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January 31, 2006

Grassroots Victory for Immigrant "Detainees" at Passaic County Jail

From the January 2006, Vol. 5, No. 1 BORDC Newsletter

by Flavia Alaya, New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee (NJCRDC)

Editor's Note: Our September 2005 newsletter reported the NJCRDC's efforts to bring abuse of New Jersey immigrant detainees to the attention of Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General. We are pleased to share the outcome of the NJCRDC's tireless efforts to bring the mistreatment of detainees to the outside world. Read Flavia's expanded account in CounterPunch . Flavia is a member of the BORDC's board of directors.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contract to hold immigrant detainees at Passaic County Jail in Paterson, New Jersey, has been voluntarily ended by Sheriff Jerry Speziale himself. Officials say that transfer of the remaining hundred or so detainees to other facilities will be complete as of February 1, 2006.

Passaic County Jail (PCJ) was one of five facilities nationwide targeted this past year for audit by the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS/IG) owing to substantial complaints of substandard conditions and treatment. The beleaguered PCJ audit, which had stalled in August and was later resumed, was completed in December. On December 29, Sheriff Jerry Speziale announced the termination of contract. The full audit report is due out in February.

The audit also includes Hudson County Jail in nearby Kearny, New Jersey. Activists say that the inclusion of two New Jersey facilities on the IG's short list owes in good part to vigorous advocacy efforts that joined citizen activists on the outside with detainees willing to seek justice for themselves. The NJCRDC submitted more than 80 detainee affidavits to the IG when the audit was announced.

Indeed, pressure on the IG was originally intensified when National Public Radio, using data about detainees and contact information for former detainees supplied by the NJCRDC, reported on the use of attack dogs in PCJ. Immediately after this report, in November 2004, the IG announced its forthcoming series of audits.

Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale has made it clear that persistent demonstrations and activism both within and outside the jail were responsible for his decision to end the ICE contract. "It's definitely more trouble than it's worth," he said, speaking on CNN's Lou Dobbs Show. "There are so many advocacy groups out there.. Regardless where you put these detainees," he went on, "the advocacy groups and the demonstrations will continue, and you're just going to have problems for other facilities."

Bergen County Peace & Justice Coalition (BCPJC), one of NJCRDC's activist partners, has just announced its own campaign to end ICE's contract with Bergen County Jail in Hackensack, one of the several facilities that have received transfers from PCJ. In a statement issued January 10, members of BCPJC wrote:

The Bill of Rights protects everyone, everywhere, from being held without charges by the US Government. It makes no distinction between citizens and non-citizens, or detention within or outside the US border. The Bill of Rights puts limits on the action the government can take at any time. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says that "No person . shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." .... The detainees have been charged with no crimes. They must be freed.

We demand that the Freeholders end the contract with ICE, stop holding the detainees and stop selling our rights! We have succeeded in ending the ICE contract at Passaic County Jail. Bergen is next!

What you can do: If there is a detention center near you, consider following the lead of the NJCRDC in exposing their plight and helping the detainees and their families. Contact us at info@bordc.org for help.

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

KS: Trial Opens in Challenge to Law Over Teenage Sex

"To me, it's violating what, quite essentially, therapy is couched in: confidentiality," Ms. McGilley said. "You have two 15-year-olds mashing in the back seat of the car ‹ who's the criminal here? Do we really need Big Brother to decide whether or not that needs to be judiciously pursued?"

New York Times

Trial Opens in Challenge to Law Over Teenage Sex

By JODI RUDOREN
Published: January 31, 2006

WICHITA, Kan., Jan. 30 ‹ A federal trial opened here Monday over whether a Kansas law prohibiting virtually all sexual activity by people under age 16 means health care professionals and educators must report such behavior to state authorities, which some say would stop many teenagers from seeking contraception or treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

Phill Kline, the Kansas attorney general, is expected to testify.

The class-action lawsuit stems from a 2003 opinion by the Kansas attorney general, Phill Kline, a conservative Republican who has developed a national reputation for fighting abortion and whose pursuit of abortion clinic records is also being challenged in court.

Mr. Kline's interpretation of the law focused mainly on the reporting duty of abortion providers, arguing that any pregnant, unmarried minor had by definition been the victim of rape or abuse. But it included a broad mandate for reporting whenever "compelling evidence of sexual interaction is present."

Bonnie Scott Jones, a lawyer for the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York, which is representing the plaintiffs, said in her opening statement that Mr. Kline's "dragnet approach" to amassing information on under-age sex violated minors' privacy rights and the Constitution's equal protection clause, and that it "seriously endangers the health and well-being of adolescents."

"Sexual abuse is not synonymous with consensual sexual activity," Ms. Jones said to the judge deciding the case, J. Thomas Marten of Federal District Court. "Consensual sexual activity is not inherently injurious. It is a normal part of adolescent development."

Steve Alexander, an assistant attorney general defending the suit, said the Kansas statute meant that those younger than 16 could not consent to sex, and that those violating the law forfeited any privacy rights.

"Illegal sexual activity by minors can lead to S.T.D.'s, unwanted pregnancies, abortion, depression, mental illness," Mr. Alexander said. "To pretend otherwise is foolish." He said the case was in essence a challenge to the law barring consensual sex between young people of a similar age, which he called "a policy argument that plaintiffs would be better served making in the Legislature."

Kansas is one of 12 states where sex under a certain age ‹ 16, 17 or 18 ‹ is illegal regardless of the age difference between partners, according to a 2004 report prepared by the Lewin Group, a consulting firm, for the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Laws on reporting child sexual abuse also vary, but a third of states require reporting only when statutory rape involves a parent or guardian, the report found.

Dr. Robert W. Blum, a Johns Hopkins University professor and an expert in pediatrics and adolescent medicine, who was the plaintiffs' lead witness, testified Monday that only one state, California, had previously tried to require reporting of all under-age sex, and that it reversed course after a year in the early 1990's because the authorities were flooded with "irrelevant and obstructive" reports.

Among the plaintiffs' arguments is that blanket reporting of sexual activity would be futile because the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services has a policy against investigating cases of consensual teenage sex.

Pressed on cross-examination, Dr. Blum said he did consider all sex by children 12 or younger to be "problematic" and worthy of reporting, but he said, "That's distinctly different than a 14-, 15- or 16-year-old in a romantic relationship."

Nationally, studies suggest that about 30 percent of teenagers under 16 have had intercourse, and an additional 20 percent have experimented with oral sex or genital fondling.

A federal appeals court on Friday overturned a temporary injunction blocking enactment of Mr. Kline's ruling but provided a two-week window, approximately the expected length of the trial, before the reporting would be required.

Among the issues debated Monday was the very definition of sexual activity. Anal and vaginal intercourse and oral sex are mentioned in the law, as is "lewd fondling or touching" done with "the intent to arouse," which Ms. Jones said could cover even intense French kissing.

Mr. Kline, who is expected to testify Friday, declined to discuss the case. In an e-mail statement, he avoided the central controversy over consensual sex between teenagers of a similar age.

"Plaintiffs are arguing that the constitution does not allow the state to require people to report child rape," the statement said. "We differ. Prosecuting and investigating child rapists depends on such laws, and if the plaintiffs believe that adult-child sex should be legal they need to take that debate to the Legislature rather than initiate litigation."

Similarly, Mr. Kline said last year that prosecuting rapists was his goal in seeking access to the medical files of women and girls who had had late-term abortions, which led to a separate lawsuit awaiting a decision by the State Supreme Court.

Mr. Kline, elected in 2002, also serves as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association and has fought against abortion throughout his career. He filed a lawsuit, recently dismissed, to challenge the state's use of Medicaid funds for abortions, and he submitted a brief in a federal case arguing that Roe v. Wade should be overturned.

Last year, Mr. Kline successfully lobbied the Legislature to require that abortion providers collect fetal tissue from patients younger than 14 and turn it over to law enforcement.

"He's certainly on a crusade to limit or eliminate abortion in Kansas," said Peter Brownlie, chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. "That's been a clear agenda for a long time." Mr. Brownlie said Mr. Kline had helped make Kansas a national battlefront in the abortion debate.

But the doctors, nurses, counselors and educators suing over Mr. Kline's interpretation of the reporting law say it goes far beyond abortion to include every teenager who requests birth control pills or H.I.V. testing, or who in a group therapy session even discusses "heavy petting" with a boyfriend or girlfriend.

"If they know what they tell me is reported, they simply won't talk," said Beth McGilley, a Wichita therapist who is among the plaintiffs, referring to both teenage clients and adults who often consult her about their children's sexual exploration.

"To me, it's violating what, quite essentially, therapy is couched in: confidentiality," Ms. McGilley said. "You have two 15-year-olds mashing in the back seat of the car ‹ who's the criminal here? Do we really need Big Brother to decide whether or not that needs to be judiciously pursued?"

Gretchen Ruethling contributed reporting from Chicago for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/national/31sex.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Posted by lois at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

Coretta Scott King

January 31, 2006, NY Times
Coretta Scott King, 78, Widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dies
By PETER APPLEBOME
Coretta Scott King, first known as the wife of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., then as his widow, then as an avid proselytizer for his vision of racial peace and non-violent social change, has died, her sister in law, Christine King Farris, said this morning.

She was 78 and had been in failing health since suffering a stroke and heart attack last August. Mrs. King appeared at a benefit earlier this month, but did not speak, and was unable to attend the yearly celebration of Martin Luther King Day.

Andrew Young, the former United Nations ambassador and longtime family friend, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Mrs. King died in her sleep and was discovered by her daughter Bernice about 1 a.m. "It seemed as though she was resting when she passed away," Mr. Young said, according to the paper's Web site.

In a statement, the King family said that "Mrs. Coretta Scott King, first lady of human and civil rights, died overnight." Mrs. King rose from rural poverty in Heiberger, Ala., to become an international symbol of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s and a tireless advocate for a long litany of social and political issues, ranging from women's rights to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, that followed in its wake.

She was studying music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in 1952 when she met a young graduate student in philosophy, who on their first date told her: "The four things that I look for in a wife are character, personality, intelligence and beauty. And you have them all." A year later she and Dr. King, then a young minister from a prominent Atlanta family, were married, beginning a remarkable partnership that ended with Dr. King's assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968.

Mrs. King did not hesitate to pick up his mantle, marching before her husband was even buried at the head of the garbage workers he had gone to Memphis to champion. She then went on to lead the effort for a national holiday in his honor and to found the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change in Atlanta, dedicated both to scholarship and to activism, where Dr. King is buried.

Aside from the trauma of her husband's death, which left her alone with four young children, Mrs. King faced other trials and controversies over the years. She was at times viewed as chilly and aloof by others in the movement. The King Center was criticized first as competing for funds and siphoning energy from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which Dr. King had headed. In recent years, it has been widely viewed as adrift, characterized by intra-family squabbling and a focus more on Dr. King's legacy than continuing his work. And even many allies were baffled and hurt by her campaign to exonerate James Earl Ray, who in 1969 had pleaded guilty to her husband's murder, and her contention that Ray did not commit the crime.

But more often, Mrs. King has been seen as an inspirational figure around the world, a dogged advocate for her husband's causes and a woman of enormous spiritual depth who came to personify the ideals Dr. King fought for.

"She'll be remembered as a strong woman whose grace and dignity held up the image of her husband as a man of peace, of racial justice, of fairness," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr. King and then served as its president for 20 years. "I don't know that she was a civil rights leader in the truest sense, but she became a civil rights figure and a civil rights icon because of what she came to represent."

Coretta Scott was born April 27, 1927, the middle of three children born to Obadiah and Bernice Scott. She grew up in the two-room house her father built on land that had been owned by the family for three generations.

From the start there was nothing predictable about her life. The family was poor, and she grew up picking cotton in the hot fields of the segregated South or doing housework. But Mr. Scott hauled timber, owned a country store and worked as a barber. His wife drove a school bus, and the whole family helped raise hogs, cows, chickens and vegetables. So by the standards of blacks in Alabama at the time the family had both resources and ambitions out of the reach of most others.

Some of Coretta Scott's earliest insights into the injustice of segregation came as she walked to her one-room school house each day, watching buses full of white children kick up dust as they passed. She got her first sense of the world beyond rural Alabama when she attended the Lincoln School, a private missionary institution in nearby Marion, where she studied piano and voice, had her first encounters with college-educated teachers and where she resolved to flee to a world far beyond the narrow confines of rural, segregated Alabama.

She graduated first in her high school class of 17 in 1945 and then began attending Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where two years earlier her older sister, Edythe, had become the first black to enroll. She studied education and music and after graduation went on to the New England Conservatory of Music, hoping to become a classical singer and working as a mail order clerk and cleaning houses to augment the fellowship that barely paid her tuition.

Her first encounter with the man who would become her husband did not begin auspiciously. Dr. King, very much in the market for a wife, called her after getting her name from a friend and announced: "You know every Napoleon has his Waterloo," he said. "I'm like Napoleon. I'm at my Waterloo, and I'm on my knees."

"That's absurd," Ms. Scott, two years his elder, replied. "You don't even know me."

Still, she agreed to meet for lunch the next day, only to be put off initially that he wasn't taller. But she was impressed by his erudition and confidence and he saw in this refined, intelligent woman what he was looking for as the wife of a preacher from one of Atlanta's most prominent ministerial families. When he proposed, she deliberated for six months before finally saying "yes" and they were married in the garden of her parents' house on June 18, 1953. The 350 guests, elegant big-city folks from Atlanta and rural neighbors from Alabama, made it the biggest wedding, white or black, the area had ever seen.

And even before the wedding she made it clear she intended to remain her own woman. She stunned Dr. King's father, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr., who presided over the wedding, by demanding that she wanted the promise to obey her husband removed from the wedding vows. Reluctantly, he went along. After it was over, the bridegroom fell asleep in the car back to Atlanta while the new Mrs. King did the driving.

Mrs. King thought she was signing on for the ministry, not ground zero in the seismic cultural struggle that would shake the South when he became minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery in 1954. But just over a year later the Montgomery bus boycott brought Dr. King to national attention and then like riders on a runaway freight train, the minister and his young wife found themselves in the middle of a movement that would transform the South and ripple through the nation. In 1960, the family moved back to Atlanta, where he shared the pulpit of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father.

With four young children to raise — Yolanda born in 1955, Martin 3d in 1957, Dexter in 1961 and Bernice in 1963 — and a movement culture dominated by men, Mrs. King, for the most part, remained away from the front lines. But the recognition of danger was always there, including a brush with death when Dr. King was stabbed while autographing books in Harlem in 1958.

What role she would play was a source of some tension between them. While wanting to be there for their children, she also wanted to be active in the movement. He was, she has said, very traditional in his view of women and balked at the notion she should be more conspicuous.

"Martin was a very strong person, and in many ways had very traditional ideas about women," she told The New York Times Magazine in 1982. She continued: "He'd say, "I have no choice, I have to do this, but you haven't been called,' " "And I said, "Can't you understand? You know I have an urge to serve just like you have.' " Still, he always described her as a partner in his mission, not just a supportive spouse. "I wish I could say, to satisfy my masculine ego, that I led her down this path," he said in a 1967 interview. "But I must say we went down together, because she was as actively involved and concerned when we met as she is now."

Instead, she mostly carved out her own niche, most prominently through more than 30 "Freedom Concerts" where she lectured, read poetry and sang to raise awareness of and money for the civil rights movement.

The division disappeared with Dr. King's assassination. Suddenly, she was not just a symbol of the nation's grief but a woman very much devoted to carrying on her husband's work. Exactly how to do that was something that evolved over time. Marching in Memphis was a dramatic statement, but Ralph Abernathy, one of Dr. King's lieutenants, was chosen to take over his movement. In stepping in for her husband after his death, Mrs. King at first used his own words as much as possible, as if her goal were simply to maintain his presence, even in death.

But soon she developed her own language and own causes. So when she stood in for her husband at the Poor People's Campaign at the Lincoln Memorial on June 19, 1968, she spoke not just of his vision, but of hers, one about gender as well as race in which she called upon American women "to unite and form a solid block of women power to fight the three great evils of racism, poverty and war." She joined the board of directors of the National Organization for Women as well as that of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference and became widely identified with a broad array of international human rights issues rather than being focused primarily on race.

That broad view, she would argue, was completely in keeping with Dr. King's vision as well. And to carry on that legacy, she focused on two ambitious and daunting tasks. The first was to have a national holiday in his honor, the second was to build a nationally recognized center in Atlanta to honor his memory, continue his work and provide a research center for scholars studying his work and the civil rights era. The first goal was achieved despite much opposition in 1983 when Congress approved a measure designating the third Monday in January as an official Federal holiday in honor of Dr. King, who was born in Atlanta Jan. 15, 1929.

President Ronald Reagan, who had long opposed the King Holiday as too expensive and inappropriate, signed the bill, but pointedly refrained from criticizing fellow Republicans such as Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who continued to denigrate Dr. King, saying he had consorted with Communists. The holiday was first observed on Jan. 20, 1986.

The second goal, much more expensive, time consuming and elusive remains to this day a work in progress — and a troubled one at that. When Mrs. King first announced plans for a memorial in 1969, she envisioned a Lincolnesque tomb, an exhibition hall, the restoration of her husband's childhood home, two separate buildings for institutes on non-violent social change and Afro-American studies, a library building an archives building and a museum of African-American life and culture. And she envisioned a center that would be a haven both for scholars and a training ground for advocates of non-violent social change.

Even friends say it may have been too ambitious a goal. Building the center was an enormous achievement in itself. But many of Dr. King's allies, particularly the leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, grumbled that the center was draining scarce resources from the movement. And over the years the center struggled to find its mission. Critics worried it had become too much a family enterprise with her two sons, Dexter and Martin 3d vying to be its leader. Those problems became particularly acute after she suffered a stroke and heart attack in August 2005 and the two brothers struggled for control over the center while she was recuperating. As a result, many feel it has not become the scholarly resource it could have become, while never becoming a center for civil rights activism.

And many supporters were saddened and baffled by the family's campaign on behalf of James Earl Ray, who confessed to the murder, then recanted and died in 1998 while still seeking a new trial. After his death, Mrs. King issued a statement calling his death a tragedy for his family and for the nation and saying that a trial would have "produced new revelations about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. as well as establish the facts concerning Mr. Ray's innocence."

Still, to the end Mrs. King remained a beloved figure, often compared to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as a woman who overcame tragedy, held her family together and became an inspirational presence around the world. Admirers said she bore her own special burden — being expected somehow to carry on her husband's work and teachings — with a sense of spirit and purpose that made her more than just a symbol.

If picking up Dr. King's mantle, in the end, was something of an impossible task, both of them described a relationship that was truly a partnership. "I think on many points she educated me," Dr. King once said. And she never veered from the conviction, expressed throughout her life, that his dream was her's as well. "I didn't learn my commitment from Martin," she once told an interviewer. "We just converged at a certain time."

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2006

WI: Study Outlines Alternatives to Jail by Increasing Drug Treatment

http://www.justicestrategies.net/States/WI.htm (this is a link to the study)
Study outlines alternatives to jail
State urged to boost drug-treatment funding for non-violent offenders
By LEONARD SYKES JR.
lsykes@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Jan. 29, 2006
Wisconsin's lawmakers are willing to consider new approaches to handling non-violent drug offenders, but absent a major investment in treatment services, the state will continue to face mounting costs and pressures on its prison population, a new study has found.

If treatment services were extended to cover half of the more than 5,000 felons sentenced to probation each year for low-level drug, property and drunken-driving offenses, the annual savings to the state could reach $22 million in the first years of a program offering alternatives to incarceration, the study says.

And down the road, the eventual savings could grow to $43 million annually while reducing the prison population by 1,500 in Wisconsin.

Much of that, however, depends on whether the state invests in its treatment and wraparound service for drug offenders, says the study commissioned for lawmakers and judges by the Washington, D.C.-based Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group for sentencing reform.

The study was conducted by Justice Strategies, an organization founded by criminal justice policy analysts Judith Greene and Kevin Pranis, who spent a year interviewing judges, corrections officials, prosecutors and others on the state's drug problem. They also analyzed data from the state Department of Corrections.

The focus groups for the study were created at the request of state Sen. Carol Roessler (R-Oshkosh), who with Rep. Garey Bies (R-Sister Bay), proposed a measure adopted by the Legislature last year that established a grant program to enable counties and regional groups to expand treatment-based alternatives to incarceration.

But the report makes note of the fact that lawmakers declined to put any general fund revenue in the grant pot, relying instead on surcharges imposed on people convicted of drug and property offenses to fund the program.

To make the grant program successful, the report recommends Wisconsin lawmakers increase the funding by $22 million annually to make quality treatment available to 3,000 people convicted of non-violent offenses each year, including more than 1,100 who otherwise would be sent to prison.

The state's prison population has grown fivefold in the span of a single generation, the study says. In recent years, the trend has been driven by the number of people incarcerated for non-violent offenses, which over the last five years has outpaced the rise in the number of inmates serving time for violent or sex offenses.

The study found that Wisconsin's prisons hold roughly 2,900 prisoners serving time for low-level, non-violent offenses. At an annual cost of $28,622 per prisoner, they consume $83 million a year in correctional resources. For an estimated $6,100 per person, the state could provide quality substance abuse treatment as an economical alternative to incarceration, the study found.

The study's findings come as no surprise to Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Charles Kahn, who was among the judges surveyed in focus groups throughout the state in 2005 by the authors.

Kahn said many of the cases coming before judges in Milwaukee are driven by drug addiction. But while he applauds Gov. Jim Doyle and Corrections Secretary Matthew Frank for moving forward with sensible programs to reform the corrections system, he wonders whether the Legislature has the will to change it.

"Whether the Legislature or county governments will go along and make responsible budgetary decisions, I don't know," Kahn said.

Among the study's recommendations is a call for the establishment of a problem-solving court that targets prison-bound individuals with severe addiction problems and expansion of local alternatives to incarceration using a mix of state grants, community corrections subsidies and state purchase of local services for probation and parole.

Original URL: http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/jan06/388565.asp

Posted by lois at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)

The GEO Group get $34 million contract to manage San Diego Detention Facility

BOCA RATON, Fla., Jan. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The GEO Group, Inc. (NYSE: GGI) ("GEO") announced today it received a contract award from the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee ("OFDT") for the continued management and operation of the 700-bed Western Region Detention Facility located in San Diego, California. GEO is currently managing the Detention Facility on behalf of the United States Marshals Service ("USMS") under a contract extension period, which expires on January 5, 2006. The new management contract has a five-year term beginning January 6, 2006 with a five-year renewal option and is expected to generate approximately $34 million in annual revenues.

Posted by lois at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)

The GEO Group get $34 million contract to manage San Diego Detention Facility

BOCA RATON, Fla., Jan. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The GEO Group, Inc. (NYSE: GGI) ("GEO") announced today it received a contract award from the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee ("OFDT") for the continued management and operation of the 700-bed Western Region Detention Facility located in San Diego, California. GEO is currently managing the Detention Facility on behalf of the United States Marshals Service ("USMS") under a contract extension period, which expires on January 5, 2006. The new management contract has a five-year term beginning January 6, 2006 with a five-year renewal option and is expected to generate approximately $34 million in annual revenues.

Posted by lois at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)

January 29, 2006

Census Bureau, Activists Debate How and Where to Count People who are Incarcerated

By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, January 30, 2006; A15

Since the first U.S. census in 1790, there has been a rule for keeping track of the convicts sitting in prisons: They are counted in the state and region where they are serving their time, not necessarily the place they did their crime or will call home once they are out of the joint.

How to count inmates historically has not been a big issue. But the fast-expanding prison population -- now about 1.5 million -- is prompting a debate because government spending and electoral district boundaries are in part decided by population. Opponents say the practice unfairly rewards rural, often sparsely populated regions where many prisons are built, at the expense of the cities where many prisoners had resided.

"For people in prison, their bodies count but their voices don't," said Kirsten Levingston, director of the criminal justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "Their presence in the tabulation column expands the influence of those who have an incentive to keep them in prison, not those who need the resources to help keep them out."

Now, after a congressional directive, the Census Bureau is studying what it would take to change the policy, and the National Academy of Sciences will also report on the question.

The issue pits the bureau, resistant to change its long-standing procedure, against activists who say that the practice results in misleading demographic data and large distortions in the size of electoral districts. It also pits rural lawmakers against urban ones.

The Census Bureau, which is due to issue a report on the feasibility of altering the practice next month, says it follows a consistent benchmark in counting the population, applying a "usual residence" rule to determine where people live -- that is, where they eat and sleep. It has been used for other mobile populations, including college students and people on military bases.

"Once you destroy the foundation for the basis for where people are counted, it becomes very difficult for people to take an accurate census," said Edwin Byerly, head of the bureau's population and housing programs branch.

The U.S. prison population has been rising steadily for decades, a result of the sharp increase in urban poverty, the influx of addictive drugs and stiffer penalties for crime. From 1993 to 2003, the population increased about 60 percent. The big numbers have prompted criminal justice activists to focus on the census effects. They have long worried about racial disparities in the penal system and a high rate of recidivism.

In New York state, activists find what they consider the most glaring example of the distortions created by the census policy. More than 40,000 convicts from New York City, in the southern part of the state, are housed in prisons upstate. Seven state Senate districts would not qualify as districts without their prison population, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, an activist group. More worrisome, the group says, is that two politicians from those areas, Republican state Sens. Dale Volker and Michael Nozzolio, lead the committees on the legal code and crime and have been enthusiastic backers of long-standing, controversial laws that require long prison sentences for drug crimes.

"If there are 10,000 people in prison on drug issues and you count them back home, that could help bring more money to fight the drug war," said U.S. Rep. Jose E. Serrano, a Democrat who represents the Bronx, a high-crime borough of New York City. He added the provision to a bill last year that ordered the Census Bureau to study the issue.

Last year, state Sen. Eric Schneiderman (D), who represents parts of New York City, introduced a bill that would order adjustments for the purpose of redistricting. It is stalled because of resistance from lawmakers representing rural areas. Nozzolio and Volker declined to comment for this article, but in past news accounts, Volker has acknowledged that if they could vote, inmates who are housed in the eight prisons in his district would not vote for him.

In Virginia, activists say a similar shift affects demographic measures and education funding. Several years ago, the Census Bureau reported that Sussex County, in southern Virginia, was the nation's fastest-growing county. But the population actually declined if inmates living in the two maximum-security prisons that opened in the late 1990s were not included, according to the Brennan Center. The population increase results in additional state funding of about $115,000 for primary and secondary education, said Eric Lotke, who studied the issue with a grant from the Soros Foundation.

But Rebecca Smith, who oversees the Sussex County school system's multimillion-dollar budget, said such a small increase does not really register.

Such views reflect a frustrating problem for activists: It is not clear how much regions with prisons actually gain and how much urban, high-crime areas would receive if they got the prisoners back as part of their census count. The ambiguity is compounded by another problem -- whether it is logistically possible for the Census Bureau to count prisoners at their home addresses. Prisons do not take a consistent approach to recording where their inmates came from.

Columbia University public affairs professor Kenneth W. Prewitt, who directed the Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001, frames the problem as one of "fairness" vs. "accuracy."

Originally, Prewitt was skeptical about arguments that prisoners should be counted where they lived before incarceration. But ultimately he was convinced that the "conditions in which prisoners are relocated" are unique
-- they are forced to move to another region and then often required to return to where they had lived before.

He concluded that "there is no doubt that there are distortions" in government spending and districting created by the census method of counting. But, he said, given the arduous task of locating inmates' homes, switching count procedures could lead to greater inaccuracy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/29/AR2006012900
775_pf.html

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

January 28, 2006

Where's home for prison inmates? Answer could mean dollars for communities

Newsday, NY By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
Associated Press Writer

January 27, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Communities with prisons often gain political clout: Inmates are counted as local residents when it comes to divvying up government grant money and laying out legislative districts.

Big-city congressmen, whose districts typically lose in the deal, have told the Census Bureau to think about changing the arrangement _ a switch that would create a mass migration of more than a million people, at least on paper.

   The lawmakers want inmates counted as residents of their home towns and cities in the 2010 Census.

Many rural areas, where most prisons are located, would lose big chunks of population. Some cities would gain a lot of new "residents."

"I believe this is essentially an issue of fairness," says Rep. Jose Serrano, a Democrat from the Bronx in New York City. "Because federal dollars are distributed based on population, prisoners should be counted in their last known permanent residences where they are most likely to return to upon release."

New York City would gain about 36,000 residents if it could reclaim all its inmates in upstate prisons, according to state and federal statistics.

Many prison communities don't like the idea, arguing that they deserve benefits for housing criminals from other areas.

"We get the stigma of having these facilities," said Christopher Bromson, interim town manager of Enfield, Conn., home to three state prisons. "We get all of the ill effects of it, and now to take away the one positive. That, I think, is grossly unfair."

Bromson said his town of 45,000 would lose grant money for road construction, schools and its general budget if the 3,000 inmates were counted as living elsewhere.

The impact would be even greater in Gatesville, Texas, a city of 15,600 between Dallas and San Antonio. About half the city's population is housed in six state prisons.

Late last year Congress required the Census Bureau to study the issue. A report is due in late February.

At issue is the Census Bureau's residency rules, which, bureau officials said, would require another act of Congress to change. The bureau defines a person's "usual residence" as the place where they sleep most nights. Jefferson Taylor, the bureau's associate director for communications, said it would be difficult to determine home addresses for many inmates, especially those on death row or serving life sentences.

"If we did this, it is very likely we would have to conduct interviews with 2 million prisoners," Taylor said. "They are not going to let us go in and conduct interviews with Charles Manson."

Gatesville City Manager Brandon Emmons said, "I think from a practical standpoint it will be a pretty tough endeavor."

Billions of dollars in federal and state grants are distributed to communities based on population. Some grants are based on per capita income, which makes prison communities eligible for more money because inmates don't have much income.

Legislative districts _ local, state and federal _ are drawn based on population counts in the 10-year census. America's 1,200 state and federal prisons house about 1.5 million inmates, the equivalent of about two congressional districts. An additional 500,000 are in local jails.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University argues that prison inmates are different from other temporary residents. The center, which advocates for inmates' rights, wants more state and federal money to go to inmates' home communities for programs to reduce recidivism.

"There is no one else who is involuntarily taken hundreds of miles from their homes to communities that they are not involved in," said Kirsten Levingston, director of the center's Criminal Justice Program. "They don't go to the libraries, they don't go to the grocery store." ___
On The Net:
Census Bureau residence rules: http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/resid_rules.html
Brennan Center for Justice: http://www.brennancenter.org/
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--prisons-census0127j
an27,0,342815.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork

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IL: State prisons Director outlines plan for treating people addicted to meth

State prisons Director Roger Walker outlines plan for treating meth addicts

By RON INGRAM - H&R Staff Writer

DECATUR - Ann is in treatment for methamphetamine addiction at the Gateway Project in Springfield after abusing the drug for 13 years.

"I finally got out, with a little nudge from law enforcement," said Ann, who did not give her last name. "My daughter got involved with meth, and she had her kids taken away from her. I have a 12-year-old son. I want to keep him from entering that world."

On Friday, Ann urged the state to initiate treatment programs for women inmates as she spoke to state officials, area sheriffs, social service agency personnel and local ministers. They gathered at the Law Enforcement Center to hear Illinois Department of Corrections Director Roger E. Walker Jr. outline a proposal to rehabilitate men incarcerated because of meth problems.

Walker assured Ann that programs for female inmates exist.

The initiative to help male inmates rejoin society as productive citizens was unveiled in Gov. Rod Blagojevich's recent State of the State address.

Friday's meeting was the third in a series to be held statewide in areas highly affected by meth-related offenses. The meetings' goal is to gain input from social service providers, community leaders and law enforcement officials to help develop the plan to reduce repeat offenses by meth users.

Methamphetamine is a powerful stimulant that affects the central nervous system and can cause users to hallucinate and become psychotic and violent, Walker said. Incarcerated addicts will not shake the addiction while in prison without treatment; and there must be a system of social service support in place so when they are paroled they don't immediately commit robberies, burglaries and thefts to support a drug habit, he said.

The state this year will create a 200-bed meth unit at the 667-bed Southwestern Illinois Correctional Center in East St. Louis. The facility will be a dedicated drug prison and re-entry program, modeled on a program piloted two years ago at the Sheridan Correctional Center in Ottawa. Next year, Sheridan will be expanded to its full capacity of 1,300 inmates from the present 950 inmates, with 200 of those spaces used for another meth unit.

Inmates at both facilities will participate in integrated programs including drug treatment, vocational training, education and closely supervised community re-entry.

Walker said the program's estimated cost the first year is $7 million, with $4.7 million coming from federal funds and $16 million the second year, with $1.9 million in federal funds.

The Illinois Department of Human Services will be a partner in the new effort, said Theodora Binion Taylor, director of its Division of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse. The effort at Sheridan over the past two years shows treatment works, she said.

Recidivism rates at Sheridan among men in the treatment program have been 50 percent less than the normal rate, said John Pugliese of the Gateway Project. The state's normal recidivism rate for males is about 56 percent.

http://www.herald-review.com/articles/2006/01/28/news/local_news/1012713.txt

Posted by lois at 07:55 PM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2006

WI: Ends Practice of Shackling women in prison during childbirth

January 20, 2006

From The Post-Crescent:
Well, that didn't take long. After Wisconsin Post-Crescent ran a series of stories on incarcerated mothers earlier this week that highlighted the mind-boggling practice of shackling female prisoners during childbirth, the state Department of Corrections vowed to review its policy. On Thursday, department secretary Matt Frank announced that policy has been ended.

From USA Today 1-19-06

The State Department of Corrections will no longer shackle inmates during childbirth, a practice that was the subject of stories recently in the Post-Crescent newspaper. Secretary of Corrections Matt Frank on Wednesday, said he directed the state Corrections staff to end the practice. “I believe that we can have a policy that promotes safety and security but still allows for a woman offender to have a baby without having restrains on,” Frank told the paper…

Posted by lois at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)

the United States supported Iran's recommendation to deny consultative status at the United Nations' Economic and Social Council to the Danish National Association for Gays

January 27, 2006
Rights Groups Fault U.S. Vote in U.N. on Gays
By WARREN HOGE
UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 26 — Human rights organizations and the co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus protested on Thursday a decision by the Bush administration to back a measure introduced by Iran denying two gay rights groups a voice at the United Nations.

In a vote Monday, the United States supported Iran's recommendation to deny consultative status at the United Nations' Economic and Social Council to the Danish National Association for Gays and Lesbians and the International Lesbian and Gay Association, based in Belgium.

Nearly 3,000 nongovernmental organizations have such status, which enables them to distribute documents to meetings of the council.

Among countries with which the United States sided were Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe, nations the State Department has cited in annual reports for their harsh treatment of homosexuals.

Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat who is co-chairman of the caucus, wrote a letter to John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, saying the move was "a major setback" for "a core component of our nation's human rights diplomacy."

Matt Foreman, executive director of the Washington-based National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said, "It is an absolute outrage that the United States has chosen to align itself with tyrants — all in a sickening effort to smother voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people around the world."

Mark P. Lagon, a deputy assistant secretary of state, said in an interview that the vote did not stem from "being against gay rights groups" but was based on "the controversial history of the International Lesbian and Gay Association — an affiliate of the North American Man/Boy Love Association, was associated with it in the past and openly condoned pedophilia."

Scott Long, a Human Rights Watch director, said that the association had publicly expelled the man/boy group in 1994.

Martin Thümmel, the German delegate at the vote, protested that "those delegations that claim that this organization is supporting pedophilia are using this as a pretext in order to shirk the real issue of sexual orientation."

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

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January 26, 2006

Halliburton Get Deal from U.S Immigration & Customs Enforcement

ttp://news.moneycentral.msn.com/printarticle.asp?Feed=AP&Date=20060124&ID=5
443578
Halliburton Unit Gets Deal From Agency
All Associated Press News - 1-24-06
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) - Defense, engineering and construction services contractor Halliburton Co. on Tuesday said its KBR subsidiary received a five-year, $385 million contract from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement department.

The pact provides for establishing temporary detention, processing and deportation facilities if there is "an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S.," Halliburton said. Under the contract, KBR will also provide planning and, if required, engineering and logistics support to establish or operate expansion facilities.

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

CT jumps on the bandwagon sentencing "sex offenders"

January 26, 2006

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) _ Gov. M. Jodi Rell wants new legislation requiring 25-year minimum mandatory prison sentences for certain sexual predators who assault children.

Her proposal mirrors a new Florida law prompted by last year's sexual assault and slaying of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford.

Rell, who unveiled a package of proposals on Wednesday, is also suggesting lifetime tracking by global positioning satellite of the most serious sexual predators. She wants those offenders to also register their addresses with state authorities for life.

Offenders who commit lesser crimes could also be monitored by GPS if state parole and probation officers believe they pose a risk, under Rell's proposal. The Judicial Branch's Office of Adult Probation recently completed a pilot program using GPS to track some high-risk offenders.

"We need to give those charged with properly tracking offenders upon their release the tools that they need," Rell, a Republican, said in a written statement.

Some of Rell's ideas are similar to parts of a plan recently unveiled by legislative Democrats, who control the General Assembly. For example, Democrats also want to expand the state's sexual offender Web site and include descriptions of the offenses committed, in addition to the offenders' photographs and addresses. Rell also wants to include contact information for the offender's parole or probation officer. Lawmakers will take up the proposals in this year's legislative session, which opens on Feb. 8.

Rell's proposal calls for lifetime GPS monitoring and lifetime registration for those convicted of multiple counts of first- and second-degree sexual assault and tougher penalties for anyone convicted of knowingly harboring a sex offender who failed to register with state authorities. Convicted sex offenders from other states would be required to register in Connecticut 48 hours before their arrival. Those failing to do so within five days would face a felony charge.

The governor's plan would also create a separate criminal violation for offenders who fail to verify address changes or report name changes for the GPS monitoring and registration requirements.
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ct-xgr--sexualpredato0126jan2
5,0,573988.story

Posted by lois at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2006

Laws Proliferate but Sex Abuse cases are down

"David Finkelhor, with the Crimes Against Children Research Center in New Hampshire, contends the increase in laws goes against a steady drop in sex abuse cases for most of the last decade. According to Finkelhor's research, which analyzed state-by-state figures from child protection agencies, the rate of substantiated sex abuse cases fell about 40 percent since the early 1990s. He cites figures that show a peak of an estimated 150,000 sex abuse cases in 1992, dropping to about 90,000 cases in 2003."

Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Lawmakers crusade against molesters
By Mark K. Matthews, Stateline.org Staff Writer

Major initiatives against sex offenders, 1994-2005
 
Wetterling Act (1994) ­ Federal law requires states to register sex offenders or lose federal funds. All 50 states now have registries.
 
Megan's Law (1996) ­ Federal law requires public notification when a sex offender is released or moves to a new neighborhood.
 
Amber Alert (1996) -- Started when Texas broadcasters joined with police officials to help find abducted children by quickly posting information on TV and highway signs.  By 2001, four states had adopted; by 2005, all 50 had a system in place.
 
Castration laws (1996) -- California was the first state to allow chemical castration of sex offenders, such as by intake of female hormones. Eight states now allow chemical or surgical castration.
 
Jessica Lunsford Act (2005) ­ Florida law enhances penalties for sexual crimes against children, requires lifetime electronic monitoring for the worst offenders and provides the death penalty for murder of sexual victims. Other states are now copying.
 
National Sex Offender Public Registry (2005) -- An online source linking state sex offender Web sites of all states except Oregon and South Dakota, which are to join soon.
 
SOURCES: U.S. Department of Justice, National Conference of State Legislatures, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

For many state lawmakers, almost no penalty is too harsh for sex offenders who hurt children.
 
Eight states allow castration. At least a dozen track molesters by satellite once they¹ve served their prison terms. In Florida last year, lawmakers made it easier to execute sexual predators who are guilty of murder.
 
Life could become even tougher for sex offenders in 2006. Already, lawmakers from New York to Washington state have submitted scores of bills designed to protect children and punish those who sexually abuse them. The flood of new laws stands out as a trend sweeping statehouses, but it can't be explained by any single development.
 
Last year, state lawmakers passed more than 100 sex offender laws -- double the number of 2004 and "far and above previous years," said Blake Harrison, a political researcher for the National Conference of State Legislatures, based in Denver and Washington D.C.
 
Among the most popular measures -- expected to spread this year -- is a law authorizing use of satellites to track released sex offenders.
 
Twelve states now allow Global Positioning System (GPS) devices to track
offenders: California, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee, according to NCSL. Iowa also requires electronic monitoring of released offenders, though not specifically GPS.
 
Kansas is one of the states considering GPS tracking this year. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) made it a key point of her State of the State address.
 
"I want to require all repeat sex offenders (to) wear electronic tracking devices -- for the rest of their lives. These tracking bracelets will allow law enforcement officers to monitor their locations at all times. I¹ve put money for this in my budget because, again, it¹s just common sense," Sebelius said.
 
Harrison, of NCSL, said the availability of improved technology is one reason for the marked increase in bills cracking down on sex offenders.
 
Jessica Lunsford is another. Last year, the 9-year-old Florida girl was killed by a registered sex offender who lived nearby. Within months, Florida legislators drafted a harsh response, calling for mandatory sentences of 25 years for the worst molesters, satellite tracking upon release and the possibility of a death sentence for predators who kill.  
 
Lunsford¹s death and Florida¹s response inspired copycat legislation last year in a handful of other states, such as Missouri and Oklahoma, and is the basis of at least a half-dozen measures this year.
 
"Very often, there is a case that catches the nation's attention, and, as a result, legislators start to pay attention. Now nearly every state is considering the implementation of Jessica's Law," said Susan Broderick, a senior attorney with the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse.
 
Among those states is Georgia, where Lunsford's accused murderer was arrested. State Rep. Jerry Keen (R), majority leader of the Georgia House, said his bill was styled after Florida's law and was co-signed by 75 House members when it was introduced.
 
"We want to make it so tough, that they (sex offenders) are not going to live in Georgia once they are released," Keen said. When asked where sex offenders then would go, he responded: "I'm a state legislator from Georgia. What Alabama, Tennessee and other states do is up to them."
 
Indeed, sex offender laws can vary greatly between states. One of the biggest differences centers on whether a state has the authority to put sex offenders in mental hospitals once they¹ve been released from prison.
 
Kansas was among the first states to try the idea, and a successful 1997 defense of the law before the U.S. Supreme Court -- in the case Kansas v. Hendricks -- encouraged at least 16 states to pass similar laws.
 
The post-prison confinement has angered both mental health experts and civil liberties advocates, and the issue created a stir in the Northeast last year when Republican Govs. George Pataki of New York and Donald Carcieri of Rhode Island abruptly ordered sex offenders sent to mental hospitals after their prison terms expired.
 
In their struggle to deal with the country's estimated 560,000 registered sex offenders, states also are trying other strategies. Last year, New York legislators barred sex offenders from operating ice cream trucks. California has stopped them from running massage parlors. And this year, Kansas legislators are proposing giving sex offenders distinctive pink license plates.
 
Meanwhile, federal officials have been trying to compile the sex offender registries of every state since last summer. Officials from the U.S. Department of Justice said only two states -- Oregon and South Dakota ­ aren¹t yet linked but are expected to join.

There is little consensus about what is causing the sharp increase in sex offender laws, and even some question about how helpful it will be.
 
Besides better technology and the high-profile cases of child murders, researchers suggest the Catholic clergy abuse scandal brought more attention to these problems and that sex offenders jailed under softer laws are now getting out, raising alarm.
 
David Finkelhor, with the Crimes Against Children Research Center in New Hampshire, contends the increase in laws goes against a steady drop in sex abuse cases for most of the last decade.
 
According to Finkelhor's research, which analyzed state-by-state figures from child protection agencies, the rate of substantiated sex abuse cases fell about 40 percent since the early 1990s. He cites figures that show a peak of an estimated 150,000 sex abuse cases in 1992, dropping to about 90,000 cases in 2003.
 
His numbers, though, aren¹t universally accepted as the trend.
 
Broderick, whose think tank deals with crimes against children, said sex offenses are difficult to track because the attacker is most likely to be an acquaintance or family member.
 
A former Manhattan prosecutor, she warned that mandatory minimum sentences for sex offenders could backfire because prosecutors would find it harder to obtain guilty pleas from defendants, who often know the child they assaulted.
 
If the child won't testify in court, or the jury is unwilling to send someone to prison for 25 years on anything but solid evidence, many sex offenders could go free, she said. "It can lead to some really bad consequences," she said. 

http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&co
ntentId=82700

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GA: Sex "crime" bill could incarcerate youth for 25 years

Atlanta Journal Constitution
Sex crime bill may snare teens

By JILL YOUNG MILLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/25/06

A broad new law to toughen sentences for sex offenders who assault children is one of the main goals of Georgia's Republican leaders.

But critics say some children themselves might be caught in the proposed law's net ‹ for at least 25 years. The House bill also might send some teens who engage in consensual sex to prison, critics say.

Teenagers 13 through 16 who are prosecuted in adult court for rape or aggravated crimes of sodomy, child molestation and sexual battery would face a mandatory sentence of at least 25 years under House Bill 1059, according to an analysis by the Barton Child Law & Policy Clinic at Emory's School of Law. The current penalty under Georgia law is at least 10 years.

"I'm very scared for kids with this legislation," said Beth Reimels, the clinic's managing attorney.

The bill also might punish some teens who engage in sexual activity with each other, critics say. They hasten to say they don't condone teen sex but know it happens. If the bill passes, a youth of 13, 14, 15 or 16 who engages in mutual sexual activity with a child under 14 could be prosecuted for aggravated sexual crimes, tried as an adult and face a minimum 25-year sentence. The age of the younger child makes the crime an "aggravated" one.

House Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R-St. Simons Island) proposed the sex offender legislation, which the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee is expected to consider this afternoon. More than 70 other lawmakers have signed on to the bill.

Keen declined to comment for this article because lawmakers are working on new draft of the bill to present to the committee today, a spokeswoman for House Republicans said Tuesday afternoon. "They are still working on the changes," Michelle Hitt said. She said she did not know the specific changes or how they might affect juveniles.

"Our top priority is to protect our children from dangerous sexual predators," Hitt said. "As we've gone through this process, we've made a lot of changes to the bill. More changes are coming."

Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of "An American Travesty: Legal Responses to Adolescent Sexual Offending," called Keen's bill as it could affect teens "a penal policy nervous breakdown."

"It takes my breath away," he said. Teens "do some very stupid things sexually that do not predict any patterns of adult sexual danger," he said. The bill perpetuates the idea that teen sex offenders "are just junior editions of adult offenders, and that is just demonstrably not true," Zimring said.

Other critics say the bill would take away discretion from judges and not address treatment and rehabilitation for offenders, not even for young ones. Yet "researchers say children can respond to treatment and be rehabilitated and never re-offend," the Barton Clinic's Reimels said.

Sara Totonchi, public policy director for the Southern Center for Human Rights, said she hoped lawmakers would change how the bill could affect teens. "Because the language is overly broad, it's going to trap children who are not sex offenders ... who could really benefit from treatment," she said.
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/stories/0125legteens.html

Posted by lois at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)

MO: Finally! One Senator Wants to Curb Flood of "Sex Offender" Bills

WEDNESDAY | JANUARY 25, 2006
Senate committee leader wants to curb flood of sex-offender bills By Matt Franck POST-DISPATCH JEFFERSON CITY BUREAU 01/24/2006

JEFFERSON CITY

The same Legislature that has engaged in a free-for-all of measures against sex offenders this session is now showing signs of restraint.

The head of a key Senate committee vowed this week to put the brakes on bills that he described as too extreme in punishing certain sex offenders.

That stance, by Sen. Matt Bartle, R-Lee's Summit, comes after prosecutors statewide warned that some bills filed this year could make it harder to obtain convictions.

In a hearing Monday night, Bartle said he was against measures that would impose tough mandatory sentences for nonviolent sex offenses, such as consensual sex involving a teenager. He vowed to not let such bills clear the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, which he oversees.

"I will stand in the way of a bill that creates a mandatory 25-year minimum for an offense that involves an 18-year-old boy having a petting encounter with a 16-year-old girlfriend," Bartle said in an interview.

Bartle also went a step further, saying he wants to re-examine the state's sex offender registry to make sure the roughly 11,000 people on the list are truly a threat to the public.

At Monday's hearing, he and other members of the committee said some people had landed on the registry for nonviolent offenses that happened years ago.

That issue is at the heart of a case currently under deliberation by the Missouri Supreme Court, which is being asked to tighten the standards for placing offenders on the registry.

Sen. Chris Koster, R-Harrisonville, told of a man in his district who was placed on the registry for statutory rape of his girlfriend. Koster said that the two later married and had children but that the father was unable to clear his name.

Koster called for an appeals process, similar to those in neighboring states such as Arkansas and Nebraska, to allow certain offenders to petition to be cleared from the registry.

"There should be some mechanism where that father can extricate himself from that net," Koster said.

Senate President Mike Gibbons, R-Kirkwood, said the sex offender registry had value only if it accurately listed those who were truly a risk to the public. He said the list lost credibility if it included too broad a range of criminals.

"The one thing you don't want to do is have a list that people don't take seriously," he said.

In recent weeks, lawmakers have filed more than a dozen bills calling for increased prison terms for offenders, particularly in cases involving forcible rape or sodomy of a child.

But a few of the bills are more aggressive, imposing mandatory sentences for lesser, nonviolent crimes. The same bills would broaden the types of offenders who would be placed on the registry.

Prosecutors, including some who testified Monday, have said tough sentences for nonviolent offenders will make it harder to win over jurors. They call for more selective use of 25-year prison terms.

"You want to do it in an appropriate way so you don't cast such a wide net," said St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch.

The enthusiasm over sex-offender bills was triggered by several high-profile child abductions and murders across the country, though experts note that sex crimes are down substantially on the whole.

What wasn't mentioned at Monday's hearing was the hefty price tag that accompanies many of the tough sex-offender bills. According to Senate researchers, some of those measures would cost as much as $140 million over 10 years just to cover prison costs.

Bartle is among those who have sponsored bills calling for increased sentences, though he targets severe offenses involving younger victims. Even so, his bill would cost the state more than $50 million over 10 years.

Bartle said Monday that he planned to take at least eight sex-offender bills already heard by the committee and roll them into one. He said the new bill would heed the concerns shared by prosecutors, while potentially re-examining the sex-offender registry.

The bill also could include a wide range of provisions unrelated to tougher sentences. For example, a bill by Gibbons would widen the circumstances in which employers could be sued if they hired sex offenders who worked around children.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/AC
73F18D3435FCA886257101001CC032?OpenDocument

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

Inspiring Rikers Teacher Runs Afoul of Jail's Rules

January 25, 2006
On Education
Inspiring Rikers Teacher Runs Afoul of Jail's Rules
By MICHAEL WINERIP
JEFF KAUFMAN, a teacher at the Rikers Island jail, has a reputation as a good educator who cares about his student inmates. In 2004, without the aid of computers, his students finished first in a citywide stock market game competition against more than 50 high schools.

Elizabeth Lesher, who oversees the competition, said that at most schools, "students gather around computers, research stocks via Web sites such as Yahoo Finance, Market Watch or Nasdaq and enter their transactions online."

"The classroom environment at Rikers was very sparse," said Ms. Lesher, a director for the Foundation for Investor Education. "No attractive bulletin boards, no computers with Internet access and no industry specialists visited the classroom to provide investment ideas." Mr. Kaufman's students relied on the newspaper and his class lessons. That, she said, "speaks volumes about the teacher. Obviously I was very impressed."

In 2003, Mr. Kaufman's students won a citywide playwriting competition. In 2000 and 2001, he arranged for the student chorus at Louis Armstrong Middle School in Queens to visit Rikers at Christmas and perform for his students.

Don Murphy, a fellow teacher, said Mr. Kaufman became so popular during his eight years at the jail that in 2004 he was unopposed in the election for union representative at Island Academy, the Rikers school, which serves about 1,000 teenage inmates.

David Lee, an inmate serving time for assault, who earned a General Educational Development diploma with one of the highest scores ever at Rikers, said no teacher worked harder. Mr. Kaufman made special arrangements for Mr. Lee to take college correspondence courses, spent his lunch hours tutoring him and then proctored each of the three-hour exams from Excelsior College.

In July 2003, Mr. Kaufman was off for the summer, but made special trips to Rikers so Mr. Lee could take his next college exam. "All the teachers were on vacation and school didn't begin until September," Mr. Lee wrote in a letter sent to this reporter from Rikers. "But Kaufman comes here to Rikers not once, but twice just so that he could give me the test on a hot summer day. He didn't have to come; he could have stayed home with his wife and kids."

"Mr. Kaufman wasn't only a teacher or test proctor," said Mr. Lee. "He inspired me to aim higher in life."

But on Friday, Mr. Kaufman received notice from his principal that he was no longer permitted to teach at Rikers.

His crime? "Undue familiarity."

Mr. Kaufman had given Mr. Lee his home address so the two could correspond by mail and try to arrange for Mr. Lee to take another of those Excelsior College exams while the inmate was in solitary confinement in the summer of 2004.

There is no allegation of anything improper about the content of those letters. Copies of 20 letters provided to a reporter by Mr. Kaufman and Mr. Lee mainly talked about learning. In one, the inmate thanked the teacher for sending books to him in solitary ("the Bing") and wrote that he was spending so much time reading, up to 12 hours a day, that he was getting headaches. "I don't mind being here at the Bing but I want to be able to take the test," wrote Mr. Lee.

Mr. Kaufman wrote back urging patience, saying that he was trying to work out arrangements with correction officials. "If your head begins to hurt from reading, stop. Your body is telling you it's enough."

How did school and correction officials know that Mr. Kaufman had given out his home address? Mr. Kaufman told them.

On Sept. 12, 2005, the Rikers principal, Frank Dody, sent out a security memo, in which he spelled out in writing, for the first time, what was meant by the prohibition against undue familiarity: "All contact with current/former students outside of the school area (home, upstate facilities) in the form of letters or phone calls must be authorized by the principal."

Mr. Kaufman read the memo, requested authorization and showed the principal a recent letter from Mr. Lee. Within days Mr. Kaufman was yanked from Rikers and placed in a holding room in Brooklyn for teachers under investigation.

Mr. Kaufman says he thinks the real reason he was investigated was that he had testified at a City Council hearing in December 2004 about how bad the Rikers school's services were for inmates being released. "That really upset Frank Dody," Mr. Kaufman says. "He wouldn't talk to me for months. He's using this incident to get me."

Mr. Dody said he was upset, but that's not why there was an investigation. He said that even though he had been principal six years and had only recently spelled out the rules in writing, anyone who had been at Rikers as long as Mr. Kaufman knew you weren't supposed to give out your address. "Teachers here have to live by the corrections rules," Mr. Dody said. "While the rules don't always make sense, even to me, they're in place for a reason, to keep everyone safe."

Mr. Dody acknowledged that the letter Mr. Kaufman showed him had nothing compromising in it. "From my reading of it, I didn't really see anything of any nature that would raise my eyebrows," Mr. Dody said.

Thomas Antenten, a corrections spokesman, said that once the principal made the decision to refer the case, officials had to investigate. "We take undue familiarity very seriously," he said. "Giving an inmate a personal address could lead to deadly consequences."

Inmates like Mr. Lee say Rikers has lost a rare, good teacher. "It was a wrong decision to demote Kaufman," Mr. Lee said. "I'm the one who initiated contact in order to see what options I had in seeking a better education."

David Lee was a 16-year-old junior with a B+ average at Francis Lewis High in Queens in January 2002. He says he got mixed up with the wrong people, and was at a Flushing apartment when a fight broke out and a man was stabbed to death. Mr. Lee pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in return for an eight-year sentence and is being held at Rikers pending the trial of a co-defendant charged with murder.

Within four months at Rikers, Mr. Lee took the G.E.D. In the middle of the test, he says, a brawl broke out and someone threw a chair at him, bruising a rib. Still, he comes from a family of good students, and even bruised, he finished with a top score. His younger sister, Sonia, is an A student in her sophomore year at George Washington University, and travels from Washington every other week to visit her brother in jail, bringing books he requests.

At the Rikers school, Mr. Lee became a favorite. He showed Mr. Murphy, the computer teacher, how to use several desktop publishing programs. He was given a job doing janitorial work. With Mr. Kaufman's help, he took three college business courses and got A's. Neither he nor Mr. Kaufman knew what material was going to be on the tests and which chapters to focus on, so Mr. Lee read everything. "I would read 450, 500 pages of a textbook from cover to cover three to four times so I would truly understand," he said.

AS Mr. Lee was about to take his fourth college exam, in May 2004, he was caught with 17 packs of Newports. Smoking was banned at Rikers in 2003; cigarettes are considered contraband. Mr. Lee said he was offered a "slap on the wrist" if he'd give up his supplier but did not. For each pack of Newports, he was given 15 days in solitary, 9 months altogether in a 6-by-9-foot cell.

Mr. Antenten, the corrections spokesman, said he did not know the details of the case but added that Rikers makes no distinction between cigarettes and heroin when it comes to contraband. "It can lead to disputes between inmates that have bloody consequences," he said.

Mr. Lee said the teacher's letters helped keep him sane those nine months. "Not only did Kaufman help me pursue educational studies, but he offered moral support through the letters," he said.

The illegal letters sent to Mr. Kaufman's home are often quite moving. A July 28, 2004, letter begins with Mr. Lee thanking the teacher for the latest package of books. "You want to know what's funny," wrote Mr. Lee. "Before I was incarcerated, I never used to really read. I could honestly tell you that I read less than 10 books during my life outside and it was during my elementary school years. I wouldn't even bother to look at the cover of a book if I came across one.

"Now that I'm incarcerated, I treasure them. I'm not just talking about novels which enhance your vocabulary and reading comprehension but also self-help books. What I like about self-help books is that from reading just one significant quote which catches your eye, it could change your whole perception of life itself. From reading books you tap into the most brilliant minds of the present and past. In here they're like my most trusted friends."

At times, in the letters, Mr. Kaufman sounds like a stern father. Referring to the cigarette infraction that got Mr. Lee removed from the school and landed him in the Bing, Mr. Kaufman wrote, "We were all upset at your sudden leaving, but we have talked about consequences."

Mr. Kaufman, 50, said his background - he is a Cornell grad, a former police officer and lawyer for the indigent - makes him well-suited for teaching inmates. He will appeal the decision. "It's a place I feel I can be of most use to my students," he said.

In December, after spending more than two months in the Brooklyn holding room, Mr. Kaufman was sent to Queens Academy, where he is mentoring three new teachers. An Education Department spokesman, David Cantor, said Mr. Kaufman would soon be given a job teaching at an alternative high school.

Mr. Dody, the principal, said Mr. Kaufman's removal was solely a Correction Department decision.

But a November 2005 memo by the department's investigator, Capt. Matthew Boyd, indicates that the principal had a significant role. "Dr. Dody reports that he has determined that Mr. Kaufman's actions violate undue familiarity and I concur," the memo says.

Mr. Dody says he's not a doctor and the corrections memo is wrong.

Mr. Lee's younger sister, Sonia, wrote about his jail experiences in a term paper at George Washington that won a top a prize and was featured at a student lecture series. The paper includes the hardships her brother knew growing up, including the suicide of their mother, who suffered from manic depression. Sonia Lee plans to get a master's degree in public policy specializing in the prison system. Her prize paper calls for prisons that devote more resources to rehabilitation and education.

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)

Reproductive Rights in Theory and Practice: The Meaning of Roe V. Wade for Women in Prison

Reproductive Rights in Theory and Practice: The Meaning of Roe v. Wade for Women in Prison

by Rachel Roth
January 20, 2006, American Prospect Magazine

In 1973, when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade, there were about 14,000 women incarcerated in the United States; today, there are over 180,000. If the ultimate legacy of Roe is that women have the freedom to make decisions about pregnancy and motherhood, then what does this anniversary mean to women who are literally not free, those in jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers? Because prisons are shielded from public scrutiny, and the women in them are “out of sight and out of mind,” their concerns rarely enter the debate about reproductive rights and health.

Although “reproductive freedom in prison” may sound like a contradiction in terms, courts have been clear that women do not automatically lose their reproductive rights simply because they are incarcerated. Moreover, prisoners are the only group in the United States with a constitutional right to medical care. Yet the difference between having a right in theory and being able to exercise that right in practice is particularly stark for women in prison.

The “war on drugs” and mandatory sentencing policies have been major forces driving up the numbers of women in prison and have had a disproportionate impact on women of color and poor women. Consequently, the health problems of incarcerated women are those that commonly affect these groups, including high rates of such chronic illnesses as hypertension, asthma, and diabetes, as well as Hepatitis C and HIV. Histories of drug addiction and physical abuse add to women’s medical and mental health needs. Incarceration poses unique threats to women, because access to medical care is frequently arbitrary, discouraging, and difficult to navigate, with few effective mechanisms to redress grievances.

A recent survey of women jailed in the nation’s capitol, for example, found that the sick-call system does not meet the needs of women with ongoing health problems. Women with chronic, infectious, and mental health conditions reported having to submit 10-15 requests before being seen. Women also reported disruptions in their HIV medications, a situation which endangers their health by leading to drug resistance.

Another recent study of a California prison highlights problems with access to life-saving preventive care. The study found that the entire process of scheduling, having, and learning the results of Pap tests to detect cervical cancer was unpredictable. Some women were called in for exams while others had to pay a fee and file medical requests – competing with the emergencies of the day for a doctor’s attention. Women also reported negative experiences during the exam itself, especially with male physicians insensitive to their histories of sexual trauma and abuse.

Given the difficulties that women have obtaining basic health care within jails and prisons, what happens when they need abortion services, which are only available in outside clinics or hospitals?

Beyond the restrictions on access that all women face, such as the mandatory 24-hour delays in place in 21 states, women in prison must deal with an additional, literal barrier – the prison itself, and whether they can get a corrections officer to take them from the prison to a clinic.

This was the problem a young woman in a rural Missouri prison confronted recently, when prison staff told her that they would not take her to a clinic – effectively telling her that she could not have an abortion. Although she ultimately prevailed, thanks to a federal lawsuit brought by the ACLU, she obtained an abortion far later than she would have if prison officials had simply respected her rights at the outset. The protracted struggle caused weeks of anxiety and necessitated raising even more money from family and friends to pay for the procedure. Her story is not unique: women in at least 15 other states have experienced similar conflicts with sheriffs and prison authorities over access to abortion.

Perhaps the most widely shared reproductive concern among women inside prison is maintaining relationships with their children. The majority of women in prison are mothers who hope to be reunited with their children when they finish their sentences. Once released, their hopes strain under the weight of policies that deny them, as people with felony convictions, access to the things they need to rebuild their lives and care for their children, such as public housing, food stamps, student loans, and jobs.

The experiences of imprisoned women stand as a vivid reminder that there is no such thing as having a right or a choice without access to the resources needed to carry out that choice. A reproductive justice agenda for imprisoned women therefore includes not only the ability to make decisions about pregnancy, but also the protection of family ties and access to basic medical care to preserve health and fertility, in order to ensure real reproductive choices in the present and the future.

When judges and juries send women to prison, they do not sentence them to a term of medical neglect or to continue a pregnancy against their will, but these are often the consequences of doing time. These excessive punishments call for greater accountability from the government, and for a broader agenda for the reproductive rights movement.

Rachel Roth, a Research Fellow at Ibis Reproductive Health, is the author of several articles on women’s rights in prison and the book: Making Women Pay: The Hidden Costs of Fetal Rights. She is also co-author of the report: Abortion Funding: A Matter of Justice and a contributor to: Defending Justice: An Activist Research Kit.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=1363953

Posted by lois at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2006

Dignity Denied: The Price of Imprisoning Older Women

The report, Dignity Denied: the Price of Imprisoning Older Women in California, documents the conditions of confinement for the more than 350 women over the age of 55 in state prisons. Because of the "Three Strikes" law and a reluctance to grant parole, more Californians are growing older in prison than ever before. It is estimated that by 2022, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) will incarcerate about 30,000 elders. Due to health-related expenses, the annual cost of imprisoning an older person, at a conservative estimate, is at least $70,000, twice that of a younger prisoner. The report questions the wisdom of committing such vast economic resources for the continued punishment of older prisoners, the group with the lowest recidivism rate of any segment of the prison population.

http://prisonerswithchildren.org/news/dignity.htm

Posted by lois at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)

UT: Men and women over 55 cost the state 16 times more for medical care

MONDAY, January 23, 2006

Aging inmates pinch prison's health budget
Costly: Those 55 and older cost 16 times more for medical care, and their numbers are rising By Lisa Rosetta
The Salt Lake Tribune

Lloyd Owens, a convicted sex offender at the Utah State Prison, will be paroled in June 2008 - if he lives that long.

The 88-year-old, who had open-heart surgery, is now diabetic. He lives in the Oquirrh Five dormitory, the closest thing to a geriatric unit at the prison in Draper.

    His ashy gray hair combed back, Owens' eyes swell with tears behind his large gold-framed glasses as he talks about his 83-year-old wife, also a diabetic, who lives alone in their Hyrum home.

    "I'd give anything to be out if I could live a couple of years with her on the outside. I'd die a happy man," said Owens, who has been in prison for five years.

    On both sides of the prison walls, demographics are changing. The baby boomers are graying. And while they're under-represented in prison, their numbers are growing, sending the prison's medical costs soaring, said Richard Garden, clinical director for the Utah Department of Corrections.
    "The fact that a larger proportion of our inmate population is aging is going to mean a tremendous burden for us," he said.

    The problem is only expected to get worse. By 2030, Utah's 65 and older population is expected to increase by 155 percent compared with the same population in 2000, according to a report by the state Department of Human Services' Utah Aging Initiative.

    In just the past six years, the number of elderly inmates at the prison has risen 67 percent while the overall population increased just 11 percent.
    The impact on the Corrections budget is significant, Garden said. While per capita medical costs for younger inmates typically range from $400 to $600, older inmates' per capita costs range between $2,000 and $12,000.

   On average, inmates 55 and older cost 16 times more for medical care, he said.

    "That is a cost to us that is real and currently unfunded."
    Complicating the problem is medical premiums, which continue to rise steeply - about 8 percent to 10 percent each year, Garden said.

    Val Green, 68, who was locked up in February 2002 on two counts of sexual abuse and two counts of forcible sex abuse, had quadruple bypass surgery in 1999. The cost: $27,000.

    These days, Green is fighting off a cold that settled into his lungs and triggers coughing fits. And he has pains and discoloration in his legs. Green, whose sentence expires in February 2007, said he'll live to get out and be with his family. Other inmates won't.

    "I feel sorry for the people who stay here," he said.
    Some inmates, such as 99-year-old Bert Jackson, who is scheduled to be paroled next month, rely on younger inmates to help make their beds, eat their meals and return to their cells.

    Those who die there, and who don't have families to provide for funeral expenses, are cremated and their ashes are buried in a cemetery, said Warden Clint Friel.

    "It's pretty unceremonial," he said.

    Such is Garth Justet's fate, a 75-year-old inmate who was locked up six years ago for a sex offense and has no parole date in sight.
    He has stopped going to mail call because his family has cut off all communication with him.
    "I'm assuming I will be here for the rest of my life," said Justet, who uses a wheelchair and relies on an oxygen tank.
    He took off his orange knit hat, revealing his salt and pepper-colored buzz cut hair.
    "I've accepted I'm no longer wanted or needed," he said.

    Justet's list of ailments is long: his arteries have hardened. He has a blockage in his shoulder. He has had three growths removed from one ear. He has the flu and takes pills for an ear infection.

    "I sneeze, I cough, my nose runs," he said.

    The Department of Corrections defines "elderly inmates" as those who are 55 and above, because most are physiologically older than their age after years of drug and alcohol abuse. They are more likely to suffer from heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and strokes.

    Most of them were 55 or older when they were sentenced to prison, according to the Utah Aging Initiative report. About 61 percent were convicted of a sex offense.

    Based on the shifting population and medical inflation, Garden estimates that for every 0.1 percent increase in elderly inmates, Corrections can expect a 1.3 percent increase in medical costs.

    Corrections, which is required by federal law to provide medical care, is tightening its belt in other areas of prison operations to make up for the climbing costs.

    Fewer medical staff members are taking on more responsibilities, Garden said. Some services have been privatized. Inmates' outside medical treatment is being more closely reviewed and scrutinized, and Corrections has taken on the role of a managed health care system.

    "There is not too much more to squeeze from the turnip here," he said.
    Yet another option is early parole for those inmates who are chronically or terminally ill and no longer pose a threat to society, Garden said.
    The Legislature is considering a bill that would require Corrections to disclose inmates' criminal history to health care facilities that accept those who get an early parole.

    House Bill 125, sponsored by Rep. Jackie Biskupski, D-Salt Lake City, also would require Corrections to provide health care for inmates who are chronically or terminally ill - something the department is already doing, Garden said.

    The prison infirmary, where inmates used to stay for a few days while they recovered from surgeries, now houses the terminally ill. Whereas before it operated as a clinic, it now serves as a round-the-clock nursing care facility for the sick.

    "It's a tremendous drain on the health-care staff," Garden said.
    In the coming years, Garden expects the prison will begin exploring the possibility of an actual geriatric unit at the prison.

    "I really think it will happen in a few years. Our problem is the bed crunch. The beds are so tight, we can't afford to have a section dedicated to geriatric inmates and then have a few beds open and no one qualifies [for them]," he said.
    lrosetta@sltrib.com
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_3428919

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

Pataki Proposes one of the most punitive laws in the country for sex offenders

PRESS RELEASES - 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
January 23, 2006

GOVERNOR PATAKI PROPOSES ONE OF STRONGEST LAWS IN THE NATION TO IMPOSE TOUGH, NEW PENALTIES ON CHILD MOLESTERS
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³Jessica¹s Law² Would Mandate 25 Years to Life for the Most Violent Sexual Crimes Against Children Impose Tougher Sentences for Worst and Repeat Sex Offenders; Strengthen Other Sexual Assault Laws; Proposal Comes Days After Governor Signs Tougher Megan¹s Law

Governor George E. Pataki today furthered his commitment to keep New York¹s children and families safe by proposing Jessica¹s Law ­ legislation that imposes tougher penalties on those who commit sexual crimes against children, and further strengthen other sexual assault laws.

³As a father of four, I can hardly imagine anything worse than the sexual abuse of a child,² Governor Pataki said. ³This new legislation will ensure that if you commit the worst kind of violent sexual crime against a child, you will go to prison for a minimum of 25 years. But Jessica¹s Law will do more than that -- it will also raise the age threshold for crimes against children and further penalize the worst-of-the-worst sexual predators as well as repeat sexual offenders.²
"The Assembly proposals would provide up to life sentences for the most serious sex crimes in which a weapon was used, in a crime with multiple victims, or if the culprit had previously been convicted of a felony sex crime. Adults convicted of a serious sex crime against a child under 13 years old could spend life in prison. In addition, a sex offender could be confined for life after a psychiatric exam and after the state attorney general petitions a court, but the offender would be provided a public defender, a public hearing and other due process measures, under the Assembly version. A jury would have to vote unanimously to hold an offender in civil confinement if it is shown he or she is likely to repeat a horrific sex crime again."

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--sexoffenders0123jan
23,0,4239420.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork

Jan 23, 2006

AP New York
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`Jessica's Law' would end short sentences in sex crimes

By MICHAEL GORMLEY
Associated Press Writer

January 23, 2006, 5:20 PM EST

ALBANY, N.Y. -- A convicted rapist likely serves less than three years in prison. A convicted sexual abuser spends about a year and a half in prison. And a sexual offender convicted of a lesser felony likely sees less than six months in prison.

Under new proposals from Gov. George Pataki, those average lengths of time served as a result of plea bargains and other factors would change.

Sentences would increase to as much as 25 years to life and life in prison without the chance of parole. The minimum sentence for conviction of a sex crime against a child would be 25 years.

"We have to have penalties that come close to the magnitude of the crime," Pataki said Monday in releasing his package of sex crime bills led by the proposed Jessica's Law. The law is named for 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford of Florida who was snatched from her bed, raped and killed last year by a convicted sex offender who, despite public sex offender registries, was living 150 yards from the home without her family's knowledge.

The Republican governor released his proposals in a news conference hours before the Democrat-led Assembly released its own Child Safety and Sexual Predator Punishment and Confinement strategy. That package of bills addresses the same issues, but they are fundamentally different from Pataki's package that was supported by the Republican-controlled Senate. The Assembly, Senate and governor will have to compromise for the competing bills to become law.

"Sexual abuse and assault are heinous crimes that leave profound, everlasting scars," said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who sponsored some of the measures. "Ultimately we intend to go to conference committees and iron out our differences, hopefully the Senate agrees, and we can produce a law."

Pataki called the Assembly package weak and full of loopholes, but said he'd negotiate.

The Assembly proposals would provide up to life sentences for the most serious sex crimes in which a weapon was used, in a crime with multiple victims, or if the culprit had previously been convicted of a felony sex crime. Adults convicted of a serious sex crime against a child under 13 years old could spend life in prison.

In addition, a sex offender could be confined for life after a psychiatric exam and after the state attorney general petitions a court, but the offender would be provided a public defender, a public hearing and other due process measures, under the Assembly version.

A jury would have to vote unanimously to hold an offender in civil confinement if it is shown he or she is likely to repeat a horrific sex crime again.

Pataki cited this as an example of a loophole: He said the measure would give one juror veto power and the ability to release a serious offender. Pataki's proposals would establish:

_A mandatory sentence of 25 years to life for violent sexual felonies against children, under a measure called Jessica's Law.

_A new definition for a child in the most serious level of sex crimes from "under 11" to "under 13" years old.

_Life without parole for causing the death of a child during a sexual assault.

_A new higher-level felony for using children under the age of 13 in a sexual performance.

_Increased sentences for all other sexual crimes against children. _Mandatory sentences of 25 years to life for all second-time felony sex offenders.

_Mandatory 25 years to life minimum sentences for a proposed "predatory sexual assault" crime. That crime would include the use of a weapon or committing multiple sexual assaults.

"The devil is in the details," said Republican Assembly leader James Tedisco of Silver's civil confinement proposal. "And even the devil wouldn't be confined under their law."

The Governor¹s legislation is named for Jessica Lunsford, a nine-year-old-girl who was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered by a registered sex offender living in her neighborhood in Florida. ³Jessica¹s Law² was first signed in Florida last year. Governor Pataki¹s proposed New York Jessica¹s Law is modeled on the original Florida law, and if passed, it would be one of the toughest laws in the country against violent sexual predators of children.

Just last week, at the Governor¹s urging, the Legislature passed an expansion of Megan¹s Law, lengthening the amount of time sex offenders would be mandated to remain on the Sex Offender Registry and ensuring thousands of sex offenders would not come off the lists beginning this month. This new law ensures that all sex offenders remain on the Registry, most for life, and continues to give every parent and family the ability to find information about sex offenders in their neighborhoods.

³Last week we strengthened Megan¹s Law. Today I am proposing Jessica¹s Law. And still, we can and must do more to further ensure the safety of our children and families. We still need to work together to pass new laws that would further toughen Megan¹s Law, protect our children and families by civilly confining dangerous sexual predators, toughen sentences for those who molest and rape children, end the statute of limitations on rape, and require every criminal to submit a DNA sample to the State¹s DNA Databank,² the Governor added.

Several of the provisions of Jessica¹s Law have been acted on by the State Senate since 1996, but they have not been acted on by the State Assembly Majority Leadership.

Mark Lunsford, father of Jessica Lunsford, the child for whom the bill is named, said, ³I want to commend Governor Pataki and New York State for looking to implement tougher laws to protect children. Although we will never be able to prevent all of the crimes that will be committed against children, we can implement laws that will further protect them and avoid senseless tragedies. The death of my daughter‹like so many other children‹could have possibly been avoided; and there is no time better than the present to take action so that it doesn¹t happen again. I look forward to helping New York protect its children by working with the Governor and the New York Legislature to get New York¹s version of Jessica¹s Law passed.

³Like Governor Pataki, I believe this will only be accomplished by working through bi-partisan partnerships. I believe the Governor and I will be able to successfully work with the Assembly and Senate so that New York¹s children can live lives free from fear and harm. I believe that together, we can implement laws that will keep dangerous individuals who want to harm and destroy innocent lives away from our children. Never again should a child have to suffer the pain and fate that my daughter did. It is our job to make sure this never happens again and that children can safely play in our communities and neighborhoods.²

Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco said, ³This is an excellent proposal. We must do everything we can to protect children from dangerous pedophiles, molesters and rapists. Sexual crimes against children are the most evil of crimes and the perpetrators should be dealt with harshly. The families of New York are demanding action immediately and if the Assembly Democrats drag their feet they will have to answer to those families in November.²

Senator Michael Nozzolio said, ³Governor Pataki has proposed a comprehensive approach to keeping violent sexual predators behind bars. Protecting innocent children from sexual assault is critically important and this new proposal will advance our fight to protect our children and families from the scourge of sexual predators.²

Jessica¹s Law would include:

Tougher Sentences for Sex Crimes against Children

* Mandatory A-I sentence of 25 to Life for violent sexual felonies
against children (Jessica's Law)
* Increase age threshold for most serious sexual crimes against children
from "under 11" to "under 13"
* Mandatory life without parole sentence for causing the death of a child
during a sexual assault (Tamiqua's Law).
* Creation of a higher-level A-I felony offense for using children under
the age of 13 in a sexual performance.
* Increased sentencing for all other sexual crimes against children.
Tougher Sentences for Repeat Sex Offenders
* Mandatory 25 to Life sentences for all second-time sexual felony
offenders.

Tougher Sentences for the ³Worst of the Worst² Sexual Offenders

* Mandatory 25 to Life minimum sentence for new crime of ³Predatory
Sexual Assault².
* Aggravating factors for the new crime of ³Predatory Sexual Assault²
would include: (1) causing serious physical injury; (2) use or display of a gun, deadly weapon or what appears to be a gun or deadly weapon; and (3) committing more than one sexual assault; (4) a prior sexual or violent offense.

Strengthening Other Sex Assault Laws

* Adding numerous sex crimes to list of ³violent felony offenses².
* Eliminating requirement that ³physical injury² be demonstrated in
aggravated sex abuse cases.
* Require the Board of Parole consider input from the State Board of Sex
Examiners prior to granting parole to any sex offender.
* Make Sexual Abuse in the Second Degree (subjecting one incapable of
consent to sexual contact for any reason except age) a felony. Currently, it is only a misdemeanor to subject a person who is physically helpless or mentally disabled or incapacitated to sexual contact.

New York State Director of Criminal Justice Chauncey G. Parker said, ³This legislation will give law enforcement officials the tools they need to ensure that dangerous predators who prey on our children receive the appropriate punishment. As a former prosecutor I know how important it is to have a law like Jessica's Law on the books. I want to thank Governor Pataki for continuing to propose legislation that will allow us to further protect our children and families.²

During his 12th and final State of the State Address three weeks ago, the Governor called for new laws that would further protect our children and families by: requiring the civil confinement of dangerous sexual predators; imposing longer sentences for those who molest and rape children, or commit violent or repeat sexual assaults; strengthening New York¹s Megan¹s Law; ending the statute of limitations on rape and sexual assaults; and requiring all criminals to submit a DNA sample to the State¹s DNA Databank.

Over the past ten years, violent crime in New York State has been cut in half. Crime is at its lowest levels since statewide crime reporting began - nearly 40 years ago. ###
http://www.ny.gov/governor/press/06/0123062.htm

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

Meth--Focus changes from locally produced to large quanties of Mexican meth

New York Times

By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: January 23, 2006

DES MOINES, Jan. 18 - In the seven months since Iowa passed a law restricting the sale of cold medicines used to make methamphetamine, seizures of homemade methamphetamine laboratories have dropped to just 20 a month from 120. People once terrified about the neighbor's house blowing up now walk up to the state's drug policy director, Marvin Van Haaften, at his local Wal-Mart to thank him for making them safer.

But Mr. Van Haaften, like officials in other states with similar restrictions, is now worried about a new problem: the drop in home-cooked methamphetamine has been met by a new flood of crystal methamphetamine coming largely from Mexico.

Sometimes called ice, crystal methamphetamine is far purer, and therefore even more highly addictive, than powdered home-cooked methamphetamine, a change that health officials say has led to greater risk of overdose. And because crystal methamphetamine costs more, the police say thefts are increasing, as people who once cooked at home now have to buy it.

The University of Iowa Burn Center, which in 2004 spent $2.8 million treating people whose skin had been scorched off by the toxic chemicals used to make methamphetamine at home, says it now sees hardly any cases of that sort. Drug treatment centers, on the other hand, say they are treating just as many or more methamphetamine addicts.

And although child welfare officials say they are removing fewer children from homes where parents are cooking the drug, the number of children being removed from homes where parents are using it has more than made up the difference.

"It's killing us, this Mexican ice," said Mr. Van Haaften, a former sheriff. "I'm not sure we can control it as well as we can the meth labs in your community."

The influx of the more potent drug shows the fierce hold of methamphetamine, which has devastated many towns once far removed from violent crime or drugs. As Congress prepares to restrict the sale of pseudoephedrine, the cold medicine ingredient that is used to make methamphetamine, officials here and in other states that have recently imposed similar restrictions caution that they fall far short of a solution.

"You can't legislate away demand," said Betty Oldenkamp, secretary of human services in South Dakota, where the governor this month proposed tightening a law that last year restricted customers to two packs of pseudoephedrine per store. "The law enforcement aspects are tremendously important, but we also have to do something to address the demand."

Here, officials boast that their law restricting pseudoephedrine, which took effect in May, has been faster than any other state's in reducing methamphetamine laboratories. Still, when Mr. Van Haaften, director of the Governor's Office of Drug Control Policy, surveyed the local police, 74 percent said that the law had not changed demand, and 61 percent said supply had remained steady or increased.

In a survey of treatment professionals, 92 percent said they had seen as many or more methamphetamine addicts; the state treated 6,000 in 2005 and expects to treat more than 7,000 this year, based on current trends. Some health officials said abuse among women, typically the biggest users of methamphetamine, was rising particularly fast.

While seizures of powdered methamphetamine declined to 4,572 in 2005 from 6,488 in 2001, seizures of crystal methamphetamine increased, to 2,025 from one.

Federal drug agents tend to describe ice as methamphetamine that is at least 90 percent pure. Officials here say much of their crystal methamphetamine is less pure - "dirty ice," they call it. But either is far more potent than homemade powdered methamphetamine; a "good cook" yields a drug that is about 42 percent pure, but around 25 percent is more common. And in the first four months after the law took effect here, average purity went to 80 percent from 47 percent.

Other states have seen the same.

"The Mexican drug cartels were right there to feed that demand," said Tom Cunningham, the drug task force coordinator for the district attorneys council for Oklahoma, the first state to put pseudoephedrine behind pharmacy counters, in 2004. "They have always supplied marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. When we took away the local meth lab, they simply added methamphetamine to the truck."

A methamphetamine cook could make an ounce for $50 on a stovetop or in a lab in a car; that same amount now costs $800 to $1,500 on the street, the police say.

"Our burglaries have just skyrocketed," said Jerry Furness, who represents Buchanan County, 150 miles northeast of Des Moines, on the Iowa drug task force. "The state asks how the decrease in meth labs has reduced danger to citizens, and it has, as far as potential explosions. But we've had a lot of burglaries where the occupants are home at the time, and that's probably more of a risk. So it's kind of evening out."

When the state surveyed the children in state protection in southeastern Iowa four months after the law took effect, it found that 49 percent were taken from parents who had been using methamphetamine, the same percentage as two years earlier, even as police said they were removing fewer children from homes with laboratories.

Some law enforcement officials say that addicts may find the crystal form more desirable. "If they don't have to mess with precursor chemicals, it's actually a bit easier on them, and safer," said Kevin Glaser, a drug task force supervisor for the state highway patrol in Missouri, which last year led the nation in methamphetamine lab seizures.

But the switch has also increased the risks. "People are overdosing; they're not expecting it to do this much," said Darcy Jensen, director of Prairie View Prevention Services in South Dakota. "They don't realize that that fourth of a gram they're used to using is double or triple in potency."

Federal officials say there are 1.4 million methamphetamine addicts in the United States, concentrated in the West, where the drug began to take hold in the late 1980's, and the Midwest and South, where it moved in the mid- and late 1990's.

Drug enforcement officials have always said that 80 percent of the nation's supply comes from so-called super labs, those able to make 10 pounds or more. But in some counties here, officials say that all the methamphetamine came from mom-and-pop labs that made the drug by cooking pseudoephedrine with toxic farm and household chemicals.

Law enforcement focused on the laboratories because they were so
destructive: the police found children who had drunk lye thinking it was water, or went without food as parents went through the long binge-and-sleep cycles of using. Laboratories in homes, motels, abandoned farm buildings or cars frequently exploded, or dumped their toxic chemicals into drains or soil. Small police departments spent much of their time attending to contaminated sites.

More than 30 states have restricted pseudoephedrine in some way. Nine have put it behind pharmacy counters, and Oregon now requires a prescription to obtain it.

Addicts and cookers have proved to be skilled at getting around the restrictions; as one state imposes a law, bordering states see an increase in laboratories. Oklahoma recently linked its pharmacies by a computer database to track sales after discovering that cooks were going county-to-county buying from several pharmacies a day.

Iowa's law passed unanimously. As in other states, officials say the number of laboratories had already begun to decline, most likely because cooks feared they would be caught because there was so much public attention on the problem.

The law resulted in a decline of at least 80 percent. Police found 138 laboratories from June to December, down from 673 for the same period the year before. The state had hit a high of 1,500 lab busts in 2004, but with the law, had 731 for 2005, and expects just 257 this year. Law enforcement says the costs of policing and cleaning up labs will drop to $528,000 next year from $2.6 million in 2004.

But here and in many of the states with recent pseudoephedrine restrictions, frustration with the stubborn rate of addiction has moved the discussion from enforcement to treatment and demand reduction.

That discussion, officials say, will be much tougher.

After listening to Mr. Van Haaften's report on the effects of the law this week, State Representative Clel Baudler, a former state trooper who now heads the public safety committee for the Iowa General Assembly, charged his committee to come back to the next meeting with strategies to reduce demand.

"My fear is, when I ask what they think we should do, they'll say 'I don't know,' " Mr. Baudler said in an interview afterward. "We've increased penalties, we've increased prison time, we're still not getting in front of it."

Officials say they never advertised the law as one that would reduce methamphetamine addiction. Still, they are surprised at how the drug has hung on.

"Things that are highly destructive, including diseases, tend to be self-limiting," said Arthur Schut, president of the Mid-Eastern Council on Chemical Abuse in Iowa City, and a member of the state's drug policy advisory council. "This has been devastating. It's remarkable how quickly people are damaged by it."

Mr. Van Haaften, too, knows that it was too much to hope that the law would reduce demand. Still, he says, "I had a little hope."

"I knew of the addictive nature, but in my heart, I believed people didn't want to deal with dealers," he said. "They have guns, it's dangerous, if you make your own it's safer. I hoped for a dip, but the availability did not allow that to happen."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/national/23meth.html?pagewanted=all

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

January 22, 2006

NY Times Editorial: A Place for Sex Offenders

New York Times
Editorial
A Place for Sex Offenders
Published: January 22, 2006

Gov. George Pataki has proposed turning a woodsy upstate prison into a pseudo-prison for certain convicted sex offenders who have already done their time. His impulse is understandable: rather than allow men who seem likely to repeat terrible crimes back onto the street, why not lock them up for psychiatric treatment until they get their impulses under control? The United States Supreme Court has declared the practice permissible for people deemed "mentally abnormal," and 16 other states have so-called civil-confinement laws.

But it isn't necessary to be a raging civil libertarian to be queasy about the Pataki plan, under which the state would spend $130 million to raze and replace Camp Pharsalia, 50 miles north of Binghamton, with a new treatment center run by the State Office of Mental Health.

There will never be an easy or wholly satisfying solution to the problem of violent sexual criminals. Sickened by highly publicized crimes against children and dubious about the odds of rehabilitation, Congress and the states have been adopting ever-tougher laws governing where and how sex offenders can live, work and travel.

But peace of mind has been elusive. An era that began with laws requiring freed sex offenders to register with local law-enforcement officials now features laws requiring notification of neighbors when offenders move in, the posting of offenders' names on the Web, electronic monitoring and restrictive "distance laws" meant to keep them away from places like schools and parks.

Preventive detention for violent sex offenders is the natural end point of the logic embraced by Mr. Pataki and his allies: that these are a special class of misfits whom existing laws are incapable of subduing, and that no price is too high for safety. But while no one disputes society's obligation to protect the innocent, it is fair to ask whether the state's limited resources might be better deployed at the front end of the problem. A bill sponsored in the Assembly by Speaker Sheldon Silver and Joseph Lentol, while allowing for the civil confinement of sexual predators, places a heavier emphasis on treatment behind bars. The current prison treatment system, underfunded and understaffed, typically offers six months of group therapy run by corrections officials. The Assembly bill would require at least two years of treatment by mental health professionals for everyone imprisoned for a felony sex offense, and provide for continued treatment after release.

But treatment is not the entire answer. Few would deny that the universe of sex criminals includes a small number of repeat offenders who do not respond to therapy, and that the criminal-justice system will eventually run out of ways to deal with them. The admittedly imperfect answer in that case would be to seek longer sentences for violent sex crimes to reduce the chances that dangerous predators will be released too soon, and to aggressively monitor offenders upon release with electronic bracelets and a strengthened parole system.

Psychiatric treatment in prisons, intensive outpatient therapy and close monitoring are, in the main, preferable to a questionable reliance on preventive detention. The remaking of Camp Pharsalia, in fact, seems more like an upstate jobs program. We should not forget that only last year lawmakers were urging Mr. Pataki to keep Camp Pharsalia open somehow, lest its neighbors lose 100 jobs and $11 million in economic activity.

We are all for upstate development, but the more urgent questions have to do with public safety and whether lavishing resources on a place for warehousing a small subset of sex offenders - rather than aggressively treating and keeping tabs on a far larger cohort of criminals - will really make all of us safer, or just make it seem that way.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/opinion/nyregionopinions/WE_Offender-RO.html

Posted by lois at 08:38 PM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2006

ID: Truly @#$%! idea for overcrowding

SODA SPRINGS SENATOR'S IDEA FOR PRISONS DRAWS NATIONAL INTEREST
Jan 20, 2006 -KPVI

One State Senator's idea to manage Idaho's growing prison population is drawing some national attention.
Idaho's Senate President Pro Tem Robert Geddes says having prisoners double up on beds might be an inexpensive solution.

Not everyone believes this unconventional way to deal with overcrowded prisons will work.

Adam Atchison has our report.

Sen. Robert Geddes (R) Soda Springs: "I've received calls and emails from all over the U.S."

President Pro Tem Robert Geddes has received a lot of attention in the past few days. A file full of feedback - interviews with the BBC and coverage on CNN all discussing his unorthodox approach to Idaho's overcrowded prisons.

Sen. Robert Geddes (R) Soda Springs: "My initial question was - why does every prisoner need his own bed? We do need to look at options that are perhaps unusual or unorthodox or crazy even to determine how best we can manage the scarce resources of our state."

Geddes says his idea of having prisoners work and sleep in shifts and double up on beds could be a workable solution to the growing cost of managing Idaho's prison population. The Department of Corrections says prisons in the gem state have been over capacity for three years. Some are being sent to county jails - others are shipped out of state at an extra cost to the state. Correction Director Tom Beauclair has asked lawmakers to consider doling out $180 million for three new prisons this year, prisons he says would be full by the time they're built.

Tom Beauclair Department Of Corrections: "On the surface, it sounds like a wonderful idea and I think that's why it generates the interest that it does."

Beauclair says he's not sure the around-the-clock idea would work. He says it might be difficult to manage prisoners in emergency situations - and worries the court may frown upon extra prisoners in existing facilities.

Tom Beauclair, Department of Corrections: "They told us basically that we don't have enough space to add any more inmates, so i think the court would intervene if we did anything like what's being presented."

Geddes admits his idea would require a lot of changes to be made in existing facilities - and right now, he has no plan to introduce legislation. But he hopes the discussion his idea is generating may lead to a long-term solution.

Sen. Robert Geddes (R) Soda Springs: "I think it's an idea that could be workable, if it's the will of the people to make it happen. "

Posted by lois at 09:16 PM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2006

This is your County on Meth

Lots of links in the online version: http://www.slate.com/id/2134392/

This Is Your County on Meth

Another bogus survey from the National Association of Counties. By Jack Shafer Posted Thursday, Jan. 19, 2006, at 10:14 PM ET

The dukes of deception who run the National Association of Counties are insulting your intelligence once again with a half-cocked "survey" about the methamphetamine menace.

Now, before I commence, let me assert that I know all about the dangers‹and the pleasures, such as they are‹of methamphetamine. While correspondence from readers detailing their personal meth sufferings or those of a family member will cause my Gmail inbox to swell, not even the most horrific testimonial will persuade me to recant what I'm about to write.

Thank you.

The survey in question, titled "The Effect of Meth Abuse on Hospital Emergency Rooms" (PDF), prompted respectful headlines from newspapers this week when assignment desks everywhere should have round-filed it: "Hospitals Say Meth Cases Are Rising, and Hurt Care" (New York Times); "Meth cases put strain on ERs" (USA Today); "Meth causes more hospital visits than any other drug" (Salt Lake Tribune); and "Meth strains hospitals in Indiana: Emergency rooms across Midwest, nation report rising caseload" (Indianapolis Star). The NBC Evening News gave it the up-close and personal treatment of "Brian
Williams: Plastic Honky Zombie or Midwestern Meth Head?" Just kidding. The headline listed on Nexis for the story is "Meth addicts drain on emergency rooms."

The headlines give no sense of the NACo survey's narrowness. You've got to read into the second or third paragraph of each story‹or deeper‹to learn that NACo surveyed only county public hospitals or regional hospital emergency rooms, and that the survey firm they hired questioned only 200 institutions. Upon these data the survey establishes the finding‹if you want to call it that‹of a 73 percent increase in meth-related visits over the last five years.

How representative of the nation's emergency departments is the survey sample? The American Hospital Association counted 4,079 emergency departments in its last census, meaning the NACo survey reached less than 5 percent. How representative are the surveyed establishments of the nation's EDs? Not representative at all. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 58 percent of all emergency departments are in metropolitan areas and account for 82 percent of all annual use. Of the 200 departments surveyed for NACo, 161 serve rural populations of less than 50,000. (The survey didn't collect results from 11 states.) The survey can't possibly give us a good idea how well the nation's EDs are handling meth-related incidents.

The survey's allegiance to, um, scientific rigor continues in its six-part questionnaire. The questions include, "In your opinion, what's the top illicit drug seen in presentations at your hospital's emergency room?" and, "In your best estimate, what percentage of total presentations in your hospital's emergency room in the last two years is methamphetamine related"? In other words, go ahead and take a guess‹we'll report it, but we won't require you to send supporting data.

This isn't the first time NACo has bamboozled the press with a bogus methamphetamine survey. Reason magazine's Nick Gillespie (a friend) hammered NACo for its equally flimsy survey of law enforcement agencies dated July 5, 2005. Its leading questionnaire begins, "As you may know, methamphetamine use has risen dramatically in counties across the nation." Every bit as anecdotal as the emergency department meth survey, the law enforcement survey reached 500 county law enforcement agencies in 45 states. (The association states that there are 3,066 counties or county equivalents.)

Why does NACo conduct and distribute these sham surveys? Because when reporters write stories based on them, it helps NACo shake the federal dollar tree for its 2,000-plus member counties, which is one of its main missions. Confirmation of that hypothesis can be found in the last paragraph of the New York Times article, which reads:

The association also said it wanted more federal money for compensation for hospitals tending to the uninsured, as well as for treatment care, programs to help affected children and continued law enforcement grants for regional drug task forces.

The Meth-Mouth Chronicles: While we're on the subject, let's see how accurately the press is defining "meth mouth." As I reported last summer, no evidence suggests that methamphetamine or its precursor compounds erode, corrode, or otherwise burn teeth. Even so, the press continues to report that urban myth as truth. (See the first cited item for my thesis.)

Here's a current selection of meth-mouth misinformation:

For those who smoke meth, the chemicals eat away at teeth. ‹Casper Star Tribune (Wyoming), Jan. 5, 2006

One of the major indicators of meth use, officials say, is a condition that has become known as "meth mouth." [Meth educator Bob] Nickisch, said this condition is one which can be easily recognized by dentists and health care professionals, as the harsh chemicals used in meth work to eat away the enamel of the teeth causing a rapid onset of tooth decay that is abnormal. ‹Black Hills Pioneer (South Dakota), Jan. 16, 2005

The use of meth can cause not only mental health problems such as depression or psychosis, but also long-term physical problems such as "meth mouth," a condition in which the teeth are burned away due to prolonged meth use. ‹Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), Jan. 5, 2006

Signs of methamphetamine use are prevalent in a user's mouth. The toxic chemicals used to make the drug irritate and burn the skin inside the mouth, creating sores that lead to infection. ‹Craig Daily Press (Colorado), Dec. 7, 2005

"Meth mouth" is the appearance of dark spots on the teeth and decay in the roots. The symptom is caused by acid in meth. ‹Eyewitness News 5 (St. Paul, Minn.), Nov. 17, 2005

******

I started out on Burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff. Send your meth fables to slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Related in Slate
Jack Shafer's meth chronicles include "The Meth-Mouth Myth," "Stupidity on Parade," "Crack Then. Meth Now.," and "The Meth Capital of the World." Moving his way through the pharmacopeia, Shafer has also written "Why Does Drug Reporting Still Suck?," "Dopes on Dope," "Smack Happy," "All the News That's Fit to Reprint," and "Ecstasy Madness!" for Slate. Ryan Grim contributed a piece on LSD's disappearance, "Who's Got the Acid?," and another on the government's big LSD lie, "The 91-Pound Acid Trip."

Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.

Posted by lois at 09:42 PM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2006

NC: Report says state needs 6,000 more prison "beds"

Posted on Tue, Jan. 17, 2006
Report: N.C. needs 6,000 more prison beds
Thousands more beds needed in addition to 6 facilities that started opening in 2003
SHARIF DURHAMS
Charlotte Observer

RALEIGH - North Carolina's prison building boom -- six 1,000-bed prisons planned over six years -- hasn't been enough. The state requires 6,000 to 10,000 additional prison beds to meet the expected need over the next decade, according to a new report.

The boost in prisoners, fueled by the state's population growth, will pressure legislators to spend tens of millions of dollars building more prison beds or reduce sentences for some felonies. Any delay could place more of a strain on prisons and on county jails, which handle the prison overflow.

The report, prepared for the N.C. Sentencing Commission, could determine whether state prison-system funding becomes part of the debate when legislators start putting together a budget in May. The commission and state corrections officials are reviewing the forecast and could recommend legislation.

Other states are facing the same problem and are considering building prisons, releasing inmates and shipping prisoners to other states to alleviate the space crunch.

"The option we don't want, from my perspective, is to extremely overcrowd the prisons," N.C. Division of Prisons Director Boyd Bennett said.

Inmate advocates who said guards were afraid to patrol packed prisons at night prompted the last N.C. prison building boom in the 1990s. Jails are just supposed to hold potential felons until they're sentenced. Then the state is supposed to take over.

The state has nearly 38,000 prisoners squeezed into barely enough space to meet court rulings and laws determining how much room each inmate should have.

To keep prisons from overflowing, the state pays counties $40 a day per inmate for jail space. Counties held 4,774 state prisoners for at least a six-day period during the last three months of 2005. The state paid counties $1.7 million for the space.

Iredell County built a jail annex in 1997. The county has about 270 beds, but the jail regularly has at least 280 prisoners, about 30 of whom are being held for the state, said Iredell Deputy Sheriff Rick Dowdle.

That means many Iredell inmates sleep on mattresses on the floor.

"You don't have a choice. All of the jails in this area are overcrowded," said Dowdle, who serves on the N.C. Jail Administrators Board of Directors. "They pay us to keep (state prisoners), but it puts a burden on us."

State corrections officials focused their recent building spree on maximum security prisons. State officials planned for six prisons that started opening in 2003. Three are complete, two will open this year and the last should open in 2008.

The maximum security prisons are the state's most expensive, since safety precautions require each prisoner to have his own cell. The two opening this year cost nearly $100 million each.

Now corrections officials say they must shift to building medium- and minimum-security prisons, where inmates can live in bunks in dorm-style cells.

Convictions increased for lower-level felonies, crimes such as drug possession and breaking and entering, those that would fill the minimum and medium security prisons. At the same time, there was a drop last year in the number of convictions for the most serious felonies, ones requiring maximum security.

Plans developed last summer called for the state to spend at least $21.9 million to add about 784 prison beds over the next year. The costs would increase in later years, officials said.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers agree they have to build prisons. But some Democrats have also pushed for changing sentencing guidelines -- a tactic Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt used in the 1990s to free some prison space.

Lawmakers submitted bills that would reduce some sentences and add programs to help inmates avoid crime after prison. But in part because of the "soft on crime" label lawmakers could face in any campaign, the legislation hasn't gone anywhere, said Rep. Phil Haire, D-Jackson.

"I wish some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would see we're not going to build our way out of the problem," said Haire, who serves on the N.C. Sentencing Commission.

Catawba Sheriff David Huffman, a Republican who ran for Congress in 2004, said reducing sentences again would be a mistake. Money that went to community sentencing alternatives in the 1990s could have built more prisons, Huffman said.

"We've got people walking on the street who should be locked up," said Huffman. He said the state needs tougher sentences, despite the fact his jail is packed. "You can't reduce sentences and expect to be fair to the people of North Carolina."

State Prisoners in County Jails

Nearly 4,800 N.C. prisoners were housed in county jails during the last three months of 2005. Corrections officials pay counties $40 a day for each prisoner they hold for the state.

COUNTY NUMBER OF PRISONERS AMOUNT PAID
Wake 433 $162,960
Mecklenburg 70 $23,000
Iredell 62 $24,080
Cabarrus 60 $20,320
Catawba 59 $26,120
Gaston 51 $14,680
Lincoln 35 $11,320
Union 24 $10,160
N.C. Total 4,774 $1,652,040

SOURCE: N.C. Department of Correction

Posted by lois at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)

Katrina and The Second Disaster: A Twenty-Point Plan to Destroy Black New Orleans

KATRINA AND THE SECOND DISASTER:
A Twenty-Point Plan to Destroy Black New Orleans
By Robert D. Bullard

As reconstruction and rebuilding move forward in New Orleans and the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama Gulf Coast region, it is clear that the lethargic and inept emergency response after Hurricane Katrina was a disaster that overshadowed the deadly storm itself. Yet, there is a "second disaster" in the making-driven by racism, classism, elitism, paternalism, and old-fashion greed. The following "Twenty-Point Plan to Destroy Black New Orleans" is based on trends and observations made over the past three months. Hopefully, the good people of New Orleans, Louisiana, the Gulf Coast, and the United States will not allow this plan to go forward-and instead adopt a principled plan and approach to rebuilding and bringing back New Orleans that is respectful of all of its citizens.

1. Selectively Hand Out FEMA Grants. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is being consistent in the slow response in getting aid to Katrina survivors. FEMA's grant assistance program favors middle-income households. Make it difficult for low-income and black Katrina survivors to access government assistance. Direct the bulk of the grant assistance to middle-income white storm victims. The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and several other legal groups have sued FEMA over its response and handling of aid to storm victims. FEMA has referred more than two million people, many of them with low incomes, to the Small Business Administration (SBA) to get the loans.

2. Systematically Deny the Poor and Blacks SBA Loans. Screen out poor and deny black households disaster loans. The New York Times editorial summed up this problem: "The Poor Need Not Apply." The Small Business Administration has processed only a third of the 276,000 home loan applications it has received. However, the SBA has rejected 82 percent of the applications it received, a higher percentage than in most previous disasters. Well-off neighborhoods like Lakeview have received 47 percent of the loan approvals, while poverty-stricken neighborhoods have gotten 7 percent. Middle-class black neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city have lower loan rates.

3. Award Insurance Claims Using the "Wind or Water" Trap. Because of the enormity of the damage in the wake of Katrina, insurance companies will categorize a lot of legitimate wind claims as flood or water-related. The "wind or water" problem will hit black storm victims hardest because they are likely to have their insurance with small companies-since the major firms "redlined" many black neighborhoods. Most rebuilding funds after disasters comes from private insurance-not the government.

4. Redline Black Insurance Policyholders. Numerous studies show that African Americans are more likely than whites to receive insufficient insurance settlement amounts. Insurance firms target black policyholders for low and inadequate insurance settlements based on majority black zip codes to subsidize fair settlements made to white policyholders. If black homeowners and business owners expect to recover from Katrina, then they must receive full and just insurance settlements. FEMA and the SBA cannot be counted on to rebuild black communities.

5. Use "Greenbuilding" and Flood-Proofing Codes To Restrict Redevelopment. Requiring rebuilding plans to conform to "greenbuilding" materials and new flood-proofing codes can price many low- and moderate-income homeowners and small business owners out of the market. This will hit black homeowners and black business owners especially hard since they generally have lower incomes and lower wealth.

6. Apply Discriminatory Environmental Clean-up Standards. Failure to apply uniform clean-up standards can kill off black neighborhoods. Use of full-scale cleanup of white neighborhoods to residential standards, while allowing no cleanup or partial cleanup (industrial standards) of black residential neighborhoods. Failure to cleanup black residential areas can act as a disincentive for redevelopment. It could also make people sick. Use the argument that black neighborhoods were already highly polluted with background contamination "hot spots" exceeding EPA safe levels pre-Katrina and thus need not be cleaned to more rigorous residential standards.

7. Sacrifice "Low-Lying" Black Neighborhoods in the Name of Saving the Wetlands and Environmental Restoration. Allow black neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans East to be "yielded back to the swamp" while allowing similar low-lying white areas to be rebuilt and redeveloped. This is a form of "ethnic cleansing" that was not possible before Katrina. Instead of emphasizing equitable rebuilding, uniform clean-up standards, equal protection, and environmental justice for African American communities, public officials should send mixed signals for rebuilding vulnerable "low-lying" black neighborhoods.

8. Promote a Smaller, More Upscale, and "Whiter" New Orleans. Concentrating on getting less-damaged neighborhoods up and running could translate into a smaller, more upscale, and whiter New Orleans and a dramatically down-sized black community. Clearly, shrinking New Orleans neighborhoods disproportionately shrinks black votes, black political power, and black wealth.

9. Revise Land Use and Zoning Ordinances to Exclude. Katrina can be used to change land use and zoning codes to "zone against" undesirable land uses that were not politically possible before the storm. Also, "expulsive" zoning can be used to push out certain land uses and certain people.

10. Phased Rebuilding and Restoration Scheme That Concentrates on the "High Ground." New Orleans officials are being advised to concentrate rebuilding on the areas that remained high and dry after Katrina. These areas are disproportionately white and affluent. This scenario builds on pre-existing inequities and "white privilege" and ensures future inequities and "white privilege." By the time rebuilding gets around to black "low-lying" areas, there is not likely to be any rebuilding funds left. This is the "oops we are out of funds" scenario.

11. Apply Eminent Domain as a Black Land Grab. Give Katrina evacuees one year to return before the City is allowed to legally "take" their property through eminent domain. Clearly, it will take much longer than a year for most New Orleanians to return home. This proposal could turn into a giant land grab of black property and loss of black wealth they have invested in their homes and businesses.

12. No Financial Assistance for Evacuees to Return. Thousands of Katrina evacuees were shipped to more than three-dozen states with no provisions for return-equivalent to a "one-way" ticket. Many Katrina evacuees are running short of funds. No money translates into no return to their homes and neighborhoods. Promote the "right to return" without committing adequate resources to assist evacuees to return.

13. Keep Evacuees Away from New Orleans Jobs. The nation's unemployment rate was 5 percent in November 2005. The November 2005 jobless rate for Katrina returnees was 12.5 percent, while 27.8 percent of evacuees living elsewhere were unemployed. However, the black jobless rate was 47 percent in November compared with 13 percent for whites who have not gone back. Katrina evacuees who have made it back to their home region have much lower levels of joblessness. This is especially important for African Americans whose joblessness rate fell over 30 percentage points for returnees. The problem is that the vast majority of black Katrina evacuees have not returned to their home region. Only 21 percent of black evacuees have returned compared with 48 percent of whites.

14. Fail to Enforce Fair Housing Laws. Allow housing discrimination against blacks to run rampant. Katrina created a housing shortage and opened a floodgate of discrimination against black homeowners and renters. In December 2005, the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) found high rates of housing discrimination against African-Americans displaced by Hurricane Katrina. In 66 percent of the tests conducted by the NFHA, 43 of 65 instances, whites were favored over African-Americans.

15. No Commitment to Rebuild and Replace Low-Income Public Housing. Shortly after Katrina struck, even the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) spoke of not rebuilding all of the public housing lost during the storm. The HUD secretary's statement is a powerful signal to New Orleans poor that public housing may not be around for them to return to.

16. Downplay the Black Cultural Heritage of New Orleans. Promote rebuilding and the vision of a "new" New Orleans as if the rich Black Culture did not matter or act as if it can be replaced or replicated in a "theme park" type redevelopment scenario. Developers should capture and market the "black essence" of New Orleans without including black people.

17. Treatment of Mixed-Income "Integrated" Housing as Superior to All-Black Neighborhoods. First, there is nothing inherently inferior about an "all-black" neighborhood-or all-black anything for that matter. Black New Orleans who chose to live in neighborhoods that happen to be all-black (whites have always had the right to move in or move out of these neighborhoods) should not be forced to have their neighborhoods rebuilt as "integrated" or "multicultural" neighborhoods. Also, "mixed-income" housing to many blacks conjures up the idea of 10% of the fair market housing units set aside for them. Many blacks are battle-weary of being 10%. New Orleans was 68% black before Katrina-and most black folks were comfortable with that.

18. Allow "Oversight" (Overseer) Board to Manage Katrina Funds That Flow to New Orleans. Take away "home rule" since the billions of Katrina redevelopment dollars that will flow to New Orleans is too much money for a majority black city council and a black mayor to oversee or manage. More important, the oversight board will need to represent "big-money" interests (real estate, developers, banking, insurance, hotels, law firms, tourist industry, etc.) well beyond the purview of a democratically elected city government to ensure that the vision of the "new" New Orleans, "smaller and more upscale," gets implemented.

19. Delay Rebuilding and Construction of New Orleans Schools. The longer the New Orleans schools stay closed, the longer the families with children will stay away. Schools are a major predictor of racial polarization. Before Katrina, over 125,000 New Orleans children were attending schools in the city. Blacks made up 93 percent of New Orleans schools. Evacuated children are enrolled in school districts from Arizona to Pennsylvania. Three months after the storm, only one of the New Orleans 116 schools is open.

20. Hold Elections without Appropriate Voting Rights Act Safeguards. Almost 300,000 registered voters left New Orleans after Katrina. The powerful storm damaged or destroyed 300 of the 442 polling places. Holding city elections pose major challenges regarding registration, absentee ballots, city workers, polling places, and identification for displaced New Orleanians. Identification is required at the polls and returning residents may not have access to traditional identification papers (birth certificates, drivers licenses etc.) destroyed by the hurricane. More than three months after Katrina struck, 80 percent of New Orleans voters have not made their way back to the city, including most African Americans who comprised a two-thirds majority of the population before the storm. Most of the estimated 60,000 to 100,000 New Orleans residents who have made it back are mostly white and middle class, changing the racial and political complexion of the city. Holding elections while the vast majority of New Orleans voters are displaced outside of their home district and even their home state is unprecedented in the history of the United States, but also raises racial justice and human rights questions.

---------
Robert D. Bullard is the Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University.

Posted by lois at 09:40 PM | Comments (0)

VA: Warner Doesn't Take Opportunity to Allow People with Felony Convictions to Vote

Felons fail to get voting rights back
BY MICHAEL HARDY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Despite the pleas of civil-rights groups, Gov. Mark R. Warner will not restore the voting rights of tens of thousands of released felons before he leaves office Saturday, sources said.

"He's not going to act on it," one official said yesterday.

Warner has restored the voting privileges of 3,414 felons who petitioned him after they completed their prison terms and post-release conditions.

Gov.-elect Timothy M. Kaine, who succeeds Warner, supports the governor and would not grant such blanket restorations, a spokesman said yesterday.

The civil-rights organizations, led by the Washington-based Advancement Project, said it was essential to end the Jim Crow-era disenfranchisement of felons after they had served their punishments.

Warner "has widespread support to put an end to this undemocratic and unjust practice," said Eddie Hailes, senior attorney with the project. "A principled stand of restoring rights is simply the right thing for Governor Warner to do."

The organization and others recently asked Warner to issue an executive order that would restore the voting rights of an estimated 243,000 Virginians.

Ellen Qualls, Warner's chief spokesman, declined to comment on what Warner will do but she quarreled with the estimates of the number of freed felons who would be affected by the unlikely gubernatorial action.

She also pointed out that Warner had restored the rights of more felons, mostly nonviolent individuals, than any other governor in history. He also has streamlined the process for a released prisoner to apply for voting rights.

"The governor has acted on every petition that has come to him and attempted to make decisions in a rational way," Qualls said. She said he had rejected the petitions of 195 freed felons.

Kevin Hall, Kaine's press secretary, said the governor-elect supports Warner's actions.

"Governor Warner's reforms are reasonable and the governor-elect intends to continue the same practice," Hall said.

Asked about the requests, Hall said Kaine would not grant such across-the-board restorations. Among the other groups asking for the restoration are the state and national branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Michigan Congressional Black Caucus.

Contact staff writer Michael Hardy at mhardy@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6810.
This story can be found at: http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?s=1045855935264&c=MGArticle&cid=1128769265938&pagename=RTD/MGArticle/RTD_BasicArticle&path=!news!politics;!news!politics

Posted by lois at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)

"We want full recovery from the addiction, we want full recovery from incarceration," said Tara Andrews, executive director of Justice Maryland.

Rally seeks vote for more ex-offenders
Additional Md. funds sought for drug treatment
By Kelly Brewington
Baltimore Sun
Originally published January 17, 2006

As election-year politics heats up, advocates of restoring voting rights to convicted felons reminded lawmakers last night that hundreds of thousands of Marylanders will be unable to cast ballots this fall.

Justice Maryland, a coalition of advocates for ex-offenders, rallied in frigid temperatures in front of the State House, calling on legislators to restore voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences and pleading for Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to earmark $50 million in his budget for drug treatment funding.

It is part of the group's campaign to reduce the number of prisoners incarcerated for nonviolent offenses and divert them to drug treatment. Advocates have been pushing for an increase in such programs for years. More than 250,000 Marylanders are in need of substance-abuse treatment, Justice Maryland estimates.

Ehrlich and Democratic lawmakers have supported increased access to treatment, but advocates said they want a larger piece of this year's $1 billion budget surplus to confront problems such as long waiting lists. An estimated 30,000 people in Baltimore alone are awaiting spots in treatment programs, advocates said.

"We want full recovery from the addiction, we want full recovery from incarceration," said Tara Andrews, executive director of Justice Maryland.
Afterward, civil rights activists, drug treatment advocates and about 200 people enrolled in Baltimore-area drug treatment centers entered the House of Delegates office building to speak face to face with lawmakers about their concerns.
The political will to confront drug treatment issues is lacking, advocates said, because many felons in Maryland are restricted from voting.
They hope lawmakers will pass legislation authorizing the automatic restoration of voting rights when felons are released from prison. Similar legislation has failed in the past.
Del. Salima S. Marriott, a West Baltimore Democrat who has supported the legislation, said the issue is essential in an election year.
"I think that we as a party who stand for democratic principles must, this year more than any year, ensure that all adults who are not incarcerated can vote," she said in an interview. "For me, it is so important because there are many people in my district who are not able to vote. To the extent that they are disenfranchised, so am I."

While Maryland restores voting rights for some convicted felons, just who is banned under current law can be difficult to decipher.

People convicted of one "infamous crime" - a category that includes fraud and corruption - may register to vote after completing their sentences. Those convicted of two or more nonviolent crimes can register three years after completing their sentences. The state prohibits voting by felons twice convicted of violent crimes, such as murder. Marvin "Doc" Cheatham, president of the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said elections officials and citizens are not sure who is eligible to vote because no statewide database records such information.

He estimates that 60,000 people statewide - 10,000 in Baltimore alone - are eligible to vote but don't know it.

"The saddest thing is the state of Maryland totally fails in educating former felons what their rights are," he said. Cheatham said some felons who are uncertain of their rights are afraid to register to vote because of a state law that deems it a felony if someone registers who is technically not eligible.

Nationally, states vary widely concerning felons' voting rights. Three states permanently bar all felons from voting, while a handful of others, including Maryland, prohibit some ex-offenders from voting, according to the Sentencing Project, which advocates the restoration of voting rights for all ex-offenders. Only Maine and Vermont allow inmates to vote.

The Maryland branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and others have criticized Maryland's law, saying it is more restrictive than others and disproportionately hurts African-Americans, who have historically faced discriminatory voting practices.
Roderick Stewart, 29, of Baltimore said he attended the rally because he thinks ex-offenders are entitled to a better quality of life. Since his release from prison last year, he said, he has been enrolled at a drug treatment center.
"I want to ask them [legislators] what they are doing for ex-offenders," he said. "I want to ask them why I don't have the right to vote."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.felons17jan17,1,7450483.story?coll=bal-local-headlines&ctrack=1&cset=true)

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January 18, 2006

NY: Follow-up to Story---Outcry, but few answers After Principal is Removed

February 1, 2006
Staten Island Principal Is Reinstated After Inquiry
By SUSAN SAULNY
The Department of Education is allowing the popular principal of a Staten Island high school to return to work today, more than a month after it began investigating her responses to two events last fall involving security.

The principal, Aurelia L. Curtis, an educator for 22 years, had been removed from Curtis High School in mid-December. She was reassigned to regional headquarters while investigators looked into the two events: her handling of a report of a bomb threat by a student, and an effort by the police to arrest three students on robbery charges. Her removal sparked protests from parents and an outcry from the teachers' union.

In the bomb threat, after hearing that a student had suggested that he could plant an explosive device at the school, Ms. Curtis and other officials suspended him and required him to receive a psychiatric exam before returning.

But education officials said Ms. Curtis should have reported the threat to the police, who later arrested the boy on the charge of making a terrorist threat, a felony since Sept. 11. The boy, a 16-year-old junior, will be allowed to return to school, also today, the officials said.

Department officials said Ms. Curtis mishandled another event, the effort to arrest three other students weeks later. Witnesses said that she defended the students to the police, and that she did not want them questioned until their parents arrived.

Keith Kalb, an education department spokesman, said the inquiry found that Ms. Curtis should have told the agency about the bomb threat, and that her comments about the arrest were inappropriate. But she would not be barred from returning to her position.

Ms. Curtis, in a telephone interview, said that she was "thrilled" to go back to work, and that she was "not terribly happy about the price I had to pay."

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
January 18, 2006
On Education
Outcry, but Few Answers, After Principal Is Removed
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
ONE day last May, the president of the College Board stood in the packed auditorium at Curtis High School on Staten Island and handed over a check for $25,000. Curtis had earned the money as one of just three high schools nationally to receive the organization's Inspiration Award for motivating students to attend college.

Operating at 160 percent of capacity, with a student body rapidly shifting from white to minority and from middle class to working poor, Curtis sent 85 percent of its graduates on to higher education. Everybody in the crowd that day understood exactly why the school's jazz band culminated the ceremony by playing "Respect."

Aurelia L. Curtis was dancing with all the rest on the stage, and nothing seemed more appropriate than the coincidence that her surname and the school's were identical. She had been at Curtis for more than 20 years, the last two as principal. An immigrant from Liberia, she formed part of the same racial transformation on Staten Island that was being felt in her school. More than a few of Curtis's alumni owed their college scholarships to her personal involvement.

Last week the Curtis auditorium was filled again, ostensibly for the monthly meeting of the PTA, but this time the mood was indignation rather than celebration. Ms. Curtis had been removed from the school in mid-December by the Department of Education, reassigned to the purgatory of regional headquarters. The department is investigating the principal's conduct in two episodes last fall, one involving a supposed threat by a student to bomb the building and the other an attempt by the local police to arrest three Curtis students inside the school.

In Ms. Curtis's absence that night, a chorus of students, teachers and graduates demanded her return. The chairman of the local branch of the N.A.A.C.P., the neighborhood's City Council member - and perhaps most surprising - the president of the citywide teachers' union joined in the outcry on the principal's behalf. Most of the members of the audience wore lapel badges with a picture of the suspended principal and the slogan "Curtis Needs Curtis." Others carried signs showing a broken heart.

All they got in return were the legalistic responses of the Department of Education's designated flak-catchers - Margaret Schultz, a local instructional superintendent; Nancy Ramos, a community superintendent; and Robin Merrill, a lawyer. They would not explain the content of the investigation against Ms. Curtis or the timetable for concluding it. "We are bound by chancellor's regulations and New York State law," Ms. Ramos offered in a typical comment.

That was pretty much when patience ran out for Maurice Royster, whose daughter received a scholarship to the University of Delaware with Ms. Curtis's help. "She was in this building for a reason," Mr. Royster said, referring to the principal. "You knuckleheads up there don't know nothing. I made myself get off the bus after work tonight and come here, and I don't even like PTA meetings." A moment later he concluded, "Let the woman come back."

The controversy began on Oct. 31 with a 16-year-old junior, according to both school and law enforcement officials. The boy, an honors student active in several school clubs, as well as a professed Marxist, was arguing about capitalism after school with fellow members of the Curtis debate team. In the course of the discussion, another student raised the question of what kind of action was permissible to create political change. The junior's lawyers, school administrators and the police differ on the exact wording, but all concur that he said something along the lines of how he could plant a bomb in Curtis the next morning as a protest against capitalism.

Word of the remark went from the debate team's faculty adviser to a dean to Ms. Curtis. On the morning of Nov. 1, she met with the student and his mother and searched the boy's belongings, finding no bomb-making materials of any kind. She then shared the information with the teachers and administrators on a crisis-intervention team. They decided to suspend the young man for four days and require him to receive a psychiatric evaluation before being readmitted.

On Nov. 4, however, the police in the 120th Precinct station house, two blocks from Curtis High, learned of the boy's statement. (Accounts differ as to whether the police were informed by Ms. Curtis or by a regional security officer in the Education Department, whom the principal had told.) That afternoon, the police arrested the student on the charge of making a terroristic threat, a felony written into law by the State Legislature six days after the Sept. 11 attacks. Meanwhile, the Department of Education ordered him suspended from school until Feb. 1.

If there was any criticism at the high school of Ms. Curtis's handling of the situation, it was at an extremely low volume. "I haven't heard anyone say they felt their children were in jeopardy," Tom Hepworth, the high school's parent coordinator, said in a recent interview. "When they found out what happened, the sequence of events, they were satisfied that a person they respect and trust made the best decision she could make."

For that matter, two of Ms. Curtis's own children are enrolled in the high school. Would a mother possibly have put them at risk of a terrorist bombing? Or would an experienced educator have known the difference between an incipient mass murderer and a precocious teenager trying to sound outrageous?

In late November and early December, Ms. Curtis went on a fellowship to Japan to study comparative educational systems. During that period, an investigator from the Department of Education came to Curtis High and told administrators there he was looking into whether the principal had failed to report a crime, a violation of chancellor's regulations.

ON Dec. 14, the afternoon after returning from Japan, Ms. Curtis was watching a girls' basketball game when the police entered the school gym to try to arrest three male students, claiming they had just robbed a student from a nearby high school. By the accounts of several witnesses, Ms. Curtis told the police the boys had been with her in the gym all afternoon and so could not have committed the crime. At the least, she told the police, she did not want them questioned until their parents could be called to the school.

The next morning, the Department of Education reassigned Aurelia Curtis to regional headquarters. The last her colleagues at school saw of her, she was cleaning out her office.

In the weeks since, the Staten Island district attorney decided not to prosecute the three Curtis students the principal had defended. A grand jury has yet to hear the case against the young man in the bomb threat episode. Yet Ms. Curtis appears no closer to having her case resolved.

Stephen Morello, the communications director for the Education Department, said, "Until we have an opportunity to examine all of the issues raised about the principal's handling of particular situations, we have reassigned her."

Jacqueline Lopardo, a Curtis graduate who went on to Vanderbilt University and a career in law, had a retort of sorts when she addressed the Education Department representatives at the PTA meeting last week. "You talk about how you need to protect Curtis High School," she said. "We stand unprotected now."
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 01:13 PM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2006

NY: Converting a prison into a prison for "sexual predators"

Press & Sun Bulletin, Binghamton, NY
Sunday January 15, 2006
EDITORIAL
Be careful
Looking into the possibility of converting Camp Pharsalia

Gov. George E. Pataki's proposal to close Camp Pharsalia and convert it into a 500-bed facility for civil confinement of sexual predators is an intriguing idea ‹ but also a very sketchy one. A lot of details need to be examined before any bricks are laid.

The governor has wanted to close the camp for the past few years in response to the falling prison population. At the same time, he has pressed for civil confinement of sexual predators for a while now. This could be a solution to both problems.

The Chenango County community, meanwhile, finds itself in an unexpected position. After years of petitioning the state to keep Pharsalia in operation, it now has to decide if the possible benefits ‹ jobs, especially ‹ will outweigh the possible debits of it becoming a repository for sexual predators.

Before the state and Chenango County commit to his proposal, of course, there are several questions that should be addressed:

€We've heard the governor boast before about large numbers of jobs being created (Glendale and EIT, for example). Is 1,000 jobs an accurate figure for staffing the facility, or does it factor in the crews necessary to build it?

€The operating cost of the facility is expected to be $92 million a year. With 500 inmates, that divides into $184,000 spent to house, feed and give medical care to each inmate. According to the state Department of Correction Services, the average cost spent to house and care for an inmate is $31,000 per year. Would the actual Pharsalia cost per inmate be so dramatically higher than the state average?

€What compensation would the Pharsalia community receive? What is the environmental impact to placing it in the rural site?

The governor is right about one thing: If New Yorkers think it's wise to restrain sexual predators after their criminal sentences have been served, they've got to go somewhere. The conversion of Pharsalia is one option worth considering.

But there's no need to rush this plan through without weighing all of these questions ‹ and others that may arise ‹ very carefully.

http://www.pressconnects.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060115/OPINION/601
150309/1005

Posted by lois at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)

MA: Springfield where the rich rob the poor

Keough indicted on 50 counts
Saturday, January 14, 2006
By STEPHANIE BARRY, Springfield MA Republican
sbarry@repub.com
SPRINGFIELD - Former homeless shelter director Francis G. Keough III traded jobs for cash, housing for sex and board appointments for bonuses, according to a 50-count federal indictment unsealed yesterday.

It is the third wave of criminal charges in a year for Keough, a one-time City Council president and former head of the Friends of the Homeless shelter on Worthington Street.

Two co-defendants - city worker Michael P. Hallahan and former shelter employee Angel T. Guzman - were arrested yesterday and charged with conspiracy and fraud.

Hallahan is a childhood friend of Keough and deputy weights and measures sealer for the city who also worked part-time at the shelter. Guzman is an ex-convict and former shelter resident whom Keough hired at the shelter in 1999 before getting him a city job using political contacts. He is currently Keough's wife's tenant at a home she owns at 53-55 Pomona Ave.

Keough, 47, was freed on bail when he was first arrested last January and charged with extortion. The bail was revoked in August after a second arrest for allegedly asking witnesses against him to lie to federal investigators.

"I hope Mr. Keough's exoneration will be covered with the same intensity of the lodging of these charges," defense lawyer Daniel D. Kelly said during an interview yesterday. Keough's arraignment was postponed yesterday because he was ill, Kelly said.

Keough, who has pleaded innocent to earlier charges, is being held at the Hampshire County House of Correction.
The corruption case against Keough is one of several prompted by a five-year federal investigation into public agencies and members of former Mayor Michael J. Albano's administration. Albano has never been charged in the probe.

Yesterday's indictment includes 98 examples of alleged fraud perpetrated by Keough, including: accepting $50,000 from a Springfield Housing Authority contractor after Keough landed James Asselin, the authority director's son, a top job with the city. Asselin is now serving prison time for bilking a city job training agency of nearly $600,000 submitting phony time sheets to the shelter for hours he spent working on former state Sen. Linda J. Melconian's failed mayoral campaign in 2003 giving jobs and rooms at the shelter to two women in exchange for sex.

Melconian, who left politics in 2004, had no comment when reached at home yesterday.

Keough is charged with conspiracy, multiple counts of fraud, perjury, witness tampering, lying to federal agents and tax evasion.

Hallahan, 37, pleaded innocent to conspiracy to commit fraud and wire fraud, the latter charge related to a bogus mortgage Keough arranged for him through an unnamed "corrupt" loan officer, according to the indictment. A city employee for 14 years, Hallahan was suspended without pay from his job yesterday, according to Mayor Charles V. Ryan. Hallahan was arrested by FBI agents at his city office on Tapley Street.

Guzman was detained by U.S. Magistrate Judge Kenneth P. Neiman yesterday after Assistant U.S. Attorney William M. Welch II argued Guzman is a flight risk who once leveled a veiled threat through a witness' 12-year-old daughter. Guzman, an admitted heroin addict with a long rap sheet, is charged with conspiracy and four counts of wire fraud. The charges are related to another mortgage, and other alleged scams at the shelter.

Keough also stacked the shelter's board of directors with friends and those beholden to him to ensure compliance, according to the indictment.

Among others, he appointed his real estate lawyer, Frank A. Caruso, who allegedly paid Keough $5,000 to gain forgiveness of a city loan; Michael R. Wells, a one-time School Committee candidate whom Keough helped to get jobs with the New England Farm Workers Council and as a state probation officer; and two tenants for whom he secured rental assistance meant for the poor and homeless, even though they were neither.

In exchange, Keough's board-approved salary jumped from $40,000 to $95,000 between 1994 and 2005. His vacation time doubled to six weeks. He scored a $500 monthly car allowance, plus other bonuses including a "performance award" of $10,000 in 2001.

The indictment also accuses Keough of lifting televisions, refrigerators, mattresses and other goods from the shelter and another local charity for his $700,000 vacation home in Rhode Island. Keough allegedly recruited shelter workers and borrowed a city-owned van to transport the stolen goods on shelter time. Payroll records, including Keough's, were routinely padded, according to the charges.

Keough is accused of billing the city (which reimburses the shelter for salaries with federal grant funds) $240,000 for payments that, in part, financed personal work.

The allegations in the indictment struck familiar chords.

Sex for jobs and payroll-padding were central to a corruption probe of the Massachusetts Career Development Institute, yielding four convictions, including that of the city's former Police Commission Chairman Gerald A. Phillips, now serving a 21-month prison sentence.

The alleged fleecing of the Springfield Housing Authority to outfit primary residences and a vacation home are among allegations leveled against former director Raymond B. Asselin, other executives, contractors and the Asselin family. Thirteen have pleaded innocent in that case.

"Those common threads must lead back to someone," Welch said of the corruption cases outside the courtroom yesterday.
Keough will be arraigned on the new charges on Wednesday; Guzman, who did not have a lawyer yesterday, will return to U.S. District Court on Tuesday for his arraignment and a detention hearing.

©2006 The Republican

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

SF Chronicle Editorial: No New Prisons for CA

San Francisco Chronicle
EDITORIAL
GETTING OUT
No new prisons for California

Sunday, January 15, 2006

WHEN GOV. Arnold Schwarzenegger came to office, his administration's goal was to reduce California's bloated prison population by 15,000. He also talked about putting a new emphasis on rehabilitation, even changing the name of the corrections department to the "Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation."

All this made sense. With 163,000 inmates, our prisons are crammed to twice their capacity. Three quarters of inmates land back in prison within three years, usually for technical parole violations.

That's why we are disturbed to learn that Schwarzenegger's $212 billion bond proposal includes billions of dollars to build two new prisons and increase the number of inmate beds in California by 83,000 in both county and state facilities.

In a telephone conference call last week, Schwarzenegger argued that the state's population is growing, and that California will need more prison space. He acknowledged that the crime rates statewide have dropped in recent years, but said that crime is linked to economic cycles, and if the economy deteriorates, crime rates could go up again. "We have to be prepared," he said.

As for the administration's embrace of rehabilitation, Mike Genest, the governor's finance director, noted that the 2006 budget includes $52 million for education and rehab programs. He says that overcrowded prisons make it difficult to implement these programs, and that new prison space is crucial to the success of the entire initiative.

We agree that the overcrowded prisons are intolerable. It's quite possible that, despite our building spree of the past several decades, more prison beds will be necessary.

But before embarking on another huge expansion of our correctional system, Schwarzenegger must present a comprehensive plan to reduce the prison population. Such as plan was nowhere to be seen in his budget and bond proposals last week.

For guidance, Schwarzenegger need look no further than the 2004 report by his appointees on the Corrections Independent Review Panel. Former Gov. George Deukmejian -- and state attorney general -- chaired the 25-member panel. Almost all panel members were officials from the Department of Corrections, the California Highway Patrol and other law-enforcement agencies.

Schwarzenegger appears to have missed the panel's central point. "The key to reforming the system lies in reducing the numbers," the panel concluded -- and provided a detailed blueprint for how to do it.

Its proposals included a revamping of the "determinate" sentencing system in which most inmates are released on parole without having to demonstrate to anyone that they are ready for life on the outside.

Deukmejian's panel recommended that inmates should be given greater incentive to rehabilitate themselves, in return for sharply reduced sentences. It made the obvious point that the parole system must be drastically reformed so that parolees don't end up back in prison. For example, it suggested that parole agents should concentrate on parolees who represent the greatest risk. It also urged releasing older inmates who present no threat to public safety, as well as finding alternatives to prison for nonviolent drug offenders.

Remember, this is the same Deukmejian who ran for attorney general advocating "use a gun, go to prison," and ran for governor on equally "tough on crime" platforms. During the time he was in state office, California passed more than 1,000 laws lengthening prison terms.

Although not mentioned in the Deukmejian report, state officials could grant more "compassionate releases" to old, dying inmates. Schwarzenegger should heed the recommendations of his own parole board to release inmates who have served sentences commensurate with their crimes and have demonstrated that they are fully rehabilitated. Schwarzenegger must also back reasonable reform of California's "three strikes'' laws.

In its current form, Schwarzenegger's plan is likely to run into stiff opposition in the Legislature -- as it should.

"We have just put the 'R' into the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation," Sen. Gloria Romero, D-L.A., chair of the Select Committee on California's Correctional System, told us. "Let's give it a chance to work."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/01/15
/EDG5TG19AQ1.DTL

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

NY: Civil Committments for "Sex Offenders"

Legislative Gazette Albany, NY
State leaders asked to rethink push for civil confinement laws
Written by: By JOSEPH GERACE
Tue, Jan 17, 2006 5:00 pm
Pataki proposes new facility in Southern Tier specifically for sexual predators

The National Association on Mental Illness of New York is concerned about Gov. George E. Pataki¹s urgent push for civil confinement of 5,000 sexual predators currently awaiting release from New York State prisons.

Civil confinement refers to the continued detainment, based on mental abnormalities, of criminals convicted of sexually violent crimes after their release from New York State prisons. The main points of contention from members of the state¹s mental health community are the housing of sexually violent criminals without psychiatric diagnosis into Office of Mental Health facilities, for reasons of cost, capacity, safety and stigma.

Speaking at a press conference in Albany last week, J. David Seay, the executive director of NAMI-NY, expressed concern that patients within the mental health field would be unjustly bunched with violent criminals if sex offenders were dispersed throughout the system without regard. Another worry was that patients with mental disorders are ³twelve times more likely to be victims of crime and violence² than those without.

³We oppose any legislation that would misuse facilities as a dumping ground for sexual predators,² Seay said at the press conference. ³State psychological centers are state resources and should not be used as a warehouse for sexual predators.²

Also speaking at the press conference was Michael Seereiter, director of public policy for the Mental Health Association in New York State, who noted that state psychiatric facilities are already at 100 percent capacity and to release sexual predators into a system that has seen drastic cutbacks over the last quarter-decade would cripple it.

There are currently 17 adult psychiatric hospitals in the New York State system, with one closing on April 1 in Middletown.

³Over the past 25 to 35 years there has been a movement called deinstitutionalization where community-based services are able to handle more of the mentally ill¹s needs,² said Seereiter. ³The psychiatric system that once treated 93,000 patients total in the early 1950s now has downsized to about 3,900 [patients].²

Sexual predators are a population, Seereiter said, that the psychiatric system was ³never meant to treat, confine or even house.²

Much of the battle over civil confinement is being fought between mental health advocates and the state Assembly on one side and Pataki and the state Senate on the other. The former say state money and beds in psychiatric wards are scarce, and other options have to be explored before legislation is passed. The latter argue that dangerous sexual predators must be kept off the streets after their prison sentences.

At his State of the State address on Jan. 4, Pataki urged, ³Our goal must be nothing less than to provide our children and families with every possible protection from sexually violent predators.²

At least 16 states and Washington, D.C. have existing laws that allow courts to civilly confine soon-to-be-released inmates considered to be at risk to repeat offenses or who have mental abnormalities.

Pataki announced last Tuesday that he would allocate $130 million in his 2006-07 Executive Budget to support his civil confinement proposal through the construction of a state facility near the Town of Pharsalia. The money would be used to raze the existing 258-bed minimum-security prison and construct a state-of-the-art, 500-bed, secure facility that Pataki said could be completed by 2009. Control of Camp Pharsalia, as it is currently called, would be transferred from the Department of Correctional Services to the Office of Mental Health.

In addition to $130 million, Pataki also made available $35 million for the renovation of current OMH facilities to hold sexual predators while Camp Pharsalia is being built and $27 million in ³new operating support for OMH in connection with housing and treating sexual predators in existing facilities in 2006-07.²

The phrase being used to describe the Mental Health Association¹s response to Pataki¹s designation of funds is ³somewhat mollified² according to Seereiter. His organization¹s concerns regarding the safety of mental health patients is addressed by separate facilities at Camp Pharsalia, but the money to handle uptake of the long-term secure facility would still be coming from the Office of Mental Health¹s budget.

³We are concerned this would zap existing mental health resources,² said Seereiter. ³This should be laid out separately in the budget.²

Assemblyman Peter Rivera, D-Bronx, the chair of the committee on mental health, last week proposed to the Assembly a system of civil confinement that offers a comprehensive trial that results in civil confinement, outside supervision similar to parole or, if a jury of peers in court located in the county in which the crime was committed cannot come to a unanimous decision, the release of the sex offender. The proposal also includes an expansion of the sentencing for sex offenders pending their first crime.

³What we¹re promoting is a change in the punishment,² said Rivera. ³We¹ll see what happens; the Senate and the Governor are not looking at that issue.²

Another take on what to do to keep children safe from sexual predators is being advocated by Richard Hamill, president of the New York State Alliance of Sex Offender Services Providers.

³Sex offender management is a complex problem, as is civil confinement,² said Hamill. ³What my professional group is advocating for is lifetime probation or parole for sex offenders.²

Hamill contends that sex offenders respond very well to personal attention from parole. One-on-one supervision results in a recidivism rate of about 50 percent, according to Hamill.

Many legislators in both houses are acting in good faith, according to Hamill.

³The Assembly is taking a careful look at the research in the field,² said Hamill. ³It¹s a complex problem that, hopefully the discussion will help to solve.²
http://www.legislativegazette.com/read_more.php?story=892

Posted by lois at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)

NY: Sex-Crime Frenzy---one sane voice

Saturday January 14, 2006
OPINION
NEW YORK JOURNAL
Senator fears sex-crime frenzy may lead to unwise legislation

By YANCEY ROY

ALBANY ‹ There's a sexual predator lurking in every driveway and street corner in New York. Or so one would think listening to the rhetoric at the State Capitol.

And because of the heated speechifying, some legislators think their colleagues are on the verge of a big overreaction. Think Rockefeller-era drug laws ‹ something passed into law in the heat of the moment and renounced decades later.

"I think there's a strong parallel," said Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, D-Brooklyn, who delivered an impassioned speech on the Senate floor urging her colleagues to act with deliberation. And, especially, she said don't paint a teenager who has sex with his girlfriend with the broad brush of "sex criminal" and put him on a list for life.

At issue is the potential for thousands of sex criminals to vanish from a state registry this year. Currently under what's known as Megan's Law, sex offenders must register their whereabouts with authorities for 10 years. About 3,500 sex offenders in New York would see their time expired in 2006 if the law is not renewed. An estimated 168 would leave the rolls on Jan. 21, the first day some would reach the 10-year mark.

Republicans in the Senate and Assembly have made sex criminals their No. 1 issue, giving it more emphasis than the struggling upstate economy or the state's population loss. They favor a bill that would require lifetime registration for the most serious cases (known as level three), while the low-level offenders would be able to petition to be removed from the list after 20 years.

In addition, they want a law to allow the state to evaluate a sexually violent predator in prison before his release to determine whether he should be confined in an institution even after completing his sentence. Republican Gov. George E. Pataki, without supporting legislation, ordered a dozen offenders confined last year. A judge later ordered them released, saying the governor had exceeded his authority. Pataki has appealed.

Democrats say they would back the concept of "civil confinement" but have concerns about how it would be carried out and what type of criminal would be confined. Many of them also say they want to renew Megan's Law ‹ but not impose 20-year registration for low-level offenders. Further, many want to renew New York's law only through 2007 because they want to see what Congress, which is considering similar measures, does.

(State data, by the way, show that most New York counties have seen a decline in sex offenses over the last five years.)

The Republican measures would be excessive, Montgomery said. Imagine the 17- or 18-year-old boy who is put on the list because he has sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend.

"It could be that we have a young person whose name goes on the list for a minor indiscretion and at the end of 20 years he is merely eligible to petition to have his name removed," she said. "I think that's very severe ... If your name goes on the registry, there are many implications for your career, jobs and what you can do with your life."

Montgomery, a senator since 1984, compared the issue to the Rockefeller-era drug laws passed in 1973. Flummoxed by a growing narcotics problem, New York lawmakers enacted harsh sentences, some calling for 15 years to life in prison for possessing or selling small amounts of drugs. Three decades later, Pataki and legislators repealed some of the toughest provisions, saying it hadn't solved the drug problem.

Montgomery said she's for tough sentences for high-risk, violent sex criminals. But she fears 20 years from now legislators will realize they overreacted on low-level offenders.

"And we'll be back here again," Montgomery said, "after a generation or two is caught up in it."
http://www.pressconnects.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060114/OPINION/601
140310/1005

Posted by lois at 09:13 PM | Comments (0)

IL: Governor Proposes Meth Treatment Units and Prisons for people with drug convictions

Governor wants to add meth treatment units at 2 prisons

By Chris Lusvardi 1-15-06

SPRINGFIELD — Gov. Rod Blagojevich would like to add methamphetamine treatment units at two Illinois prisons.

He plans to announce details of the proposal in his State of the State address Wednesday.

The governor’s plan would create meth treatment units at East St. Louis’ Southwestern Illinois Correctional Center and Sheridan Correctional Center. Each unit would have 200 beds. The Southwestern unit would open in July, with the Sheridan unit in July 2007.

Southwestern, which is currently a minimum security facility, would at some point in the future become a fully dedicated drug prison and re-entry program. Blagojevich also plans to expand Sheridan, currently the state’s only prison dedicated fully to drug treatment, from 950 inmates to its capacity of 1,300.

“The governor recognizes meth is a serious problem, particularly to downstate communities,” said Abby Ottenhoff, the governor’s spokeswoman. “Meth is one of the fastest growing threats to communities all over the state.”

In 1996, six people were imprisoned on meth-related crimes in Illinois. Now, that number has jumped to about 800 inmates.

Inmates voluntarily would participate in the program, most likely in the last six months to two years of their sentence, Ottenhoff said. Those involved in the program would also receive vocational training, education and closely supervised community reentry.

The program would cost the state $1.9 million in the first year with the federal government providing $4.78 million. In the second year, Illinois would spend $16.4 million with a federal contribution of more than $1.8 million.

Following the two-year startup, the state’s annual cost for running the methamphetamine treatment programs would be $18.1 million.

“We want to make sure we’re not putting people back onto the street who are going to commit crimes,” Ottenhoff said.

Participants in the existing Sheridan drug treatment program have a 50 percent lower chance of returning person over the average inmate, said Deanne Benos, assistant director for the Illinois Department of Corrections.

http://www.qctimes.net/articles/2006/01/15/news/state/doc43c9d43ff24fd196904740.txt

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

January 14, 2006

NY Times Editorial: Telephone Justice--Keeping in Touch with a Parent

January 14, 2006
Editorial
Keeping in Touch With a Parent in Prison
One way to cut down on the number of inmates who end up right back in prison shortly after being released is to make sure that they preserve their ties with their families, especially with spouses and children, while they are serving time. But keeping in touch is often impossible for inmates and their families because of state prison systems that earn huge profits from inmates' phone calls by forcing the family members who receive those collect calls to pay usurious rates. As a result, a family must often choose between talking to a loved one in prison and putting food on the table.

A bill introduced in Congress by Representative Bobby Rush, Democrat of Illinois, would help end this shameful practice by requiring the Federal Communications Commission to set fair rates for interstate phone calls made from prison. The bill will surely face fierce opposition from the telecommunications lobby and from state prison systems that have grown accustomed to gouging the poorest families in the country to subsidize some prison-related activities. But the current arrangement is both counterproductive and morally indefensible.

State prison systems typically use telephone setups that permit only collect calls, made through providers that keep a monopoly on prison telephone service by paying the states a "commission" - essentially a legal kickback. The kickback does not materialize out of thin air. The people who receive the phone calls often pay as much as six times the going rate. Not surprisingly, the costs discourage inmates from keeping in touch with spouses and children who may live hundreds of miles away and find it difficult or impossible to visit.

Federal prisons use a significantly less expensive debit-calling system, which lets inmates use the money accumulated in computer-controlled accounts to place easily monitored calls to a limited group of phone numbers. The Rush bill would require prisons to use both collect-calling and debit-calling systems. It would also prohibit providers from paying kickbacks to prison systems, and would require each prison system to allow more than one phone company to enter the market. In addition, the law would not let prison phone providers refuse to place calls to phone numbers served by rival companies.

Prison systems are likely to argue that the current arrangement is just fine because it helps pay for programs that benefit the inmates. But the high phone rates are actually a hidden tax on people who already pay for the prisons through their taxes. Beyond that, the states should not be in the business of bleeding low-income families - and fraying already fragile family ties - to pay for services that the state itself is obligated to provide.

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2006

SC: Neglect & Inadequae Health Care in Prisons A Rampant Problem

January 13, 2006 07:45 AM US Eastern Timezone
Neglect & Inadequate Healthcare in South Carolina Prisons a Rampant Problem, Says Bell Legal Group; Another Verdict In Favor Of Inmate Denied Medical Treatment
GEORGETOWN, S.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 13, 2006--A Clarendon County, South Carolina jury on Tuesday evening returned a verdict of $825,000 dollars in actual damages against the South Carolina Department of Corrections. Attorneys J. Edward Bell, III and C. Carter Elliott, Jr., of the Bell Legal Group, Georgetown, South Carolina and Sam Floyd and Ashley Boyd of Kingstree, South Carolina, represented inmate, Jason Bynum, in the negligence claim regarding the lack of appropriate and timely medical care while battling a life threatening infection during incarceration at the Turbeville Correctional Center, Turbeville, South Carolina.

This verdict follows a recent Sumter County, South Carolina case whose verdict awarded $28.5 million to the family of Rev. Ronel Huggins, who died in prison resulting from diabetic shock and medical neglect from the prison's healthcare provider. The Bell Legal Group is currently serving as counsel in two similar cases regarding healthcare neglect and police misconduct which are currently being tried.

January 9th, 2002, while in the custody of the Turbeville Correctional Center, Mr. Bynum was seen in the infirmary and diagnosed with a very serious mouth infection of the lower floor of his mouth. Beginning as an abscessed tooth, the untreated infection had progressed to Ludwig's Angina, which without immediate medical care can lead to death by suffocation due to a swelling of the throat. According to plaintiff's counsel, Edward Bell of the Bell Legal Group, his painful and serious condition had been noted by nurses, but ignored by prison management and doctors.

After a couple of weeks of suffering, Mr. Bynum complained of breathing troubles and was admitted to the hospital on January 23rd. The infection had continued to rage in his upper body, filling his lungs up to 90% with pus. According to Carter Elliott, head of the Police and Jail Misconduct Division for the Bell Legal Group, hospital doctors where appalled with the inhumane treatment of Bynum and one expert witness, a professor at a Maryland Medical School, identified this case as the worst example of medical neglect he had seen in his entire career.

Following multiple surgeries and several weeks in the hospital on a ventilator, Mr. Bynum still suffers from nerve damage, a speech impediment and problems swallowing food and drinks as a result of his mistreated infection.

Mr. J. Edward Bell, III was assisted in this case by C. Carter Elliott, Jr. and Vanessa A. Richardson of the Bell Legal Group of Georgetown, South Carolina and Sam Floyd and Ashley Boyd of Jenkinson, Jarrett and Kellahan of Kingstree, South Carolina. For more information about this verdict, contact J. Edward Bell, III or Rachel Ridgeway of the Law Offices of J. Edward Bell at 843-546-2408 or visit www.belllegalgroup.com.

About the Bell Legal Group LLC

The attorneys and staff of the Bell Legal Group focus on select and challenging areas of law and bring 25 years litigation experience. To successfully litigate the large scale cases for which the Bell Legal Group has become known for, the firm offers its own unique reserve of capitol, resources and state of the art technology. Leaving no stone unturned while pursuing justice, the firm has built its reputation concentrating in the areas of automotive defect, medical malpractice, nursing home litigation, personal injury litigation and police misconduct cases. For more information on the Bell Legal Group LLC call 877-546-2408 or visit www.belllegalgroup.com.

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Posted by lois at 09:49 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Schwarzenegger's Budget: Up with Prisons, Down with Communities

San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

Original article is at http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/01/1795317.php Print comments.

Schwarzenegger's budget: up with prisons, down with communities
by Californians United for a Responsible Budget Friday, Jan. 13, 2006 at 9:25 AM
Sacramento - In his budget released today, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stuck to an old script: increasing funding for the state's massively troubled prison system. Elected on a platform that promised to "blow up boxes," the governor continues to fall in line with expensive and ineffective "tough on crime" policies despite widespread voter frustration at pouring ever more resources into a failed prison system.

San

While many of California's students struggle in drastically overcrowded and under-funded schools and nearly 1 million children live without health insurance, this year's budget proposes building more prisons. "It has become more apparent that the governor's priorities are with corporations, not communities, and definitely not with making fiscally responsible decisions," commented Susan Burton, executive director of the New Way of Life Foundation in Los Angeles.

The governor's budget and last week's announcement of a proposed $12 billion, 90,000-cell prison and jail expansion project suggest that the governor's mantra of following the people lacks meaningful public safety funding. Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore, prison expert at USC, explains, "Building more prisons and jails will actually undermine the state's efforts to produce wealth, the point of investment in infrastructure. State and local governments will be forced to waste resources for decades repaying the bonds and hiring more jail staff, leading to continuing neglect of productive infrastructure like schools, hospitals and mass transit."

The governor's 2006-07 budget increases spending for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation by $426 million, pushing the total spending to over $8 billion, a 5.6 percent increase over current year spending. The budget does not include expected increases in spending for prisoner health care as a result of the federal court takeover of the CDCR's scandal-ridden health care system.

The governor's budget raised eyebrows coast to coast, and national prison issue watchdogs slammed his move to rejuvenate California's prison building boom. "The number of prison and jail beds this governor is planning to build would be the fourth biggest prison system in the United States. Republican governors from Maryland to Ohio are focusing on sentencing reforms, parole reforms and community investments," says Jason Ziedenberg, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute.

For Debbie Reyes, a community organizer in Fresno with the Prison Moratorium Project, the news is one more example of rural Californians getting the raw end of a deal. "More than 20 prisons have been built in the Central Valley since the 1980s. But Fresno is the poorest city in the nation. The south San Joaquin Valley has some of the worst air in the nation.

"In many of our communities, we can't even drink the water, so how exactly have these prisons helped? We need to increase the minimum wage and school funding. Give him credit for that. But neither the Valley nor the state can afford one more single cage."

The budget proposal includes provisions allowing the corrections department to contract with community drug treatment programs in order to transition some non-violent women prisoners out of state institutions. While this is an encouraging step toward recognizing the need for more substance abuse treatment, prisoner advocates remain critical of the reports that the department plans to convert existing women's facilities into more bed space for men.

"Who is the governor listening to?" wonders Susan Burton. "In poll after poll, Californians have preferred reducing spending on incarceration to cuts in any other state program. Message received? The Independent Review Panel of the California Performance Review, chaired by former Gov. George Deukmejian, said the key to reform of the Department of Corrections and Reform is to 'reduce the numbers' of prisoners. Message received?

"California voters overwhelmingly approved Prop. 66 mandating treatment rather than prison time for nonviolent drug users. Message received? The Little Hoover Commission recommended major changes to California's parole policy to reduce the numbers of parolees returned to prison for technical violations. Message received? Apparently not."

Heidi Strupp of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children in San Francisco asserts that "Gov. Schwarzenegger is committed to more punishment and should recognize that Californians are tired of footing the bill for a system that fails to make our society safer. Policy makers should take a courageous step forward and support policies that build communities, not prisons."

Californians United for a Responsible Budget is a statewide coalition of over 40 organizations committed to reducing prison spending by reducing the prison population and closing state prisons. Contact them through Rose Braz, Critical Resistance, 1904 Franklin St., Suite 504, Oakland, CA 94612, (510) 444-0484, rose@criticalresistance.org.

Posted by lois at 09:42 PM | Comments (0)

The Sentencing Project: New Report on Crack Cocaine & Federal Sentencing

Crack Cocaine/Federal Sentencing Report

The Sentencing Project is pleased to announce the publication of a new report, Sentencing with Discretion: Crack Cocaine Sentencing After Booker. The report coincides with the one-year anniversary of the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Booker, in which the Court struck down the mandatory application of the federal sentencing guidelines as unconstitutional, but kept the guidelines intact by requiring that they be consulted in an advisory capacity. Examining published court decisions, the new report assesses how judges have utilized their expanded range of discretion in one of the most contentious areas of federal sentencing, crack cocaine offenses.

The key findings of the report are the following:
Continuing Harsh Sentences -- Federal judges continue to impose stiff prison sentences in crack cocaine cases despite deviations from the federal guidelines. Of the published decisions analyzed, defendants in crack cocaine cases were sentenced to an average prison term of 11 years.
Judges Using Discretion in Individual Cases -- Judges are employing their discretion to assess individual case characteristics and in selected cases, to impose sentences that better meet the goals of sentencing. These factors include defendant circumstances, goals of sentencing, and policy recommendations of the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
The report recommends that: 1) There is no need for a Booker “fix” since judges appear to be imposing harsh penalties in serious cases, but distinguishing these from those cases in which the defendant is less culpable; and, 2) Congress should reconsider the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity in order to expand the range of cases in which judges can consider individual case characteristics.

The report is available at http://www.sentencingproject.org /pdfs/crackcocaine-afterbooker.pdf

Posted by lois at 09:21 AM | Comments (0)

New Study Shows More "Leniency" on Crack Cocaine Sentencing

Judges Show More Leniency On Crack Cocaine
By GARY FIELDS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 12, 2006
WASHINGTON -- In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision a year ago making sentencing guidelines advisory rather than requirements to be followed, some federal judges appear to be giving more lenient sentences in cases involving crack cocaine, according to an analysis released yesterday.

The study by the Sentencing Project, a Washington research and advocacy group for criminal-justice policy, may reinvigorate the debate about the racial disparity in sentences for crack-cocaine defendants, who are primarily minorities, and powder-cocaine defendants, who are more likely to be white and more affluent.

The study examined 24 crack-cocaine cases in which judges explicitly discussed the reasoning behind their sentencing decisions in the context of the 2005 Supreme Court ruling that allowed them to use the sentencing guidelines as advisory rather than as requirements.

In 21 of the 24 cases, the judges sentenced defendants to less time than they likely could have received under the sentencing guidelines. Under the guidelines, for instance, a person who possesses five grams of crack cocaine will get the same sentence as someone who sells 500 grams of powder cocaine-- although there is little physiological difference in the two.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, said he intended to introduce a bill this year that will propose changing the law to reduce the disparity between the amounts of crack cocaine and powder cocaine necessary to give a defendant the same sentence. He and Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch co-authored a bill in 2003 that would have reduced the disparity to 20-to-1-- from 100-to-1 -- but it got little support.

"I still believe the guidelines are not appropriate on crack and powder cocaine," said Sen. Sessions. "I think we need to make some improvements there based on the reality of what's going on in the courts of America. This study does seem to indicate that judges would tend more to the 20-to-one ratio rather than 100-to-one."

The Sentencing Commission, which declined to comment on the study, has long supported altering its guidelines on crack-cocaine crimes to bring the penalties and amounts more in line with powder cocaine. In 1995, the Sentencing Commission sent Congress an amendment which would have equalized the penalties on the two forms of cocaine, but Congress rejected the amendment. Similar recommendations from the commission in 1997 and 2002 were ignored by Congress.

At least two of the cases highlighted in the study have been overturned by appeals courts in the past week. In one case, Rhode Island Chief District Court Judge Ernest Torres sentenced a crack-cocaine defendant to just over five years in prison, although the sentencing guidelines called for him to be sentenced to between seven and 12 years.

In handing down the sentence, the judge wrote that the 100-to-1 ratio was "excessive" and "not reasonable." However, a three-judge panel on the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled last week that Mr. Torres had erred in handing down the sentence.
"Laboring in uncharted waters, the lower court jettisoned the guidelines and constructed a new sentencing range," the appeals court wrote.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113701741219244105.html?mod=politics_primary_hs

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

January 12, 2006

NY Times Editorial: Drugs & Racial Discrimination---School Zones

January 12, 2006
Editorial, Editorial
Drugs and Racial Discrimination
The mandatory sentencing laws that have swept this country since the 70's have clearly done more harm than good. The inmate population has skyrocketed, driving prison costs to bankrupting levels, while having no impact at all on the drug problem. By taking away judicial discretion, the laws have led the country to write off first-time offenders who might have deserved second chances and to imprison addicts who could otherwise have been effectively and less expensively handled through treatment programs.

The laws have also discriminated against members of minority groups, who are disproportionately singled out for harsher mandatory sentences, often because of where they live. That issue has come into sharp focus in New Jersey, where a panel of criminal justice officials has recommended that the state revise a law that mandates more severe sentences for people convicted of certain drug crimes committed within 1,000 feet of school property.

The law appears to have had no impact at all on the actual pattern of drug dealing. But it has created a profoundly discriminatory sentencing pattern, which treats minority defendants unfairly while undermining confidence in the criminal justice system.

Offenders who live in cities, where populations are dense and the schools numerous, tend to fall under the drug-free-zone laws, not because they peddle drugs to minors, but because they live near schools. Offenders who live in suburban and rural areas, where drug abuse is just as common but where schools are more spread out, tend to fall outside the law, so they receive lighter sentences.

As a consequence, the report found, just about every offender incarcerated for a drug-free-zone offense in New Jersey is either black or Hispanic, even though those two groups make up only about a quarter of the population. Not a single one of the offenders had sold drugs to a minor, and fewer than 2 percent had actually committed offenses on school property.

The so-called urban effect of these laws is hardly unique to New Jersey. More than 30 states have passed such laws since the 1980's, thus turning whole swaths of largely black and Hispanic urban areas into extra-penalty zones. Though widely emulated around the nation, the 1,000-foot rule appears arbitrary and without basis in law. The New Jersey panel's study wisely recommends reducing the size of the zones and changing the law so it actually targets the few people who sell drugs at or near schools - without discriminating against minorities.

The broader message of this study is that the country can't just imprison its way out of the drug problem. Coping with this issue - while reducing prison costs - will require a complex set of strategies, including drug abuse treatment and prevention services and increased judicial discretion in sentencing.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)

January 11, 2006

New Movie: Turning A Corner about people involved in the sex trade

February 6, 2006
Premiere Screening, Turning a Corner

Turning a Corner tells the stories of people involved in the sex trade in Chicago and their efforts to raise public awareness of systemic injustice and promote needed reforms. Created in a media activism workshop with over a dozen PART members, this groundbreaking film recounts their survival and triumph over homelessness, violence and discrimination, and gives rare insights into Chicago's sex trade industry.

FREE Chicago Premiere:
Monday, February 6, 2006, 5:30 - 8pm (screening 6-7pm)
Northwestern University Thorne Auditorium
375 E. Chicago Ave.
Reception, Art Exhibition by Urban Art Retreat, Panel Discussion
For Information and RSVP: Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (www.chicagohomeless.org) 312-435-4548 or
Beyondmedia (www.beyondmedia.org) 773-973-2280

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

New Report: Sentencing with Discretion: Crack Cocaine After Booker

Sentencing with Discretion: Crack Cocaine Sentencing After Booker. The report coincides with the one-year anniversary of the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Booker, in which the Court struck down the mandatory application of the federal sentencing guidelines as unconstitutional, but kept the guidelines intact by requiring that they be consulted in an advisory capacity. Examining published court decisions, the new report assesses how judges have utilized their expanded range of discretion in one of the most contentious areas of federal sentencing, crack cocaine offenses.

The key findings of the report are the following:
Continuing Harsh Sentences -- Federal judges continue to impose stiff prison sentences in crack cocaine cases despite deviations from the federal guidelines. Of the published decisions analyzed, defendants in crack cocaine cases were sentenced to an average prison term of 11 years.
Judges Using Discretion in Individual Cases -- Judges are employing their discretion to assess individual case characteristics and in selected cases, to impose sentences that better meet the goals of sentencing. These factors include defendant circumstances, goals of sentencing, and policy recommendations of the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
The report recommends that: 1) There is no need for a Booker “fix” since judges appear to be imposing harsh penalties in serious cases, but distinguishing these from those cases in which the defendant is less culpable; and, 2) Congress should reconsider the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity in order to expand the range of cases in which judges can consider individual case characteristics.
For the full report go to: http://www.sentencingproject.org /pdfs/crackcocaine-afterbooker.pdf

Posted by lois at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)

Prison Term for 55 Years for Drugs is Upheld

January 11, 2006, NY Times
Prison Term of 55 Years for Drugs Is Upheld
By KIRK JOHNSON
DENVER, Jan. 10 - A federal appeals court has upheld a 55-year prison term imposed on a Utah man with no criminal record who was convicted in 2003 of selling several hundred dollars worth of marijuana on three occasions.

The case of the man, Weldon H. Angelos, a record producer from Salt Lake City who was 22 at the time of his crime, has become a benchmark in the debate about sentencing rules and justice. The trial judge in the case complained in issuing the sentence, which was required by federal statutes, that he thought it excessive, and 29 former judges and prosecutors agreed, in a brief filed on Mr. Angelos's behalf.

But a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a decision issued here late Monday, rejected those arguments. The sentence properly reflected the will of Congress, the court said, and was not cruel or unusual punishment. Mr. Angelos was reported by a witness to have been armed with a pistol during two of the drug sales - and requiring stiffer sentences in cases where drugs and violence are linked, the court said, is legitimate social policy.

"Although the district court concluded that Angelos's sentence was disproportionate to his crimes, we disagree," the court said. "In our view, the district court failed to accord proper deference to Congress's decision to severely punish criminals who repeatedly possess firearms in connection with drug-trafficking crimes, and erroneously downplayed the seriousness of Angelos's crimes."

Mr. Angelos's lawyer, Jerome H. Mooney, said the decision would be appealed, either for reconsideration by the full Court of Appeals here in Denver or directly to the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Angelos's sister, Lisa Angelos, said in a telephone interview from Salt Lake City that she had not yet been able to speak with her brother, who is serving his sentence at a federal prison in Lompoc, Calif.

"This was all of our hopes," Ms. Angelos said of the appeal.

The appeals panel did conclude that the police, in searching Mr. Angelos's home, had exceeded the limits of a search warrant as they looked for the source of a strong marijuana smell. But the evidence the officers found in following their noses, the court said, had not materially influenced the outcome.

The court also said that Mr. Angelos's lack of a criminal record appeared to be more about luck in not getting caught than any indication of innocence.

"The evidence presented by the government at trial clearly established that Angelos was a known gang member who had long used and sold illicit drugs," the court said. "In addition, the government's evidence established that Angelos possessed and used a number of firearms, some stolen, to facilitate his drug-dealing activities."

But Mr. Mooney, the defense lawyer, said he thought Mr. Angelos was a victim of politics and of courts that he called too willing to bend to political winds.

"How deferential to Congress should they be on these issues?" he said. "Courts are uncertain and are erring on the side of being more conservative than I think they ought to be."

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2006

Harry Magdoff, Economist

January 9, 2006
Harry Magdoff, Economist, Dies at 92
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Harry Magdoff, who fell in love with Marxist thought at 15 and became an influential socialist economist, author, editor and commentator - and, some said, a Soviet spy - died on Jan. 1 at his home in Burlington, Vt. He was 92.
His son, Frederick, announced the death.

Mr. Magdoff, in his 1969 book "The Age of Imperialism: The Economics of U.S. Foreign Policy," argued that the United States had an empire in all but name. His contention that American imperial ambitions, not anti-Communism, provoked the Vietnam War struck a responsive chord during that conflict. The book sold more than 100,000 copies and was translated into 15 languages.

For many years, Mr. Magdoff was co-editor of Monthly Review, a socialist journal, with Paul Sweezy, an influential Marxist economist who died in 2004. Together, they wrote many articles, some published in five books of essay collections. Their combined work, to which Mr. Magdoff supplied the more technical economic analyses, added up to a running commentary on what they deemed inherent deficiencies of modern capitalism.

Mr. Magdoff also held several influential positions during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, in which he developed and put into effect new ways of measuring the productivity of labor. His last federal post was as a top aide to Commerce Secretary Henry A. Wallace, a former vice president who ran for president on a leftist agenda in 1948.

In 1950, Richard M. Nixon, then a congressman, released a report accusing Mr. Magdoff of being part of a spy ring that fed secret economic data to the Soviet Union. Mr. Magdoff declined to answer questions about the allegations at a Senate hearing in 1953 and continued to refuse to talk about the matter in recent years as details emerged from American and Russian archives that some contend added weight to the earlier charges.

In any case, security concerns made it impossible for Mr. Magdoff to remain in government. He worked at a series of private sector jobs, sometimes under assumed names, including salesman for a television production company, insurance broker and stockbroker, a job that he, as a Marxist, particularly loathed.

He gained a measure of financial security by acquiring part ownership in Russell & Russell, a publisher of previously out-of-print scholarly books. He taught part time at the New School for Social Research and elsewhere.

Henry Samuel Magdoff was born on Aug. 21, 1913, in the Bronx, to immigrants from Russia. His father was a housepainter, and one of Mr. Magdoff's earliest memories was the glee with which family and friends greeted the downfall of the czar.

He remembered that as a child he was perplexed, then enraged, when he heard in a playground that Britain "owned" India. At 15, he read Marx's "Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy," which aroused his interest in radical economics. He said his most influential youthful experience was witnessing a demonstration of the unemployed in Union Square in Manhattan in 1930.

At City College of New York, he studied engineering, physics and mathematics before being expelled in a dispute with administrators over a leftist student publication. The expulsion came after he helped stage a mock trial of the college president and other officials, none of whom attended.

In 1932, Mr. Magdoff visited Chicago to participate in the founding conventions of the National Students League and the Youth League against War and Fascism. During that trip, he married Beatrice Greizer, known as Beadie, who had been marching on picket lines with her pro-union mother since she was a preschooler.

Mrs. Magdoff died in 2002 after nearly 70 years of marriage. Their son Michael has also died. In addition to his other son, Frederick, of Burlington and Fletcher, Vt., Mr. Magdoff is survived by a grandson.

After finishing his undergraduate degree at New York University, Mr. Magdoff went to Philadelphia to work for the Works Progress Administration, trying to solve interesting economic problems.

"You sat in an office supplied with research materials and were paid every week to sit and think why there was so much unemployment," he said in an interview in Monthly Review in 1999. "Who needed heaven?"

In 2004, Mr. Magdoff wrote about his friendship with Che Guevara, one of his revolutionary heroes. At what proved to be their final meeting before Mr. Guevara's death in 1967, Mr. Magdoff asked what he could do to help Cuba.
"Keep on educating me," was the response.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

NY Times Editorial: VA--Restoring the Right to Vote

January 10, 2006
Editorial, NY Times
Restoring the Right to Vote

In his few remaining days in office, Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia has an opportunity to strike a blow for democracy with the stroke of a pen by restoring the right to vote to more than 240,000 felons who are now out of prison. This is manifestly the right thing to do. Mr. Warner, who is likely to be a presidential candidate in 2008, should not let political considerations deter him because taking a principled stand in favor of ex-prisoners' voting rights would only augment his reputation.

Virginia has one of the nation's most punitive felony disenfranchisement laws. Felons must wait for years after their release from prison to apply for restoration of their voting rights, and the government must decide on each petition individually, case by case. This is in sharp contrast with the many states that automatically restore felons' voting rights when they are out of prison. Even Texas and Georgia restore felons' voting rights automatically when they have completed probation and parole.

There is no good reason to deny these Americans the vote, and many reasons not to. Democracy is rule by the consent of the governed. It diminishes American democracy to not allow people who have paid their debt to society to help select their leaders. It also detracts from the former prisoners' prospects for rehabilitation to insist that they are unworthy to vote.

It is impossible to think about felony disenfranchisement, particularly in Virginia, without thinking about race. African-Americans are far more likely than whites to have their votes taken away by these laws. In Virginia, African-Americans make up 20 percent of the population, but they account for 52 percent of those disenfranchised because of felony convictions.

Governor Warner may have his mind on the presidential race as he considers how to proceed. No politician wants to appear "pro-criminal." But most Americans see felony re-enfranchisement as an issue of rehabilitation and democracy. In a 2002 Harris poll, 80 percent of those surveyed supported restoring voting rights to felons who had completed their sentences. Voters in Democratic presidential primaries no doubt favor that idea even more. When Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa signed an order last year restoring the vote to ex-felons, he improved his national standing. The public interest and Mr. Warner's political interests both argue in favor of giving Virginia's ex-prisoners full citizenship.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/opinion/10tue2.html

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

Rev. Jon de Cortina, Saved Salvadoran Children

January 9, 2006
The Rev. Jon de Cortina, 71, Is Dead; Saved Salvadoran Children
By GINGER THOMPSON
MEXICO CITY, Jan. 8 - The Rev. Jon de Cortina Garaigorta, a Jesuit priest who dedicated the last decade to searching for the missing children of El Salvador's brutal civil war, died in mid-December, officials of his organization said Wednesday. He was 71.

They said the cause was complications of a stroke.

The founder of the independent Association for Missing Children, Father de Cortina is credited with using basic detective work, then later DNA testing, to solve the disappearances of about 310 children.

Sandra Lobo, the coordinator of the group, said it had reunited 178 of those children with their parents. At least 50 of them had been adopted by unsuspecting Americans, she said.

Father de Cortina's mission began in 1992, when the war had ended and the United Nations Truth Commission opened investigations into widespread human rights abuses during the war. In the Chalatenango region, a handful of rural peasants came forward with testimony about how their children had been kidnapped by government troops. That led him to begin his search.

Word of his search spread across the country, bringing hundreds of reports of abducted children, as well as confessions from soldiers. They told him the kidnappings had been meant not only to terrorize supporters of the Marxist rebel group but also to raise money by selling the children to corrupt adoption agencies.

The Salvadoran military publicly acknowledged that families had been separated during the war, but always maintained that its officers had acted on the impulse to save children who had been abandoned or orphaned in fighting that left 75,000 people dead or missing.

"These children were robbed, abducted in the countryside by the military for a variety of motives," Father de Cortina said in a 1996 interview with The New York Times after the first few dozen missing children had been found and reunited with their families. "But we believe that the right to recover their identity, and the right of their families to know the fate of the children they lost, must be fulfilled and respected."

Born in 1934 in Bilbao, Spain, Father de Cortina joined the Society of Jesus in 1954, moved to El Salvador a year later and was ordained in 1968. He studied philosophy and civil engineering at St. Louis University, in Missouri, and theology in Frankfurt. He later became a professor of seismic engineering at the Jesuit-run Universidad Centroamericana.

During the war, even after six of his Jesuit colleagues were killed by a secret military unit and Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero was assassinated during a Mass, Father de Cortina remained an outspoken critic of the systematic abuses by the Salvadoran military, which had been trained and financed by the United States.

A month before he died, his work in El Salvador was recognized with St. Louis University's highest honor, the Sword of Ignatius Loyola.

"Instead of being frightened by the conflict around him, he became a tireless and articulate advocate for disclosing the atrocities that took place during the war," said Lawrence Biondi, president of St. Louis University. "He was the voice for the voiceless."

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2006

WV: $120 million for new prisons

January 9, 2006
Report Advises New Prison, Possibly Private, For W.Va.

West Virginia needs a new 12-hundred-bed prison to ease crowding, and state officials are not ruling out having it privately built and run.

The state Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety has issued a final report to lawmakers before their 60-day session begins this week. The report offers options to address the state's growing prison population.
It recommends the state build fund three, 48-bed work camps to house its least-dangerous prisoners, at a cost of one-point-two million dollars per camp.

The new prison recommended in the report would cost as much as 120 million dollars. If lawmakers balk at the price-tag, the report says they should consider hiring a private prison company to build and run the facility.

West Virginia has one of the nation's smallest inmate populations, per-capita, but its rate of growth is among the most rapid.

http://www.wtov9.com/news/5946026/detail.html?rss=steu&psp=news

Posted by lois at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Possibly thousands of women could be moved into drug treatment centers

PRISONS: Possibly thousands of women could be moved into drug treatment centers. 10:29 PM PST on Sunday, January 8, 2006

By PAIGE AUSTIN / The Press-Enterprise

State leaders this week are considering a proposal to get control of California's bulging prison population. Officials with the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Gov. Schwarzenegger's budget, to be released Tuesday, will outline plans to shift hundreds and possibly thousands of female inmates out of prison cells and into community-based drug treatment centers. Though releasing few details, officials said the plans will significantly impact the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, which would become a prison for men instead of housing men and women as it does now. Of the Norco prison's 775 female inmates, 500 would be transferred to "drug treatment furlough beds in the community," said Terry Thornton, department spokeswoman. Qualifying inmates could not be serious or violent offenders, Thornton said. Their current dorms would be used to house men, and the remaining female inmates would be sent to other prisons throughout the state. The tentative proposal may affect inmates statewide. Those qualifying for treatment programs likely would support the effort, while those who would be shipped to other facilities would not, said CRC Warden Guillermina Hall. "Some of the women don't want to go. They'd rather stay locally," Hall said. "It doesn't just affect us.

(State officials) are looking for 4,500 drug treatment beds." A report released in 2004 by the Little Hoover Commission, a state auditing agency, found that the state's female inmate population grew by about 500 percent since 1983. About 87 percent of female prisoners in 2003 were nonviolent or drug offenders. The commission recommended the state place more women in community-based programs where they can maintain the family and social interactions that encourage rehabilitation. It also recommended that the state move women out of prisons too remote for them to maintain community ties. One of the biggest hurdles for the newest proposal could be finding enough drug treatment programs, Thorton said. While it is going before the Legislature in the budget, the proposal doesn't require legislative approval, she said. The corrections department already has the authority to take the necessary steps to reduce prison population, she added. "We have 168,000 inmates -- more than we've ever had before," she said. "We have to do something to relieve the overcrowding." In recent months crowding has plagued prisons and jails in the state. More inmates are being housed in dayrooms used as makeshift dorms -- a longstanding practice at the California Institution for Men in Chino, but newer to the California
Institution for Women near Corona.

Posted by lois at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)

VA: "Are Black Politicians Suppressing Black Votes for Mark Warner?"

Are Black Politicians Suppressing Black Votes for Gov. Mark Warner?
By Spencer Overton

BlackProf.com

I recently heard a rumor that a leading Virginia State Senator has objected to a proposal that Governor Mark Warner restore voting rights to 243,000 Americans in Virginia who have served their time. According to the rumor, the politician is an African-American Democrat.

Let me provide some context. Virginia is one of four states that remove voting rights from all former offenders for life, even after they have served their probation or incarceration and parole (Kentucky, Alabama, and Florida are the others). This rule applies to everyone convicted of any felony, even those sentenced only to probation and never spend a day in prison. Virginia, the three other Southern states, and Armenia are the only democracies in the world that disenfranchise all citizens who have been convicted of a felony for life.

Over half of those disenfranchised in Virginia are black. As a result, one of every six black adults in Virginia cannot vote due to a felony (including 25% of black men). Evidence shows that the rule was adopted in a segregated, Jim Crow Virginia to exclude blacks. According to a transcript of proceedings from the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901-02, Carter Glass, a delegate to the Convention, stated that the plan that included felon disenfranchisement laws “will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State in less than 5 years, so that in no single county… will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government.” More information on the impact of disenfranchisement laws in Virginia is available in The Advancement Project report entitled "Access Denied: The Impact of Virginia's Felony Disenfranchisement Laws."

Numerous voting rights organizations, elected officials, and conscientious citizens have asked Governor Warner to restore voting rights to the 243,000 individuals who have completed their sentences before Warner leaves office on January 14, 2006. The law firm of Hogan & Hartson has issued a legal memorandum that shows that Virginia law gives the governor the authority to issue a blanket executive order restoring voting rights to these Americans.

Rumor has it that Gov. Warner is replying to callers that some black legislators, notably Senator Henry Marsh III and a couple of others, have asked Warner NOT to restore voting rights to those who have served their time. As Warner is rumored to tell it, these black Democratic legislators have developed a fine working relationship with Republican legislators, and they fear a massive Republican backlash if voting rights are restored to the 243,000 Americans.

I’m hoping that this rumor is false. Senator Marsh has a great civil rights record, and I doubt that he’d tarnish it simply to curry favor with Republican politicians or even to allow a political ally like Governor Warner to avoid being branded “too liberal” in his march toward the presidency.

But, in the off chance that either of these two possibilities has an element of truth, let’s explore the shortcomings in the logic.

Myth 1: Restoring Rights Will Result in Republican Backlash in Virginia

The fear of “Republican backlash” is misguided. Why should Black politicians be parties to a deal that disenfranchises one of every six blacks in order to have “peace” with Republican politicians? Why is this “peace” more important to Black politicians than standing up for the voting rights of 243,000 Americans? There are also reasons to believe that the massive “Republican backlash” is a fabricated fear. First, many Republicans favor restoring voting rights once people have served their time (including national leaders like Jack Kemp as well as many Christian conservatives who believe in forgiveness and the redemptive power of Jesus Christ). Also, Governor Warner recently used his executive powers to extend protections against discrimination in state hiring for gay Virginians that Republicans vehemently opposed, and any “backlash” would have been triggered by that move.

Myth 2: Restoring Rights Will Hurt Warner’s Presidential Bid
Some black politicians in Virginia who quietly disagree with Senator Marsh are rumored to suggest that the “fear of Republican backlash” is just a cover, and that Senator Marsh and a few other blacks are taking a “hit” for the Warner team because they fear that restoring voting rights will hurt Warner’s national aspirations. While this political calculation might be true in a Virginia race, it is dead wrong in a national presidential contest.

Warner’s next contest for president is not a general election in which he needs to appeal to moderate swing voters, but Democratic presidential primaries that feature African-American and other liberal voters (half of Democratic primary voters in South Carolina, for example, are black). Warner is a Harvard-educated, millionaire centrist (Forbes Magazine celebrated him as one of America's richest politicians), and Warner’s main challenge is to prove to Democratic primary voters that he is truly a Democrat.

http://www.blackprof.com/archives/2005/12/are_black_politicians_suppress.html

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

NY Telephone Justice Campaign Update

FAMILY CONNECTIONS BILL TO REFORM PRISON PHONE SYSTEM
PASSES IN STATE SENATE COMMITTEE

New York State Moves One Step Closer to Ending Monopoly Contract with MCI that Unfairly Taxes Innocent Families of Prisoners

New York, NY, January 9, 2006—The Family Connections Bill (S.5299-A) moved out of the N.Y. State Senate Committee on Crime Victims, Corrections, and Crime today, bringing New York closer to ending the unjust backdoor tax on families of prisoners. The Assembly version of the bill (A.7231-A) passed in June of last year, but will have to pass the Assembly again in 2006.

“As this bill moves to the Senate floor, families of prisoners have real hope that their obscene phone bills will end,” said Annette Dickerson, who coordinates the NY Campaign for Telephone Justice on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “We applaud the committee chair, Senator Michael F. Nozzolio (R-Auburn) for this bold action.”

Under the State’s monopoly contract with MCI, the average prison phone call is billed at 19 minutes, costing just over $6 and adding up to monthly phone bills of up to $400. New York State gets a 57.5 percent kickback on MCI’s profits.

The Family Connections Bill will end the unjust, backdoor tax on families of prisoners by:

Prohibiting the State from entering into a similar contract once the current contract expires on March 31, 2006.
Requiring that in the future the State contract with the lowest bidder for the purposes of providing telephone services to inmates.
Preventing the State from making a profit off of the arrangement. Currently the State takes 57.5% of the total profit.
Presenting facilities with the choice of providing phone service through collect calls or a debit card service.
Allowing prisoners to maintain contact with their loved ones by lowering phone rates. Currently families are forced to choose between buying food or paying rent and paying their telephone bill.
MCI recently implemented a new billing policy for this contract, which has further outraged family members. Prisoners’ families must pay MCI each time their bill reaches $100, regardless of whether they have paid their bills on time in the past. MCI gives prisoners’ families the option of putting money down in advance, but for people on limited or fixed incomes – and considering that many bills approach $400 – that is often not possible. If the payment is not made within 48 hours, the consumer’s phone is blocked from receiving collect calls from prison, and it can take days of jumping bureaucratic hurdles to get service restored.

“This new policy hurts families who do not have credit cards and cannot ensure that their payment is received within 48 hours,” noted Dickerson. “Other MCI customers have not been targeted in this manner.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights is also fighting the MCI contract in court. Byrd v. Goord, in Federal court, and Walton v. NYSDOCS, in New York State court, both challenge the legality of the contract and its affect on family members.

“Prisoners who maintain close contact with their families and communities reenter society more successfully and are much less likely to return to prison,” Dickerson concluded. “But the exorbitant prices of prison phone calls impede a critical means for families to keep in touch.”

The New York Campaign for Telephone Justice works to end the kickback contract between MCI and the New York State Department of Correctional Services and deliver choice, affordability, and equitable service to the families and friends of those incarcerated in New York State. The campaign is a project of the Center for Constitutional Rights, in partnership with Prison Families of New York, Inc. and Prison Families Community Forum.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is a nonprofit legal and educational organization dedicated to protecting and advancing the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

-30-
www.ccr-ny.org

The New York Campaign for Telephone Justice
The New York Campaign for Telephone Justice is a project of the Center for Constitutional Rights, in partnership with Prison Families Community Forum and Prison Families of New York, Inc.

January 2006 Events
We’ve been busy! The current contract between New York State and MCI ends in March 2006, and we need all your support in bringing choice, affordability and quality service to the friends and family members of people incarcerated throughout New York State.

January 9th (Mon) FAMILY CONNECTIONS BILL TO REFORM PRISON PHONE SYSTEM PASSES UNANIMOUSLY IN STATE SENATE COMMITTEE. New York State Moves One Step Closer to Ending Monopoly Contract with MCI that Unfairly Taxes Innocent Families of Prisoners. The Family Connections Bill (S.5299-A) moved out of the N.Y. State Senate Committee on Crime Victims, Corrections, and Crime today, bringing New York closer to ending the unjust backdoor tax on families of prisoners. The Assembly version of the bill (A.7231-A) passed in June of last year, but will have to pass the Assembly again in 2006.

BOYCOTT MCI: Every week on Wednesday encourage everyone you know to call Governor Pataki (212) 681-4580 or (518) 474-8390 and MCI (800) 955-0925 to say “I support the NY Campaign for Telephone Justice -- put an end to the phone contract between MCI and DOCS.”

BOYCOTT MCI: January 16th (Monday) on the 16th of every month family members will keep the boycott alive by rejecting calls from their loved ones in prison. To REJECT the call, your loved one in prison MUST CALL YOU - and then you simply hang up. Then call CCR at (212) 614-6481 so we can log in your participation and/or visit the website at www.telephonejustice.org/boycott and sign in every 16th of the month to let us know you’ve done your part!

January 21st (Saturday) Queens, NY NAACP Jamaica Branch Prison Project Presents the second annual Criminal Justice Conference: From City Blocks to Cell Blocks: The Impacts of Mass Incarceration, 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM, York College, 94-20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd. Lecture Hall 2M04, Jamaica, New York. Contact: 718-723-3653 or 718-670-3784. Directions: E train to Jamaica Center, Grand Central to Parsons Blvd., Right on Parsons Blvd. to Archer Ave, Left on Archer Ave. to Guy R. Brewer Blvd., Right on Guy R. Brewer Blvd.


January 16th (Monday), Richmond, Virginia. Join advocates for criminal justice reform from around the Commonwealth Virginia for Virginia C.U.R.E.'s Annual Advocacy Day at the General Assembly on the corner of Ninth and East Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia 23219. Visit http://www.advocacyday.homestead.com or call CURE 703-765-6549.

We need to start sending our support for Virginia legislation HB 221 Inmate telephone systems; Prisoner Reentry Fund. Requires the Department of Corrections to obtain debit or prepaid telephone services for inmates at the lowest available rates, allowing for the security needs of the institutions. The bill caps at 10% the commission to be paid to the Commonwealth by the service providers. The bill creates a prisoner reentry fund, comprised of the commissions, to be used for pre-release and post-release programs, including those supported by charitable and faith-based organizations. Contact Keith DeBlasio at advocareinc@aol.com

SPEAK OUT! We need folks willing to speak to the public about MCI and DOCS, especially folks who have high MCI bills! Media Spokespeople Trainings are easy! Call Marion at 212 614 6421 and she will set you up for a quick, 1-on-1 one hour training.

Save the Date: February, 2006 – Lobby Day in Albany, NY week of 2/6 or 2/13
Transportation will be provided by CCR. Please call Marion for more info 212 614 6421.

Peace,
www.telephonejustice.org / Boycott MCI!

Posted by lois at 08:23 PM | Comments (0)

January 08, 2006

NY Times: Reform the Rockefeller Drug Reforms

Op-Ed
Reform the Reforms

By LESLIE CROCKER SNYDER
Published: January 8, 2006

ABOUT a year ago, the New York State Legislature made a number of revisions to the Rockefeller drug laws. The most significant changes involved reducing sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, raising the amount of drugs required for top-level possession charges and allowing defendants serving a life term to apply for a reduced sentence. The primary goal was to grant low-level drug dealers relief from overly harsh sentences.

These measures were a step in the right direction, but unfortunately they fail to take into account drug kingpins. As the new legislative session begins this month, the priority should be to retain severe sentencing for major drug dealers while providing more alternatives to incarceration and more treatment options for low-level addicts and small-time dealers.

To do this, we must provide judges with greater discretion in determining which defendants should be placed in alternative sentencing and treatment programs. We must pass legislation that provides for more such programs. And we must enact a kingpin statute to ensure that major and violent drug predators are sentenced appropriately and cannot have their sentences reduced.

I was the judge who presided over many of New York City's most serious drug cases in the 1980's and 90's. In a number of these cases, judges, after a resentencing hearing mandated by the changes to the Rockefeller drug laws, have recently reduced these sentences - inappropriately so.

For example, I sentenced a violent drug dealer to more than 33 years in prison. He had sold crack and heroin on the Lower East Side of Manhattan for years and threatened to send the two lead detectives' children back to them "in a box." He recently had his sentence reduced by a judge who apparently based his decision on the defendant's somewhat positive prison record. If I had not been retired from the bench, I would have heard his request for resentencing and been highly unlikely to have granted it.

On the other hand, many defendants should never have been sentenced under the original draconian Rockefeller drug laws. For example, as in many cases, I once placed a defendant, who was charged with possession of cocaine and faced a sentence of 25 years to life, in a rehabilitation program because it was his first and only offense and the prosecutor consented. In the program, he took classes and received counseling and job training for two years, followed by another two years of supervision. Since then, he has become a productive, law-abiding member of society.

Under the current laws, the prosecutor's consent is still required in many cases before a defendant can be placed in a rehabilitation program. But judicial discretion in sentencing is critical. Judges, not prosecutors, must be allowed to determine which defendants are eligible for alternatives to incarceration. Why judges? Because they are not advocates but neutral arbiters who seek to impose an appropriate penalty in each individual case.

There must be adequate, meaningful treatment programs from which a court can choose. Many defendants in serious drug cases must be required to plead guilty before being placed in such a program. The administrators of the program must report regularly to the court. And it is essential that the court continue to monitor the defendant, and that the program provides support.

If the defendant completes the program successfully, the court should have the discretion to reduce or dismiss the charges in some cases. This is the ultimate incentive for treatment and rehabilitation.

Programs like Abraham House provide counseling, job training, education and re-entry support in addition to substance abuse treatment. Of those who have completed that program, less than 1 percent have returned to jail. And the best part of all this is that by sending fewer people to jail, we can use the money saved to finance similar programs, giving hope to those who need it.

But we cannot forget the other side of the drug industry - the violent kingpins. A kingpin statute is a necessary component of any drug-law reform. Sentences for kingpins shouldn't be reduced except in rare instances. And if the original sentencing judge is unavailable to consider a resentencing application, perhaps a panel of three judges where the majority rules would be appropriate.

In most criminal justice legislation, too often politics prevents the Senate and the Assembly from agreeing to meaningful reform. To make passage of drug reform legislation more likely and to monitor its effects, I propose a "sunset" clause, which would require periodic assessments of these reforms and a review in three to five years to evaluate their effectiveness and to determine if the legislation should be renewed.

In our system there is a place for tough sentencing, a place for leniency and a place for rehabilitation. We have reached one of our goals in the reduction of the sentences for some drug offenders, although not always the appropriate ones. But breaking the cycle of recidivism and violence will continue to be a challenge.

Leslie Crocker Snyder, a former New York State Court of Claims judge, was a candidate for Manhattan district attorney in the 2005 Democratic primary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/opinion/nyregionopinions/08WEsnyder.html

Posted by lois at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

Hugh Thompson, Who Saved Civilians at My Lai

January 7, 2006
Hugh Thompson, 62, Who Saved Civilians at My Lai, Dies
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot who rescued Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre, reported the killings to his superior officers in a rage over what he had seen, testified at the inquiries and received a commendation from the Army three decades later, died yesterday in Alexandria, La. He was 62.

The cause was cancer, Jay DeWorth, a spokesman for the Veterans Affairs Medical Center where Mr. Thompson died, told The Associated Press.

On March 16, 1968, Chief Warrant Officer Thompson and his two crewmen were flying on a reconnaissance mission over the South Vietnamese village of My Lai when they spotted the bodies of men, women and children strewn over the landscape.

Mr. Thompson landed twice in an effort to determine what was happening, finally coming to the realization that a massacre was taking place. The second time, he touched down near a bunker in which a group of about 10 civilians were being menaced by American troops. Using hand signals, Mr. Thompson persuaded the Vietnamese to come out while ordering his gunner and his crew chief to shoot any American soldiers who opened fire on the civilians. None did.

Mr. Thompson radioed for a helicopter gunship to evacuate the group, and then his crew chief, Glenn Andreotta, pulled a boy from a nearby irrigation ditch, and their helicopter flew him to safety.

Mr. Thompson told of what he had seen when he returned to his base.

"They said I was screaming quite loud," he told U.S. News & World Report in 2004. "I threatened never to fly again. I didn't want to be a part of that. It wasn't war."

Mr. Thompson remained in combat, then returned to the United States to train helicopter pilots. When the revelations about My Lai surfaced, he testified before Congress, a military inquiry and the court-martial of Lt. William L. Calley Jr., the platoon leader at My Lai, who was the only soldier to be convicted in the massacre.

When Mr. Thompson returned home, it seemed to him that he was viewed as the guilty party.

"I'd received death threats over the phone," he told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" in 2004. "Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up. So I was not a good guy."

On March 6, 1998, the Army presented the Soldier's Medal, for heroism not involving conflict with an enemy, to Mr. Thompson; to his gunner, Lawrence Colburn; and, posthumously, to Mr. Andreotta, who was killed in a helicopter crash three weeks after the My Lai massacre.

The citation, bestowed in a ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, said the three crewmen landed "in the line of fire between American ground troops and fleeing Vietnamese civilians to prevent their murder."

On March 16, 1998, Mr. Thompson and Mr. Colburn attended a service at My Lai marking the 30th anniversary of the massacre.

"Something terrible happened here 30 years ago today," Mr. Thompson was quoted as saying by CNN. "I cannot explain why it happened. I just wish our crew that day could have helped more people than we did."

Mr. Thompson worked as a veterans' counselor in Louisiana after leaving military service. A list of his survivors was not immediately available.

Through the years, he continued to speak out, having been invited to West Point and other military installations to tell of the moral and legal obligations of soldiers in wartime.

He was presumably mindful of the ostracism he had faced and the long wait for that medal ceremony in Washington. As he told The Associated Press in 2004: "Don't do the right thing looking for a reward, because it might not come."

Copyright 2006The New York Times Compan

Posted by lois at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2006

Help Gather Stories for a Human Rights Report on Hurricane Katrina

Help Gather Stories for a Human Rights Report on Hurricane Katrina
U.S. Human Rights Network Collaborative Documentation Project

The Hurricane Katrina disaster has left a path of destruction and serious human rights concerns in its wake. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced, and many have not had their rights protected, as defined by internationally recognized United Nations standards for survivors of such situations.

In response to interest in applying international standards to assess the human rights of Hurricane Katrina victims and make policy recommendations to address their needs, the U.S. Human Rights Network is coordinating a documentation project spearheaded by one of its members – the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI). Because the displacement is so widespread and groups serving the communities impacted cover many geographic regions, we are joining together as members of the Network in a collaborative effort to share information and document the impact of this disaster as comprehensively as possible.

The Hurricane Katrina Human Rights Documentation Project will:
► Support U.S. Human Rights Network members and other community-based groups in documenting human rights violations affecting those displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

► Gather stories and testimonies to produce briefs, reports, media and other educational materials to support relief services, community organizing and human rights advocacy efforts related to the crisis.

► Provide training and technical assistance on human rights, documentation and analysis for groups interested in participating in the report.

► Urge international observers and institutions to address the human rights needs of Hurricane Katrina survivors and provide monitoring.

► Encourage information sharing and collaboration among those documenting the impact of the disaster.

To learn more about the project and how to participate, please contact Sharda Sekaran at NESRI, 212-253-1771 or sharda@nesri.org.

For those groups generally interested in receiving and posting updates related to research and documentation on human rights and Hurricane Katrina (regardless of participation in the collaborative documentation efforts), the Documentation Caucus of the U.S. Human Rights Network hopes to serve as a clearinghouse for such information. To learn more about the U.S. Human Rights Network’s Documentation Caucus, please contact Cathy Albisa at NESRI, 212-253-1761 or cathy@nesri.org.

The US Human Rights Network was formed to promote US accountability to universal human rights standards by building linkages between organizations, as well as individuals, working on human rights issues in the US.

www.ushrnetwork.org

The National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) promotes a cultural and political commitment to a human rights vision for the United States that ensures dignity and access to the basic resources needed for human development and civic participation.

www.nesri.org

Sharda Sekaran
Associate Director
NESRI - National Economic and Social Rights Initiative
666 Broadway, Suite 625
New York, NY 10012
tel: 212-253-1771
fax: 212-253-1711
sharda@nesri.org
http://www.nesri.org

Statement on Hurricane Katrina Disaster

The National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) extends its deepest sympathies to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. NESRI also expresses serious concern about the failure of government to meet its humanitarian and human rights obligations to the victims. Thousands of people, primarily poor, Black and/or disabled, were not taken into account in the evacuation plan or provided with basic human rights such as clean water, food, medical care and decent shelter for days on end. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the right to permanent housing, education, health, work and a decent standard of living will be assured to all those displaced by the catastrophe. NESRI urges the U.S. government to take immediate corrective action and ensure the full range of human rights of those displaced by Katrina, as required by the United Nations Guidelines on Internally Displaced Persons. NESRI also urges local, state and national officials to undertake a serious inquiry into the human rights conditions that led to the extreme vulnerability of residents.

NESRI Commentary: Disaster Exposes National Human Rights Crisis
The images of survivors struggling through the chaos left in Hurricane Katrina’s wake are so consistent that it is impossible to ignore what they reveal about the state of race, class and human rights in the United States.

Matt Lauer of NBC’s Today Show, said on the air, “The great majority of the people we are seeing suffering right now are black and they are poor. These are the people who don't have a safety net in their daily lives and clearly there was no net prepared to help them in a situation like this. How much of a wake-up call does this have to be for the people of this country?”

As the rest of the world sees this footage, a provocative secret is revealed: the income inequities and scarcity of resources experienced by poor countries are prevalent here, in the world’s most rich and powerful nation, branded as the champion of freedom. For those inundated with our pop culture exports and wealthy national leaders, this is probably hard to believe but here it is, in a form too glaring to ignore.

An even more shocking blow to the U.S. public image is the fact that its poor people, denied their human right to live with security and dignity, are often criminalized and attacked for their desperation. As unaddressed need escalated to the point of catastrophe, government officials promised to show “zero tolerance” to those struggling to withstand the nightmare by following the law of survival and scavenging for sustenance.

The social safety net protecting people from abject poverty in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama wasn’t there before this tragedy and has not emerged in its wake. Moreover, it is increasingly being dismantled across the U.S. Despite the grand façade of national unity, all of us are not treated equally or given adequate resources to survive. Hurricane Katrina has washed away whole cities and exposed this ugly truth. Social and economic disparity is on the rise.

According to the latest statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, 2004 was the first time on record that household incomes failed to increase for five straight years. The poverty rate went up to nearly 13%, and income inequality rose to near all-time highs last year. Meanwhile, the average CEO pay rose last year to 431 times what the average worker earned, according to a recent report from the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies and Boston-based United for a Fair Economy.

While economic and social needs are growing, social programs that provide basic services to secure the right to live with dignity are being cut. Take for instance Medicaid, the country’s largest provider of health coverage to the poor, which is now being slashed from state to state, as more and more people cannot afford health insurance. In 2004, according the U.S. Census, the number of people without health insurance climbed 859,000 to reach 45.8 million.

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumers Protection Act, that President Bush signed into law this year, is about to take effect in October. Yet another legislative decision favoring wealthy lenders and creditors over the nation’s poor and middle class, this law to curb people from filing for bankruptcy may add another layer of misery to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, if lawmakers do not intervene soon. Even if disaster survivors become exempt from the provision, its enactment will add to the burden of the many people in the U.S. finding it harder and harder just to get by.

The needs of poor people are frequently misunderstood or an afterthought, rather than seen as a government responsibility to the human rights of its people. In a climate where their existence is swept under the rug, it shouldn’t be surprising that the inability of many to evacuate from the hurricane due to lack of transportation was inaccurately viewed as some sort of baffling choice. Nor is it shocking that disaster relief efforts have shown a remarkable disregard and ignorance of the level of human need.

For those who have been paying attention to poverty in the U.S., the faces of those most devastated by the hurricane are painful to watch but also predictable in their color. Although income insecurity and violations of the fundamental human rights to health, social security, education and other social and economic rights are growing across racial lines, they are most prevalent in communities of color.

If the country were confronted with the images of those most impacted by preventable disease, under-funded schools, incarceration, infant mortality, hunger and homelessness, they would also be overwhelmingly black, brown or immigrant. However, whites are also facing these violations in increasing numbers. These issues are compelling, not only for moral reasons, but also because they are major indicators of state of human rights in the United States, which ultimately affects all of us.

Social and economic inequity brought instability and insecurity well before this catastrophe. In order to prevent future tragedies of this magnitude and protect human rights, we must be better at providing a basic safety net for all. The U.S. should not be forced by events this devastating to recognize the injustice of poverty, a much better target for “zero tolerance” than its victims.

Human Rights and Hurricane Katrina

Summary of UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement
The Guiding Principals on Internal Displacement issued by the Secretary General of the United Nations identify internationally recognized rights and guarantees of persons who have been forcibly displaced from their homes due to a number of factors, including natural disaster. Those who have been displaced from their homes but not crossed international borders are not refugees, but rather “internally displaced persons.”

National authorities are primarily responsible for ensuring the human rights of internally displaced persons; however the guidelines are relevant to intergovernmental agencies, non-governmental agencies and local authorities as well. The following is a summary of the guiding principles that are particularly relevant to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in the U.S. gulf region, but does not include all the principles contained in the guidelines:

Ø Internally displaced persons shall enjoy equally all the rights and freedoms as other persons in their country.

Ø Every human being has the right to dignity and physical, mental and moral integrity.

Ø Internally displaced persons have the right to request and to receive protection and humanitarian assistance from national authorities.

Ø Certain internally displaced persons, such as children, especially unaccompanied minors, expectant mothers, mothers with young children, female heads of household, persons with disabilities and elderly persons, shall be entitled to any necessary special protection and assistance.

Ø All internally displaced persons have the right to an adequate standard of living. At the minimum, regardless of the circumstances, and without discrimination, competent authorities shall provide internally displaced persons with and ensure safe access to: (a) Essential food and potable water; (b) Basic shelter and housing; (c) Appropriate clothing; and (d) Essential medical services and sanitation. Special efforts should be made to ensure the full participation of women in the planning and distribution of these basic supplies.

Ø All wounded and sick internally displaced persons as well as those with disabilities shall receive to the fullest extent possible and with the least possible delay, the medical care and attention they require, without distinction on any grounds other than medical ones. When necessary, internally displaced persons shall have access to psychological and social services. Special attention should be paid to the health needs of women, including access to female health care providers and services, such as reproductive health care, as well as appropriate counseling for victims of sexual and other abuses. Special attention should also be given to the prevention of contagious and infectious diseases, including AIDS, among internally displaced persons.

Ø Every human being has the right to respect of his or her family life. To give effect to this right for internally displaced persons, family members who wish to remain together shall be allowed to do so. Families which are separated by displacement should be reunited as quickly as possible.

Ø All internally displaced persons have the right to know the fate and whereabouts of missing relatives, and authorities shall make efforts to obtain and provide this information. Authorities shall inform the next of kin on the progress of investigations on missing relatives and notify them of any result.

Ø The authorities concerned shall endeavor to collect and identify the mortal remains of those deceased, prevent their despoliation or mutilation, and facilitate the return of those remains to the next of kin or dispose of them respectfully.

Ø Grave sites of internally displaced persons should be protected and respected in all circumstances. Internally displaced persons should have the right of access to the grave sites of their deceased relatives.

Ø Competent authorities have the primary duty and responsibility to establish conditions, as well as provide the means, which allow internally displaced persons to return voluntarily, in safety and with dignity, to their homes or places of habitual residence, or to resettle voluntarily in another part of the country. Such authorities shall make efforts to facilitate the reintegration of returned or resettled internally displaced persons.

Ø Special efforts should be made to ensure the full participation of internally displaced persons in the planning and management of their return or resettlement and reintegration.

Ø Every human being has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. To give effect to this right for internally displaced persons, the authorities concerned shall issue to them all documents necessary for the enjoyment and exercise of their legal rights, such as passports, personal identification documents, birth certificates and marriage certificates. In particular, the authorities shall facilitate the issuance of new documents or the replacement of documents lost in the course of displacement, without imposing unreasonable conditions.

Ø Authorities have the duty and responsibility to assist returned and/or resettled internally displaced persons to recover, to the extent possible, their property and possessions which they left behind or were dispossessed of upon their displacement. When recovery of such property and possessions is not possible, authorities shall provide or assist these persons in obtaining appropriate compensation.

The Guiding Principles shall be applied without discrimination of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion or belief, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, legal or social status, age, disability, property, birth, or on any other similar criteria.

Posted by lois at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Schwarzenegger proposes 83,000 new jail/prison "beds"!

From the Governor's message
Public Safety

State prisons are facing significant overcrowding resulting in unsafe conditions for staff and inmates. Local jails are similarly overcrowded leading to the early release of felons in those facilities and difficulty booking serious misdemeanants. The Governor's Strategic Growth Plan creates a groundbreaking partnership between state and local agencies to manage the inmate population while providing for two new prisons, a new crime lab, emergency response facilities and space for 83,000 prisoners at the state and local level over the next ten years.

To fund this investment, the Governor's Strategic Growth Plan includes:

* $14.8 billion in total investment to protect public safety.

o An initial $6 billion bond for local jail construction to provide beds for approximately 45,000 offenders. This bond is proposed for the first five years. o A second $6 billion bond in the second five years also for local jail construction. o $1.1 billion in bonds to build new prisons and juvenile facilities for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. o $600 million in bonds in the first five years and $1.1 billion in bonds in the second five years to fund critical public safety projects in the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, a DNA lab for the Department of Justice and to improve the Military Department's facilities.

Office of the Governor PUBLIC SAFETY

State and Local Detention Facility Construction

The Governor is proposing a groundbreaking partnership between the state and local agencies to help manage inmate population at all levels of government. This proposal will result in an increase in the number of available local jail beds that will alleviate overcrowding in both state and local facilities, enhance the safety for correctional staff and inmates, and enhance the safety of the local communities by keeping offenders locked up for the appropriate time as prescribed by the court. The $6 billion proposal is the initial five-year plan to address state and local detention facility needs. In the second five years, the Governor proposes another $6 billion for local jail construction ($2 billion GO bonds); along with $1.1 billion additional GO bonds to build new prisons or juvenile detention facilities at CDCR. This program will consist of the following components: · $2 billion of state GO bonds to provide jail construction grants to local agencies. · $2 billion in matching funds from local governments, required by the grant program. · $2 billion from local bonds secured by the portion of revenues received by local agencies from the state as payment to use jail beds in these new facilities.

Other Public Safety Needs
The Strategic Growth Plan includes $600 million in GO bonds to fund critical public safety projects, including replacement or relocation of old and deteriorated emergency response facilities for the Department of Forestry and Fire protection, such as forest fire stations, air attack bases, and conservation camps. In addition, the multiyear funding proposal includes funding for the Department of Justice to provide for the permanent replacement of the current DNA lab. All these programs support the essential efforts of the state's public safety employees.

Courts and Other Public Service Infrastructure
A significant number of the court facilities do not meet current security standards, working conditions or accessibility standards. To ensure the continued provision of justice and provide for staff and public safety, there will be a need for considerable improvement of these facilities. The Governor proposes GO bonds totaling $1.8 billion over a ten-year
period:
· $800 million for fiscal years 2006-07 through 2010-11
· $1 billion for years 2011-12 through 2015-16.
In addition, the Strategic Growth Plan proposes $400 million in GO bonds over the next five years to address the state's most critical needs for the infrastructure of other public services, including seismically retrofitting high-risk state buildings and addressing health and safety issues at state parks facilities.

STRATEGIC GROWTH PLAN:
OTHER EXISTING FUNDING SOURCES AND NEW FUNDING SOURCES

Public Safety
· First Five Years-Other Existing Funding Sources
o $2 billion will be provided by various counties to match grant awards received from the state for jail construction. o $2 billion will be paid by the state over a 25 to 30 year period for the utilization of jail beds. The funds will come from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) budget for population and contract jail beds. o $1.1 billion from existing funding sources represents $815 million from GF, $140 million from special funds and $183 million from federal funds. This level of funding is what is projected in state departments' five year infrastructure plans and is consistent with historical contributions of these funding sources. · Second Five Years-Other Existing Funding Sources o $2 billion will be provided by various counties to match grant awards received from the state for jail construction. o $2 billion will be paid by the state over a 25 to 30 year period for the utilization of jail beds. The funds will come from the CDCR budget for population and contract jail beds. o $1.1 billion from existing funding sources is estimated to be similar with the first five years, consistent with historical contributions of these funding sources.

Source:

http://www.governor.ca.gov/state/govsite/
Strategic Growth Plan Briefing Packet available via link at bottom of Gov's webpage above....

Posted by lois at 08:42 PM | Comments (0)

Fixing the Census Bureau's mistakes--only they can do it

FIXING THE CENSUS BUREAU'S MISTAKES IS ADMIRABLE,
BUT NOT EVERY GOVERNMENT CAN DO IT
[URL: http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/fact-5-1-2006.shtml ]

In past articles I have celebrated the efforts of jurisdictions to adjust the federal census data so that it meets their needs and people are counted in the right place. These efforts are vivid evidence that people would prefer that the Census counted incarcerated people differently. However, that these jurisdictions can fix the Census Bureau's mistakes does not mean the Bureau should continue to make them. In order to fairly serve its data users in state and local government, the Census Bureau must change how it counts prisoners. As I will show, it is not only inconvenient for data users to fix the Census Bureau's mistakes, for some communities it would be impossible for practical or legal reasons.

In New York State, the state constitution declares that incarceration does not change a residence. In rural Franklin County, where almost 11% of the population reported in the Census is incarcerated prisoners from elsewhere in the state, the chair of the county legislature called ignoring the prisoners during redistricting a no-brainer. He was right. It made no sense to draw a district around the prisons in the town of Malone that was would be 2/3rd prisoners who did not live in the county. But there is another relevant issue: It was possible for Franklin County to take the 2000 Census data, and two years later, take the prisoners out and be left with just the actual residents of Franklin County.

The New York City Council -- in whose districts most of the prisoners counted in Franklin County actually belong to -- had no such choice. When they drew their districts in 2002, it was too late to put the prisoners back in to their Census data because the Census Bureau didn't collect this information. In my 2002 Importing Constituents report, I was able to use correctional data to calculate that the Census Bureau credited 43,740 New York City residents to upstate prison towns, but those records didn't say exactly where in New York City those prisoners reside. Taking the prisoners out is easy, but putting them back in after the fact is a different matter altogether when the Census Bureau didn't ask the right questions about residence.

A different, legal, problem exists with some state level adjustments. Kansas currently adjusts the federal census to count students and military at their home addresses for purposes of redistricting. The state starts the planning for this about a year before the federal census is undertaken and then there is a relatively simple process of fixing the federal census data when it arrives. Illinois and New York State currently have bills pending that would create similar processes in those states for prisoner counting. This is not the ideal situation because the U.S. Census Bureau could make this change at less cost, but it would work.

Unfortunately, not every state that wants to can follow suit with a simple change in their statutes. In Massachusetts, for example, such a statute would violate a 1990 amendment to the state constitution that the "federal census shall be the basis for determining the representative districts". Massachusetts, which was the last state to abolish its state census to rely on the federal census precisely because its top court viewed the U.S. Census Bureau's definition of usual residents to be incompatible with the state constitution's definition of "inhabitant", is now stuck. Unless it changes the state constitution yet again, Massachusetts is forced to use Census data regardless of how illogically the Census Bureau may count the population. While the state constitutions in New York and Illinois have some flexibility on what data is used for redistricting, many other states are in the same situation as Massachusetts and must use whatever the federal Census provides. It is therefore critical that the Census Bureau change how it counts prisoners if every state is to be able to fairly draw legislative districts to contain equal numbers of actual residents.

Counting prisoners at the facility probably made sense at the first Census in 1790 when few people were in prison and when the data was not used for redistricting. Things are different now, and the data collection methods need to change. Jurisdictions that are impatient waiting for the Census to update its methodology should be commended for taking matters in to their own hands. But we can't pretend that every jurisdiction has the practical ability or even the legal option to fix the Census Bureau's mistakes after the fact.

If we want an efficient national fix to the problem of where prisoners are counted in the Census, that solution needs to come from the Census Bureau itself.

\ http://www.PrisonersoftheCensus.org

Posted by lois at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)

Lou Rawls

January 6, 2006
Lou Rawls, Grammy Award-Winning Singer, Dies at 72
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:49 a.m. ET

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Lou Rawls, the velvet-voiced singer who started as a church choir boy and went on to record such classic tunes as ''You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine,'' died Friday of cancer. He was 72.

Rawls died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was hospitalized last month for treatment of lung and brain cancer, said his publicist, Paul Shefrin. His wife, Nina, was at his bedside when he died.

Rawls' family and Shefrin said the singer was 72, although other records indicate he was 70.

Rawls' deep, smooth voice was his trademark, and he used it in a variety of genres.

''I've gone the full spectrum, from gospel to blues to jazz to soul to pop,'' Rawls once said on his Web site. ''And the public has accepted what I've done through it all.''

Rawls' grandmother introduced him to gospel in his hometown of Chicago. The singer moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1950s to join a touring gospel group, the Pilgrim Travelers.

After a two-year stint in the Army, Rawls rejoined the Pilgrim Travelers in Los Angeles, where he sang with Sam Cooke. Rawls performed with Dick Clark at the Hollywood Bowl in 1959, and he later he opened for The Beatles at Crosley Field in Cincinnati.

Rawls was playing small blues and R&B clubs in Los Angeles when his four-octave range caught the ear of a Capitol Records producer, who signed him to the label in 1962.

His debut effort, ''Stormy Monday,'' recorded with the Les McCann Trio, was the first of 28 albums Rawls made with Capitol.

In 1966, his ''Love Is a Hurtin' Thing'' topped the charts and earned Rawls his first two Grammy nominations. He won three Grammys in his career and released his most recent album, ''Seasons 4 U,'' in 1998 on his own label, Rawls & Brokaw Records.

He also appeared in 18 movies, including ''Leaving Las Vegas'' and ''Blues Brothers 2000,'' and 16 television series, including ''Fantasy Island'' and ''The Fall Guy.''

A longtime community activist, Rawls visited schools, playgrounds and community centers in the 1960s, encouraging children to continue their studies and have confidence in their abilities. In the '80s, he helped the United Negro College Fund raise more than $200 million through telethons.

In 1976, Rawls became the corporate spokesman for the Anheuser-Busch Cos. breweries.

Rawls was diagnosed with lung cancer in December 2004 and brain cancer in May 2005.

Besides his wife, Rawls is survived by four children: Louanna Rawls, Lou Rawls Jr., Kendra Smith and Aiden Rawls.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete, Shefrin said.

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

January 05, 2006

PA: "More attention should be paid to county prisons

Opinion
Thu, Jan. 05, 2006, Centre Daily
More attention should be paid to county prisons

The recent Associated Press series on Pennsylvania's county prisons documented again the low status jails have occupied historically in the hierarchy of correctional solutions to public safety at the local level.

The "gaol," transplanted to the American soil from an English model, has been shown throughout history to be characterized by acute and chronic overcrowding, understaffing, unhealthy and unsanitary conditions and, most importantly, underfunding.

That the articles illustrated great variation in these attributes in Pennsylvania county prisons is no surprise given the low priority county tax revenues, local politicians and the general public have traditionally given to supporting prisons.

My research on county jails in New York state from 1920 to 1960, utilizing New York State Commission of Correction inspection records and statistics for that period, showed that communities enlarged their jails only when there were extreme overcrowding pressures (immigrant population swells or federal prisoners from the Volstead Act) or (rarely for this time period) court interventions.

The typical "Band-Aid" solution was to use outside cell space such as hallways, gymnasiums and even chapels to address chronic overcrowding situations. Because of the lack of local county funding, jails were often expanded in the short term by building annexes or dormitories.

Rarely did local county governments respond to the New York State Commission of Correction's threats (as the state's regulatory agency from 1922) to close down local facilities.

In fact, one large urban county jail continued to ignore the commission's calls for improvements for a period of 65 years -- until the old jail burned and a new one had to be built.

Across all states, new jails have been built and old jails enlarged through the infusion of state funding from bonding initiatives. Yet, in Pennsylvania and throughout the United States, it is criminal-justice policies that have placed the most pressure on county jails and their administrators and staff.

The war on drugs and accompanying mandatory minimum-sentencing laws, fueled by media and political "lock 'em up and throw away the key" campaigns of the past 25 years, have filled our county jails and state prison systems with substance abusers and parole violators and more women than ever in the history of our country.

As 2006 begins, prisons large and small, rural and urban, struggle to house and separate, feed and clothe, program and habilitate pretrial and sentenced, local, state and federal detainees and inmates, while balancing public safety and inmate and staff security and safety, using a model that has largely never worked.

Yet the failure of many of Pennsylvania's county prisons to meet inspection standards is not the real story.

Here in Pennsylvania, the birthplace of national model institutions of freedom, the struggle to establish legitimate federal, state and local government order and authority resulted in the creation of penal institutions that were, by 18th century standards, benign and reformative.

The Walnut Street Jail and the Eastern State Penitentiary came to exemplify a new nation's efforts to punish under the protection of law.

Unfortunately, over time, these well-intentioned institutions were stripped of their reformative intent. Over time, punishment as the denial of individual liberty has come to focus primarily on the most marginal of Americans -- the under-educated, the under-employed, minorities and immigrants, the mentally ill, homeless and the addicted.

Indeed, the United States leads all other democratic nations in its rate of incarcerating marginal people.

Building more high-tech prisons in Pennsylvania will not address the critical issues of who is in our jails, the high rate of jail recidivism, and what resources our communities can offer to prisoners who return to their home communities each day.

This is Pennsylvania's real "brain drain."

Rosemary L. Gido, of Boalsburg, is professor of criminology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is a board member of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, editor of The Prison Journal and former director of policy of the New York State Commission of Correction.
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/13552690.htm

Posted by lois at 06:43 PM | Comments (0)

Suffolk Co NY: Pairing Down Plans for Yaphank Jail

Newsday, Jan 5, 2006
Paring down plans for Yaphank jail
New Suffolk County sheriff has concerns, suggestions on cuts in multimillion-dollar project to build facility

BY ZACHARY R. DOWDY AND EMI ENDO
STAFF WRITERS
Ditch the fancy executive locker rooms. Scrap a $6-million storage facility. Tighten up the design throughout.
After reviewing Suffolk County's plans for a new 1,280-bed jail in Yaphank, newly elected Sheriff Vincent DeMarco said he had a host of suggestions for reducing the scope of the massive project.

"This design, to me, seems very spread out," said DeMarco, a former deputy sheriff, in a recent interview, singling out the executive locker rooms as "overkill."

Slicing whole sections of brick, mortar and metal with a wave of his hand as he scanned preliminary blueprints, DeMarco said he believed the county could chip away at the size and cost of the project, although he could not say specifically by how much.

He said he wants to build a facility that reflects the needs and resources of the county - which could be one that houses only 720 inmates.

DeMarco, who was not involved in discussions last year among the county executive's office, Department of Public Works, sheriff's office and some legislators regarding the designs, intends to meet later this month with jail planning consultants to raise concerns about portions of the proposal.

Major changes would have to be approved by the state Commission of Correction.

While a shovel to build the jail isn't due to go into the ground at least until 2007, the most recent estimate on the cost of the facility, which would be built in two stages, has climbed up to $253 million from the $231 million budgeted in 2005.

Mandated for construction by the Commission of Correction, which determined that the current dilapidated facility is overcrowded and unsafe, the jail would be among the most expensive capital projects in Suffolk history.

Suffolk legislators last month approved $93 million to be devoted to the first phase, though DeMarco said he joins Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy in hoping the second phase never has to be built. "Our goal is to come in with more bed space at the same Phase I cost, which we hope will eliminate the need for a Phase II," DeMarco said.

During last year's campaign, Levy, a Democrat, endorsed DeMarco in his successful bid to unseat incumbent Sheriff Alfred C. Tisch, who favored a large state-of-the-art facility.

Levy said, "What we're most happy about is the incoming sheriff is very proactive and willing to sit down with us to work in concert to find savings in the jail and in other parts of his department."

The commission has granted the county dozens of variances, or permission slips, to house overflow inmates in recreation and programming areas as a stopgap measure pending the construction of a new facility.

The county also pays rent at several upstate jails for dozens more inmates who are shipped there because there is just no more room at the Yaphank facility or the larger jail in Riverhead.

While the proposed plans call for razing the current jail facility, DeMarco said about eight dormitories that may be structurally sound could be refurbished. He added that the proposed facility includes big sections devoted to administrative offices - which have little to do, he said, with the state mandate to deal with inmate overcrowding.

Maurice Mitchell, lead organizer with the Long Island Progressive Coalition, which has fought what it calls a "super-jail," said he was optimistic the new sheriff would have significant influence in scaling back the scope of the project, but would continue to put pressure on Levy and the lawmakers to fund the alternatives to incarceration that could reduce the need for jail beds.

"It's going to require a lot of work from this point to make sure that Suffolk County ends up with a criminal justice system that is truly progressive, efficient and just," he said.

Sheriff's suggestions

Newly sworn-in Suffolk County Sheriff Vincent DeMarco believes he can trim plans for a massive jail project now estimated to cost $253 million. At the top of DeMarco's list:

Refurbish more of the existing dorms to reduce the number of new housing pods needed

Get rid of new "executive locker rooms"

Reduce or eliminate a $6-million storage facility

Cut back on administrative office space throughout

Change inmate processing procedures so that a large booking room at the jail is not needed

ttp://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lisher054575626jan05,0,72527
22.story?coll=ny-linews-headlines

Posted by lois at 01:34 PM | Comments (0)

South Africa: Prisons Filled to Bursting Point

04 January 2006
SA’s prisons filled to bursting point
Wendell Roelf, Business Day - Johannesburg,South Africa
Sapa
SA, an economic and political leader in Africa, is also the continent’s number one jailer. If prisons are a reflection of society, what conclusions are to be drawn from this reality, particularly in a nation rightfully proud of its nascent democracy?

In global terms, SA is not alone in registering a sharp increase in its prison population. Today more than 9-million men, women and children are held in penal institutions worldwide, according to the sixth edition of the World Prison Population List, compiled by Roy Walmsley at the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College, London.

More than 2-million of those prisoners, or 22% of the total, are found behind bars in the US, which maintains the world’s highest rate of imprisonment — with 714 prisoners for every 100000 inhabitants.

Russia and Belarus share Europe’s highest incarceration rate, with 532 prisoners per 100000 inhabitants.

China has the world’s second-highest number of prisoners, at 1,55- million. However, its incarceration rate (118 per 100000) reflects only sentenced prisoners. The latest list, compiled at the end of February last year, shows SA has Africa’s highest incarceration rate (413 per 100000), followed by Botswana (339 per 100000). Nigeria, the continent’s most populous state, trails with a modest 31 per 100000.

In terms of absolute numbers, SA’s prison population of 186700 dwarfs that of every other African country, including Egypt (80000), Ethiopia (65000) and even Rwanda, where approximately 103000 of the 112000 people behind bars are held on suspicion of participation in genocide. Even after the release of 65387 prisoners in June and August last year, SA still has the highest number of prisoners on the continent.

Walmsley, an honorary consultant to the United Nations, says that between mid-2002 and February last year inmate numbers rose in 73% of the 211 countries covered by the list. “The rise in prison populations worldwide is attributable to a variety of circumstances, varying from country to country. In some it follows the election of government ministers with a tough on crime agenda, in others it is related to increased use of drugs. In many it occurs despite decreases in crime levels.

“There are many different reasons. There is no uniform answer,” he says. SA faces a complicating factor: it has been just over a decade since a democratic government inherited a racially skewed criminal justice system lacking integrity or legitimacy in which prisons were not subject to credible or effective oversight. The transition to democracy was accompanied by a sharp increase in the reported incidence of violent crime. Statistics from the Institute of Security Studies show that recorded violent crimes such as murder, rape and all forms of robbery and assault grew from 618000 in 1994 to 751000 incidents in 1999.

These trends appeared to catch the new African National Congress-led government by surprise. As the public outcry over crime grew, however, government officials increasingly adopted a tough on crime stance. In 1998, then deputy president Thabo Mbeki, in an address to the South African Democratic Teachers Union, likened criminals to “barbarians in our midst”. In 1999 the late Steve Tshwete, then safety and security minister, was reported to have suggested that police officers deal with criminals “in the same way a bulldog deals with a bull”.

These words were accompanied by tougher laws and minimum sentencing. The prison population swelled rapidly, fuelled largely by an explosion in the number of awaiting-trial prisoners from 24265 in January 1995 to 63964 in April 2000.

Today, SA’s 240 prisons are grossly overcrowded. In September 2004 these institutions, designed for a total capacity of 113825 prisoners, housed 186546.

“It is no exaggeration to say that, if the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) were to cram as many animals into a cage as our correctional services are forced to cram prisoners into a single cell, the SPCA would be prosecuted for cruelty to animals,” said Pretoria High Court Judge Eberhard Bertelsmann in February last year when he gave reasons for not sending Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to prison.

Few dispute that SA’s social and economic disparities help to fuel crime. Inspecting Judge Hannes Fagan wrote in the 2003-04 annual report of the judicial inspectorate of prisons that of crimes committed, 30% were economic crimes and 50% aggressive crimes “largely engendered by poverty and joblessness and the frustrations that they cause”.

The immediate cost to the state of keeping so many people in jail is approximately R25m a day. But perhaps the most shocking statistic is that 28% of those behind bars — more than 52000 people — are awaiting trial and have not been found guilty of any crime.The awaiting-trial prisoners, who are held on average for several months, are not involved in any rehabilitation programmes, receive no training or schooling, and seldom have access to recreational facilities.

Despite government’s broadly centre-left policies, contradictory signals are evident when it comes to the criminal justice system. For example, minimum sentencing laws were extended last year, mandating minimum jail terms of up to 25 years and life for a variety of offences, including categories of theft, drug dealing, assault, rape and murder. “The effect of the minimum sentence legislation has been to greatly increase the number of prisoners serving long and life sentences. It has resulted in a major shift in the length of prison terms,” Fagan pointed out in a 2004-05 report on prisons.

On the other hand, in February last year the cabinet officially adopted the white paper on corrections, which proposes a radical shift in prison policy towards rehabilitation, to better reflect the country’s constitutional imperatives, and to conform to international human rights statutes to which SA is a signatory. However, the white paper acknowledges that there is a tremendous gap between the policy shift that it envisions and the current reality.

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

January 04, 2006

Frank Wilkinson, Fighter For Civil Liberties

January 4, 2006
Wilkinson, Defiant Figure of Red Scare, Dies at 91
By RICK LYMAN
Frank Wilkinson, a Los Angeles housing official who lost his job in the Red Scare of the early 1950's and later became one of the last two people jailed for refusing to tell the House Un-American Activities Committee whether he was a Communist, died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 91.

Mr. Wilkinson, whose experiences inspired a half-century campaign against government spying, had been ill for several months and was recovering from surgery and a fall, said Donna Wilkinson, his wife of 40 years. "It was just the complications of old age, " Mrs. Wilkinson said.

In 1952, when Mr. Wilkinson was head of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, he spearheaded a project to replace the sprawling Mexican-American neighborhood of Chavez Ravine, home to 300 families and roamed by goats and other livestock, with thousands of public-housing units.

Real estate interests that viewed public housing as a form of socialism accused Mr. Wilkinson of being a Communist. When asked about this, under oath, he declined to answer, causing a furor.

After a City Council hearing, in which Mayor Fletcher Bowron punched a man in the audience who had called him a "servant of Stalin," Mr. Wilkinson was questioned by the California Anti-Subversive Committee. Mr. Wilkinson was fired along with four other housing officials and five schools employees, including his first wife, Jean.

The housing project was scuttled and much of the land eventually turned over to the city, after which it became the site of Dodger Stadium, new home to the former Brooklyn Dodgers.

The entire episode has inspired books, documentaries, a play and even a recently released album by Ry Cooder called "Chavez Ravine." "Every church has its prophets and its elders," one song goes. "God will love you if you just play ball."

Mr. Wilkinson consistently refused to testify about his political beliefs. He had, in fact, joined the Communist Party in 1942, according to "First Amendment Felon," a 2005 biography by Robert Sherrill. He left the party in 1975.

Mr. Wilkinson continued his antipoverty activities and, in 1955, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which wanted to know whether he was a Communist. This time, Mr. Wilkinson used what he believed was a novel approach. Instead of claiming his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination, he refused to answer on First Amendment grounds, saying the committee had no right to ask him.

The committee requested that Congress cite Mr. Wilkinson for contempt, but it was not until 1958 that he and a co-worker, Carl Braden, became the last men ordered to prison at the committee's behest. Mr. Wilkinson fought the contempt citation in the courts, but the Supreme Court, by a vote of 5 to 4, affirmed it.

At a press conference after the decision, Mr. Wilkinson said: "We will not save free speech if we are not prepared to go to jail in its defense. I am prepared to pay that price."

In 1961, the year construction began on Dodger Stadium, Mr. Wilkinson spent nine months at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa. He came out of prison, he said, determined to fight for the committee's abolition. For the next decade, he traveled the country, speaking and protesting, largely through his National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, based in Los Angeles.

On Jan. 14, 1975, when the committee was finally abolished, Representative Robert F. Drinan, Democrat of Massachusetts, paid tribute to Mr. Wilkinson, saying, "No account of the demise of the House Un-American Activities Committee would be complete without a notation of the extraordinary work done by the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation."

But Mr. Wilkinson was not finished with the federal government. When he discovered, in 1986, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been compiling files on him, he filed a Freedom of Information Act request for their release.

He was sent 4,500 documents. But he sued for more, and the next year the F.B.I. released an additional 30,000 documents, and then 70,000 two years later. Eventually, there were 132,000 documents covering 38 years of surveillance, including detailed reports of Mr. Wilkinson's travel arrangements and speaking schedules, and vague and mysterious accusations of an assassination attempt against Mr. Wilkinson in 1964.

A federal judge ordered the F.B.I. to stop spying on Mr. Wilkinson and to never do it again.

He is survived by his first wife, Jean, of Oakland, Calif.; their three children, Jeffry Wilkinson, of Albany, Calif., Tony Wilkinson, of Berkeley, Calif., and Jo Wilkinson of Tucson; and by his second wife, Donna; her three children from a previous marriage, John, William and Robert Childers; 19 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Frank Wilkinson was born Aug. 16, 1914, in a cottage behind his family's lakeside retreat in Charlevoix, Mich. His father, a doctor, came from a family that had lived in America since colonial days. His mother was French Canadian. Mr. Wilkinson was the youngest of four children.

Mr. Wilkinson's father fell in love with Arizona while posted there in World War I and moved the family to Douglas, Ariz., after the war. The family lived there until Frank was 10, then moved to Hollywood for two years while their permanent home was being built in Beverly Hills.

They were a devout Methodist family and firm Republicans. "Every morning of my life, we had Bible readings and prayers at the breakfast table," Mr. Wilkinson once said.

He attended Beverly Hills High School and then the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 1936. He was active in the Methodist Youth Movement, president of the Hollywood Young People's chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and an organizer for Youth for Herbert Hoover.

After college, considering a career in the ministry, he decided to tour the Holy Land. On the way, along Maxwell Street in Chicago, the Bowery in New York and later in the Middle East, he had his first glimpse at wrenching poverty, and he described it as a life-altering experience.

Mr. Wilkinson lost his faith and found himself adrift. "What do you do if you have no religion?" he said. "What is the basis of your ethics?" He chose to become active in efforts to eradicate the kind of poverty he had seen in his travels.

In later years, he would spend months on the road, speaking to whatever group would listen to him, usually telling his own story and answering questions.

In 1999, he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Civil Liberties Union. Four years earlier, the City of Los Angeles, which had once fired him, issued a citation praising Mr. Wilkinson for his "lifetime commitment to civil liberties and for making this community a better place in which to live."

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

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

January 03, 2006

KY: Jails and Roads top the list for priorities

Posted on Tue, Jan. 03, 2006
GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Counties ready to lobby for projects
Jail and road funds top lists
HERALD-LEADER STAFF REPORT

As state lawmakers convene today in Frankfort for the 2006 General Assembly, officials from Central Kentucky counties are preparing to lobby for a variety of projects. Top priorities include projects such as the Kentucky Horse Park Arena in Fayette County and completion of U.S. 460 Bypass in Georgetown.

Here's a look at what some officials from Fayette and a few Central Kentucky counties say are some top legislative priorities this year.

Fayette

Top priority: Kentucky Horse Park Arena.

Cost: $33.4 million.

About it: To host the 2010 World Equestrian Games, the Kentucky Horse Park needs a $33.4 million, 7,000-seat arena. The facility would feature club-level seats and luxury suites as well as warm-up areas, an exhibition space and meeting rooms. The arena would be used for two World Equestrian Games events: reining, in which riders maintain control of their horses during various spins and other moves, and vaulting, in which riders perform gymnastic exercises while their horses are cantering. The Urban County Council has approved a resolution stating its support for the arena to be included in the state budget.

Top priority: Placing New Circle Road improvements in the state's Six-Year Highway Plan for funding and construction.

About it: Improvements need to be made to New Circle Road as Lexington prepares for the 2010 World Equestrian Games. Road improvements the Urban County Council wants to see before the games include adding lanes to the signalized and limited access portions of New Circle as well as reconstruction of interchanges. The state has hired a consultant to design improvements to New Circle between Georgetown Street and Boardwalk. Those improvements could include adding lanes and reconstructing the Newtown Pike interchange. The current Six-Year Highway Plan also includes a design project to redo the inbound Harrodsburg Road on-ramp onto the outer loop of New Circle. Those are the only two New Circle projects in the six-year plan, and neither are funded beyond design. The Urban County Council supports widening New Circle and reconstructing the Newtown interchange.

Clark

Top priority: More money for counties to operate jails.

About it: Virtually every county jail in the state is in the red, said Judge-Executive John Myers. He said cities should be required to share in the cost of incarcerating prisoners and for counties to get more help paying for catastrophic medical expenses.

Jessamine

Top priority: Offices for county attorney and child support.

Cost: $400,000 or more.

About it: Jessamine Fiscal Court might seek an appropriation to restore some burned-out buildings in downtown Nicholasville that the county bought this fall. The total cost of the restoration isn't known, but Jessamine County Judge-Executive Neal Cassity said the county might seek money from the legislature as well as grants from other sources to restore the buildings so they can be occupied by the county attorney and the division of the county attorney's office that enforces child support.

Madison

Top priorities: Jail funding, sewer plant.

Cost: $8.25 million (jail); $2 million (sewer).

About it: Judge-Executive Kent Clark said jail funding tops his list. He said counties are lobbying for a package of funding increases that would cost $8.25 million in the first year of the two-year budget. Clark also hopes to get more grants to pay for a sewer plant to serve northern Madison County.

Scott

Top priority: Completion of U.S. 460 Bypass.

Cost: About $31 million.

About it: For years, the unfinished loop around Georgetown has forced scores of trucks and other traffic through the heart of downtown. Three-fourths are completed, but the northwest section from U.S. 460 West to Interstate 75 has yet to be completed. Construction will be even more of a priority now that the school district and county government have purchased land near U.S. 460, which will be the site of a technical training center and eventually a second high school. "It would allow the schools to move forward with their plans to first build a technical school and then a high school and for the county to build its park out there," said Scott Judge-Executive George Lusby. Transportation Secretary Bill Nighbert agreed the bypass is a priority, but added, "when you're a billion dollars underfunded, just because it's in the six-year plan, doesn't mean it's going to become a reality. We'll have to see." The project could be placed in the state transportation bill.
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/legislature/13537079.htm

Posted by lois at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Record number of suicides among those incrcerted

State's inmate suicides are double national rate
Advocates hope to convince federal judge to investigate prison policies
The numbers
Here are the number of prison suicides each year, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation:
2005: 44
2004: 26
2003: 36
2002: 21
2001: 30
2000: 14
1999: 29
1998: 22
1997: 19
1996: 19
1995: 22
1994: 16
1993: 32

Don Thompson
The Associated Press
January 3, 2006

SACRAMENTO - A record number of convicts killed themselves in California prisons during 2005 - double the national inmate suicide rate, according to state records.
The trend approaching one suicide each week is triggering new complaints from class-action lawyers that the state is stalling prevention efforts. Prison officials deny delays, saying they thwart the vast majority of suicide attempts.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported 44 suicides in an inmate population that is at an all-time high - nearly 164,000 - though inmates' attorneys have so far been able to confirm only 41 deaths as suicides. Either figure is up from 26 suicides in 2004, and exceeds the previous record of 36 deaths in 2003.

Using the more conservative estimate, the rate is 27 deaths per 100,000 inmates, compared to a national rate of 14 per 100,000 calculated by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. That rate is falling nationally even as California's rate increases.

The National Center on Institutions and Alternatives puts the nationwide prison suicide rate at about 13 deaths per 100,000, compared to 11 deaths per 100,000 in the general community.

Seventy percent of inmate suicides in California occur in disciplinary isolation units, which reported an astronomical rate of 248 suicides per 100,000 inmates in 2004.

"We try to be there and vigilant," said corrections spokesman J.P. Tremblay. "It's always a tragedy when anybody commits suicide, but we're working hard to try to prevent that. We have made some progress, but it's not going to happen overnight."

Lawyers representing more than 26,000 mentally ill inmates in California are heading back to a Sacramento federal judge Thursday, accusing the state of not training guards quickly enough to provide emergency resuscitation when inmates are found unresponsive. Some prisons have trained fewer than half their guards, said Michael Bien, the lead attorney.

Prison attorneys countered, saying most have trained at least 75 percent of guards, and many are above 90 percent.

Previous prison policy let guards wait for medical staff to arrive: "You could choose not to help someone who was dying at your feet," Bien said.
California officials have balked at replacing overhead air vents in segregation units with vent covers that have smaller openings to prevent inmates from stringing sheets or cords to hang themselves. The department says the smaller vents would restrict air flow, while the inmates' attorneys say the vents are used in hundreds of prisons, including the California Men's Colony and Atascadero State Hospital for the criminally mentally ill.

Inmate attorneys are also objecting to prison proposals to reduce the amount of mental health supervision provided in segregation units.

They hope a federal judge will order a hearing into a 3-year-old prison policy that treats mental illness as a security danger. The mentally ill are often sent to more secure prisons where they are housed with violent inmates and are more frequently locked in their cells with fewer privileges and amenities.

Posted by lois at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)