided. See below for more information on the actions taking place in Washington, D.C. San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Florence, Arizona.

CITY ACTIONS:
Los Angeles Contact: Rocio Santa Cruz (213) 383-7484
Location: outside LAPD Headquarters, Parker Center, 150 N. Los Angeles St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
Time: 10:00 a.m. PST
Homies Unidos, Sin Fronteras, Raza Graduate Student Association; Institute for Policy Studies fellow; and two family members affected by Operation Community Shield, Homeboy Industries, Salvadoran American Leadership and Education Fund (SALEF), Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, ADELANTE, Los Amigos of Orange County, National Immigration Law Center

San Francisco Contact: Angela Junck (415) 255-9499 ext. 586
Location: Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), 1663 Mission Street, Suite 602m, San Francisco, CA 94103
Time: 1:00 p.m. PST
Speakers: Angie Junck (ILRC); Wilbert Anibal Castillo, an asylum seeker affected by Community Shield; Karl Krooth, chair of National Lawyers Guild Bay Area Immigration Committee and immigration attorney representing Wilbert Anibal Castillo; Ilyce Shugall (Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale); Gabriel Morera, former District Safety Coordinator for the San Francisco Neighborhood Safety Partnership (invited)

Washington, D.C. Contact: Paromita Shah (617) 227-9727 ext. 1
Location: Pigeon Park, Corner of 16th Street NW and Harvard Avenue, Washington, DC Time: 10:00 a.m. EST
Speakers: Paromita Shah (National Immigration Project); Juan Pacheco (Barrios Unidos); Christina Wilkes (AYUDA, Inc.) and her client; Brittney Nystrom (CAIR Coalition); Valerie Burch (Pennsylvania Immigrant Resource Center) (invited); Andrea Black (Detention Watch Network)

Florence, Arizona Contact: Holly Cooper (520) 868-0191 ext.102
Location: Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, 300 S. Main Street, Florence, AZ 85232
Time: TBA PST
Speakers: Holly Cooper and staff of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project

Posted by lois at 09:23 PM | Comments (0)

North Carolina City Confronts Its Past in Report on White Vigilantes

December 19, 2005
North Carolina City Confronts Its Past in Report on White Vigilantes
By JOHN DeSANTIS
WILMINGTON, N.C., Dec. 18 - Beneath canopies of moss-draped oaks, on sleepy streets graced by antebellum mansions, tour guides here spin stories of Cape Fear pirates and Civil War blockade-runners for eager tourists.

Only scant mention is made, however, of the bloody rioting more than a century ago during which black residents were killed and survivors banished by white supremacists, who seized control of the city government in what historians say is the only successful overthrow of a local government in United States history.

But last week, Wilmington revisited that painful history with the release of a draft of a 500-page report ordered by the state legislature that not only tells the story of the Nov. 10, 1898, upheaval, but also presents an analysis of its effects on black families that persist to this day.

Culled from newspaper clippings, government records, historical archives and interviews, some previously unexplored, the report explodes oft-repeated local claims that the insurrection was a frantic response to a corrupt and ineffective post-Reconstruction government.

"The ultimate goal was the resurgence of white rule of the city and state for a handful of men through whatever means necessary," the historian LeRae Umfleet wrote in the report's introduction.

The report concludes that the rioting and coup fully ended black participation in local government until the civil rights era, and was a catalyst for the development of Jim Crow laws in North Carolina.

"Because Wilmington rioters were able to murder blacks in daylight and overthrow Republican government without penalty or federal intervention, everyone in the state, regardless of race, knew that the white supremacy campaign was victorious on all fronts," the report said.

In the period immediately after the Civil War, the Democratic Party-ruled government in Wilmington, which was then North Carolina's largest city, was displaced by a coalition that was largely Republican and included many blacks. The loss of power stirred dissatisfaction among a faction of white civic leaders and business owners.

The tensions came to a head on Election Day, Nov. 9, 1898, when the Democrats regained power, according to historians largely by stuffing ballot boxes and intimidating black voters to keep them from the polls. Not waiting for an orderly transition of government, a group of white vigilantes demanded that power be handed over immediately. When they were rebuffed, in the words of the report, "Hell jolted loose."

The mob - which the report said grew to as many as 2,000 - forced black leaders out of town, dismantled the printing press of a black-owned newspaper, The Daily Record, fired into the homes of blacks and shot down black men in the streets.

Estimates of the number of black deaths are as high as 100, state officials said, although they add that there is no way of truly knowing.

"No official count of dead can be ascertained due to a paucity of records from the coroner's office, hospital, or churches," the report said.

Black women and children fled to swamps on the city's outskirts made frigid by November's chill. There are accounts of pregnant women giving birth in the swamps, the babies dying soon after.

No white deaths were verified.

Five years ago, members of the North Carolina General Assembly commissioned a report on the incident that they said would be made part of the state's official record. The final report is to be presented to lawmakers next year.

The release of the draft report - and its painful conclusions - have been politely, if uncomfortably, received in this city.

"I spend a lot of time looking forward and not a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror," said Mayor Spence Broadhurst. "But we can use our history to grow on. It was a horrible situation in 1898, and this is 2005. But I think it is good for us to talk about it and to fully understand it."

Styled after similar efforts to document racial atrocities in Rosewood, Fla., and in Tulsa, Okla., the report begins with a thorough account of Wilmington's status as the Confederacy's premier port, and the complex structure of its black society, which included slaves as well as a sizable population of free black craftsmen before Emancipation. Rifts between black tradesmen and white Democrats in the years after Reconstruction are chronicled, along with the growth of black society in prominence and power. In 1897, a year before the race riot, black residents numbered 3,478 or 49 percent of Wilmington's working population, according to a directory for that year. By 1900 that number had fallen to 2,497, or 44 percent, according to data in the report.

According to the 2000 census, Wilmington had a population of 76,000, and nearly 71 percent of its residents were white and 26 percent were black.

Federal and state authorities did nothing in response to the racial rioting in Wilmington, and according to the report, the revolt became a model of sorts when violence later erupted in other cities.

A 1906 upheaval in Atlanta, the report said, "suggests that the lack of governmental response to the violence in Wilmington gave Southerners implicit license to suppress the black community under the right circumstances."

In the years after the Wilmington rebellion, blacks and whites alike tended not to speak of it.

"I did not even know it happened until I was a grandmother," said Lottie Clinton, 68, a lifelong resident of Wilmington who is black and a member of the Riot Commission. "My family thought the more positive things I learned, the better off I would be."

Another commission member, Anthony Gentile, a Wilmington contractor who is white, said he had questions initially about whether the report should have been done at all.

"We didn't want to keep open wounds open," Mr. Gentile said. "There were a lot of emotions, and there was a lot of animosity. I was not in favor of doing it."

He continued, "Everyone made mistakes 100 years ago, let's deal with today."

But, he said, "My opinion changed, and I was surprised to learn the depth of feeling that existed and that it was not that long ago."

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

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

Northampton, MA: Lawyer who fought legality of drug roadblocks dies in car accident

Dedicated lawyer dies in collision
BY SCOTT MERZBACH STAFF WRITER
GERI LAVENTIS
NORTHAMPTON - Longtime defense attorney Geri Laventis, who six years ago successfully argued a landmark case resulting in the ruling that police roadblocks to catch drug dealers are unconstitutional, was killed late Saturday night in a three-car accident.
Laventis, 58, of 31 Gregory Lane, Florence, was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident, on South Street near Lyman Road, Saturday at 11:23 p.m., police said.

Laventis, who practiced law from an office in Holyoke, was described by colleagues as a zealous advocate for the rights of the accused, a fierce defender of the Constitution, and a woman of great integrity both in and out of the courtroom.

'She was a dedicated fighter for her clients; she worked very hard and cared very much for defendants' rights,' Northampton attorney Colleen Currie said this morning. 'She worked very hard to do the best for her clients in difficult situations.'

Stella Xanthakos, another city attorney, described Laventis as an 'extraordinary advocate' this morning.
'She gave her heart and soul to her clients,' said Xanthakos. 'She never ceased finding ways to help people, always finding the good in people.'

She said she had known Laventis for 20 years, both as a professional and as a city resident.'She had such a love of life and lived it with such integrity, compassion, and passion in life and in the courtroom,' said Xanthakos.

The accident
Laventis was driving a 1996 Honda Accord north on South Street when it collided head on with a 1997 Ford pickup truck, driven by Jacob Liptak, 23, of Westfield, that had crossed the center line as it was negotiating a turn while traveling south near Lyman Road, police said.
Liptak's truck then collided with a 2002 Chevrolet Cavalier driven by Amanda Garlick, no age available, of 80 North St., Whately, that was also heading north on South Street, police said.
Liptak, who had leg and head injuries, and passenger Samantha Serre, 22, also of Westfield, who had knee injuries, were both transported by AMR ambulance to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield.
Serre was listed in fair condition Sunday afternoon; no condition was available for Liptak. There was no further information for either Serre or Liptak available from the hospital this morning.
Garlick was transported by AMR ambulance to Cooley Dickinson Hospital with shoulder, chest, ankle and knee injuries, police said. She was treated and released, according to a hospital spokeswoman.
Police are still investigating whether occupants of all three vehicles were wearing seat belts. Airbags deployed in both the Liptak and Garlick vehicles.
Police said road conditions were not a factor in the collision, and the accident remains under investigation. No citations or charges have been filed.
This morning police said the accident is still under investigation and anyone who witnessed the accident is asked to contact them at 587-1105.
Laventis legacy
Originally from Beverly, on the north shore of Boston, Laventis grew up as the youngest child of parents Constantine and Katherine Laventis, both natives of Greece. During the summer, her father ran a fruit and vegetable stand at an outdoor market in Salem.
Laventis had made her home in Northampton since 1973 and ran her law practice from offices in Holyoke.
In perhaps her most famous case, Laventis in 1999 argued before the state's Supreme Judicial Court in Boston that a roadblock in Holyoke designed to search for drugs should be declared unconstitutional as an illegal search and seizure. Her client, Hector Rodriguez, had been arrested for possession of a small amount of marijuana as a result of such a roadblock in November 1997.
Northampton attorney William Newman, who noted the case that became known as 'drug roadblock' case as her professional legacy, represented the ACLU of Massachusetts in the same case.
'It was a pleasure to work with a dedicated defense lawyer who zealously represented the rights of her client and in doing so helped guarantee the fundamental constitutional rights of all persons in the Commonwealth,' Newman wrote in an email.
Laventis said a favorable decision by the court in the case, which was supported by civil libertarians, would have far-reaching effects on the use of such roadblocks.
'I think it's pretty scary that it gives that much discretion to the police,' Laventis told the Gazette at the time. 'It gives them a tool to harass people - and harass minority people - and all in the name of drug interdiction.'
The court ruled unanimously that checkpoints for drunken drivers are a 'minimal and focused intrusion' on people that are intended to remove a deadly and immediate menace from the road, while the kinds of drug roadblocks that led to her client's arrest are generalized searches to discover evidence of criminal activity, without any probable cause or reasonable suspicion.
Laventis was also successful in 1997 in getting overturned a zero-tolerance drug policy in the Easthampton public schools, and in reinstating a student expelled as a result of this policy.
Laventis represented a 16-year-old student after the student had allegedly smoked marijuana on a class trip to Canada. Citing failure to comply with due process, Laventis said the school had not held a hearing before issuing the suspension, had not given proper notice before the expulsion hearing and had failed to provide copies of witnesses' statements before the expulsion hearing.

A Hampshire Superior Court judge ruled that the mandatory expulsion policy was invalid and that the School Department's zero-tolerance policy contradicted the Education Reform Act of 1993, which leaves the decision to expel students caught with drugs or weapons in the hands of their principal.

Her client was one of five students who eventually reached a cash settlement with the school.
Besides her professional work, Laventis was also active in the city of Northampton, seeking a School Committee seat in 2001 and sponsoring a team in this year's Northampton Adult Spelling Bee, which benefits the Northampton Education Foundation.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.

Posted by lois at 04:54 PM | Comments (0)

In Mn, an Odd Request: Please Don't Fence the Inmates In

December 19, 2005
In Minnesota, an Odd Request: Please Don't Fence the Inmates In
By KATE ZERNIKE
SHAKOPEE, Minn. - In 40 years here, Dennis Hron has never worried about the women living across the street - not even the murderers, the robbers and the kidnappers among them.
What Mr. Hron and other residents are up in arms about now is a plan to wall them off.
The women live in the Minnesota Correctional Facility, separated from the tidy suburban neighborhood that surrounds it by nothing more than a three-foot hedge, pruned to ground stubble in some spots in winter.
State corrections officials, concerned about the rising number of violent women in prison, want to cordon the facility off with a 12-foot fence. They argue that it is the only prison in the country with a maximum-security wing and no perimeter wall.

But residents and city officials say good fences would be wasted on good neighbors.
"They're better neighbors than neighbors," Mr. Hron said, referring to the 496 inmates in the prison, which in December included 79 killers, 5 kidnappers and 17 burglars. "The prison has been part of the community for a long time; a fence will divide that."
Residents of this suburb southwest of Minneapolis apparently did not consider the prison a blemish on the neighborhood when they bought their homes; over the years, most have come to see it as an asset.
Prisoners ran a day care center for a time and enrolled in high school classes by video link. They still play softball on a diamond just across the street from the local elementary school. The prison rents plots to local gardeners and allows neighbors to bicycle and jog on the grounds, despite the No Trespassing signs. People here still recall watching inmates milk cows and raise chickens when the prison kept a farm.
"They're out there every day walking, and there's no trouble," said Gary Hartmann, who has lived on a quiet street behind the prison for 28 years. "We're not concerned about safety issues. There have been a few walkaways, but nothing too violent. I don't see any reason to have a fence."
The warden, Rick Hillengass, counts seven escapes - or walkaways, as even he calls them - in the past 10 years. A young woman serving time for homicide fled to a Smashing Pumpkins concert in Minneapolis, then came back. (Rolling Stone magazine, Mr. Hillengass said, named her Most Dedicated Fan.)
Another made it only to the other side of the street, where she stuck out her thumb and was picked up by an off-duty police officer, who promptly delivered her back to the prison. Others have gotten a few blocks only to encounter the Minnesota River and realize that it is too wide to swim across - and that the only bridge out requires them to walk through downtown Shakopee, where in their prison clothes they would surely be spotted.
Mr. Hron recalled one inmate who changed into some clothes left hanging to dry on someone's back deck. "That's a little scary," he said. "But generally, there hasn't been a problem."
Still, state corrections officials say the neighbors are ignoring a new reality: more women are in prison now, and they are more violent.
While there are still 13 times as many men as there are women in prison, the women's population is growing faster. Nationally, the number of women grew an average of 4.7 percent a year from 1995 to 2004; in Minnesota, the increase was far greater, an average of 10.8 percent a year. The population at Shakopee, the state's only prison for women, has doubled since 1998.
And while nationally men are more likely than women to be in prison for violent crimes, violent offenders accounted for half the growth in female prisoners from 2001 to 2004, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
That is only likely to grow: while the number of men arrested for violent crimes declined 20 percent from 1995 to 2004, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the number of women arrested for such crimes increased by 3 percent.
"We feel good about the fact that we've always had a very good relationship with the community," Mr. Hillengass said. "We're very concerned about trying to keep that. But I think a lot of people in the community think we house only low-level offenders. We don't."
The prison has been here, in different configurations, since the 1920's, and Shakopee has grown up around it: at 32,000 residents, this is one of the fastest-growing Minneapolis suburbs. The prison sits a few blocks from downtown in an established neighborhood of ranch houses, on a plot dotted by crabapple trees and pines, reminders of the farmland this once was.
The prisoners live in brick "cottages," and the grounds include a greenhouse and a large fitness center. Cameras on the perimeter watch the women on their daily outings. The only fence, however, is the backstop behind the softball diamond, which is across the street from the elementary school, a water tower and a cemetery. (The cemetery and the water tower have fences.)
"It's beautiful; it looks like a college campus," said David Hart, who lives across a bike path on the edge of the prison. "You put up a fence and searchlights, and it changes people's perception of what's there."
But the residents say they are concerned about more than property values. The average inmate gets out in six years, and only 12 are serving life sentences.
"We have to think about assimilating them back into society," said Mr. Hron, a former county commissioner. "Now they come out and play ball, they see us cutting our lawns or coming and going, they see what life is like out there, that people are enjoying it. It gives them a good picture, something to aspire to."
Mayor John Schmitt suggested that the fence might actually inspire more walkaways. "If suddenly you're inside a wall, and you can't see your neighbors," Mayor Schmitt said, "it will give you other thoughts. Your natural inclination is to say, 'I want to get outside those walls.' "
The fence would cost $4 million to $6 million. But at a recent meeting, neighbors told the warden that it would be a waste of taxpayer money; they were unimpressed by the statistics on escapes. "Five million for seven people in 10 years?" Mr. Hart said afterward.
In a nod to the community, state prison officials are suggesting that the fence be made of black metal pickets between carved stone or concrete posts - "the kind of fence you might find in a gated community," Mr. Hillengass said - with another fence 20 feet inside for extra protection. Lights would be positioned downward to avoid "the ball-field effect," he said, and there would be no concertina wire.

"If somebody gets out of this facility and causes some serious harm," the warden said, "we would be sitting here in a position of explaining why we hadn't done something about it - why we didn't have a system that tried to keep people inside. As sensitive as we are to the community, we have a public protection responsibility that goes beyond the neighborhood."
Now, visitors often toss drugs in the bushes for inmates, Mr. Hillengass said. And many of the women have come from violent relationships, reflected in restraining orders they have taken out against their partners. "That's an additional reason: to keep people off as well as people on," he said.
Mayor Schmitt remains unconvinced. On a recent tour, he pointed out that the fence would be almost as high as the unobtrusive, one-story prison buildings there now.
"I think it would look very forbidding, certainly not in keeping with a residential neighborhood," he said. "If they want a 12-foot fence, I would encourage them to move to the country."

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/national/19fence.html

Posted by lois at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

December 16, 2005

AL: Jail Tale Much Too Familiar

"At least in theory, the state could build several more prisons and create the space to house all its inmates. That's one way to address the issue, but it surely is not the best way, even if the state could somehow come up with the hundreds of millions of dollars it would take to build and staff a string of new prisons."

December 16, 2005
Editorial, Montgomery Advertiser
Jail tale much too familiar

Talk about a recurring theme. An all too familiar story is playing out once more in Alabama, where the number of state inmates housed in county jails is swelling again as more people are sentenced to time in a system that has no place to put them.

This has been a problem off and on -- mostly on -- for years. Alabama's prison system now has about 27,000 inmates. Its facilities were designed for about half that number.

This results in dangerous overcrowding in the prisons, which creates enormous danger for inmates, prison personnel and, potentially, the public. But the impact doesn't stop there, as the backlog of state inmates in county jails shows.

A court order allows the state to keep individuals sentenced to the custody of the Department of Corrections in county jails for 30 days before moving them to a state facility. That alone is a considerable burden on counties, given that the state compensates -- hardly the word -- the counties at a ridiculous $1.75 per day per inmate. The problem is only exacerbated when inmates remain in county jails for even longer periods, which is common.

The Associated Press reported this week that there were 1,299 inmates in county jails awaiting transfer to state prisons, more than 800 of whom had been in county jails for more than 30 days.

Baldwin County offers the worst example of the problem, with an inmate backlog of 96 prisoners this month, the AP reported. On Dec. 1 -- just that one day -- these inmates cost the county $2,688. At $1.75 per inmate per day, the state's payment to the county for that day comes to $168. That is indefensible.

At the core of the problem is a sentencing structure that simply sends too many people to prison for offenses that do not warrant incarceration. Brian Corbett, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, told the AP that the prison system took in 660 inmates from county jails between Nov. 10 and Dec. 2. However, the net reduction in the inmate backlog was just 28. No digits are missing; the figure is 28.

Under the current arrangement, the problem is intractable. As long as inmates keep flowing in such numbers into an already hazardously overcrowded system, the backlog in the county jails will persist. Counties will continue getting hit with an unfair financial burden.

At least in theory, the state could build several more prisons and create the space to house all its inmates. That's one way to address the issue, but it surely is not the best way, even if the state could somehow come up with the hundreds of millions of dollars it would take to build and staff a string of new prisons.

The far better approach is broad-based sentencing reform that sends to a penitentiary the criminal who needs to be in one, but sends the nonviolent offender to a less costly, community-based alternative to incarceration that allows for meaningful restitution, more effective drug addiction treatment and other beneficial programs that don't work well -- or at all -- in a prison.

That's the wisest longer-term approach, but there is at least one short-term measure that could help alleviate the problem somewhat. For example, not every county jail has a backlog problem as pressing as Baldwin County's. At the start of this month, the AP report noted, seven county jails had no state inmates and several others had only a handful.

Some counties with unused jail space might be willing to hold some state inmates -- if they were reasonably compensated for doing so. Nobody would want to do it at $1.75 a day, but suppose the department could pay something more realistic, something that might actually generate a little net revenue for a county with more jail space than it usually requires. There's certainly precedent for such an arrangement in the department's use of out-of-state private prisons.

The real key, however, lies in sentencing reform. That doesn't mean being soft on crime, but rather smart on crime. Alabama historically has not done that, and our state has paid -- and still pays -- a heavy price for it.
http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051216/OPIN
ION01/512150366/1006

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

Oppose Mandatory Minimums in new Immigration Bill

Act now to oppose mandatory minimums in the new immigration bill

The U.S. House of Representatives is currently debating H.R. 4437, the "Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005." (Click here to watch it live if you have RealPlayer or Windows Media Player.) The debate remains contentious, with numerous Democrats decrying the absence of any provision for the 11 million illegal immigrants now in the country. The Republicans are badly split on the issue as well, and opposition is mounting from groups ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Catholic Conference of Bishops. The debate could end later today, leading to a vote on the bill. Now is the time to raise your voice in opposition to the mandatory minimum penalties in H.R. 4437.

While immigration laws in this country may need to be reformed, they do not need mandatory minimums. But this bill is filled with them. Mandatory minimums cast too wide a net, harshly punishing individuals who Congress never intended to punish. Furthermore, they prevent judges from considering the circumstances of the case, the person's role in the offense or the likelihood of rehabilitation. The result is what the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist called "the law of unintended consequences." We have seen this effect time and again with drug offense mandatory minimums where low-level offenders serve harsh sentences designed to punish drug lords. This bill will have a similar effect on immigration violators.

For these reasons, FAMM needs you to act now! Tell your Member of Congress that you oppose the mandatory minimum penalties in H.R. 4437.

Posted by lois at 05:52 PM | Comments (0)

VA: Contact Gov. Warner to Restore Voting Rights

Action Alert
The Advancement Project is leading a campaign to encourage outgoing Virginia Governor Mark Warner to restore the voting rights of the estimated 243,000 citizens of that state who have completed a felony sentence. Virginia is one of the most restrictive states in the nation, with all felony convictions leading to permanent disenfranchisement. Although Governor Warner has been very receptive to applications for restoration of rights during his term, less than 2% of the disenfranchised population has regained the right to vote The Advancement Project and its allies are calling on the governor to follow the lead of Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack by issuing an executive order before his term ends on January 14th to automatically restore voting rights to all people who have completed a sentence. See the call to action below and make your voices heard.

IT’S TIME TO RESTORE VOTER RIGHTS . . .
AND THE CLOCK IS TICKING!
DON’T LET THE MOMENT PASS.
CALL GOVERNOR MARK WARNER TODAY.

There are 243,000 Virginia citizens who are unfairly denied the right to vote.
The overwhelming majority of Americans – more than 80%! – believe that people who have completed their sentences should be allowed to vote.
Virginia is one of only four states – all former slave states – that still permanently disenfranchise individuals with felony convictions.
Virginia disenfranchises 1 in every 6 African Americans in the Commonwealth.
It doesn’t have to be that way! The time for change is now.
Call Governor Warner today at 804-786-2211 or email him via his website:
http:// www.governor.virginia.gov/Contact/email_form.html
Urge him to issue an executive order to restore voting rights to Americans in Virginia who have completed the conditions of their criminal sentences.

Governor Warner’s term ends January 14, 2006. Before he leaves office, let’s make a bold, historic move for democracy. Let’s trounce a history of felony disenfranchisement laws that were intended to exclude African Americans, and still do.
Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack restored voting rights for disenfranchised voters this past summer. Ask Governor Warner to join Governor Vilsack in leading the way for a just democracy.
Governor Warner has already restored the voting rights of over 3,000 individuals – a number greater than his 4 predecessors combined – but this is only an estimated 2% of the eligible population. Now we need him to take the next step to strengthen voter justice and democracy in Virginia. It’s the right thing to do. And the time is now!
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Governor Mark R. Warner,
Patrick Henry Building, 3rd Floor, 1111 East Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia 23219
Phone: (804) 786-2211
Fax: (804) 371-6351
Email correspondence: Follow link at:
http:// www.governor.virginia.gov/Contact/email_form.html

For more information go to www.AdvancementProject.org or email ap@advancementproject.org

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

States Still Concerned About Prison Costs

"Yet steady increases in costs of Medicaid, healthcare, education, and prisons continue to have states on edge. Many are also wary that some of the boosts that have helped fuel the current turnaround, such as booming housing markets in several states, will bottom out."

December 16, 2005

Though revenues up, states stay thrifty

By Daniel B. Wood | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor LOS ANGELES - Oregon state employees will probably see a thaw in their multiyear salary freeze. California and New York will plug billion dollar holes left by depleted cash reserves since 9/11. New Jersey, Hawaii, and Oklahoma will sink big bucks into higher education facilities that have been neglected for five years.

Continued recovery of the US economy and more cautious budgeting by state officials - burned by overestimating revenues for several years - have brought about a rebound in the fiscal fortunes for 48 states that have been sagging since 2001. Personal and corporate income taxes, sales taxes, and capital gains on stock options are the sources of the newfound revenue.

But rather than rushing out to re-fund all the on-going programs they have had to slash over four years, or tackle long-term spending projects, most states are treating the current revenue boost as a momentary breath of fresh air rather than a new, prevailing wind.

Instead they plan funding for one-time-only projects like buildings or bridges, paying off debts or socking money away for anticipated shortfalls next year.

"The situation for the states right now is like a father who gets a long-awaited raise at the office, and then comes home and finds out his daughter just got accepted to Harvard," says Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers.

Yet steady increases in costs of Medicaid, healthcare, education, and prisons continue to have states on edge. Many are also wary that some of the boosts that have helped fuel the current turnaround, such as booming housing markets in several states, will bottom out.

"Revenue has turned around, but expenses are still tight and getting tighter," says Mr. Pattison. "Finance people are welcoming it with open arms. At the same time they feel it is probably not sustainable, and so are acting accordingly."

The list of reasons that revenue increases are "probably not sustainable," analysts say, includes volatile energy prices, low consumer-spending confidence, the economic drain of the Iraq war, and worries about a possible drop in housing prices.

"Over the past few years we've seen such huge equity increases in home values that people have felt comfortable and wealthy ... and so they buy things, which has helped fuel sales taxes," says Nick Jenny, fiscal analyst for the Rockefeller Center for Study of the States. "If that wealth effect declines because the housing market softens, states might no longer enjoy the same indirect effect on sales-tax revenues."

Idaho is particularly concerned about a housing bubble burst, since revenues for the current fiscal year have exceeded estimates by 10 percent.

"A lot of what is fueling our economic turnaround right now is investment by nonresidents in housing ... buying up houses for rental," says Brad Foltman, spokesman for the Idaho Division of Financial Management. "We are concerned how long it lasts, and what if it doesn't ... and with the Federal Reserve raising the prime [lending] rate, it seems likely to soften."

States are also planning to discuss several rising expenses in 2006, according to a report released by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

Budget pressures of Medicaid and other healthcare concerns are issues that at least 23 states are taking up. Many states say they have little control over the rising prices of nursing care and prescription drugs, in spite of attempts to rein them in.

"We have paid lots of attention to Medicaid and made substantial containment in the area of long-term care," says Tim Keen, assistant budget director for Ohio, one of 19 states reporting Medicaid cost overruns. "We are hoping to hold the line on growth in those costs, but the programs are growing much more dramatically than the state economy at large."

Ohio is also one of seven states that has cut its prison facilities - closing five institutions in five years - to halt overruns. Idaho prisons, meanwhile, are so crowded that the state is sending convicts to Minnesota.

As governors prepare state-of-the-state addresses, and state legislatures return to session in January, the report lists other top fiscal concerns that are on lawmakers' agendas: education (15 states), taxes (14 states), infrastructure/transportation (10 states), tax or expenditure limits (6 states).

"Given the situation of the past five years as legislators have faced mid-year cuts and dwindling revenues, this new situation is the kind they would rather face," says Arturo Perez, an NCSL analyst. "Your priorities have a much better chance of being addressed than when everything from parks to prisons to colleges had to be peeled back just to keep your budget in balance."

The positive news is not evenly dispersed geographically, note Mr. Perez and others. Michigan and Ohio are reeling from lost manufacturing jobs, most notably with the recent announcements that General Motors and Ford will lay off thousands of workers. In Louisiana, where many people left after the hurricanes, outlays to state employees are down, lightening the woes of America's most financially strapped state.

But some coastal states are breathing sighs of relief. New York is earmarking a $1 billion surplus to cover next year's anticipated deficit. California is applying a $4 billion surplus to its own giant deficit.

"We are finally going to make some inroads on infrastructure - roads, bridges - and free up more money for education," says H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the California State Department of Finance. Such money can spur the state's nascent recovery by helping add more jobs. "This is all stuff we haven't been able to focus on because of the fiscal crisis we inherited."

http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2005/1216/p01s04-uspo.html

Posted by lois at 05:47 PM | Comments (0)

NY: No big changes under Rockefeller Drug "reform"

Few State Prisoners Freed Under Eased Drug Law

By LESLIE EATON
Published: December 15, 2005

When Gov. George E. Pataki signed a law a year ago reducing what he called "unduly long sentences" for drug crimes, he predicted that hundreds of nonviolent drug offenders would be released from prison.

But so far, only 142 prisoners - about 30 percent of those originally eligible for new sentences under the revised law - have been freed, according to a report released yesterday by the Legal Aid Society.

New York Times
The new law "has not resulted in a whole heck of a lot in terms of real impact on folks who were serving long sentences," said Gabriel Sayegh, a policy analyst for the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports further changes in the drug laws and organized a news conference to publicize the Legal Aid report.

The new sentencing provisions were the most widely heralded aspect of the Drug Law Reform Act of 2004, which changed the mandatory sentencing laws imposed in 1973 when Nelson Rockefeller was governor.

Those laws had been criticized for requiring judges to impose a sentence of 15 years to life on anyone convicted of selling two ounces or possessing four ounces of narcotics, whether they were drug lords or low-level couriers.

The new law increased the amount of drugs that trigger long sentences, and reduced those sentences to 8 to 20 years. And it allowed prisoners serving the longest prison terms to ask to be resentenced under the new standards.

The Pataki administration believes the drug law reforms are working as they were intended to, said Chauncey G. Parker, the governor's director of criminal justice.

The goal was not to win release for all of the long-term prisoners, known as A-1 felons, he said. "Our goal was to give 100 percent of the A-1's the opportunity to be resentenced," and to adjust the sentences to fit the seriousness of their crimes.

A major reason that relatively few prisoners have been released is that district attorneys are still opposing resentencing requests and, in some cases, asking judges to impose long prison terms, said William Gibney, a senior attorney for Legal Aid who wrote the report.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/nyregion/15rocky.html

Posted by lois at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

NY Times & Washington Post: Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

The NY Times held off publishing this article for one year...
December 16, 2005
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts
By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

"This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches."

Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight.

According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters. Some of the questions about the agency's new powers led the administration to temporarily suspend the operation last year and impose more restrictions, the officials said.

The Bush administration views the operation as necessary so that the agency can move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to the United States, the officials said. Defenders of the program say it has been a critical tool in helping disrupt terrorist plots and prevent attacks inside the United States.

Administration officials are confident that existing safeguards are sufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, the officials say. In some cases, they said, the Justice Department eventually seeks warrants if it wants to expand the eavesdropping to include communications confined within the United States. The officials said the administration had briefed Congressional leaders about the program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that deals with national security issues.

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

Dealing With a New Threat

While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it say the N.S.A. eavesdrops without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time. The list changes as some names are added and others dropped, so the number monitored in this country may have reached into the thousands since the program began, several officials said. Overseas, about 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time, according to those officials.

Several officials said the eavesdropping program had helped uncover a plot by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker and naturalized citizen who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting Al Qaeda by planning to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches. What appeared to be another Qaeda plot, involving fertilizer bomb attacks on British pubs and train stations, was exposed last year in part through the program, the officials said. But they said most people targeted for N.S.A. monitoring have never been charged with a crime, including an Iranian-American doctor in the South who came under suspicion because of what one official described as dubious ties to Osama bin Laden.

The eavesdropping program grew out of concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks that the nation's intelligence agencies were not poised to deal effectively with the new threat of Al Qaeda and that they were handcuffed by legal and bureaucratic restrictions better suited to peacetime than war, according to officials. In response, President Bush significantly eased limits on American intelligence and law enforcement agencies and the military.

But some of the administration's antiterrorism initiatives have provoked an outcry from members of Congress, watchdog groups, immigrants and others who argue that the measures erode protections for civil liberties and intrude on Americans' privacy.

Opponents have challenged provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the focus of contentious debate on Capitol Hill this week, that expand domestic surveillance by giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation more power to collect information like library lending lists or Internet use. Military and F.B.I. officials have drawn criticism for monitoring what were largely peaceful antiwar protests. The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security were forced to retreat on plans to use public and private databases to hunt for possible terrorists. And last year, the Supreme Court rejected the administration's claim that those labeled "enemy combatants" were not entitled to judicial review of their open-ended detention.

Mr. Bush's executive order allowing some warrantless eavesdropping on those inside the United States - including American citizens, permanent legal residents, tourists and other foreigners - is based on classified legal opinions that assert that the president has broad powers to order such searches, derived in part from the September 2001 Congressional resolution authorizing him to wage war on Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, according to the officials familiar with the N.S.A. operation.

The National Security Agency, which is based at Fort Meade, Md., is the nation's largest and most secretive intelligence agency, so intent on remaining out of public view that it has long been nicknamed "No Such Agency." It breaks codes and maintains listening posts around the world to eavesdrop on foreign governments, diplomats and trade negotiators as well as drug lords and terrorists. But the agency ordinarily operates under tight restrictions on any spying on Americans, even if they are overseas, or disseminating information about them.

What the agency calls a "special collection program" began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, as it looked for new tools to attack terrorism. The program accelerated in early 2002 after the Central Intelligence Agency started capturing top Qaeda operatives overseas, including Abu Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002. The C.I.A. seized the terrorists' computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, they said.

In addition to eavesdropping on those numbers and reading e-mail messages to and from the Qaeda figures, the N.S.A. began monitoring others linked to them, creating an expanding chain. While most of the numbers and addresses were overseas, hundreds were in the United States, the officials said.

Under the agency's longstanding rules, the N.S.A. can target for interception phone calls or e-mail messages on foreign soil, even if the recipients of those communications are in the United States. Usually, though, the government can only target phones and e-mail messages in the United States by first obtaining a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which holds its closed sessions at the Justice Department.

Traditionally, the F.B.I., not the N.S.A., seeks such warrants and conducts most domestic eavesdropping. Until the new program began, the N.S.A. typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions in Washington, New York and other cities, and obtained court orders to do so.

Since 2002, the agency has been conducting some warrantless eavesdropping on people in the United States who are linked, even if indirectly, to suspected terrorists through the chain of phone numbers and e-mail addresses, according to several officials who know of the operation. Under the special program, the agency monitors their international communications, the officials said. The agency, for example, can target phone calls from someone in New York to someone in Afghanistan.

Warrants are still required for eavesdropping on entirely domestic-to-domestic communications, those officials say, meaning that calls from that New Yorker to someone in California could not be monitored without first going to the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court.

A White House Briefing

After the special program started, Congressional leaders from both political parties were brought to Vice President Dick Cheney's office in the White House. The leaders, who included the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, learned of the N.S.A. operation from Mr. Cheney, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden of the Air Force, who was then the agency's director and is now a full general and the principal deputy director of national intelligence, and George J. Tenet, then the director of the C.I.A., officials said.

It is not clear how much the members of Congress were told about the presidential order and the eavesdropping program. Some of them declined to comment about the matter, while others did not return phone calls.

Later briefings were held for members of Congress as they assumed leadership roles on the intelligence committees, officials familiar with the program said. After a 2003 briefing, Senator Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who became vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee that year, wrote a letter to Mr. Cheney expressing concerns about the program, officials knowledgeable about the letter said. It could not be determined if he received a reply. Mr. Rockefeller declined to comment. Aside from the Congressional leaders, only a small group of people, including several cabinet members and officials at the N.S.A., the C.I.A. and the Justice Department, know of the program.

Some officials familiar with it say they consider warrantless eavesdropping inside the United States to be unlawful and possibly unconstitutional, amounting to an improper search. One government official involved in the operation said he privately complained to a Congressional official about his doubts about the program's legality. But nothing came of his inquiry. "People just looked the other way because they didn't want to know what was going on," he said.

A senior government official recalled that he was taken aback when he first learned of the operation. "My first reaction was, 'We're doing what?' " he said. While he said he eventually felt that adequate safeguards were put in place, he added that questions about the program's legitimacy were understandable.

Some of those who object to the operation argue that is unnecessary. By getting warrants through the foreign intelligence court, the N.S.A. and F.B.I. could eavesdrop on people inside the United States who might be tied to terrorist groups without skirting longstanding rules, they say.

The standard of proof required to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is generally considered lower than that required for a criminal warrant - intelligence officials only have to show probable cause that someone may be "an agent of a foreign power," which includes international terrorist groups - and the secret court has turned down only a small number of requests over the years. In 2004, according to the Justice Department, 1,754 warrants were approved. And the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can grant emergency approval for wiretaps within hours, officials say.

Administration officials counter that they sometimes need to move more urgently, the officials said. Those involved in the program also said that the N.S.A.'s eavesdroppers might need to start monitoring large batches of numbers all at once, and that it would be impractical to seek permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court first, according to the officials.

The N.S.A. domestic spying operation has stirred such controversy among some national security officials in part because of the agency's cautious culture and longstanding rules.

Widespread abuses - including eavesdropping on Vietnam War protesters and civil rights activists - by American intelligence agencies became public in the 1970's and led to passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which imposed strict limits on intelligence gathering on American soil. Among other things, the law required search warrants, approved by the secret F.I.S.A. court, for wiretaps in national security cases. The agency, deeply scarred by the scandals, adopted additional rules that all but ended domestic spying on its part.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, though, the United States intelligence community was criticized for being too risk-averse. The National Security Agency was even cited by the independent 9/11 Commission for adhering to self-imposed rules that were stricter than those set by federal law.

Concerns and Revisions

Several senior government officials say that when the special operation began, there were few controls on it and little formal oversight outside the N.S.A. The agency can choose its eavesdropping targets and does not have to seek approval from Justice Department or other Bush administration officials. Some agency officials wanted nothing to do with the program, apparently fearful of participating in an illegal operation, a former senior Bush administration official said. Before the 2004 election, the official said, some N.S.A. personnel worried that the program might come under scrutiny by Congressional or criminal investigators if Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, was elected president.

In mid-2004, concerns about the program expressed by national security officials, government lawyers and a judge prompted the Bush administration to suspend elements of the program and revamp it.

For the first time, the Justice Department audited the N.S.A. program, several officials said. And to provide more guidance, the Justice Department and the agency expanded and refined a checklist to follow in deciding whether probable cause existed to start monitoring someone's communications, several officials said.

A complaint from Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the federal judge who oversees the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, helped spur the suspension, officials said. The judge questioned whether information obtained under the N.S.A. program was being improperly used as the basis for F.I.S.A. wiretap warrant requests from the Justice Department, according to senior government officials. While not knowing all the details of the exchange, several government lawyers said there appeared to be concerns that the Justice Department, by trying to shield the existence of the N.S.A. program, was in danger of misleading the court about the origins of the information cited to justify the warrants.

One official familiar with the episode said the judge insisted to Justice Department lawyers at one point that any material gathered under the special N.S.A. program not be used in seeking wiretap warrants from her court. Judge Kollar-Kotelly did not return calls for comment.

A related issue arose in a case in which the F.B.I. was monitoring the communications of a terrorist suspect under a F.I.S.A.-approved warrant, even though the National Security Agency was already conducting warrantless eavesdropping.

According to officials, F.B.I. surveillance of Mr. Faris, the Brooklyn Bridge plotter, was dropped for a short time because of technical problems. At the time, senior Justice Department officials worried what would happen if the N.S.A. picked up information that needed to be presented in court. The government would then either have to disclose the N.S.A. program or mislead a criminal court about how it had gotten the information.

Several national security officials say the powers granted the N.S.A. by President Bush go far beyond the expanded counterterrorism powers granted by Congress under the USA Patriot Act, which is up for renewal. The House on Wednesday approved a plan to reauthorize crucial parts of the law. But final passage has been delayed under the threat of a Senate filibuster because of concerns from both parties over possible intrusions on Americans' civil liberties and privacy.

Under the act, law enforcement and intelligence officials are still required to seek a F.I.S.A. warrant every time they want to eavesdrop within the United States. A recent agreement reached by Republican leaders and the Bush administration would modify the standard for F.B.I. wiretap warrants, requiring, for instance, a description of a specific target. Critics say the bar would remain too low to prevent abuses.

Bush administration officials argue that the civil liberties concerns are unfounded, and they say pointedly that the Patriot Act has not freed the N.S.A. to target Americans. "Nothing could be further from the truth," wrote John Yoo, a former official in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and his co-author in a Wall Street Journal opinion article in December 2003. Mr. Yoo worked on a classified legal opinion on the N.S.A.'s domestic eavesdropping program.

At an April hearing on the Patriot Act renewal, Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., "Can the National Security Agency, the great electronic snooper, spy on the American people?"

"Generally," Mr. Mueller said, "I would say generally, they are not allowed to spy or to gather information on American citizens."

President Bush did not ask Congress to include provisions for the N.S.A. domestic surveillance program as part of the Patriot Act and has not sought any other laws to authorize the operation. Bush administration lawyers argued that such new laws were unnecessary, because they believed that the Congressional resolution on the campaign against terrorism provided ample authorization, officials said.

The Legal Line Shifts

Seeking Congressional approval was also viewed as politically risky because the proposal would be certain to face intense opposition on civil liberties grounds. The administration also feared that by publicly disclosing the existence of the operation, its usefulness in tracking terrorists would end, officials said.

The legal opinions that support the N.S.A. operation remain classified, but they appear to have followed private discussions among senior administration lawyers and other officials about the need to pursue aggressive strategies that once may have been seen as crossing a legal line, according to senior officials who participated in the discussions.

For example, just days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Mr. Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer, wrote an internal memorandum that argued that the government might use "electronic surveillance techniques and equipment that are more powerful and sophisticated than those available to law enforcement agencies in order to intercept telephonic communications and observe the movement of persons but without obtaining warrants for such uses."

Mr. Yoo noted that while such actions could raise constitutional issues, in the face of devastating terrorist attacks "the government may be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties."

The next year, Justice Department lawyers disclosed their thinking on the issue of warrantless wiretaps in national security cases in a little-noticed brief in an unrelated court case. In that 2002 brief, the government said that "the Constitution vests in the President inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority."

Administration officials were also encouraged by a November 2002 appeals court decision in an unrelated matter. The decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which sided with the administration in dismantling a bureaucratic "wall" limiting cooperation between prosecutors and intelligence officers, cited "the president's inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance."

But the same court suggested that national security interests should not be grounds "to jettison the Fourth Amendment requirements" protecting the rights of Americans against undue searches. The dividing line, the court acknowledged, "is a very difficult one to administer."

Barclay Walsh contributed research for this article.

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


Bush Authorized Domestic Spying
Post-9/11 Order Bypassed Special Court

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 16, 2005; A01

President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, despite previous legal prohibitions against such domestic spying, sources with knowledge of the program said last night.

The super-secretive NSA, which has generally been barred from domestic spying except in narrow circumstances involving foreign nationals, has monitored the e-mail, telephone calls and other communications of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people under the program, the New York Times disclosed last night.

The aim of the program was to rapidly monitor the phone calls and other communications of people in the United States believed to have contact with suspected associates of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups overseas, according to two former senior administration officials. Authorities, including a former NSA director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, were worried that vital information could be lost in the time it took to secure a warrant from a special surveillance court, sources said.

But the program's ramifications also prompted concerns from some quarters, including Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, and the presiding judge of the surveillance court, which oversees lawful domestic spying, according to the Times.

The Times said it held off on publishing its story about the NSA program for a year after administration officials said its disclosure would harm national security.

The White House made no comment last night. A senior official reached by telephone said the issue was too sensitive to talk about. None of several press officers responded to telephone or e-mail messages.

Congressional sources familiar with limited aspects of the program would not discuss any classified details but made it clear there were serious questions about the legality of the NSA actions. The sources, who demanded anonymity, said there were conditions under which it would be possible to gather and retain information on Americans if the surveillance were part of an investigation into foreign intelligence.

But those cases are supposed to be minimized. The sources said the actual work of the NSA is so closely held that it is difficult to determine whether it is acting within the law.

The revelations come amid a fierce congressional debate over reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Patriot Act granted the FBI new powers to conduct secret searches and surveillance in the United States.

Most of the powers covered under that law are overseen by a secret court that meets at Justice Department headquarters and must approve applications for wiretaps, searches and other operations. The NSA's operation is outside that court's purview, and according to the Times report, the Justice Department may have sought to limit how much that court was made aware of NSA activities.

Public disclosure of the NSA program also comes at a time of mounting concerns about civil liberties over the domestic intelligence operations of the U.S. military, which have also expanded dramatically after the Sept. 11 attacks.

For more than four years, the NSA tasked other military intelligence agencies to assist its broad-based surveillance effort directed at people inside the country suspected of having terrorist connections, even before Bush signed the 2002 order that authorized the NSA program, according to an informed U.S. official.

The effort, which began within days after the attacks, has consisted partly of monitoring domestic telephone conversations, e-mail and even fax communications of individuals identified by the NSA as having some connection to al Qaeda events or figures, or to potential terrorism-related activities in the United States, the official said.

It has also involved teams of Defense Intelligence Agency personnel stationed in major U.S. cities conducting the type of surveillance typically performed by the FBI: monitoring the movements and activities -- through high-tech equipment -- of individuals and vehicles, the official said.

The involvement of military personnel in such tasks was provoked by grave anxiety among senior intelligence officials after the 2001 suicide attacks that additional terrorist cells were present within U.S. borders and could only be discovered with the military's help, said the official, who had direct knowledge of the events.

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies at George Washington University, said the secret order may amount to the president authorizing criminal activity.

The law governing clandestine surveillance in the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, prohibits conducting electronic surveillance not authorized by statute. A government agent can try to avoid prosecution if he can show he was "engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction," according to the law.

"This is as shocking a revelation as we have ever seen from the Bush administration," said Martin, who has been sharply critical of the administration's surveillance and detention policies. "It is, I believe, the first time a president has authorized government agencies to violate a specific criminal prohibition and eavesdrop on Americans."

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said she is "dismayed" by the report.

"It's clear that the administration has been very willing to sacrifice civil liberties in its effort to exercise its authority on terrorism, to the extent that it authorizes criminal activity," Fredrickson said.

The NSA activities were justified by a classified Justice Department legal opinion authored by John C. Yoo, a former deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel who argued that congressional approval of the war on al Qaeda gave broad authority to the president, according to the Times.

That legal argument was similar to another 2002 memo authored primarily by Yoo, which outlined an extremely narrow definition of torture. That opinion, which was signed by another Justice official, was formally disavowed after it was disclosed by the Washington Post.

Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos would not comment on the report last night.

Staff writers Dafna Linzer and Peter Baker contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Posted by lois at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2005

“It means that they’re actually collecting information about who’s at those protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests,” says Arkin. “On the domestic level, this is unprecedented,” he says. “I think it's the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the military.”

Some former senior DOD intelligence officials share his concern. George Lotz, a 30-year career DOD official and former U.S. Air Force colonel, held the post of Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight from 1998 until his retirement last May. Lotz, who recently began a consulting business to help train and educate intelligence agencies and improve oversight of their collection process, believes some of the information the DOD has been collecting is not justified.

Make sure they are not just going crazy
“Somebody needs to be monitoring to make sure they are just not going crazy and reporting things on U.S. citizens without any kind of reasoning or rationale,” says Lotz. “I demonstrated with Martin Luther King in 1963 in Washington,” he says, “and I certainly didn’t want anybody putting my name on any kind of list. I wasn’t any threat to the government,” he adds.

Story continues below ↓
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The military’s penchant for collecting domestic intelligence is disturbing — but familiar — to Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer.

“Some people never learn,” he says. During the Vietnam War, Pyle blew the whistle on the Defense Department for monitoring and infiltrating anti-war and civil rights protests when he published an article in the Washington Monthly in January 1970.

The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed that revealed that the military had conducted investigations on at least 100,000 American citizens. Pyle got more than 100 military agents to testify that they had been ordered to spy on U.S. citizens — many of them anti-war protestors and civil rights advocates. In the wake of the investigations, Pyle helped Congress write a law placing new limits on military spying inside the U.S.

But Pyle, now a professor at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts, says some of the information in the database suggests the military may be dangerously close to repeating its past mistakes.

“The documents tell me that military intelligence is back conducting investigations and maintaining records on civilian political activity. The military made promises that it would not do this again,” he says.

Too much data?
Some Pentagon observers worry that in the effort to thwart the next 9/11, the U.S. military is now collecting too much data, both undermining its own analysis efforts by forcing analysts to wade through a mountain of rubble in order to obtain potentially key nuggets of intelligence and entangling U.S. citizens in the U.S. military’s expanding and quiet collection of domestic threat data.

Two years ago, the Defense Department directed a little known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, to establish and “maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense.” Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established a new reporting mechanism known as a TALON or Threat and Local Observation Notice report. TALONs now provide “non-validated domestic threat information” from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war protests. In the program’s first year, the agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports. The database obtained by NBC News is generated by Counterintelligence Field Activity.

CIFA is becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S. national security community. Its “operational and analytical records” include “reports of investigation, collection reports, statements of individuals, affidavits, correspondence, and other documentation pertaining to investigative or analytical efforts” by the DOD and other U.S. government agencies to identify terrorist and other threats. Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33 million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that comb through classified and unclassified government data, commercial information and Internet chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and spies.

Posted by lois at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

Pentagon spying on anti-war and anti-recuitment activists

•Dec. 13: A secret Pentagon database indicates the U.S. military is collecting information on American peace activists and monitoring Iraq war protests. NBC's Lisa Myers reports.
Nightly News

By Lisa Myers, Douglas Pasternak, Rich Gardella and the NBC Investigative Unit
Updated: 6:18 p.m. ET Dec. 14, 2005


Lisa Myers
Senior investigative correspondent


WASHINGTON - A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.

A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month period.

“This peaceful, educationally oriented group being a threat is incredible,” says Evy Grachow, a member of the Florida group called The Truth Project.

“This is incredible,” adds group member Rich Hersh. “It's an example of paranoia by our government,” he says. “We're not doing anything illegal.”

The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.

“I think Americans should be concerned that the military, in fact, has reached too far,” says NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin.

The Department of Defense declined repeated requests by NBC News for an interview. A spokesman said that all domestic intelligence information is “properly collected” and involves “protection of Defense Department installations, interests and personnel.” The military has always had a legitimate “force protection” mission inside the U.S. to protect its personnel and facilities from potential violence. But the Pentagon now collects domestic intelligence that goes beyond legitimate concerns about terrorism or protecting U.S. military installations, say critics.

Four dozen anti-war meetings
The DOD database obtained by NBC News includes nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center. One “incident” included in the database is a large anti-war protest at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles last March that included effigies of President Bush and anti-war protest banners. Another incident mentions a planned protest against military recruiters last December in Boston and a planned protest last April at McDonald’s National Salute to America’s Heroes — a military air and sea show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The Fort Lauderdale protest was deemed not to be a credible threat and a column in the database concludes: “US group exercising constitutional rights.” Two-hundred and forty-three other incidents in the database were discounted because they had no connection to the Department of Defense — yet they all remained in the database.

The DOD has strict guidelines (.PDF link), adopted in December 1982, that limit the extent to which they can collect and retain information on U.S. citizens.

Still, the DOD database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons. Other documents obtained by NBC News show that the Defense Department is clearly increasing its domestic monitoring activities. One DOD briefing document stamped “secret” concludes: “[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the [I]nternet,” but no “significant connection” between incidents, such as “reoccurring instigators at protests” or “vehicle descriptions.”

The increased monitoring disturbs some military observers.
“It means that they’re actually collecting information about who’s at those protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests,” says Arkin. “On the domestic level, this is unprecedented,” he says. “I think it's the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the military.”

Some former senior DOD intelligence officials share his concern. George Lotz, a 30-year career DOD official and former U.S. Air Force colonel, held the post of Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight from 1998 until his retirement last May. Lotz, who recently began a consulting business to help train and educate intelligence agencies and improve oversight of their collection process, believes some of the information the DOD has been collecting is not justified.

Make sure they are not just going crazy
“Somebody needs to be monitoring to make sure they are just not going crazy and reporting things on U.S. citizens without any kind of reasoning or rationale,” says Lotz. “I demonstrated with Martin Luther King in 1963 in Washington,” he says, “and I certainly didn’t want anybody putting my name on any kind of list. I wasn’t any threat to the government,” he adds.

The military’s penchant for collecting domestic intelligence is disturbing — but familiar — to Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer.

“Some people never learn,” he says. During the Vietnam War, Pyle blew the whistle on the Defense Department for monitoring and infiltrating anti-war and civil rights protests when he published an article in the Washington Monthly in January 1970.

The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed that revealed that the military had conducted investigations on at least 100,000 American citizens. Pyle got more than 100 military agents to testify that they had been ordered to spy on U.S. citizens — many of them anti-war protestors and civil rights advocates. In the wake of the investigations, Pyle helped Congress write a law placing new limits on military spying inside the U.S.

But Pyle, now a professor at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts, says some of the information in the database suggests the military may be dangerously close to repeating its past mistakes.

“The documents tell me that military intelligence is back conducting investigations and maintaining records on civilian political activity. The military made promises that it would not do this again,” he says.

Too much data?
Some Pentagon observers worry that in the effort to thwart the next 9/11, the U.S. military is now collecting too much data, both undermining its own analysis efforts by forcing analysts to wade through a mountain of rubble in order to obtain potentially key nuggets of intelligence and entangling U.S. citizens in the U.S. military’s expanding and quiet collection of domestic threat data.

Two years ago, the Defense Department directed a little known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, to establish and “maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense.” Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established a new reporting mechanism known as a TALON or Threat and Local Observation Notice report. TALONs now provide “non-validated domestic threat information” from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war protests. In the program’s first year, the agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports. The database obtained by NBC News is generated by Counterintelligence Field Activity.

CIFA is becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S. national security community. Its “operational and analytical records” include “reports of investigation, collection reports, statements of individuals, affidavits, correspondence, and other documentation pertaining to investigative or analytical efforts” by the DOD and other U.S. government agencies to identify terrorist and other threats. Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33 million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that comb through classified and unclassified government data, commercial information and Internet chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and spies.

One of the CIFA-funded database projects being developed by Northrop Grumman and dubbed “Person Search,” is designed “to provide comprehensive information about people of interest.” It will include the ability to search government as well as commercial databases. Another project, “The Insider Threat Initiative,” intends to “develop systems able to detect, mitigate and investigate insider threats,” as well as the ability to “identify and document normal and abnormal activities and ‘behaviors,’” according to the Computer Sciences Corp. contract. A separate CIFA contract with a small Virginia-based defense contractor seeks to develop methods “to track and monitor activities of suspect individuals.”

“The military has the right to protect its installations, and to protect its recruiting services,” says Pyle. “It does not have the right to maintain extensive files on lawful protests of their recruiting activities, or of their base activities,” he argues.

Lotz agrees.

“The harm in my view is that these people ought to be allowed to demonstrate, to hold a banner, to peacefully assemble whether they agree or disagree with the government’s policies,” the former DOD intelligence official says.

'Slippery slope'
Bert Tussing, director of Homeland Defense and Security Issues at the U.S. Army War College and a former Marine, says “there is very little that could justify the collection of domestic intelligence by the Unites States military. If we start going down this slippery slope it would be too easy to go back to a place we never want to see again,” he says.

Some of the targets of the U.S. military’s recent collection efforts say they have already gone too far.

“It's absolute paranoia — at the highest levels of our government,” says Hersh of The Truth Project.

“I mean, we're based here at the Quaker Meeting House,” says Truth Project member Marie Zwicker, “and several of us are Quakers.”

The Defense Department refused to comment on how it obtained information on the Lake Worth meeting or why it considers a dozen or so anti-war activists a “threat.”

Link to data base below:

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/DODAntiWarProtestDatabaseTra cker.pdf
Link to story:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/

Posted by lois at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2005

More Support for Shrinking Drug-Free School Zones

By CHRIS NEWMARKER
Associated Press Writer

December 8, 2005, 3:14 PM EST

TRENTON, N.J. -- A bill that would cut the size of drug-free zones around schools and other public places corrects an unfair system that penalizes minority city dwellers more harshly than suburban residents, advocates of the legislation said Thursday.

The zones, established as a response to the crack cocaine explosion of the 1980s, have been criticized because they effectively blanket entire urban areas, leaving the mostly low-income and minority residents of such communities facing harsher sentences for drug crimes.

"What we have are two different penalties for the same offense _ two different penalties which are based on geography and ultimately on race," said Roseanne Scotti, director of the Drug Policy Alliance of New Jersey, one of several groups that spoke in favor of the measure during a Statehouse news conference.

Shrinking the zones and doing away with mandatory minimum sentences would eliminate disparities and even make the zones more effective, because drug dealers who now cannot avoid the zones would have incentives to stay away from schools, Scotti said.

The bill _ sponsored by Assemblyman Peter J. Barnes, D-Middlesex, and Assemblywoman Mary T. Previte, D-Camden _ passed out of the Law and Public Safety Committee on Monday. It now heads to the full Assembly.

It would reduce the zones to 200 feet from their present size of 1,000 feet around schools and 500 feet around public parks, public housing and other public buildings.

Offenders would face five to 10 years in prison, compared to three to five years under the current statute. But judges would have greater discretion in sentencing, since the revised law would not set mandatory minimums. Advocates said giving judges more leeway would keep prisons from being crowded with urban drug criminals while their suburban counterparts receive lighter sentences.

The proposed law follows a recommendation from the state Commission to Review Criminal Sentencing, which reported that the zones presently put entire cities in such zones and resulted in the law being applied almost exclusively to blacks and Hispanics.

"We've been saying this for years, but this is the first time we have evidence-based data," Scotti said.

The 15-member commission, which includes lawmakers, state officials and criminal justice experts, found that 96 percent of offenders convicted and incarcerated for a drug-free zone offense in New Jersey are either black or Hispanic.

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
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Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Drug-free school zones keeping prison cells full

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 12/14/05
BY JON SHURE

It seemed like a good idea at the time. If you want to be serious about fighting crime, make rules that are very strict and inflexible.

A prime example was the law that says if someone is convicted of a drug crime within 1,000 feet of a school, they will be subject to a more severe penalty than someone who is arrested 1,001 feet from a school. Caught within the zone, you face a mandatory prison sentence of three years with no parole. Even a judge can't change it. Outside the zone, though, plea bargains, probation, treatment and the like are much-used alternatives to incarceration.

Over the 18 years that law has been on the books, it has gotten results ‹ just not good ones. A greater share of New Jersey inmates ‹ 33 percent ‹ is in prison for drug-related crimes than in any other state. In 1986, only 11 percent of inmates in New Jersey were incarcerated for drug-related offenses.

In 1986, inmates convicted of violent crimes accounted for 61 percent of the state's prison population, compared to 40 percent today.

In 1986, 23 percent of whites and 22 percent of blacks entering prison were charged with drug offenses. But today, 64 percent of New Jersey's prisoners are black, while the state's black population is 14.5 percent of the total. And, over the past 20 years, spending in New Jersey on corrections ‹ building, maintaining and staffing prisons ‹ has risen by about 500 percent.

The bottom line is that the school-zone law and a companion measure that also sets a 1,000-foot zone around parks, day care centers and other facilities where children are likely to be present have had a disproportionate racial impact when it comes to punishment for relatively low-level, nonviolent drug-related crimes.

To figure out why, just go to a city. In cities, it is hard not to be 1,000 feet from a school or public place. According to one report, there is just a tiny pocket of Hudson County near the Holland Tunnel entrance that is not covered by the laws. But in suburbs and rural areas, it is fairly easy to be out of range.

It's not as though the mandatory minimum sentencing law was aimed at minorities. The intent was to help protect children from drugs. It just goes about it in a seriously ill-advised manner. Consider this: A study by the Boston University School of Public Health on a similar law in Massachusetts found that fewer than 1 percent of the people convicted of drug sales within a school zone were selling to minors or were even on school property.

Fortunately, in New Jersey there is a vehicle for restoring some sanity to the process. The Commission to Review Criminal Sentencing, created in January 2004 by then-Gov. James E. McGreevey, recently recommended establishing zones of 200 feet around schools and 500 feet in other areas covered by the law. Drug-dealing in the covered areas would be punishable with prison terms of five to 10 years, but without any mandatory minimum.

It's a win-win recommendation: protection for children and discretion for judges so that if they feel, for example, that drug treatment (which costs less and often has better results) makes more sense than time in prison, they can make sure it happens.

Adopting this and other reforms would fit in with a national trend that has eluded New Jersey. Even New York, which instituted some of the nation's harshest drug laws under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, has been moving in the other direction. And, not long ago, Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell signed a law aimed at moving nonviolent drug offenders more quickly into treatment.

Reforming the get-tough laws of the past often is uniting liberals and conservatives. The moral qualms of one group are merging with the spending worries of the other. As stated in a 2004 report by the Vera Institute of Justice, "Fiscal concerns are providing common ground ‹ and a political safe haven ‹ for officials of all political stripes looking to temper reliance on incarceration."

Whatever the motivation, let's welcome the effort. And when supporters of reform are attacked for being "soft on crime," as they are certain to be, stand up for common sense.

Jon Shure is president of New Jersey Policy Perspective, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization in Trenton that conducts research on state issues.

Posted by lois at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)

AL: Health Care improves at Tutwiler

Monday, December 12, 2005
CARLA CROWDER
News staff writer
It's been a year since Tutwiler Prison's health care became subject to quarterly visits from a court monitor, Illinois Dr. Michael Puisis.

His reports have blamed prison doctors for several deaths and generally have been scathing. But the latest is different. "Much improvement has been recognized," Puisis begins.

He commends the Alabama Department of Corrections for refurbishing clinics, examining rooms and the pharmacy. However, medical care remains sketchy for many prisoners, with missed medications, delayed treatment or no treatment at all.

Tutwiler Prison care on mend

"There is a system in place to administer medications, but it remains broken," Puisis wrote.

Puisis, an expert in correctional health care, was appointed in 2004 to monitor the medical agreement from a class action lawsuit settled on behalf of Tutwiler inmates. The DOC switched medical providers shortly before the agreement was signed, replacing Birmingham-based Naphcare with PHS.

The lawsuit, filed in 2002 by the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, also produced a settlement that governs overall conditions at the prison.

In the June 2004 federal court settlement, the Alabama Department of Corrections agreed to dozens of improvements in medication, dental care and mental health care for almost 1,000 women housed at the state's only prison for women.

Sweeping changes called for everything from better sanitation to cut down on insects to quicker responses to inmates' complaints of painful medical problems left untreated for months.

A year later, Puisis is lukewarm in his evaluation. He says the prison is in "partial compliance," but repeats concerns he's voiced all year. Among them, women housed in the segregation unit filed repeated sick call requests that were ignored.

One woman, who filed four complaints about abdominal pain since February, was found to have a hemorrhaging cyst in March. The potentially malignant cyst has not been removed, and she has not been seen since August. "This is an excessive wait to evaluate this potentially life-threatening condition," Puisis wrote.

An example of "partial compliance" was the administering of medicines. He gave the DOC credit for refurbishing the medication room. But prisoners still miss doses, sometimes because they are away from their dorms at work during pill call. "I was especially concerned with medication for persons on preventative therapy for TB. One record indicated that the patient has received only 25 percent of doses," Puisis wrote.

The patients with the most missed medication were on antibiotics, which can lose their effectiveness if not taken properly.

The settlement requires four years of monitoring. Puisis will continue to visit once a quarter - with his expenses paid by the state - unless medical care improves next year and he finds the prison in "substantial compliance" for three consecutive visits, according to the agreement.

Exact costs of those visits, and of the improvements to date, were unavailable Friday. The total costs of renovation have not been calculated because more work is planned, said Brian Corbett said, spokesman for the DOC.

"We believe we have done well given the limitations of funding and the age and limited size of the Tutwiler facility. All Tutwiler-related issues were not created overnight, and they all are not going to be resolved in a 12-month time period," he said.

Corbett added, "Generally speaking, medical treatment provided at Tutwiler is some of the best and most consistent treatment these women have ever had. At times they come to us very sick, under-diagnosed and under-treated. They have greater access to specialists and daily care compared to the majority of individuals receiving medical care under the state's Medicaid programs."

Year in contract:

PHS has another year in its three-year contract with the state. The Brentwood, Tenn.,-based company's contract is worth $142 million.

Earlier this year, the Alabama DOC withheld $1.2 million in payments to PHS as a result of understaffing at some of the prisons. A March report from Puisis cited poor, incomplete or substandard medical care as contributors to three women's deaths at Tutwiler.

No deaths were reviewed in the latest report.

"Without question, patient care at Tutwiler has improved," PHS spokeswoman Susan Morganstern said.

She added that the company has increased the staff, including the addition of a specialist to treat women with HIV. "PHS and ADOC already have resolved or are in the process of resolving the remaining areas of concern in the October report. We look forward to Dr. Puisis' next report, which we are confident will reflect these efforts as well," she said.

E-mail: ccrowder@bhamnews.com FILEA federal court monitor says medical treatment at Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka remains sketchy for many prisoners.

© 2005 The Birmingham News

Posted by lois at 07:43 PM | Comments (0)

Prison--"Not Just for Men Anymore"

³The solutions are hard to come by,² Moon said. ³You can do one of two things. You can soften punishments -- which is not politically palatable. Or you can spend more money (on social programs), which is little more acceptable, but is still not fun.² One option is to create better prisons. At the Family Foundations Program in San Diego, a small group of women live in a dorm-style facility that emphasizes rehabilitation, rather than retribution. Imprisoned women are allowed to keep their young children -- and learn parenting skills in the process."

Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Not just for men anymore
By Mark K. Matthews, Stateline.org Staff Writer

Three summers ago, Shylena Littlejohn quit job-hopping to sell drugs full-time. Life on the clock didn't pay enough, and cooking methamphetamine offered the chance to turn $300 into a quick $5,000. So she converted her kitchen into a makeshift drug shop.
 
The business didn't last long. Less than a year later, the former honor roll student returned home to find the Oklahoma City police waiting for her. Her roommate ratted her out, said Littlejohn during a phone interview from her halfway house near Tulsa. "It was kind of like a setup," she said.
 
She was sentenced to five years in prison, with two years probation. Now 24, Littlejohn is among a growing number of women incarcerated in the nation's prisons. Last year, female inmates accounted for 7 percent of all prisoners held in state and federal facilities -- the highest rate since the U.S. Department of Justice started keeping records.
 
Nowhere is this trend more evident than in the Sooner State.
 
For eight of the last nine years, a greater percentage of Oklahoma women were imprisoned than in any other state in the country. The latest statistics show that in 2004, 129 out of every 100,000 females living in the state were incarcerated -- about twice the national average and more than 10 times the rate of a few states.  
 
Only in 2003 did Mississippi briefly assume the lead spot.
 
It¹s an infamy that troubles Oklahoma lawmakers, who have studied the problem and are conflicted over how to lower the incarceration rate.
 
"The question came up in a committee: 'Are women just meaner in Oklahoma?'" said K.C. Moon, director of the Oklahoma Criminal Justice Resource Center, which studies law enforcement issues for the state. While that theory got a few laughs, Moon says the reasons are more systemic.
 
Oklahoma deals with low-level crime more harshly than other states, he said. In addition, the state spends significantly less money on social programs such as childcare and drug treatment, driving many poor women to deal drugs and shoplift to feed their addictions or support their families, he said.
                                                       
"We're a conservative state. We don't like to spend money, and hope people can deal with it on their own. When people reach the depths of their problems, there is not a safety net," Moon said. "We just get the pound of flesh, the punishment part of it."
 
Corrections officials agree low-level drug criminals are packing the state¹s prisons, but a spokesman for Lt. Gov. Mary Fallin, who recently chaired an Oklahoma commission to study this issue, said the sentences were not only fair, but equitable.
 
³Oklahoma is simply tough on crime," Tony Vann, a spokesman for Fallin, said in an e-mail. ³Other states are often more lenient with female offenders versus male offenders. Oklahoma is less inclined to consider gender in prosecuting individuals.²
 
Vann also said Oklahoma¹s numbers may look higher because the national report doesn't count prisoners in county jails, where many states put their female offenders.
 
Yet Moon and other experts argue imprisonment is a less effective, and more expensive, way to break the cycle of crime. By imprisoning these women -- many of whom have children -- Oklahoma risks creating another generation of criminals.
 
In a 2004 report, the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth said incarceration of either parent is hard on children, but particularly when it¹s the mother, who may be the only adult in the household.
 
"Children are affected in many ways when a parent is incarcerated," the report stated. ³In particular, academic performance, conflict with friends and caretakers, and alcohol and drug problems may be prevalent.²
 
Nationally, almost 105,000 women were incarcerated in state and federal prisons in December 2004, according to Department of Justice. The rate has increased steadily, from 5.7 percent in 1990 to 6.1 percent in 1995 to 7 percent last year.
 
Paige Harrison, who co-wrote the report, said that since the mid 1990s, women have become more active in violent crime and drug offenses. And once arrested, these women are serving longer sentences than their criminal counterparts of the 1980s and 1990s.
 
Harrison says Oklahoma's large number of female inmates fits with overall regional trends. The Northeast typically incarcerates a lower number of people, both male and female, and so a state such as Rhode Island has as little as 11 women inmates per 100,000 females in the state.
 
Similarly, states in the South and Midwest with large prison populations overall also imprison a large number of women. Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Montana joined Oklahoma as the only states in 2004 with more than 100 women inmates per 100,000 females living in the state.
 
The rising female inmate population raises new issues for corrections officials. In Montana, a group of female prisoners has filed formal complaints, charging state prison officials do not give women equal opportunity for programs and jobs.
 
In California, Stephanie Covington, who studies female incarceration at the Center for Gender and Justice, said state corrections officials are beginning to understand that female inmates do not have the same needs as their male counterparts.  Specifically, Covington said corrections officials are finding better ways to bring together incarcerated mothers and their children.
 
"Fifteen years ago, they (the number of female inmates) were small enough that we weren't looking at them at all. Now we're looking at them and saying, 'Hey, wait a minute. We can't give the women what we're giving men.' They're not the same population," she said.
 
Laurie Ramey, who works at the same facility where Littlejohn is held, said she has seen a flood of repeat offenders in the five years she has worked at the Turley Correctional Center.
 
³As for these ladies, it's hard for them to find a decent job. The only options are fast food or hotel jobs. And you can¹t take care of a family on minimum wage,² Ramey said, adding that the convict label can be a scarlet letter in Oklahoma. ³Once you get a Department of Corrections number, the economy looks down on you out here.²
 
To fix the problem, Ramey echoed the advice of Covington and others: spend more money on social programs and create a correctional facility that emphasizes education and rehabilitation rather than retribution. ³They need computer classes,² she says.
 
At the moment, Oklahoma officials are looking into a number of solutions. Vann, with the lieutenant governor¹s office, said Oklahoma hopes to route more women through drug programs, rather than jail, and to better treat the female convicts who have a history of mental or psychological ailments.
 
³The solutions are hard to come by,² Moon said. ³You can do one of two things. You can soften punishments -- which is not politically palatable. Or you can spend more money (on social programs), which is little more acceptable, but is still not fun.²
 
One option is to create better prisons. At the Family Foundations Program in San Diego, a small group of women live in a dorm-style facility that emphasizes rehabilitation, rather than retribution. Imprisoned women are allowed to keep their young children -- and learn parenting skills in the process.
 
Littlejohn, who has no children, is currently living in a facility that allows her to leave the halfway house to work at Sonic, a fast-food hamburger joint. At the same time, her stay gives her the chance to attend rehabilitation programs. Looking back, Littlejohn said she is ready to break with her past.
 
"I spent all that money on stupid stuff. I ruined a lot of good things in my life. It wasn¹t worth it.²

http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&co
ntentId=73902

Posted by lois at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2005

Schwarzenegger's Denial of Clemency for Stanley Williams

The full text of the Schwarzenegger's denial of Clemency for Stanley Williams can be found at http://www.governor.ca.gov/govsite/pdf/press_release_2005/Williams_Clemency_Deci
sion.pdf

But below are a couple of paragraphs:

"The dedication of Williams' book "Life in Prison" casts significant doubt on his personal redemption. This book was published in 1998, several years after Williams' claimed redemptive experience. Specifically, the book is dedicated to "Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard Peltier, Dhoruba Al-Mujahid, George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the countless other men, women, and youths who have to endure the hellish oppression of living behind bars." The mix of individuals on this list is curious. Most have violent pasts and some have been convicted of committing heinous murders, including the killing of law enforcement.

But the inclusion of George Jackson on this list defies reason and is a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed and that he still sees violence and lawlessness as a legitimate means to address societal problems."

Schwarzenegger Denies Clemency for Williams
By DAVID KRAVETS, Associated Press Writer
12-12-05

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday refused to spare the life of Stanley Tookie Williams, the founder of the murderous Crips gang who awaited execution after midnight in a case that stirred debate over capital punishment and the possibility of redemption on death row.

Schwarzenegger was unswayed by pleas from Hollywood stars and petitions from more than 50,000 people who said that Williams had made amends during more than two decades in prison by writing a memoir and children's books about the dangers of gangs.

"After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find no justification for granting clemency," Schwarzenegger said, less than 12 hours before the execution. "The facts do not justify overturning the jury's verdict or the decisions of the courts in this case."

Schwarzenegger could have commuted the death sentence to life in prison without parole.

With a reprieve from the federal courts considered unlikely, Williams, 51, was set to die by injection at San Quentin State Prison early Tuesday for murdering four people in two 1979 holdups.

Williams' fate became one of the nation's biggest death-row cause celebres in decades.

Prosecutors and victims' advocates contended Williams was undeserving of clemency from the governor because he did not own up to his crimes and refused to inform on fellow gang members. They also argued that the Crips gang that Williams co-founded in Los Angeles in 1971 is responsible for hundreds of deaths, many of them in battles with the rival Bloods for turf and control of the drug trade.

Williams stood to become the 12th California condemned inmate executed since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977 after a brief hiatus.

Williams was condemned in 1981 for gunning down a clerk in a convenience store holdup and a mother, father and daughter in a motel robbery weeks later. Williams claimed he was innocent.

The last time a California governor granted clemency was in 1967, when Ronald Reagan spared a mentally infirm killer. Schwarzenegger — a Republican who has come under fire from members of his own party as too accommodating to liberals — rejected clemency twice before during his two years in office.

Just before the governor announced his decision on clemency, the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals denied Williams' request for a reprieve, saying among other things that there was no "clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence."

In his last-ditch appeal, Williams claimed that he should have been allowed to argue at his trial that someone else killed one of the four victims, and that shoddy forensics connected him to the other killings.

Williams was convicted of killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at a Los Angeles motel the family owned, and Albert Owens, 26, a 7-Eleven clerk gunned down in Whittier.

Among the celebrities who took up Williams' cause were Jamie Foxx, who played the gang leader in a cable movie about Williams; rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a former Crip; Sister Helen Prejean, the nun depicted in "Dead Man Walking"; Bianca Jagger; and former "M A S H" star Mike Farrell. During Williams' 24 years on death row, a Swiss legislator, college professors and others nominated him for the Nobel Prizes in peace and literature.

"If Stanley Williams does not merit clemency," defense attorney Peter Fleming Jr. asked, "what meaning does clemency retain in this state?"

The impending execution resulted in feverish preparations over the weekend by those on both sides of the debate, with the California Highway Patrol planning to tighten security outside the prison, where hundreds of protesters were expected.

A group of about three dozen death penalty protesters were joined by the Rev. Jesse Jackson as they marched across the Golden Gate Bridge after dawn Monday en route to the gates of San Quentin, where they were expected to rally with hundreds of people.

At least publicly, the person apparently least occupied with his fate seemed to be Williams himself.

"Me fearing what I'm facing, what possible good is it going to do for me? How is that going to benefit me?" Williams said in a recent interview. "If it's my time to be executed, what's all the ranting and raving going to do?"

info@abolishdeathpenalty.org.

Posted by lois at 09:11 PM | Comments (0)

Hurricane Katrina--New Orleans--Death of an American City

December 11, 2005
Editorial, NY Times
Death of an American City
We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.

We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles.

There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city.

At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words "pending in Congress" are a death warrant requiring no signature.

The rumbling from Washington that the proposed cost of better levees is too much has grown louder. Pretending we are going to do the necessary work eventually, while stalling until the next hurricane season is upon us, is dishonest and cowardly. Unless some clear, quick commitments are made, the displaced will have no choice but to sink roots in the alien communities where they landed.

The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives.

Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300 billion. All that money has been appropriated as the cost of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. But what was the worst possible case we fought to prevent?

Losing a major American city.

"We'll not just rebuild, we'll build higher and better," President Bush said that night in September. Our feeling, strongly, is that he was right and should keep to his word. We in New York remember well what it was like for the country to rally around our city in a desperate hour. New York survived and has flourished. New Orleans can too.

Of course, New Orleans's local and state officials must do their part as well, and demonstrate the political and practical will to rebuild the city efficiently and responsibly. They must, as quickly as possible, produce a comprehensive plan for putting New Orleans back together. Which schools will be rebuilt and which will be absorbed? Which neighborhoods will be shored up? Where will the roads go? What about electricity and water lines? So far, local and state officials have been derelict at producing anything that comes close to a coherent plan. That is unacceptable.

The city must rise to the occasion. But it will not have that opportunity without the levees, and only the office of the president is strong enough to goad Congress to take swift action. Only his voice is loud enough to call people home and convince them that commitments will be met.

Maybe America does not want to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe we have decided that the deficits are too large and the money too scarce, and that it is better just to look the other way until the city withers and disappears. If that is truly the case, then it is incumbent on President Bush and Congress to admit it, and organize a real plan to help the dislocated residents resettle into new homes. The communities that opened their hearts to the Katrina refugees need to know that their short-term act of charity has turned into a permanent commitment.

If the rest of the nation has decided it is too expensive to give the people of New Orleans a chance at renewal, we have to tell them so. We must tell them we spent our rainy-day fund on a costly stalemate in Iraq, that we gave it away in tax cuts for wealthy families and shareholders. We must tell them America is too broke and too weak to rebuild one of its great cities.

Our nation would then look like a feeble giant indeed. But whether we admit it or not, this is our choice to make. We decide whether New Orleans lives or dies.

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2005

Hurricane Katrina: Gulf Planning Roils Residents

December 8, 2005, NY Times
Gulf Planning Roils Residents
By BRADFORD McKEE
BILOXI, Miss.

EVER since the water rose over Andrea Harris's white bungalow on Elmer Street during Hurricane Katrina, Ms. Harris has been keeping a scrapbook. It holds three daily prayers, news clippings, the business cards of people who have helped her and angry letters to those who have not - including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which she said took two months to deliver trailers. Until then, she and her neighbors lived in tents.

Now her scrapbook is filling with new worries. At a town meeting Nov. 30, Ms. Harris, 43, and her neighbors had gotten their first glimpse of new plans for Biloxi, developed by a state commission organized by Gov. Haley Barbour and a group of architects known as the Congress for the New Urbanism.

The plans made passing references to restoring sleepy older neighborhoods like hers, but focused heavily on remaking Biloxi as a more polished tourist magnet to rival Paradise Island. The plans proposed changing Highway 90 along Biloxi's coast, home to several of its casinos, into a new "Beach Boulevard." They also envisioned recreating a fishing harbor as a "seafood village," with clusters of condominiums, stores and restaurants. And it envisioned a streetcar running through town to shuttle people to new resorts and casinos.

"We want to see the casino activity here go beyond gaming," said Elizabeth Moule, an architect in Pasadena, Calif., and a founder of the New Urbanist group. "You're really competing with Myrtle Beach."

But for homeowners like Ms. Harris, golf courses and shopping promenades are not a priority. "It's like they're making it for Casino Row," she said last week. Her hair was pulled back in a loose braid, and her eyes flashed from exhaustion to fury. "Are you trying to turn this into a Sin City, or what?"

The Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal, established in late September, is charged with planning the reconstruction of 11 coastal towns, including Biloxi, along with issuing a broader set of recovery guidelines due at the end of December. The town plans, drawn up in about six weeks, are meant to serve as blueprints for state and local leaders.

The New Urbanists, who organized in 1993, have become controversial for opposing suburban sprawl, instead designing old-fashioned town centers with picturesque streets lined by traditional parks, dense housing and stores. New Urbanism's critics, mostly modernist architects and academics, consider its designs a form of nostalgia catering to developers and rich homeowners, too rigid and retrograde for contemporary needs.

But politicians in the hurricane zone are finding New Urbanism's formulas for rebuilding persuasive. Last week, following Governor Barbour's lead in inviting New Urbanists to develop plans, the Louisiana Recovery Authority said it had hired three firms to develop "a comprehensive regional vision," for areas outside New Orleans hit by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The firms include those of the leading New Urbanists, Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk of Miami and Peter Calthorpe of Berkeley, Calif.

This week, KB Home, one of the nation's largest homebuilding companies, announced plans to build up to 20,000 houses across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, near Avondale. KB Home specializes in the type of suburban tract development that the New Urbanist movement opposes.

Ms. Harris knew nothing of the New Urbanists. She went to the meeting hoping for answers to basic questions, such as what the new building codes and flood elevations for Biloxi will be, so she and her neighbors can begin rebuilding their houses.

She found the town meetings had more to do with plans for replacing her neighborhood than restoring it. Lately, she and several neighbors said, surveyors have started showing up daily on her ruined street, some taking pictures of their houses and one bearing a plan that would place a resort on her property. "We were told by the surveyors that a golf course was going to run through my yard," Ms. Harris said.

Like other people in the neighborhood, called Point Cadet, she said she wonders whether city officials will encourage her and her neighbors to stay put and rebuild the houses they own, or whether they will be run off to make the town a tourist playground. Before the storm, Point Cadet was home to several floating casinos. In October, Governor Barbour signed a law that allows casinos to be built on land within 800 feet of the water, rather than restricting them to floating barges. At least one is planned for Point Cadet.

With their hold on Gulf Coast planning, the New Urbanists face their biggest task to date. In the past, many of their developments have been built on virgin sites, or were made to replace run-down public housing in cities. Now they have large areas of 11 badly damaged towns, from Waveland eastward to Pascagoula, to serve as blank slates.

"They're approaching it as if it's raw land," said William Morrish, a professor of architecture at the University of Virginia. In 1993, Mr. Morrish was a founding member of the New Urbanist group but later broke away over what he believed was intolerance toward new eclectic forms of architecture and urban design. "On the issues of transportation and transit, they've done an excellent job," Mr. Morrish said. But he objected to what he said was the New Urbanists' imposing particular architectural styles - namely "neotraditional" styles - in a place like Mississippi.

"A particular style does not promote a certain kind of sustainability or democracy," Mr. Morrish added. "You can't approach building a city like it's a 30-acre development."

Ms. Harris left the meeting unsatisfied. "It's like they just push us away," she said. She found the plans mostly "worried about the beachfront, condominiums, the fishing harbor." She did not like what she heard about plans for housing. "They said 'affordable low-income housing,' " she recalled. "We already own our homes."

Her concerns, she said, have not been alleviated by her mayor, A. J. Holloway, or by William Stallworth, her city council member, both of whom, she said, had turned away from her questions in public meetings.

Mr. Holloway disputed her account. "I never turned my back on anybody," he said. He said he did not know the precise location of Elmer Street. "I do know that Elmer Street won't be a casino," Mr. Holloway said. "But somebody might be surveying. It's not anything the city is doing." Mr. Stallworth was traveling and could not be reached.

Ms. Harris's fears are resounding through Point Cadet's shattered streets as wholesale land clearing by the government rolls slowly westward from the point's eastern tip. Three blocks from the water on Oak Street, Martha Bryant, 44, a licensed contractor, said she is rebuilding her house with her friend, Richard Fredrickson, despite what she sees as resistance from the city.

"They've made my life a living hell since they found out I'm going to move back there," Ms. Bryant said, requiring permits that she found excessive.

She noted that plans for a $400 million Golden Nugget resort with a 60,000-square-foot casino near her home were announced in late November.

"They want to put up an amusement park, a golf course," she said. "I'm east of Oak Street. They're saying everything east of Oak is going to go."

Ms. Bryant, who owns a painting business, erected a multicolored plywood sign on the front of her house that reads: "Hell No I Won't Go."

Her neighbor Elaine Parker, 61, with whom Ms. Bryant made a pact not to sell their houses, hung a protest sign as well. It read: "Now Recruiting Point Cadet Militia People vs. City."

Soon after she hung the sign behind her front fence, a city code enforcement officer came and took it down, she said, for being on city property.

"Of course, you had to be born and raised on Point Cadet to understand the humor in it," Ms. Parker said. Point Cadet has historically been a tough part of town. "We've lost everything, and now are you going to take my sense of humor away from me?"

Ms. Parker asked the enforcement officer whether she could hang the sign on her house, well within her property line. "He said a citation will be issued and you will be put in jail for up to two days," she recalled.

"Can I get 30 days?" she said she asked him. "Because three hots and a cot is more than I got."

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

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

December 08, 2005

Financial Burden of How Prisoners Counted in Census Falls on Rural Communities

FINANCIAL BURDEN OF HOW PRISONERS COUNTED IN CENSUS FALLS ON RURAL -- NOT URBAN -- COMMUNITIES

[URL: http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/fact-8-12-2005.shtml
Website version contains more links and a data table.]

Census 2000 found one out of every 200 residents of New York City in an upstate prison and counted them as if that was their actual residence. I have written extensively on this site about how this relatively small population transfer is magnified through the redistricting process to radically change the balance of power in New York in violation of the state and federal constitutions.

The impact of Census counts of incarcerated people on funding streams for local governments is far smaller than the political impact, but it is worth exploring how funding is effected and who gains and who loses funding from the practice. In contrast to the political effects, the transfer of 0.5% of New York City's population upstate is, when dropped in the giant ocean that is the budget processes of the federal, state and local governments, a tiny ripple that is difficult to see long before it reaches the shore.

These budget processes are not commonly understood, and the resulting confusion impairs an honest debate about reforming the Census Bureau's method of counting incarcerated people.

This article will make two critical points:

1. The way the Census counts prisoners does not significantly reduce the funding available to the urban communities where most prisoners come from.

2. The financial Census benefit to prison towns comes not from the places that prisoners come from but at the expense of other rural communities without prisons.

As discussed in the article Eric Lotke and I wrote in the Pace Law Review, while Census data does play a role in the distribution of more than $1.5 trillion each decade in federal aid, the vast majority of this aid is completely unaffected by where prisoners are counted within a state. The two largest programs, Medicaid and Highways, amount for 74% of the total and are completely unaffected. The majority of the remainder are highly tailored programs that target the program to the need. Simply put, most government programs are smart enough to base a program for poor school age children on a formula that includes not the total population in a county but the number of poor school age children.

There are funding streams that are less sophisticated, but the losers aren't urban citizens. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture distributes $60 million annually to impoverished Appalachian communities via a formula that includes the total population. The completely unanticipated result is to reward communities that build prisons by giving them a larger share of the $60 million Appalachian aid pie.

Stop and think who loses here: The victims are not the urban communities that supply the prisoners because they are not eligible to apply for this money. The real victims are the poor Appalachian communities that see the prison communities more quickly draw down the very limited $60 million fund.

As we described in the Pace Law Review article, most of the money redirected by prison census counts is raised in specialty taxes (liquor taxes, cigarette taxes, recreational park usage fees, hunting-fishing licenses, etc.) and county sales taxes. Not all states have these revenue sources, and in the big picture this is small change, but it is important to see who pays for the windfall received by some.

Dutchess County, NY, can provide a detailed example. In 2003, the town of Fishkill and the small City of Beacon argued over whether the prison counted in one town was really in the other because $85,000 in county sales tax revenues was at stake. Although the prisoners were from New York City, neither the prisoners nor New York City had a valid claim on these funds.

This was not a state sales tax being distributed within the state on the basis of population, but a county sales tax being distributed on the basis of population within the county. The county sets the tax rate -- about 3% of each purchase -- and keeps that money locally. As a result of their "population" based formula, towns with elevated populations due to prisoners get an extra share. So if that money doesn't belong to New York City or to the prison towns, to whom does it belong?

That money belongs to every other town in the county that does not have a prison. The towns with prisons get a windfall, and every community without a prison is deprived of about 1.7% of the tax receipts it would otherwise receive. (See table on website).

It is in fact true that if the Census started to count prisoners as residents of their legal and pre-incarceration addresses, there would be an impact on funding for rural communities. There would be little change in the money that urban communities receive, and towns with prisons would see some decline in their revenue. But most critically, a fairer count of the population would result in an increase in the funds received by the many rural communities that do not have prisons.

As I'll be describing in more detail in the coming weeks, most urban and most rural people have something to gain from changing how prisoners are counted in the Census. But the biggest difference is in political clout, not funding.

RESOURCES:

Pace Law Review article mentioned above: http://www.library.law.pace.edu/PLR24-2/PLR218.pdf

Data table showing estimated change to annual county sales tax income in each city or town in Dutchess County if state prisoners were not included in the population totals for the cities, towns and the county and describing methodology:http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/fact-8-12-2005.shtml

Posted by lois at 08:48 PM | Comments (0)

Yale Advisoroy Committee on Investor Responsibility Decides Not to Divest Private Prisons

The committee discussed the report in the ACIR, and we sort of take the view that the prison industry is a regulated industry," Rouwenhorst said."

Published Wednesday, December 7, 2005, Yale Daily News

ACIR does not call for divestment
Committee will reconsider GESO's claims against private prisons in March

BY RACHEL DEMPSEY
Contributing Reporter

A meeting Tuesday between the chair of Yale's Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility and representatives from the Graduate Employees and Students Organization yielded no immediate progress in GESO's push for divestment from private prison holdings, GESO members said.

"Although the ACIR discussed GESO's report on abuse in prisons, the committee has decided there is not enough evidence to merit divestment, committee chair K. Geert Rouwenhorst said. GESO representatives will have a chance to present their case again during ACIR's annual open meeting this March. Yale President Richard Levin said he stands by ACIR's decision.

"I referred the issue to the ACIR, and that's the process we use," Levin said. "Their conclusion was that this was not a case that warranted divestment under our policy."

But Levin also said that the committee is "always open to new evidence." GESO, which has collected hundreds of signatures from Yale faculty, employees and students in support of divestment, alleges that Yale's holdings in the Corrections Corporation of America ignores the corporation's repeated violations of human rights.

"Unfortunately, Yale has gone from a tacit approval of investing in private prisons to now an active approval," GESO organizer Mary Reynolds GRD '07 said after the meeting with Rouwenhorst.

Reynolds said GESO organizers learned yesterday that ACIR had concluded Yale's investment in CCA did not constitute a "grave social injury," which is the standard for divestment set forth in "The Ethical Investor," the book of adapted investment guidelines used by the ACIR in 1972. The guidelines define social injury as "a violation or frustration of domestic or international legal norms meant to protect against deprivations of health, safety, or basic freedoms."

Rouwenhorst said GESO's report did not contain evidence that the current state regulation of CCA is insufficient to prevent abuses.

"The committee Š discussed the report in the ACIR, and we sort of take the view that the prison industry is a regulated industry," Rouwenhorst said.

Sarah Haley GRD '09, who wrote GESO's report on the CCA, said she was pleased GESO was being given the opportunity to present its case before the ACIR in March, but she was not satisfied with the ACIR's decision not to take a stand against investment in private prisons.

"I'm disturbed that they can't see the blatant human-rights issues," she said. "I'm disappointed that the standard [for divestment], at least the way it's interpreted, seems very vague."

Haley's report describes instances of what she terms "rape and brutal assault" in CCA-run prisons and charges the CCA with lobbying for harsh sentencing to keep its prisons full.

GESO organizers plan to continue their campaign and expand it to other universities across the country, many of which also have money invested in private prisons, over the next semester, Reynolds said.

"In general, I think this is an issue that people are concerned about," Haley said. "We're going to continue this conversation."

Yale's investment in CCA through investment manager Farallon Capital Management totals approximately $1.5 million, according to GESO's report.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=31127>

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

New Immigration Bill Adds Mandatory Minimums without hearings

New immigration bill adds mandatory minimums without hearings
Although it is the season for compassion, House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.) showed little when he introduced H.R. 4437, "The Border and Immigration Enforcement Act of 2005," this week. Alarmingly, Chairman Sensenbrenner has scheduled the committee vote on Thursday, December 8, without the benefit of any hearings and even though committee members will have had a mere two days to analyze this 170-page bill. This hasty action leaves the Judiciary Committee members ill prepared to seriously consider the merits of this legislation, particularly the new mandatory minimum penalties it proposes.

Among other things, H.R. 4437 would add many new immigration crimes and dozens of new mandatory minimum penalties to current law. They include three years for merely encouraging at least two illegal foreigners to reside in the United States if committed for private financial gain, and five years if the encouragement furthers any crime punishable by more than one year in prison. The five-year mandatory minimum will nearly always apply because the bill would also increase the maximum penalty for illegal entry to a year and a day and provides mandatory minimum penalties of one to 10 years for those who reenter the country following deportation.

FAMM members know that mandatory minimum sentences in any form are a bad idea. By casting too wide a net, they punish arbitrarily and forbid judges the ability to make the punishment fit the crime. Furthermore, mandatory minimum sentences are not the kind of immigration reform we need in America. They will only further increase our lead over Russia and China as the most punitive nation in the world. Finally, if there's anything we've learned over the years of sentencing reform, it's that good policy is the product of careful deliberation, not hasty, railroaded votes!

If H.R. 4437 is approved by the House Judiciary Committee, then the U.S. House of Representatives will debate and vote on the bill next week. FAMM will send another alert if this happens, urging you to tell your representative that you oppose H.R. 4437. So be ready for (hopefully) one last effort to end 2005 without any new terrible sentencing laws in place.

For more information about FAMM www.famm.org

Posted by lois at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

Thousands in NYC prisons have Hep C--only a few hundred get treatement

Rotting Away
Thousands of New York inmates have hepatitis C. Only a few hundred get treatment.

by Kai Wright, Village voice
December 6th, 2005 1:25 PM

It's hard to imagine how a doctor could miss Jimi Hammerstein's primary health risk. The graying Brooklyn native spent most of the last 10 years upstate for slinging dope in Park Slope—back when the neighborhood was still in transition. "I remember when this neighborhood wasn't nothing like this," he says, laughing as he sits in a drop-in center for ex-offenders on Fourth Avenue, the Slope's still-gritty border with Downtown Brooklyn. "This was like, dope land!"

Dope land's geography extended into the prison compounds Hammerstein bounced between. His habit continued once he was inside, and just as intensely. Most inmates snort heroin rather than inject it, but as Hammerstein describes the scene, "You got the die-hard dope fiends like I was, where there's only one way to fly. If you're going to do any kind of substance, you might as well shoot it."

Hammerstein's commitment to the needle made him a textbook candidate for two of the modern era's most aggressive communicable diseases: HIV and hepatitis C—a deadly virus that, when left untreated, slowly devours your liver. He tested positive for HIV back in 1989, before he entered prison. He says he copped to the infection at the beginning of his two bids, but he'd never heard of hep C and claims no one— certainly not corrections health officials—ever asked him about it.

Only after his release last year did the questions begin. "People used to say to me, 'Oh, you're HIV; are you hep C too?' " Hammerstein remembers. "I'd say no. And they'd say, 'Oh, that's unusual.' " He'd shrug the idea off. "I'd been taking tests up north for years, and no one mentioned anything about hep C." His doc on the outside finally insisted he get tested, and in what should have been no surprise, he was positive.

Like Hammerstein, thousands of prisoners around the country are slowly dying from a wholly treatable disease because corrections officials are doing everything possible to avoid caring for them. New York is among the worst offenders, as by most estimates it boasts more inmates living with hep C than any other state. But after years of advocates and inmates fruitlessly lobbying for change, a series of recent lawsuits, including a class action case now pending in federal court, appears to have finally forced the state's hand.

Over the last three decades, hep C has been a stealthy but virulent sidekick to its celebrity sister HIV. Nearly 3 million people nationwide now have chronic infections—triple the HIV caseload. They are uniquely concentrated in prisons: At least 14 percent of New York's inmates are known to have hep C. And as these legions barrel toward the disease's end stage, in which the inflamed liver turns cirrhotic, they promise to collapse the teetering liver-transplant market. Already, hep C is the number one reason for swapping out a liver; the waiting list for transplants is 17,000 people deep and growing. The sooner you start treatment, the less likely you'll need one.

In response to growing awareness about the epidemic—and its concentration among drug users who cycle in and out of incarceration—the state corrections department says it now offers tests to all incoming prisoners whose profiles raise red flags, as Hammerstein's should have. But even for those who get screened, learning you've got the disease is where, for most, the process ends. According to a Justice Department census, as of 2000, only about 300 of the state's estimated 10,000 hep C–positive inmates were being treated.

Prison health advocates charge this dismal rate is no accident. Coincidentally or not, treating hep C is one of the more expensive tasks in medicine. The multi-drug regimen can cost as much as $35,000 per patient. Corrections already spends almost $23 million a year on AIDS meds, nearly 40 percent of its whole pharmacy budget.

Until mid October, when the department began revising its policies in response to ongoing litigation, any inmate needing hep C treatment who had a history of using drugs—as does almost everyone with the virus—was required to first enroll in a six-month class for users. The official approach, which has been slowly shifting over the last couple of years, originally forced inmates to complete the course before getting treatment. It was expansive and unbending: If you'd ever done drugs or alcohol in your life, you had to take the class.

"You got guys that been in the system eight, nine, 10 years," scoffs Rahiem (not his real name), a hep C–positive lifer at the medium-security facility in Auburn who refused to take the drug class and so hasn't gotten treatment. "They don't have no record of drug use from disciplinary actions. But they're denied treatment." Rahiem wears long gray dreadlocks and stares with measured intensity when insisting that he last got high in 1973. But his old girlfriend once got charged with smuggling whiskey into the visiting room, he says, so now he's stuck with a user label.

"These rules are barriers that they set up," complains Romeo Sanchez, a hep C–positive ex-offender who organizes prison activism at the New York City AIDS Housing Network, "because they don't want to pay for it."

But as Robert Hilton found out, even if you go along with the rules, the outcome is often the same: no treatment. Hilton is the lead plaintiff in the new class action, filed in federal court on August 17.

Hilton began treatment for hep C at Bellevue in 2002. But a few months after starting, he became homeless, and his treatment was interrupted. In August 2004, he was locked up on a parole violation and shipped upstate to Altona. Upon intake there, he underwent a routine exam at which he told doctors about his infection, the resulting liver disease, and his treatment history.

But the medical staff waited two months to conduct its own tests, according to the complaint, and a full seven months to recommend him for treatment. Then Chief Medical Officer Lester Wright ruled Hilton couldn't start until he took drug addiction classes, even though no previous doctor in or out of the system had suggested it and even though Hilton professed to have not used drugs in 13 years—much of which time he spent passing drug tests as a parolee.

Hilton acquiesced and signed up for the class—only to be put on a lengthy waiting list. He was then transferred to another facility, where counseling staff again tried to enroll him in an addiction class. This time, his enrollment was turned down because he would be eligible for parole before the class finished. "As antiretroviral treatment continues to be denied on the basis of this catch-22," the class action complaint notes, "Mr. Hilton's liver continues to deteriorate."

The state declined to comment on this and other suits it now faces.

In previous suits, the corrections department has offered a reasonable-sounding defense. Hep C treatment is no joke—at least a shot a week and daily pills that can cause depression and flu-like symptoms similar to those of heroin withdrawal. Even the regular needle use can be traumatic for someone kicking an old habit. So the department worries about triggering relapses. And all credible medical guidelines stress that no one who's actively using drugs or alcohol should start treatment without getting sober, lest they fail to complete the regimen.

The stakes are high: If you start and don't finish, your virus will likely mutate, developing the sort of drug resistance we've heard so much about with HIV.

Critics, however, point out that all of the guidelines cited by corrections warn only against treating active users. The concern over relapse is the department's own.

In early November, the prison officials submitted a sweeping policy change to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, asking that a central part of Hilton's case be dismissed based on that change. The new policy removes the drug abuse class requirement but maintains an insistence that inmates have "no evidence of active substance abuse" in the previous six months. Those with evidence of such will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Alexander Rienert, an attorney with Koob & Magoolaghan, which is leading the Hilton class action and has led a number of previous hep C suits, says that's not near good enough. He wants to see a far more detailed portrait of how the system will scale up treatment—and how it will get those it has previously turned away into treatment. "What Dr. Wright is saying is, trust us, you don't have to be involved anymore," scoffs Rienert. "But our experience is, the only time an individual gets treated is when an attorney has stepped in."

Moreover, Rienert says he's already received at least one new complaint from an inmate who has been denied treatment based on his failure to take a drug abuse class.

Milton Zelermyer, a staff attorney with Legal Aid's Prisoners' Rights Project, adds that there remain plenty of ways for corrections to ration treatment. Already, the prisons only test certain inmates for hep C, and as Hammerstein's experience shows, many likely candidates slip through unscreened. But effective hep C screening and treatment also require extensive diagnostics, including regular blood tests and a liver biopsy—just the sort of thing the department delayed for months before denying Hilton based on the drug class rule. So the new policy looks like progress, Zelermyer says, but "how it works in reality is another question."

Prison health advocates say the system's failure to deal adequately with hep C is just the latest disaster to come from letting prison guards control public health. Even as the narrow legal battle over hep C intensifies, advocates are pressing a broader legislative reform. Of course, for activists in Albany, reforms for guys like Rahiem and Hammerstein and Hilton have been the most dead on arrival.

The corrections department's health care challenge is already massive—it runs what amounts to the nation's largest HIV medical practice, for instance. Yet it is exempt from Department of Health oversight because state law considers its facilities more akin to private colleges than public hospitals. The state assembly wants that law changed, but neither the health department nor corrections wants to be part of an arranged marriage; bills calling for it have twice stalled in the senate.

And that leaves dying inmates' futures in the hands of the courts. "There could be something out there for you—whatever medicine, whatever program, whatever doctor you have to see—and they ain't telling," Hammerstein complains, "because the facility don't want to go for the money."

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

December 02, 2005

NY: Bronx Congressman Jose Serrano seeks new U.S. count for prisoners

Bronx congressman seeks new U.S. count for prisoners

By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer
December 1, 2005
WASHINGTON -- A Bronx congressman is pushing to change the way the government counts prison inmates, arguing they should be considered residents of their hometowns instead of the locked cells they now call home. Such a move could drastically alter how much government aid towns, cities, and counties receive, and how much representation they get in Congress.

  Rep. Jose Serrano, a Democrat, worked language into a recent budget bill ordering the U.S. Census Bureau to study a new way to count such inmates: by their pre-arrest address instead of the location of their cell. If Serrano's effort were to succeed, both money and political clout would likely tilt away from rural areas, where most prisoners do their time, toward New York City, where most commit their crimes. Rep. John McHugh is a Republican who represents the state's North Country, a district that includes a number of large prisons in otherwise sparsely populated areas.
"He's concerned about anything that would have a negative impact on the economic fabric of the communities of the rural areas, but he'll wait to see what the results of that study are," McHugh spokeswoman Brynn Barnett said Thursday.
New York state currently holds 63,173 prisoners. Most of its prisons are arrayed along upstate New York, while the majority of the prisoners, 56 percent, come from New York City. The state's Department of Correctional Services does not take a position on how the census should count prisoners. Bronx county, as of October 29, was the county of offense for some 6,915 prisoners, while Manhattan was the county of offense for 12,581, according to state records. Counties of offense are not a guarantee those prisoners lived there, but they are a reasonable indicator that the convict lived either in the county or nearby. While New York's prison population has declined in recent years, the national trend is continued growth. In the United States, there were 1.4 million men and women held in state and federal prisons last year, an increase of 2.6 percent, compared with an average annual growth of 3.4 percent a year since 1995. Advocates for changing prisoner counts in the U.S. Census say that long-term trend is forcing government agencies and officials to re-examine the issue. "It's unfair to count them as residents of their penitentiary, with all the needs that exist back in their home communities where they'll eventually return," said Kirsten Levingston, director of the Criminal Justice Program at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. "I think on Capitol Hill there is a growing sensitivity to the fact that people go to prison, and when they are released they need to be able to re-integrate to society," Levingston said.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--countinginmates120
1dec01,0,1915679.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork

Posted by lois at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2005

CA: New Plan on Youth Prisons Criticized

To Articles on California's Department of Correction new youth plan
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prison1dec01,0,4328860.story?coll=la-home-local

Gov.'s Youth Prison Plan Is Criticized
The proposal would put more emphasis on inmate rehabilitation. Critics back principles but worry about lack of details, cost estimates.
By Jenifer Warren
Times Staff Writer

December 1, 2005

SACRAMENTO — One year after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed to make the state's youth prisons places where inmates receive "a better chance to succeed in life," his administration Wednesday released a court-mandated plan to carry out that vision, outlining a therapeutic approach that has proved successful elsewhere in the country.

The long-awaited blueprint proposes cutting in half the number of youths housed together, changing how guards handle unruly wards, ensuring that all receive therapy, eliminating extended solitary confinement for misbehavior, and more carefully screening incoming juveniles so they are housed and treated according to their needs.

It also suggests transferring California's 155 female wards into secure residential programs and says reform will probably be impossible unless the state closes its "decrepit" youth lock-ups and opens new or renovated facilities that are state of the art.

Though supportive of the principles at the heart of the plan, lawyers, legislators and relatives of young offenders called it skimpy on details. They also lamented that neither the document, nor the officials unveiling it, mentioned how much the changes would cost and where money to accomplish the task would be found.

"The state worked hard on this plan, and I know their intentions are good," said Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office, the nonprofit firm that sued the state over its management of juvenile corrections. "But there are too many unanswered questions for us to feel confident that we will eventually have a system that keeps kids safe and protects the public."

Specter said he and other attorneys were so disappointed by the lack of specifics that they considered filing a motion seeking to hold state officials in contempt of court for violating a settlement agreement, reached last year, in which Schwarzenegger vowed to make reforms.

Instead, Specter said, the Prison Law Office and state struck an agreement late Wednesday requiring the state to hire by Jan. 3 six national juvenile justice experts. The team, which will include the former youth prison chiefs of Massachusetts and Illinois, will help make immediate changes inside prisons and fine-tune the long-term plan, he said.

The clash over the beleaguered youth system comes as Schwarzenegger faces intense criticism for another aspect of his massive corrections department: a lack of progress on fixing profound problems with medical care for the state's 168,000 adult prisoners.

On Monday, a federal judge overseeing that issue sternly warned the governor to get involved and get the problem fixed, urging him to pay for emergency reforms "the same way you find the money to build a tent to smoke cigars" outside his Capitol office.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson said he was "taking the gloves off" and would hold a hearing on a contempt motion soon unless Schwarzenegger appoints someone with authority to overcome the "no-can-do bureaucratic mind-set" that has thwarted progress on adult inmate healthcare.

Noting that nothing has changed since court inspectors reported that an average of one inmate dies of medical neglect or incompetence each week, Henderson warned that he would soon issue an order spelling out what the governor must do.

Like prison healthcare, the question of how best to house and manage the state's youngest lawbreakers — 3,149 wards ages 12 to 25 — has dogged government officials for years.

Decades ago, California's prisons for juveniles were hailed nationally for their success in turning around lives. But over time, officials acknowledge, a culture of punishment and control replaced a softer, more paternalistic approach.

In recent years, independent experts have criticized almost every aspect of youth prisons, including the use of force by staff, medical and mental healthcare and the practice of isolating unruly youths in their cells almost around the clock for months on end.

Just as disturbing, critics say, is the fact that the state's investment in the system — about $450 million a year, or more than $140,000 per ward — delivers a poor return in public safety. Statistics show that three out of four youths are back in custody within three years of their release.

Despite agreement on the system's problems, efforts to improve it have stumbled, the victim of political indifference and disagreement over what constitutes a successful approach.

Last year, however, activists thought a historic corner had been turned as Schwarzenegger visited a youth prison to announce a new emphasis on rehabilitation.

In settling the Prison Law Office suit that had challenged conditions, Schwarzenegger agreed to build a new model.

But since then, critics say, progress has been agonizingly slow, and some question whether Schwarzenegger's sagging popularity has made him leery of making corrections a priority.

"It's a question of political courage, and it doesn't look like the governor has enough of it to close these terrible prisons and create a system that works," said Jakada Imani, field director for Books Not Bars, which represents relatives of many wards.

David Steinhart, a noted juvenile justice consultant who has advised the state on reforms, also expressed frustration, saying "the momentum for change has slowed to a crawl, and the commitment just doesn't seem to be there at the top."

A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, Julie Soderlund, said the governor remains "fully committed to bringing necessary reform to California's juvenile justice system."

Bernard Warner, chief deputy secretary of juvenile justice, echoed that sentiment, noting that other states that shifted their youth prisons from a punitive to a rehabilitative model, such as Missouri and Colorado, took many years to accomplish the change.

The plan was filed Wednesday in Alameda County Superior Court as part of the lawsuit settlement. Funding will be specified in the governor's next budget, scheduled for release in January.

Warner, who was appointed by Schwarzenegger in August, said the plan would be phased in over five years. In the first 18 months, he said, the state would roll out a more refined screening process for incoming inmates, replacing the current method of categorizing them merely by gender, age and gang affiliation.

Officials also will replace the use of temporary detention, or the extended isolation of youths who fight or commit other misconduct, with a new behavior management program that includes positive reinforcement and steps wards must follow to rejoin normal housing.

Another important change, Warner said, is moving beyond a "one-size-fits-all" correctional employee to multiple categories of staff, allowing those with more of a social work orientation to specialize in treatment while others focus on security.

Shortly before noon Wednesday, a few dozen protesters showed up at Schwarzenegger's office, delivering letters from incarcerated teenagers as well as petitions with 3,200 signatures demanding that the most notorious of the youth prisons, N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility in Stockton, be closed. Instead, the plan recommends converting the prison into one for treatment of sex offenders and those who are mentally ill.

Among those protesting was Oralee Small, whose grandson, Dyron Brewer, died in September 2004 while serving time at Chaderjian. He is one of three wards — including Joseph Maldonado, who hanged himself with his bedding in August — to die at the prison in the last two years.

Posted on Thu, Dec. 01, 2005

Youth prison reforms unveiled
ADVOCATES COOL TO STATE'S PLAN
By Edwin Garcia
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on Wednesday proposed an ambitious plan to reform California's juvenile justice system that includes rebuilding aging youth prisons, improving living conditions and providing treatment to all offenders.

The plan, however, was criticized by some juvenile justice advocacy groups and a top legislative critic of the state's youth prison system who contend the proposed reforms don't go far enough.

``What we need is a detailed vision for moving this department philosophically toward education and rehabilitation,'' said state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, ``not just incarceration of youth.''

The reforms would be implemented through at least the next five years, depending on funding, and state officials contend they will lower recidivism rates, provide safer facilities and better prepare youths to integrate into society.

``What it does is really improve the services and the environment of our facilities for the wards who are committed by the court to our care,'' said Bernard Warner, chief deputy secretary of Juvenile Justice, calling the plan ``not just a shell'' but a ``comprehensive strategy.''

The plan is in response to a 2002 lawsuit filed by the non-profit Prison Law Office. Among the highlights of the reforms:

• The state will eliminate the concept of so-called general population. ``Right now, essentially about one of every three of our youths are in what would be defined as a treatment program,'' Warner said. ``And what this plan does is, it says that all youths who come to our system will be in a treatment program, whether it's sex offender, whether it's mental health, whether it's substance abuse.

• The size of living units, which house as many as 80 youths, will be reduced to no more than 38. Mental health units will house no more than 30, and include more staffing and the use of licensed mental health professionals.

• A proposal to replace 40-year-old decrepit prisons with ``state-of-the-art'' facilities, including prisons for no more than 350 wards. Some of the current facilities were designed for more than 1,000 youths.

Many of the areas proposed for reforms were detailed in the lawsuit and covered in a 2004 Mercury News series that described wards being packed into what was then known as California Youth Authority institutions and receiving inadequate education and a lack of treatment for mental health care.

Under a 22-page consent decree issued in Alameda County Superior Court in November 2004, the state was required to spell out how it intended to improve living conditions, mental health care, education and rehabilitation programs. The last of the series of remedial plans, covering mental health, and safety and welfare, were filed in court shortly before Wednesday's deadline. The department also faces a deadline today to present its reform plans to the Legislature.

Warner and his associates presented the state's latest plans in a fifth-floor office of the department known as the ``reform room,'' where walls are covered with colorful papers containing hand-scribbled notes on how to improve the 100 or so facilities that house about 3,200 youths.

Like Romero, advocates for youth prison reforms had reservations about the report's recommendations.

``The plan is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't go anywhere near far enough to address the serious and life-threatening problems present in the CYA today,'' said Don Specter, director of the San Rafael-based Prison Law Office. The Marin County inmate rights group filed its class-action lawsuit on behalf of Marciano Plata and eight other inmate plaintiffs.

Specter said the facilities were not much better than a year ago when the governor signed the legal consent decree obliging state officials to make significant reforms.

``The plan isn't developed. Although it has many good things and many positive ideas, there are few concrete commitments that can assure confidence that you actually have a program that will rehabilitate youth and promote public safety.''

Lenore Anderson, director of the activist group Books Not Bars in Oakland, had hoped the department would close some facilities. The 2-year-old organization founded by San Francisco's Ella Baker Center for Human Rights has long been critical of the youth authority.

``Any plan that keeps abusive youth prisons run by prison guards open is a set-up for failure,'' Anderson said. ``The solutions have been obvious for a long time, and we're disappointed that it doesn't call for closing any facilities.''

Under the reforms, none of the current facilities are slated to be closed.

The state's most troubled youth prison, the N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility, which has been cited for its failure to provide adequate education, will turn into a treatment facility.

Warner said staffing levels would need to be improved, but he did not disclose details, and he said a number of reforms would have to be agreed upon by the state's powerful prisons union.

Warner also declined to put a price tag on the proposed reforms, saying it was too early to determine the financial implications. But he expressed confidence that Schwarzenegger and the Legislature would fund the improvements.

Posted by lois at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)

Commission Hearing Explores The Work of Corrections Officers

COMMISSION ON SAFETY AND ABUSE
www.prisoncommission.org
December 1, 2005
COMMISSION HEARING EXPLORES THE DIFFICULT WORK OF
CORRECTIONS OFFICERS

On November 1st and 2nd, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons convened in St. Louis, Missouri, to hear testimony about the difficult work of corrections officers, with a focus on the conditions that jeopardize the health and safety of both officers and prisoners and how to remedy those problems. A transcript of the proceedings, in whole and by witness panel, is available on the Commission’s web site, http://www.prisoncommission.org/public_hearing_3.asp.

Highlights of the testimony include:
* A portrait of a complex job that is under-resourced and under-valued
* A clarion call to change the institutional culture
* What happens when officers function under extreme stress
* The critical role of leadership at all levels
* A look at why officers use physical force and how to minimize it
* Divergent views about professional accreditation
* The public vs. private prison debate

A complex, but under-resourced and under-valued, job. The hearing began with a personal account by St. Louis Corrections Officer Lou West who described a job that is difficult even under the best circumstances – “customer service in hell,” he called it. West supervises 67 people, out in the open, and relies on interpersonal skills and 25 years of experience to meet the demands of the job. Even though “direct supervision” is extremely demanding, West prefers it to the old-style, “linear” prisons he worked in as a young officer. “Even though I grew up in the streets of St. Louis,” he said “there was nothing to prepare me for the graphic violence I experienced everyday. Direct supervision is a much more humane setting.”

“We have come a long way, from prison guard to correctional officer,” said Theodis Beck, Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Correction. “Our correctional officers are much better trained, more professional, believe in their work, and take their job seriously.” “But for all that we ask them to do,” he continued, “the correctional officer is under-paid, under-recognized, and often under appreciated.” In support of the workforce, Beck also cited rising numbers of women, African-Americans, and Latinos among the officer ranks.

Both James Marquart, a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, and Lance Corcoran, a labor leader in California, who testified along with Beck, described a mismatch between the demands of managing a large, diverse, and troubled prison population and dwindling resources for doing that job well. “One word sums it up,” said Marquart, “and that’s the word pressure.” “In football, there’s a penalty called ‘piling on.’ The officer has been piled on. And as a result of a massive surge in prison admissions, everything in prison must be accomplished faster, faster.” At the same time, Corcoran said, the public’s low image of the profession makes it difficult for officers to take pride in their work. The ultimate effect: departments can’t hire and retain the best people. All three witnesses concluded that until there is political will to invest in prisons, conditions for both staff and inmates will not improve, and recidivism rates will remain high.

A clarion call to change the institutional culture. A critical look at the underlying culture of confinement emerged as a theme of this hearing, with nearly every witness calling for continued improvements in the institutional culture. Three witnesses, in particular, focused their testimony on relations between officers and prisoners, covering issues that ranged from cross-gender and cross-racial supervision to the underlying combative, dehumanizing dynamics that fuel abuse and the code of silence.

Massachusetts Corrections Commissioner Kathleen Dennehy said that for years, training for officers encouraged an “us vs. them mentality” and talked about the “missed opportunities” and also dangers of not seeing inmates as “fully human.” (The department’s nine-week basic training program was redesigned to focus on building the officers’ communication skills.) “An inmate may have committed a criminal act, but it is not a steady state,” said former prison superintendent Elaine Lord. “They are not monsters,” she continued. “They are not subhuman. They are us.” Lord retired when she felt that she could not protect the women under her care.

Drawing on his experience as a prisoner, Eddie Ellis testified that many uniformed staff believe that even criminal behavior will not be prosecuted and that they will be “protected by their peers, their supervisors, ultimately by the system itself.” Dennehy spoke candidly about resistance from individual officers and the union to reforms intended to hold officers accountable for their behavior and to encourage them to report instances of misconduct by their colleagues, but she ended on a hopeful note: “What’s happening rather slowly is that we are now having some employees step forward willing to tell the truth. And I think the critical issue here is that it is a small proportion of staff who engage in the most egregious conduct.”

Earlier in the hearing, asha bandele described how dehumanizing dynamics also hurt the families of prisoners and undermine those crucial bonds. Married to a long-time prisoner in New York, she described “sudden, capricious” new rules around acceptable dress for visitors that were enforced in a “humiliating” way. “I will never be convinced that this made the facility more secure. Indeed, it can lead to severe tension between a prisoner and a guard who humiliated or otherwise violated his wife.”

The toll of functioning under extreme stress. As an opening to a panel focused on the human consequences of the job, Commissioner Dr. James Gilligan recalled that “One year we measured the blood pressure of all the corrections officers who worked at the prison mental hospital and the vast majority had blood pressures so high they would have qualified for immediate medical leave of absence.” In talking about her daughter who works as a correctional officer, former prison chaplain the Rev. Jacqueline Means said, “I can't blame her position as an officer for the drinking problem that she developed. But the stress of the job and the lack of support for the officers didn't help the situation.”

Psychology professor Robert Delprino identified the sources of extreme stress – emphasizing, in particular, the feeling among many officers that they operate in a difficult, demanding environment with little or no control over their own work or the environment. He also pointed out the corrosive effect of shame: “I think that many COs I found really don’t want to tell people that they are corrections officers. They’d rather just say I work for the state.”

“When you go to work in a place that has a tendency to be condescending, negative, vulgar, that can show up in your life. I’ve seen officers the first year maybe putting on 75 pounds. They get to become cynical. They get to become a little bit paranoid,” said William Hepner, who trains officers in New Jersey. The “expectation of obedience,” he continued, can act as a catalyst for violence at home. And the extreme stress leads to high rates of turnover – about 400 officers annually in New Jersey.

To mitigate stress and its consequences, both Hepner and Larry Brimeyer, Deputy Director for Eastern Operations in the Iowa Department of Corrections, talked about the value and popularity among officers of structured peer support programs – programs developed initially with support from the National Institute of Justice. According to Brimeyer, more than eighty officers in Iowa have been trained as peer supporters. And in the first nine months of this year, officers sought help from these peer supporters on more than 400 separate occasions.

In offering potential solutions, Delprino focused on the role that supervisors can play in identifying officers under stress and getting them the help they need. He also cautioned against concluding that the job affects everyone in the same way. “I just want us to remember,” he said, “that many corrections officers go through this career of 20, 25 years with themselves and their families intact. Many COs are proud of their profession and see themselves as serving an important role.”

The critical role of leadership. The importance of good leadership – people walking the halls and not merely issuing orders from behind a desk – was another theme that emerged during the hearing. “I often tell leadership staff you are judged by offenders and staff by how you spend your time and how you spend your money, not what you say,” testified Mary Livers, Deputy Secretary for Operations in the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

Asked by the Commission to speak about leadership, Livers described why it’s important, the opportunities it presents, and real obstacles to reform. She called the best correctional leaders “change agents” and described the attempt at instituting sweeping reforms in the Maryland system. “We are moving from a very restrictive philosophy of managing offenders to an environment that supports secure settings by creating a culture of safety, dignity, respect, and accountability,” said Livers. “We’re moving away from having that feeling of being safe when offenders are all locked up, to one where we’re actually safer because we have inmates out of their cells, involved in something hopeful and productive.”

The obstacles to reform include lack of funding, staff shortages, low pay for officers, unions that fight to keep officers who abuse their authority on the job, old facilities built to warehouse prisoners, and fleeting tenure. “Time is not on our side,” Livers said, and noted that the average tenure for a top administrator in a state system is 3.2 years.

She also reminded those gathered in St. Louis that the effort is, for most corrections leaders, a labor of love. “Most leaders in corrections will not go on to have a political career or be revered as a hero. They do this work for the satisfaction of knowing that somehow, despite all of the difficulties in managing large and complex systems, they make a difference. This, of course, is the antithesis of what is portrayed in the popular culture, but it’s the truth.”

Why officers use force and how to minimize it. “It’s your sergeants and your lieutenants that actually run the prison,” said former Kansas corrections head Patrick McManus. “Abuses don’t occur unless a large number of them know about it.” As a consultant, McManus is working to get facilities to move beyond specialized training in the use of force to cultivate leadership and an institutional culture that discourages relying on force. The on-the-job environment, McManus says, is far more influential in shaping the behavior of new staff than pre-service training. “Training is important. Policies are important. But leadership sort of trumps them all,” he said.

Testimony by Ronald Kaschak illustrates how a less experienced officer is shaped by his environment. An employee of the Mahoning County Jail near Youngstown, Ohio, with three years on the job, he felt he had to follow orders to restrain and beat an inmate.

To broaden understanding about why officers may use force unnecessarily or excessively, Sgt. Michael Van Patten, a 20-year veteran who now trains officers in Oregon, described survival stress reaction (SSR), which is the result of accumulated tension and actual violent encounters. Officers suffering from SSR, he said, are more likely to use force because stress impairs their judgment as they enter a cell or confront a prisoner who is disobeying orders or causing conflict.

According to both Patrick McManus and Randall Berg, who heads the Florida Justice Institute, that kind of poor judgment is more likely to occur when officers are dealing with mentally ill prisoners – especially officers working in small local jails. Berg showed the Commissioners photographs illustrating the serious injuries that result from excessive exposure to pepper spray – both on targeted inmates and on other people housed in the same cell block.

Divergent views about professional accreditation. “This wasn’t a thing of make work,” said former Indiana corrections commissioner Evelyn Ridley-Turner. “We wanted to live by the standards.” Ridley-Turner was one of four witnesses to address the process, benefits, and ultimate value of having a prison or jail accredited by the American Correctional Association (ACA), the profession’s primary trade association. Ridley-Turner continued: “When you’re doing operations 24/7, sometimes it gets to the point that you can’t see the forest for the trees, and that was what I was finding out with some of our facilities. They did have procedures in place, but this gives you a peer review.”

ACA Deputy Director Jeff Washington and Michael Hamden, a member of the ACA's Commission on Accreditation for Corrections since 1998 and also Executive Director of North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, echoed her views, emphasizing that the accreditation process is voluntary and that the ACA collaborates with and supports correctional administrators who engage in the process. “We are a helping body,” Washington said, noting that the ACA has been accrediting facilities since 1974.

It’s precisely that kind of collaboration that troubles Brian Dawe, Executive Director of Corrections USA, a nonprofit coalition of unions, associations, and individual officers. “As a line officer, I went through several accreditations,” said Dawe. “And I can tell you one of the biggest problems we had was that we knew well in advance who was coming, when they were coming, and you could always tell the day the accreditation team would be there because there would be more staff. You’d be tripping all over them. And the day after the accreditation team left, the staff would be gone.”

Much of the debate among the witnesses and with the Commissioners centered on whether the ACA’s standards are too low; whether the process and results are credible, given the symbiotic relationship between the ACA and the corrections administrators who pay to engage in the process; whether results of ACA audits should be made public; and whether professional accreditation should be mandatory – and who would fund it.

The public vs. private prison debate. “I would not have taken the job with Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) if I believed I would have to choose between profitability and good quality corrections,” testified Richard Seiter, a CCA executive and former federal prison administrator. Seiter also emphasized that the contracting process – and the penalties for violating those contracts – make private prisons more accountable than publicly run facilities.

UCLA law processor Sharon Dolovich acknowledged that contracts can have this benefit, if government officials exercise their rights under those agreements. How often, she asked, does government inspect a privately run facility unannounced? How often does it terminate a contract for cause? Private prison opponent Frank Smith pointed out multiple CCA-run facilities that were poorly monitored, rife with serious abuses, and some that were shut down as a result.

Providing support to Smith’s stories, Dolovich testified that her research suggests that private prisons are less safe than their governmental counter-parts, but she objected mainly to the contours of the debate. “The way the debate has generally been framed, as a choice or even a competition between public and private is the wrong way to think about the issue,” she said. “I think the real question is why all of our prisons, public and private alike, fall so short of satisfying our obligations to those who we incarcerate.”

About the hearings and Commission. Twenty-four people testified in St. Louis, offering both personal accounts and expert opinions. Their testimony, as well as written statements provided in advance of the hearing, are posted at http://www.prisoncommission.org/public_hearing_3.asp. This was the third of four scheduled hearings. The final hearing will take place in Los Angeles, California, in early February. The Commission expects to issue a final report and recommendations in April 2006.

The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons is a diverse, 21-member, non-partisan panel co-chaired by former United States Attorney General Nicholas de B. Katzenbach and the Honorable John J. Gibbons, former Chief Judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The Commission formed in March 2005 and will work for one year to explore the most serious problems inside U.S. correctional facilities and their impact on the incarcerated, the men and women who staff facilities, and society at large. The Commission is staffed by and funded through the Vera Institute of Justice.

Posted by lois at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)

More Young Black Men Have Done Prison Time Than Miliary Service or Earned a College Degree

May. 20, 2004 | Social Science | Law and Policy
More young black men have done prison time than military service or earned college degree, study shows
CONTACT: Joel Schwarz joels@u.washington.edu 206-543-2580

Being jailed in federal or state prisons has become so common today that more young black men in the United States have done time than have served in the military or earned a college degree, according to a new study.
The paper, appearing this week in the American Sociological Review, estimates that 20 percent of all black men born from 1965 through 1969 had served time in prison by the time they reached their early 30s. By comparison, less than 3 percent of white males born in the same time period had been in prison.

Equally startling, the risks of prison incarceration rose steeply with lower levels of education. Among blacks, 30.2 percent of those who didn't attend college had gone to prison by 1999 and 58.9 percent of black high school dropouts born from 1965 through 1969 had served time in state or federal prison by their early 30s.

"More strikingly than patterns of military enlistment, marriage or college graduation, prison time differentiates the young adulthood of black men from the life course of white males. Imprisonment is now a common life event for an entire demographic group," said Becky Pettit, one of the study's authors and a University of Washington assistant professor of sociology. Bruce Western, a Princeton University professor of sociology, is the co-author.

The study looks at men born from 1945 through 1969 focusing on two groups -- those born from 1945 through 1949 and those born from 1965 through 1969. It draws on publicly available data on inmates in federal and state prisons from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, but does not include information on spending time in local jails, which hold an estimated one-third of the incarcerated prison population. Hispanics were not included because data was not available, particularly about men born in the 1940s.

The incarceration rate for black men born in 1945-49 was 10.6 percent by the time they were in their early 30s, but increased to 20.5 percent for those born in 1965-69. Among white men the overall risk of imprisonment grew from 1.4 percent to 2.9 percent over the same time period.

The increase in incarceration marked a dramatic shift in the life course for young black males. In addition to estimating the risk of incarceration for birth cohorts by race and education, the researchers compared the prevalence of spending time in prison to other important life events for men born in 1965-69 who survived until 1999. Pettit and Western found that 22.4 percent of surviving black men born in that period had spent time in jail, while just 17.4 percent had served in the military and only 12.5 percent had earned a bachelor's degree.

By the end of 1999, 1.3 million men were in federal or state prisons. The researchers said that changes in penal policy through the 1970s and '80s, including custodial sentences for drug offenses and mandatory minimum sentences, helped fuel the expansion of the penal system and has led to growing disparities in the risk of incarceration by education.

"Prison is no longer just for the most violent or incorrigible offenders. Inmates are increasingly likely to be serving time for drug offenses or property crimes," Pettit said. "While there is enduring racial disproportionality in imprisonment, we find that the lifetime risk of incarceration is increasingly stratified by education. Over the past 30 years the risk of incarceration has grown for both blacks and whites, but has grown the fastest among men who have a high school diploma or less."

"This has become increasingly important because we know ex-prisoners face a variety of challenges after incarceration," said Western. "These range from employer discrimination in the job market to increased risks of divorce and separation in family life. The experience of imprisonment in America has emerged as a key social division marking a new pattern in the lives of recent birth cohorts of black men."

The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation.

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Posted by lois at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)