The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog: February 2006 Archives

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February 26, 2006

NY: State Takes Over 9 Substance Abuse Centers

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/nyregion/24crossing.html
New York Times
State Takes Over 9 Substance Abuse Centers
By JULIA C. MEAD
Published: February 24, 2006

RIVERHEAD, N.Y., Feb. 23 ‹ The State of New York took control of nine substance-abuse treatment centers scattered around Long Island on Thursday. The action ended a three-day State Supreme Court hearing in which state officials, who had revoked the centers' operating certificates, were seeking control.

Crossings Recovery Systems, the company that owns the centers, was facing a $6.9 million fine by the state's Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services for what the agency said was a failure to properly manage and staff the centers. The agency had cited Crossings for 174 violations of state regulations, including inadequate medical care and supervision, and inappropriate treatment.

The company disputed the state's allegations, but agreed on Thursday to a voluntary receivership under which the state's substance abuse agency will operate the clinics and supervise the Crossings employees who agree to stay. The clinics served a total of 1,200 to 1,500 patients.

The receivership does not involve about 15 group homes for recovering addicts, known as sober homes, that are operated by Crossings.

An assistant state attorney general, Denis J. McElligott, said the agency would decide whether Frank Buonanotte, the Crossings owner, would have any access to the clinics or their records.

After two days of testimony, lawyers on both sides said Justice Peter H. Mayer had pushed them to reach a settlement. "It's not about benefiting Crossings or Mr. Buonanotte," said Scott J. Fine, the Crossings lawyer. "This is for the sole benefit of the clients. Period."

Crossings recently closed one clinic, in Huntington; several others, which had not paid rent since October or November, were in danger of eviction. And others were temporarily closed this week, Mr. Fine said. As a result, many patients ‹ all recovering addicts, and some of them mentally ill or convicted sex offenders ‹ were left without access to counseling or other treatment services. About $250,000 in emergency state funds was approved late on Thursday to reopen the clinics, and state workers from Manhattan and Long Island offices were called in to assess the caseloads, remaining staff and facilities.

"There's going to be some uncertainty but I think we can work through it together," Henry F. Zwack, the general counsel for the agency, told three dozen Crossings employees who waited in the courtroom most of the afternoon as the lawyers negotiated in the hallway.

Crossings employees said many co-workers had already quit and others were looking for new jobs, but those in court today agreed to report to work on Friday. The state will pay their salaries and patients should once again be receiving treatment or referrals to other programs starting Monday morning, Mr. Zwack said.

On Feb. 14, the agency revoked the operating licenses of all nine clinics and sought a court-ordered receivership, actions the company then challenged in court.

Before the hearing was halted by the settlement talks, Crossings employees testified that it had not met its latest payroll and was nearly $500,000 in debt, and that Medicaid, which represented about half its revenue, had stopped sending payments.

Posted by lois at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

The Myth of L.A.'s Race War

By Maria Luisa Tucker, AlterNet

Posted on February 24, 2006, Printed on February 24, 2006

http://www.alternet.org/story/32674/

J.R. has spent 12 of his 28 years behind bars for attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and discharging a firearm, among other things. His broad back is covered with tattoos of women, marijuana leaves, cars, guns. The images were etched into him with a tattoo gun made from a Walkman motor, a guitar string and a single needle. Like the majority of men behind bars in Los Angeles County, J.R. was a gang member. Which gang, he declines to say.

The calculated intimidation factor of his tattoos and his gangbanging past were necessary for survival during his years on the streets and in prison, and are now necessary for his job. Amidst the brightly colored buildings of Hispanic East L.A., J.R. works as a motivational speaker for Homies Industries, a cornerstone of L.A.'s community of gang intervention organizations. He has been rehabilitated, not by the system but by the combination of parenthood, religion and the realization that gang life almost inevitably leads to prison or death. In the neighborhoods he works, kids are more likely to listen to tattooed ex-cons than cops or teachers, and this ex-con is hoping to steer kids away from gang life and toward education and jobs.

J.R. is not alone in this mission. Over the last couple of decades, a cadre of reformed gangsters has created a community that exists in a netherworld between law enforcement and gang life, working to prevent crime and simultaneously keep the trust and respect of gang members. Along with Homies Industries, there are organizations like Unity One, Unity T.H.R.E.E., Homies Unidos, Amer-I-Can and NO GUNS, which negotiate ceasefires between rival gangs, and provides tattoo removal, job training and life skills classes. The gang intervention workers know what goes on in the streets, jails and prisons better than pretty much anyone else. And recently, they have felt a sense of familiar wariness at the news of the violent, racially charged riots that erupted in L.A. County's jails.

For more than two weeks, headlines have been telling the story of sporadic violence inside the jails that has led to two deaths. The first articles reported that so-called brown-on-black violence began when the Mexican Mafia greenlighted Latino gang members to attack African-American inmates. Later, the sheriff's department said white inmates began the attacks on a black inmate, Wayne Tiznor, the first man to be killed. Though the stories about what sparked the riots have changed, the race war hype stuck.

"When you're on the outside looking in, you are looking for a political answer. And calling it a race riot is the quickest political answer," says J.R., who is Latino. It's both a sensational and digestible way to frame the crisis. "It's like 'Ten o'clock tonight! Mexicans killing blacks! Only on Fox 11 News!' That's what grabs people's attention." But really, he says, "it's about power, money, and dope."

The race-riot narrative simplifies and masks a much more complex tragedy in which racism may be the result of violence, but not its cause. L.A.'s sorely inadequate jails are the setting for a story that has many more antagonists than heroes. And it is a tragedy that begins and ends in the neighborhoods where many of L.A.'s inmates come from -- Compton, Boyle Heights, Inglewood and East L.A. -- where gang intervention workers like J.R. are working to calm the waters and dispel the destructive myth of a new black-Latino race war.

Power and insignificance

Feb. 4: "In rioting triggered by racial tensions, more than 2,000 inmates went on a four-hour rampage Saturday at a maximum-security jail in Castaic, leaving one prisoner dead and nearly 50 others injured." --L.A. Times

"This is more about power, not about whether Latinos hate blacks. It's about who gets to decide what's on television," says Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest who founded Homies Industries and is a highly respected leader of gang intervention in L.A. "I think this has very little to do with race." Father Boyle's statement may sound dismissive, but it is true that the flames of large scale violence behind bars are often sparked by seemingly insignificant things.

For example, Shonteze Williams, a gang intervention worker who spent years in Corcoran State Prison remembers a battle in 1998 that began when a Latino inmate cut in front of a black inmate while they were waiting to use the phone. The ensuing melee involved hundreds of men and left Williams with 22 stitches in his arm. Williams says black and Latino inmates automatically divided along racial lines in the fight, because "you have to stick with your own." It's this kind of group mentality that leads to a "never-ending game" behind bars, says Williams.

At an emotional level, incarceration is the act of stripping someone of their self-determination, and in a street culture that values masculine pride, power and dominance, this is acute. Any minor affront is fraught with the possibility of violence.

"It's a little bit like rape. Rape has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with power," says Father Boyle. The violence manifests along a racial divide, but racism is not the cause. Steve Whitmore, Sheriff's Department spokesman, recognizes this as well: "The conflict was divided along race, but the reason it happened was that it is the culture of the jails. What fuels the fights is the tension in the jails."

Violence has erupted frequently in L.A.'s jails, where overcrowding, understaffing and underfunding have historically been part of the system. In the last few months, seven major fights have been reported in L.A.'s jails, and in the Men's Central facility alone, eight inmates were murdered in under three years. The jails saw similar rioting in 2000, 1996, 1985 and 1972.

Since the riots began, the county has been in a tailspin of fingerpointing. "Who should the fall person be? They try to make [Sheriff] Lee Baca the fall guy. Or they try to blame the county," says Bo Taylor, founder of the gang-intervention organization, Unity One. "Well, it should be society. We allowed this to happen."

These problems are not confined to L.A. County jails or California's prisons, but are part of the larger prison industrial complex set up across the nation. Similar stories are told everywhere of corrupt corrections officers, inmate hierarchies, overcrowding, mistreatment, and -- always -- violence. What's unique to California is its historic reliance on segregation as a method of managing inmates.

Riots and segregation

Feb 5: "Violence broke out again late Sunday, this time at the Pitchess Detention Center North 10 inmates were injured in the violence that broke out just before 10:30 p.m. at Pitchess. [Deputy Alba] Yates said the incident involved approximately 170 Latino and 35 black inmates who 'divided on racial lines and fought'." --L.A. Times

Bo Taylor is a clean-cut black man with a bald head, neatly trimmed goatee, and a tattoo on his inner forearm that reads "God's First" in an elaborate script that takes a moment to decipher. "I've had this 14 years," Taylor says. "People look at it and see something negative before they even read what it says. But that's OK. I want people to prejudge us," he says, because people need to realize their initial judgments are often wrong. "They say you can't judge a book by its cover. I say you can't judge a book by its first chapter."

Taylor does not have an office; he conducts meetings in a Mexican diner housed in a bowling alley near mid-city Los Angeles, and is interrupted every four minutes by the ring of his cell phone. When the discussion turns to the jail riots and segregation, Taylor sighs.
Gang intervention workers repeatedly say that segregation is necessary right now simply to save lives. In the same breath, they say cops and the penal system reinforce the racial antagonism.

"Most inmates have a 6th- or 7th-grade education level," Taylor says. "They don't know how to make decisions. They have no tools to figure things out, and once the media gets involved they start saying things that aren't necessarily true and adding fuel to the fire," he says, referring to the racial component of the coverage. "When you look at a jail, you look at groups of whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics and then others. People can't use the same phones, or use the same toilets. Someone has implemented a system based on racism."

For decades, California segregated its prison inmates by race. Last year, a Supreme Court decision outlawed the practice and the state is still in the midst of changing its segregation policies. L.A. County has followed suit, stating that it will only segregate inmates in times of emergency. That time came when the riots began Feb. 4, and since then deputies have segregated some jails by race and ethnicity largely in attempts to protect black inmates, who are outnumbered by Latinos.

"It makes it easier for them to control you, but it promotes hatred. There are boundaries set up by the institutions," says Ralph, a Latino volunteer for Taylor's organization and an ex-con who was released from prison last year. (Like many former gang members, he declined to give his last name.) "It's hard to say if it would be better without segregation. It's been etched into prison life."

Taylor believes that segregation is appropriate now, but still holds that race has been used as the scapegoat. "You have to take into consideration that [if you are incarcerated], you don't have a job, you don't have a house or a car, you might not even have a family when you come out. You are a frustrated person! To say it is a race riot is a blanket statement."

Gangs and communities

Feb. 8: "Nearly 500 inmates fought Wednesday in racially charged melees at Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, marking a fifth day of violence in the Los Angeles County jail system and underscoring officials' inability to stop unrest tied to street conflicts between Latino and black gangs." --L.A. Times

Shonteze Williams Sr. euphemistically calls gangs "communities." His community is the Harlem 30 Crips.

Williams is careful to differentiate between gangbangers -- those who commit crimes and use violence -- and gang members, who are part of the "community" but not necessarily part of the criminal element. "I still have a gangbanger's heart but not a gangbanger's mind," says Williams, who considers himself the voice of reason and peace within the Crips.

Sitting in an office in South Central L.A. that relies entirely on donations and volunteers, Williams talks about the camaraderie of gang life and his belief that gang members can help make positive changes. He believes you don't have to leave the gang to do that: "To be giving back to the community you grew up in, that you used to cause havoc in? Man, that's a beautiful thing."

Williams understands what a lot of law enforcement bureaucrats fail to recognize -- that gang life offers a powerful sense of belonging, the thrill of street life, and a surrogate family to replace absent fathers and strung-out mothers. The group adhesiveness is based partly on a common enemy, and gangs operate much like their own nations by protecting borders, finding symbolism in "flags" or colors, and declaring war on rival gangs. The national values are pride and dominance. Rules are enforced by violence and intimidation.

The rules that apply in jail are established out here, where even during ceasefires men are afraid of looking weak. Williams helped negotiate a ceasefire among 12 gangs that began after the death of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, a founder of the Crips who was executed in December. Even then, those agreeing to the ceasefire were not agreeing to turn the other cheek, says Williams; only not to be the aggressors. "But either way the result is the same -- peace. And credit needs to be given to the gang members for doing that."

A large part of what gang intervention workers do is control rumors and calm tensions before retaliation takes place. On this particular night, Williams plans to get some information on a recent shooting that left a teenager dead. He hopes to comfort family members and simultaneously quell any plans for vengeance. The community of gang intervention workers across L.A. is hoping to do the same on a larger scale.

Williams is part of an effort to strategize how to keep the peace on the streets when hell breaks loose in the jails. The Unity Collaborative, a gang-intervention network made up of five Los Angeles area agencies, brought together a dozen black and Latino gang-intervention leaders in San Pedro, Calif., just south of William's office.

"It's a war out there," one man says at the meeting. Heads nod in agreement. Discussions roam from the current ceasefire in South Central, the peace-building process that is still underway, and the most recent casualty of the jail riots -- a black inmate who died Feb. 12. By the end of the meeting, a mixture of wariness mingled with dogged hope emerged as the men went around the conference table sharing their woes. One spoke about the need for blacks to be unified, another about the upcoming funeral of a 16-year-old who was shot by the cops the day before. There is clearly no immediate end to violence between gangs in or outside of jail, but it is obvious that preventative measures must continue. The men around the table remind themselves that they can't save every life, but that they must keep going in order to save some.

silence and fear

[Feb. 17: "Skirmishes between black and Latino inmates broke out again Friday night at Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic Six inmates were slightly injured, including four who were taken to a hospital, after more than three dozen prisoners scuffled." --L.A. Times

On Saturday, Feb. 18, the parking lot at the inmate reception center in Pitchess is desolate. As she drives up and catches sight of a piece of paper declaring "No Visits," Elizabeth Schultz feels the wind of hope knocked out of her. Her boyfriend was arrested on drunk driving charges Feb. 6 and since been awaiting trial in the North County Correctional Facility, the same building where the most recent fighting took place. Schultz has been unable to communicate with him because of the lockdown. No mail was allowed in or out until a couple days ago, and inmates are still prohibited to make phone calls or receive visitors. Only the sparsest bit of information is available on the county's inmate information phone line and website, and even that has been more confusing than helpful.

Meanwhile, newspaper headlines continued their story of regular race riots being quashed with tear gas, "sting balls" and rubber pellets. Inmates are punished by having privileges taken away, including showers, and most recently, clothes. According to a Feb. 19 New York Times article, deputies attempted to "calm" inmates by taking away their mattresses and forcing them to strip, leaving only blankets to cover themselves.

Now, in the cold breeze that gusts across the inmate reception center's parking lot, Schultz peers through the gate, even though the actual jail buildings are behind the hills, far from view. The faint, unnerving sound of gunshots echoes through the air. Every few minutes another car ventures in, another family checks to see if visits are allowed today. A father comes and goes, a mother, a neighbor. A guard at the employee entrance road tells Schultz the jail will probably be on lockdown for another couple weeks. He has no other information.

Schultz brushes away tears as she drives away. She is beginning to feel the frustration and outrage at the system gang-intervention workers have been dealing with for decades.

"California's answer to gangs is 25-to-life for teenagers," J.R. says. His voice rises in disgust. "You can rape a woman or molest a kid and be out in a few years. That's messed up."

As for the jail riots, J.R. declares, "I don't see no color lines. I see struggle and pain."

Maria Luisa Tucker is an AlterNet staff writer.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/32674/

Posted by lois at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)

CA: State Chief of Prisons Resigns After 2 years on job

State Chief of Prisons Says He's Resigning
By Jenifer Warren
Times Staff Writer

February 26, 2006

SACRAMENTO - Corrections Secretary Roderick Q. Hickman, who embodied Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's vow to turn around California's violent and scandal-plagued prison system, said Saturday night that he was resigning the post he has held for more than two years.

Hickman, reached by telephone, said that he was calling it quits because he lacked political support for his efforts to create a correctional system that was more than a revolving-door warehouse for felons.

Hickman, 49, said the governor would receive an official letter of resignation Monday.

"I think we've built an excellent foundation, but I just don't see the courage and will we need to get it done across the board in the government of California," Hickman said.

While he believes Schwarzenegger remains interested in prison reform, Hickman said "the special interests we're up against are just too powerful to get much done in the current environment."

He said he had grown increasingly frustrated by legislators who attacked the department - often during public hearings - for "small mistakes" that were portrayed as a "massive failure of leadership."

But he also said the influence the powerful prison guards' union wields in Sacramento had nudged him toward the door.

The union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., has battled with Hickman from his first days as secretary - even though he began his career as a prison guard and was a union member for 20 years.

Recently, that battle had intensified as Hickman was approaching a confirmation hearing in the Senate this spring. Though he was confirmed once, legislation that restructured the department last year required he pass a second test.

Hickman, the administration's highest-ranking African American, said he felt confident he could muster the votes to survive, and Schwarzenegger has professed support for the secretary in the past.

But it was unclear whether the governor's advisors were behind Hickman.

The departure will leave the governor with an enormous hole in his Cabinet and the daunting task of filling what experts say is the toughest correctional job in the nation.

Hickman is responsible for a sprawling $8.2-billion penal system that incarcerates more than 171,000 youth and adult convicts and employs 59,000 people throughout the state.

He was brought in as a reformer and, from the start, faced immense problems, including severe overcrowding, an aging inmate population that has driven up healthcare costs and an entrenched gang problem that has defied easy solution.

Because of a series of lawsuits, Hickman also was forced to navigate in an environment where large portions of his domain were under court supervision.

Last week, a federal judge appointed a receiver to manage medical care, declaring that outside intervention was essential to solve a long-brewing crisis in which inmates died because of incompetence or neglect at a rate of one a week.

Hickman and Schwarzenegger had attracted national attention, however, for their pledge to reemphasize rehabilitation as a way to increase the odds that parolees would stay crime-free.

As part of a restructuring of the Department of Corrections last year, the governor elevated inmate rehabilitation to equal standing with other prison operations - a major departure from the past - and even added "rehabilitation" to the agency's name.

Hickman also sent deputies around the country to find the most effective inmate programs to determine which would best fit in California.

Those moves were part of his response to criticism of the system as an operation that, while adept at incarcerating convicts, did little to ensure they would not get in trouble again.

With a recidivism rate that was highest in the nation, California was lambasted by experts time and again for a system that wasted tax dollars and, in effect, provided poor public safety because so many parolees committed new crimes.

To help figure out a new approach, Hickman opened the department's doors to academia, inviting some scholars, such as UC Irvine's Joan Petersilia, to sit in on meetings with him and his top deputies and offer advice.

More recently, Hickman had attracted attention with new thinking on female offenders, who are housed in expensive, high-security prisons even though most are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes. He was pushing a proposal to move 40% of the state's female inmates out of prison and into community correctional centers closer to their families.

A physically imposing man with a charismatic style, Hickman has faced criticism from one source more than any other throughout his tenure: the union representing the majority of his employees, the correctional officers. Some say the secretary would have gone further with his reforms had he found a way to work with the union.

Union spokesman Lance Corcoran agreed.

"What is really sad is he had an incredible opportunity to lead this department in a new direction, but he chose to alienate people," Corcoran said. "Our members are tired, they're demoralized, we have an unclear chain of command, and the management team Š is in complete disarray. It all happened under Mr. Hickman's watch."

Once an insignificant player in the Capitol, the union has grown over the last two decades into one of the most powerful forces in state politics. A generous donor supporting both Democratic and Republican candidates, the union spent more than $1 million to defeat a ballot measure seeking to soften the three-strikes initiative and was a key player in defeating Schwarzenegger's special-election measures last year.

Union leaders were initially upset over Hickman's efforts to purge the prisons of the "code of silence," which the secretary and others said deterred guards from reporting misconduct by colleagues. Union executives said Hickman had wrongly portrayed all officers in the same bad light.

Last year, they blamed Hickman for the death of an officer, Manuel Gonzalez, stabbed by an inmate at the state prison in Chino, noting that the prison had failed to distribute 300 stab-proof vests to guards at the lockup. Corcoran said Hickman's "philosophy and his lack of leadership" created the climate for the killing, noting, "I'm sticking all of it on Hickman."

Hickman has declined to comment on the specific attacks but was defiant in one past interview with The Times, saying, "We're heading in a new directionŠ. [The union] can get on the train or get left at the station."

Lawyer Steve Fama, who represents inmates in lawsuits over prison conditions, praised Hickman for "standing up to the union and trying to end the code of silence that too often permeates prisons."

But he said the secretary's brief legacy will be marred by his failure to respond more forcefully to the crisis over medical care that has claimed so many lives.

Earlier this month, Hickman faced criticism anew in the Legislature when Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) blasted the secretary and other officials during a tense hearing called to assess the department's progress.

For the first time, Hickman's patience and enthusiasm seemed to be wearing thin. He left the hearing after testifying, despite Romero's request that he stay.

Former Undersecretary of Corrections Kevin Carruth, who left the department last year, said the hearing and Romero's criticism were telling.

"Rod had the courage to come in at a difficult time and try to provide leadership and go in a new direction," Carruth said. "But the expectations in that place are just unrealistic. They think you can come in, write a memo and turn the place around on a dime. It's impossible."

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hickman26feb26,0,7927526.story?coll=la-h
ome-headlines

Posted by lois at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

Prison Economics: Crime and Punishment

Publication: Fortune Magazine http://fortune.com
Date: April 30, 2001
Title: PRISON ECONOMICS Crime and Punishment
Author: Cait Murphy
Print URL: http://www.fortune.com/indext.jhtml?channel=print_article.jhtml&doc_id=20182
0

PRISON ECONOMICS Crime and Punishment
Think that stuffing prisons with lawbreakers makes sense?
You clearly haven't run the numbers.
Here are some better ways to buy safety. FORTUNE
Monday, April 30, 2001
By Cait Murphy

America is an exceptional country. Compared with citizens of other nations, Americans tend to be more religious and more entrepreneurial. We send more people to university, have more millionaires, and enjoy more living space. We are the world leaders in obesity and Nobel Prizes.

And we send people to prison at a rate that is almost unheard of. Right now, almost two million Americans are either in prison (after conviction) or jail (waiting for trial). Of every 100,000 Americans, 481 are in prison. By comparison, the incarceration rate for Britain is 125 per 100,000, for Canada 129, and for Japan 40. Only Russia, at 685, is quicker to lock 'em up.

America was not always so exceptional in this regard. For the 50 years prior to 1975, the U.S. incarceration rate averaged about 110, right around rich-world norms. But then, in the 1970s, the great prison buildup began.

This was a bipartisan movement. Democrats like Jerry Brown of California and Ann Richards of Texas, for example, presided over prison population booms, as did Republican governors like John Ashcroft of Missouri and Michael Castle of Delaware. Bill Clinton worried in public about rising prison populations but signed legislation, much of it Republican sponsored, that kept the figures rising. No surprise, then, that spending on incarceration has ballooned from less than $7 billion in 1980 to about $45 billion today.

Just because the U.S. is different doesn't mean it is wrong. But prison is a serious matter in a way that, say, America's inexplicable affection for tractor pulls is not. Accordingly, a number of people--social scientists, prison professionals, even a few politicians--have begun to examine how and why the U.S. sends people to prison. What they are finding, in broad terms, is that there is a substantial minority of prisoners for whom incarceration is inappropriate--and much too expensive.

Who deserves to be imprisoned is, of course, partly a question of moral values. Prison keeps criminals off the streets; it punishes transgressors and deters people from committing crimes. But it is also a question of economic values. Everyone agrees that caging, say, John Wayne Gacy is worth whatever it costs, but that locking up a granny caught shoplifting makes no sense. The question to consider, then, is not "Does prison work?" but "When does prison work?" Economics can help draw the line.

On one level, it makes sense that America imprisons more people than its peers. The U.S. has historically been more violent than Europe, Japan, or Canada--in particular, our homicide rate is well above world norms--and the public wants violent people punished while freeing society from their presence. "We are a culture that believes change is possible, that human beings can be saved," says Francis Cullen of the University of Cincinnati, who specializes in public attitudes toward crime and rehabilitation. "The dividing line is violence. That's where people start becoming unwilling to take risks."

Fundamentally, America's prison population grew because people got sick of feeling scared and elected politicians who promised to deliver freedom from that fear. Moreover, it could be argued that America had some catching up to do: From the early 1960s to the early 1970s, the violent-crime rate rose sharply while the incarceration rate actually fell. Those trends probably helped spawn the "tough on crime" mentality that has reigned since. In the 1980s lawmakers delivered mandatory minimums--statutory requirements for harsh sentences for certain offenses, mostly gun- and drug-related. In the 1990s came "three-strikes" laws, designed to target repeat felons; truth-in-sentencing legislation; and the abolition of parole in many states. All those policies filled prisons, but not necessarily with the hardened thugs people thought they were putting away. Though there are now 400,000 more violent offenders behind bars than there were in 1980, the proportion of violent offenders in the prison population has actually fallen.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the percentage of violent offenders in state prisons has dropped from almost 60% in 1980 to 48% at the end of 1999; 21% were in prison in 1999 for property crimes, 21% for drug crimes, and the rest for public-order offenses, such as immigration, vice, or weapons violations. In the federal system, home to about 145,000 offenders, 58% are in for drug offenses (compared with 25% in 1980) and only 12% for violent crimes--down from 17% in 1990. Of the six crimes that account for the great majority of prisoners (murder, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, drugs, and sexual assault), drug offenders made up 45% of the growth from 1980 to 1996, figures Allan Beck of the BJS. Every year from 1990 through 1997, more people were sentenced to prison for drug offenses than for violent crimes.

(INCARCERATION RATE TABLE IN ARTICLE)

Because imprisonment went up in the 1990s and crime went down, you might conclude that locking up so many criminals bought us less crime. Up to a point that's true. Steven Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, has cleverly provided an empirical foundation to prove the link between incarceration and crime reduction. In 1996 he studied what happened after the courts ordered 12 states to reduce overcrowding in their prison systems. By looking at how the states responded, either by releasing convicts or by building new prisons, he estimated that the effect of imprisoning one additional lawbreaker for a year was to prevent two fewer violent crimes and about a dozen fewer property crimes. The social costs of these crimes Levitt estimated at $53,900 (a figure derived from published estimates commonly used by social scientists). That's well above the $25,000 or so it costs to keep a prisoner behind bars for a year. But that doesn't prove that every prison cell built in America's 25-year construction spree was worth it. There could be ways to deliver just as much public safety for less money.

Take Canada. Like the U.S., Canada saw a sharp decline in violent crime in the 1990s--but while America's prison population almost doubled, Canada's rose only slightly. Or take next-door neighbors New Hampshire and Maine. In the first half of the 1990s, both saw similar declines in crime, but New Hampshire sharply increased the number of people it imprisoned, while Maine did not. Ditto for Kansas and Missouri; the latter built lots more new prisons, but the crime rates in the two states remained similar. In short, building prisons is not the only way to fight crime--and often not a cost-effective way to do so. In economic terms, this is because not every prison cell delivers equal returns, in terms of havoc unwreaked. As more and more people are imprisoned, the nastiness of the inmate population diminishes, so the crime control delivered per convict drops.

Consider the research of John DiIulio, the new director of President Bush's office of faith-based programs; Bert Useem, director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of New Mexico; and Anne Morrison Piehl, a professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In 1999 the trio surveyed male inmates in Arizona, New Mexico, and New York about their criminal pasts. Then they multiplied each crime by its social cost, using National Institute of Justice numbers. (The cost of a rape, for example, is estimated at $98,327; of a burglary, $1,271.) They found that the social cost of the crimes committed by the median inmate in New York--that is, one whose crimes rank 50 on a scale of 100 in terms of seriousness--was $31,866; in New Mexico, $26,486; and in Arizona, $25,472. That's slightly more than the $25,000 cost of incarceration. For the 40th percentile, though, that figure dropped to less than $14,000 in all three states, and for the 20th, less than $7,000. At the 80th percentile, the monetary value of crime caused was almost $240,000 for New York and $163,311 for New Mexico--marking the perpetrator as the type of person for whom prison is clearly an appropriate solution.

The major dividing line between cost-effective and non-cost-effective incarceration?
That turns out to be fairly easy to figure. As a general rule, those who were imprisoned for property or violent crimes caused damage to society that cost more than their incarceration; those convicted solely of drug offenses did not. Drug dealing is not harmless, of course. Having an open-air crack market on the corner kills commerce and devastates neighborhoods. But the authors became convinced that the incarceration of so many drug-only offenders--28% in New York and 18% in Arizona--made no economic sense, because one drug seller sent to prison just created a job opening for another seller.

Consider the example of a Milwaukee street corner. In 1996 a Wisconsin task force noted that although the police had made 94 drug-related arrests in three months at the corner of 9th and Concordia, most of them leading to prison sentences, the drug market continued and public safety did not improve. And the price was substantial: It costs about $23 million to jail 94 people for a year.

In short, the authors found that for drug offenders, "the crime averted by incarceration is low," says Piehl. "We need to come up with sanctions that are graduated so that our only options are not nothing, or prison, or probation." What made that conclusion particularly noteworthy was that Piehl and DiIulio had argued for years in favor of more prisons. But by last year DiIulio, who is no one's idea of a bleeding-heart liberal, was writing an article for the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal titled "Two Million Prisoners Is Enough." Are there better, less costly alternatives to prison for drug offenders?

Lisa Roberson offers one answer to that question.
She is a resident at the Phoenix Career Academy in Brooklyn, N.Y.,
which offers residents--many of them repeat offenders who
would otherwise be in prison--intensive drug treatment, vocational training, and after-care assistance. Roberson, 31, who started selling drugs at 17 and using them at 21, spent four years at Clinton State in New Jersey for selling drugs to an undercover cop. "All I did there is learn how to jail," she says.

When she was arrested again in 2000, the court gave
her a choice: prison or two years at Phoenix. This is no country club. Residents sleep ten to a room. Just about every minute of their day, starting with a 6 A.M. wake-up call, is plotted for them. If Roberson makes it through the program--and about 60% do--she will be drug-free and will have completed training as a drug counselor. Phoenix will help her find a job, an apartment, and child care for her 4-year-old son. Yes, Roberson may regress--of those who complete the course, about a third eventually go back to drugs--but clearly she has a much better shot at establishing a real life than if she had spent several more years "learning how to jail." The cost of her treatment, funded mostly by state and local governments: $17,000 to $18,000 a year.

Many successful drug-treatment programs are run out of prisons too--such as Amity Righturn, a program in a medium-security facility in San Diego that provides more than a year of assessment and counseling, plus further treatment after the inmates have left prison. A 1999 study found that three years after release, 27% of inmates who completed all three parts of the program had returned to prison; among those who got no treatment, 75% did.

On the subject of drug treatment, cost-benefit analysis has something to
say: It works. Numerous studies have concluded that well-run drug-treatment programs, particularly long-term residential ones with follow-up care, can pay for themselves just by reducing crime. Add in the value of incarceration avoided and taxes paid by the freed, and it adds up. Given this context, it's little short of tragic that drug-treatment programs in prison are not keeping pace with the need for them. In 1991 about a third of the inmates who reported drug use in the month prior to their arrest were getting treatment; by 1999 that was down to less than 15%, according to the Department of Justice, and much of that was of the nonintensive variety that has little long-term effect. Treatment is no panacea: Lots of people will drop out or go back to their bad habits.

The point is simply that treatment works often enough for the benefits to outweigh the costs--the exact opposite of the economics of prison for drug offenders.

What about other prison programs? Social scientists have applied cost-benefit analysis to those too. They have found that busy inmates--those given the chance to learn to read, to finish high school, to learn basic job skills--are significantly less likely than idle ones to return to prison. In Maryland, for example, a follow-up analysis published last October of 1,000 former inmates found a 19% lower recidivism rate for those who had taken education programs in prison than for those who hadn't. Extrapolating that 19% figure for the state as a whole suggests that Maryland could save $23.2 million a year in reduced incarceration--double what it spends on prison education programs.

More evidence that educational programs save money:
In 1999 analysts from the state of Washington surveyed
studies dating back to the mid-1970s on what works and what fails in reducing crime. The researchers concluded that for every dollar spent on basic adult education in prison, there was $1.71 in reduced crime; for every dollar on vocational education, $3.23. If you think such data have prompted more educational programs in prisons, think again. Congress passed "get tough" legislation in the 1990s that eliminated Pell grants to prisoners for college courses; it also reduced the requirements for basic and vocational education for prisoners. Many states have therefore taken the opportunity to cut back. Prisoners have a limited constituency, after all, and nixing programs for them is a politically painless way to cut budgets. Ironically, surveys show that the public strongly supports prisoner-rehabilitation programs. So do many who run the prisons.

Tommy Douberley, warden of Florida's Moore Haven Correctional Facility, is convinced that no-frills prisons are a mistake. "These people are going to be returned to society," he says. "We need to make some provision for them that when they get out they are better than when they went in."

Politicians, however, seem to have interpreted the public's clear desire for greater safety as a mandate for more and harsher prisons. And they are not the same thing at all. There are signs that America is beginning to recognize the limits of prison. Drug offenders are less likely to be sentenced to prison today than they were in 1992 (though still more than three times as likely as in 1980), in part because of the emergence of drug courts in many states, which force defendants into treatment on pain of prison. But past policies continue to exert expansionary pressure. From June 1999 to June 2000, the last 12-month period for which figures are available, the incarcerated population rose 3%. Though the smallest rise in decades, that still meant that 31,000 more Americans were behind bars. To house them means building a prison every ten days or so--an expensive hobby, considering that a medium-security facility for 1,000 inmates can cost $50 million.

Make no mistake: A large proportion of inmates thoroughly deserve to be exactly where they are. Incarceration is an effective way to isolate really awful people. But too many prisons stuffed with nonviolent, idle inmates is simply wasteful, of both people and money. We would do better to learn from several states that have lowered the crime rate without substantially raising prison populations--as New York did at least in part by aggressively funneling drug offenders into treatment, for example. Instead of being exceptional for its willingness to jail its citizens, the goal for America should be to become exceptional in the application of wisdom to its criminal population. At the moment, it is not even close.

Posted by lois at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

WVA: Prison Refomer Hopes for Statewide Success

Charleston Daily Mail, West VA
Prison reformer hopes for statewide success

by Kris Wise
Daily Mail Capitol reporter
Thursday February 23, 2006

WELLSBURG -- Proponents of alternative sentencing programs are looking to overhaul the way the state deals with lawbreakers, and in turn cut down on climbing regional jail costs and prison overcrowding.

Jim Lee, a veteran probation officer in Brooke County, has spent the better part of two decades promoting diversion programs such as community service, day reporting centers and drug rehabilitation for convicted criminals.

Now that the Legislature and counties across the state are struggling to deal with rising regional jail costs and exploding inmate populations, Lee's ideas might be starting to resonate.

"We've been in this madness, locking people up and giving them their just desserts, for 24 years," Lee said.

"I see the same people coming out (of jail) and then going right back in, and then I see their kids doing the same thing. We are never able to break the cycle."

Lee and other law enforcement experts still are trying to come to terms with statistics showing West Virginia has one of the lowest crime rates in the nation while maintaining one of the most rapidly rising incarceration rates.

The state for years incarcerated fewer persons in relation to its population than other states. It has moved up the scale in recent years but still falls significantly below the national average and ranked 40th among states in 2004, according to U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics.

But the growing number of men and women in jail is putting serious strains on state and county resources.

A bill advancing through the Legislature would shift some of the costs of housing inmates in regional jails from the counties to the state. Many counties exhaust their annual jail budgets in the span of a few short months.

The measure would have the state pay 25 percent of those fees, which already have risen by $9 a day this year to $48.50 per inmate each day. If legislation passes, the state's share of regional jail costs will increase another $17 million.

The population at most jails has expanded rapidly in recent years, mostly because of overflow from state prisons that are too small and fall short of beds for more than 1,000 prisoners.

Lee is among those fighting to halt jail expansion and instead change the way people in the state are sentenced.

He's courting legislators, Gov. Joe Manchin and other state executives to buy into his philosophy that only the most violent offenders and sexual predators should be put behind bars.

He said he's seen criminals in his jurisdiction pay a more meaningful debt to society by staying in it.

"What is the crime rate going to look like in a few years if we don't change things?" Lee asked recently from his office outside Wheeling.

"We sentence them to jail, but then when we let them out, we've taken away all their rights. They can't own a gun, they can't get a job and they can't go to college because they don't have any way to make money or get benefits."

Lee hoped to thwart the failing trend in 2001 when he helped open the state's first day reporting center.

Offenders show up there each day for supervised work assignments instead of being incarcerated.

Since then, Lee has started the state's first drug and drunken driving court. He's working to open a new 10-bed residential center for parolees, and he's courting big employers such as Wal-Mart and Lowe's to start a supervised employment program for low-level offenders.

Lee also is pushing for consolidation of the state's 17 day reporting centers, which are modeled after his. At the centers in Kanawha and surrounding counties, offenders show up to do tasks ranging from mowing lawns to painting government buildings.

Lee's plan for the state would have a network of just 12 or so reporting centers that would be more cost efficient and would allow for expansion of alternative sentencing programs like those that have seen success in the Northern Panhandle.

One recent morning, Lee and his team of about a dozen drug counselors and probation officers met to review the cases of 26 offenders recently sentenced through another of those programs, a five-county drug and DUI court.

In Hancock, Brooke, Ohio, Marshall and Wetzel counties, people arrested on drug charges or driving under the influence can be referred to the alternative drug court by a police officer, a judge or even a family member.

The court -- including a judge, a probation officer and counselors -- decides on an approach that will work best to break the person's addiction, get him cleaned up and back functioning in society.

Offenders are sentenced to so much community service each week, supervised work through the day reporting center and a heavy dose of counseling and addiction courses.

Some are sentenced to periods of home confinement, some have to wear ankle bracelets that monitor their alcohol intake and all of them have to submit to frequent urine tests.

Offenders who don't follow the rules - those who show up with drugs or alcohol in their systems, stop attending addiction classes and counseling or become uncooperative -- are sanctioned. They can be fined or demoted in the program, and if things get bad enough they can be locked in jail for up to a week.

Those who don't improve can be expelled from the program and then face the jail sentence they would have in a regular court.

Last week, problems arose with several offenders who were either still experimenting with drugs and alcohol or neglecting their treatment plans.

One young man was fueling his alcohol addiction by drinking four bottles of Robitussin in between sessions each day.

Another offender occasionally would skip treatment when his college-age girlfriend would come home for the weekend.

One participant, who'd been repeatedly sanctioned, was given a final warning and spent five days in jail as punishment. If he continues acting out, he could be expelled from the program and his crime - fourth-offense burglary
-- could qualify him for five to 15 years in jail.

"Sometimes that's all it takes to get an attitude adjustment," probation officer George Winter said. "He didn't like being confined, didn't like the food and just when he found a guy to sit and talk to, he found out that guy was in there for sexually abusing a child. He was mortified at the thought of being locked up with child molesters."

Challenges in the program often reach beyond trying to straighten out lawbreakers who might be hesitant to give up old habits.

Providing transportation for criminals from their homes to day reporting centers sometimes several counties away can pose problems and often becomes an excuse offenders use to explain why they fail at rehab.

Securing housing sometimes trips up even offenders who want to succeed in the program. Often, addicts have overstepped the boundaries of friends and family members who have provided a roof over their heads. Sometimes offenders are living in crime-riddled housing projects or with other addicts, environments that are not conducive to recovery.

Sometimes the most daunting task for drug court and day reporting officials is just dealing with the scope of a person's drug problem.

Last week, Lee and his staff were handed the case of a young woman addicted to heroin, the substance of choice these days for most of the offenders that come through the Wheeling-area alternative sentencing programs. This particular woman was in the worst shape many of them had seen, doing up to 10 bags of heroin a day.

"These are addictions that just don't get better in jail," Lee said. "We lose them so quickly when they have been incarcerated. Unless we give them help, they aren't going to get it."

The goal of the drug court and the day reporting programs is for offenders to finish sober, with a stable job or the skills they need to get one and a secure place to live.

In the past five years, about 650 people have been assigned to day reporting programs for work and rehabilitation.

About 230 of them have been expelled from the program for either repeatedly failing drug tests or breaking program rules. Most of those have wound up back in jail.

The Northern Panhandle's mental health court, which helps rehabilitate offenders with serious mental illness, has 150 participants right now. The drug and drunken driving court oversees about 36 non-violent offenders in the throes of addiction or working on recovery.

The process of graduating from the drug court program is a long one. There are three phases of rehabilitation that take a total of a year and require weekly to bi-monthly court appearances, along with imposed community service and counseling. A person then must submit to continued drug tests and less frequent rehabilitation sessions and stay clean for an additional six months to "graduate" from the program.

"All the issues are based on giving someone the tools to be successful, and then allowing them to be successful," Lee said. "They have more eyes on them than they would being in jail, but the goal is to give them self worth. That's ultimately what will lead to change."

http://www.dailymail.com/news/News/2006022343/

Contact writer Kris Wise at 348-1244.

Posted by lois at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

Aid to Students with Drug Convictions Restored

Aid To Students With Drug Convictions Restored

February 13, 2006

Faces & Voices of Recovery

www.facesandvoicesofrecovery.org

Washington, DC - Thousands of students with drug convictions, many of whom are in recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs, will be eligible for federal financial aid to students. A provision in the budget bill signed into law by President Bush will help people with drug convictions regain eligibility for federal student financial aid, which has been denied since 1998.

"We applaud this important first step in making educational financial aid available to all Americans. It will increase opportunities for thousands of people, many of whom are in recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs," said Merlyn Karst, chair of Faces & Voices of Recovery. "Most Americans supported changing the law and viewed the ban on student aid as discriminatory against people who want a chance to make a positive change in their lives."

Under the new law, people can receive aid unless they are convicted of a drug felony or misdemeanor while in school.

Students convicted while receiving federal aid will remain ineligible - for one year for a first possession offense, two years for a second and indefinitely for a third, with harsher penalties for selling. Repeal of the ban on federal financial aid to students with drug convictions is one element of Faces & Voices of Recovery's Right to Addiction Recovery platform.

Faces & Voices of Recovery is releasing a flyer, "Exercise Your Rights." It will be distributed through recovery community organizations around the country. It informs likely students of their restored right to federal financial aid to attend community college, technical school and college. Faces & Voices of Recovery is working to mobilize, organize and rally the families, friends and allies of the millions of Americans in recovery from addiction in a campaign to: end discrimination; broaden social understanding; and achieve a just response to addiction as

a public health crisis. For more information, please visit: www.facesandvoicesofrecovery.org
.

From the Faces and Voices website:

How the New Law Will Work

The new law goes into effect on July 1, 2006. People will be able to receive aid unless they are convicted of a drug felony or misdemeanor while in school. Students convicted while receiving federal aid will remain ineligible - for one year for a first possession offense, two years for a second and indefinitely for a third, with harsher penalties for sales.

People can participate in treatment programs in order to qualify for their aid to be restored. However accessing treatment services can be extremely difficult. The federal government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Institute of Medicine have estimated that only 20% of the individuals who need drug and alcohol treatment in any given year receive care.

The US Department of Education, which oversees the new law, will be deciding how it will be implemented over the next few months. In the meantime, if you have a prior drug conviction or know of someone who has one and is thinking about going back to school, talk with a financial aid counselor at the school you would like to attend about filling out the FAFSA financial aid form.

Faces & Voices will continue to work for full repeal. Under the law, students convicted while receiving federal aid will still lose their eligibility - for one year for a first possession offense, two years for a second and indefinitely for a third, with harsher penalties for selling. We will also continue to work to remove the drug conviction question from the financial aid form.

http://www.jointogether.org/news/yourturn/announcements/2006/aid-to-students-with-drug... 2/15/2006

Join Together publishes selected press releases and other announcements relevant to alcohol and drug policy, prevention and treatment.

Posted by lois at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)

"Mixed Signals" new counter military recuritment comic book from Sabrina Jones

"Mixed Signals" - a counter-recruitment tool in comicbook form - is now available for use in activism,outreach, counseling, education, startingconversations and saving lives.

For Sample Copies: Please email me your address and
how you'll use them.

16 pages, black & white.
Suggested donation: $2 per copy.
Mailing address: Sabrina Jones
811 Cortelyou Rd #6O, Brooklyn NY 11218

If you are a no-budget group - we can send you some free copies, otherwise, please contribute what you canto keep this thing rolling.
We're hoping to raise funds to print it with color covers (any leads?) but for now, let's get the messageout!
If you have access to a good quality copier, you can
order one copy, remove the staples, and make your own multiples.

Content:
Mixed Signals contains specific information on the
enlistment contract, benefits and obligations. It
proposes alternative sources of college money and job
training, and non-violent forms of community service.
Stories about fictional characters alternate with
illustrated fact-sheets about military life and
non-military opportunities. It questions today's
militaristic climate by raising the issue of
conscientious objection, through a fictional
character, then two recent cases and a brief history.
The comic offers useful, concrete, legal facts, as
well as prompting deeper reflection on the role of
militarism in our lives and society. Mixed Signals
takes vital information from flyers and web sites, and
puts it in an appealing, easy-to-pass-along format, to
catch the eyes of our most vulerable young citizens.

Drop in any time: www.sabrinaland.com
or check me out on these sites:
NEWEST!: http://www.nextleftnotes.net/ www.directoryofillustration.com/SabrinaJones
www.wobblyshow.org/gallery1.php

Posted by lois at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2006

LA Times Editorial: Politicizing Prisons

EDITORIAL
Politicizing prisons
February 23, 2006

SENDING 1,300 INMATES IN L.A. County jails back to state prisons, as the Board of Supervisors proposed Tuesday, is sort of like pitching them from one burning building to another. As bad as the overcrowding, understaffing and inmate violence are in the county jails, the dysfunctional state prison system is hardly an improvement. But the move does at least help focus the political spotlight where it belongs: on a state bureaucracy that is a big contributor to the county's corrections nightmare.

State prisons are already overflowing, with twice the number of inmates they were designed to hold, so the state may fight the county's move. The county has a $27-million contract to hold state prisoners who are either parole violators or felons with less than a year left on their sentences; supervisors voted Tuesday to cancel it as a way of improving supervision of the county's burgeoning inmate population.

There are on average about 21,000 inmates a day in L.A. County jails, and fewer than 3,000 deputies and civilian employees to guard them - a frighteningly unbalanced ratio. Part of the reason for the huge and growing jail population is a series of get-tough-on-crime laws passed since the 1980s. But another is the gross inadequacy of rehabilitation programs at state prisons, including wrongheaded approaches to parole violators, youth offenders and women.

California has the second-highest recidivism rate in the United States. Only 21% of the state's parolees successfully complete their term of supervision, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The returnees have to be processed at county jails, so both systems pay the price.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed many sensible reforms to reduce recidivism and lower the prison population, only to be thwarted at every turn by the politically powerful state prison guards union - which opposes anything that could jeopardize jobs for its members.

In 2004, pressure from the union was a factor in the state's decision to close 300 vocational education programs in the prisons - programs that gave inmates badly needed job skills. Last year, in a move also backed by the guards, the state ended a program that sent nonviolent parole violators to community-based rehabilitation centers or to home detention.

Schwarzenegger hasn't given up trying, partially because he's bound by court orders and settlement agreements to improve prison conditions. He recently released plans to better house and rehabilitate youth offenders, whose experience with the state correctional system too often helps mold them into career criminals, and to move nonviolent female inmates to private community centers. Both proposals are in for a battle as the prison guards' political lackeys in both parties stand up against them.

Enough. Schwarzenegger needs to find the backbone to support these reforms with what political capital he has left. And Californians can help by letting their representatives in Sacramento know that improving conditions in the state's prisons is a priority.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-jails23feb23,0,3968114.stor
y?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

Posted by lois at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)

NY State Takes Over 9 Substance Abuse Centers

New York Times

State Takes Over 9 Substance Abuse Centers

By JULIA C. MEAD
Published: February 24, 2006

The receivership does not involve about 15 group homes for recovering addicts, known as sober homes, that are operated by Crossings.

An assistant state attorney general, Denis J. McElligott, said the agency would decide whether Frank Buonanotte, the Crossings owner, would have any access to the clinics or their records.

On Feb. 14, the agency revoked the operating licenses of all nine clinics and sought a court-ordered receivership, actions the company then challenged in court.

Posted by lois at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2006

Women and Girls in the Criminal Justice System

http://www.ncjrs.org/spotlight/wgcjs/Summary.html
Women and Girls in the Criminal Justice System
Source: National Criminal Justice Reference Service
"Female criminal behavior has been commonly perceived as a less serious problem than male criminal behavior. Historically, women have been more likely to commit minor offenses and have made up only a small proportion of the offender population. Although women remain a relatively small number of all prisoners, these facts have concealed a trend in the rising percentage of female offenders, their participation in violent crime, and have inhibited the development of gender-specific programs to address the issue."

Posted by lois at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)

Falling Through the Cracks: Loss of State-Based Financial Aid

Falling Through the Cracks: Loss of State-Based Financial Aid Eligibility for Students Affected by the Federal Higher Education Act Drug Provision
Source: Coalition for Higher Education Act Reform (CHEAR)
"The drug provision of the Higher Education Act expressly denies federal aid to persons convicted of state or federal drug offenses for specified periods of time.4 However, the law offers no prescribed method by which states should determine eligibility for state financial aid. This has led to inconsistency and confusion among state financial aid offices, leaving many qualified applicants without the resources they need to go to college, and many financial aid officers believing, incorrectly, that they must deny aid to students who have been convicted of drug offenses simply because the federal government has done so. This report details the findings of research conducted on how the 50 states and the District of Columbia determine eligibility for state-based financial aid for persons who have reported having drug convictions on Question 31 of the Free Application for Student Financial Aid (FAFSA). The report also makes recommendations for how states can clarify the situation so that students losing federal aid because of drug convictions can still receive state aid."

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

Debt to Society Is Least of Costs for People Who Have Been Incarcerated

February 23, 2006
Debt to Society Is Least of Costs for Ex-Convicts
By ADAM LIPTAK, NY Times. Page 1
It is increasingly expensive to be a criminal.

Beverly Dubois, a 49-year-old former park ranger in Washington State, spent nine months in jail for growing and selling marijuana. She still owes the state almost $1,900 for court costs and various fees. Until she pays up, the state has taken away her right to vote.

Wilbert Rideau, 64, a convicted killer, spent 44 years in Louisiana prisons. Not long after he was released last year, he filed for bankruptcy in an effort to avoid the state's attempts to collect $127,000 in court costs.

Almost every encounter with the criminal justice system these days can give rise to a fee. There are application fees and co-payments for public defenders. Sentences include court costs, restitution and contributions to various funds. In Washington State, people convicted of certain crimes are also charged $100 so their DNA can be put in a database.

Private probation companies charge $30 to $40 a month for supervision. Halfway houses charge for staying in them. People sentenced to community service are required to buy $15 insurance policies for every week they work. Criminals on probation and parole wear global positioning devices that monitor their whereabouts — for a charge of as much as $16 a day.

The sums raised by these ever-mounting fees are intended to help offset some of the enormous costs of operating the criminal justice system. But even relatively small fees — $40 per session, say, for a court-ordered anger management class or $15 for a drug test — can have devastating consequences for people who emerge from prison with no money, credit or prospects, and who live in fear of being sent back for failing to pay.

"The difference between 30 years ago and today," said George H. Kendall, a lawyer with Holland & Knight in New York who represents Mr. Rideau, "is that people who everyone agrees are poor are leaving the courthouse significantly poorer."

Prosecutors and political leaders often say it is only fair that criminals rather than taxpayers pay for what it costs to protect the public.

But Judge James R. Thurman of the Magistrate Court in Lee County, Ga., said his state's many fees, known there as add-ons, were a backdoor way to make poor people pay for the free lawyers guaranteed to them by the United States Supreme Court's decision in Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963.

"You're asking the people who can't afford to hire an attorney to pay anyway by making them pay through add-on fees," Judge Thurman said.

Indeed, according to the American Bar Association, at least 15 states, including New Jersey and Connecticut, charge application fees to people seeking court-appointed lawyers. Washington has one of the longest lists of fees assessed to criminals, and it is diligent in trying to collect them. Ms. Dubois, disabled after a car accident, makes payments of $10 a month toward what was once a $1,610 debt — $1,000 for a county "drug enforcement fund," a $500 "victim assessment fee" and $110 in court costs.

"I still don't know who the victim was," she said.

Her efforts notwithstanding, her debt is growing because of the 12 percent interest assessed annually by the State of Washington. As of September, it stood at $1,895.69.

"I will never have it paid off in my lifetime," Ms. Dubois said.

Washington also uses an unusual tool: it denies people who have not paid such debts the right to vote.

"You have to complete all the terms of your sentence" to regain the right to vote, explained Jeffrey T. Even, a lawyer for the state. "If the monthly payment is low enough and if the debt is high enough, you can actually be going backwards."

Aaron H. Caplan, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington State, which has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Ms. Dubois challenging her disenfranchisement, said that tens of thousands of people were affected and that their number would grow. "Over the last 20 to 25 years, the Legislature has been making it more and more expensive to purchase back the right to vote," Mr. Caplan said.

National figures concerning fees assessed to criminals are not available, but Washington is something of a case study. The state sends out some 79,000 bills every month, and it collected about $25 million last year. But these collection efforts are barely making a dent in the $1.2 billion owed by former offenders, much of it for the cost of prison room and board, which can reach $50 a day. The budget of the State Department of Corrections for the two-year period ending in 2007 is more than $1.4 billion.

Fees for room and board are levied in many states, and they can quickly mount to levels that are essentially uncollectible, with states not bothering, except in special cases. Even other types of fees can be unwieldy.

Mr. Rideau, for instance, has been billed $127,000 for the cost of his fourth and final trial last year.

Louisiana wants him to pay for the costs of housing, feeding and transporting his jury from across the state. The prosecution has submitted bills from more than two dozen establishments, including the Seafood Palace ($435.68), Ruby Tuesday ($312.66) and Best Suites ($16,874.33).

His trial was expensive partly because Mr. Rideau was so famous in Lake Charles, La., where he killed a bank teller in 1961. He was convicted of murder three times, in 1961, 1964 and 1970, but appeals courts threw out the verdicts, citing misconduct by the government.

A fourth jury last year rejected the murder charge and found Mr. Rideau guilty of manslaughter, which had a maximum sentence of 21 years, meaning his sentence was complete. Mr. Rideau, who was also a prison journalist during his four decades behind bars, was freed that same day.

But Louisiana was not done with Mr. Rideau. David A. Ritchie, the judge in the case, ruled that Mr. Rideau was responsible for all of the charges billed by the prosecution.

"Mr. Rideau is the one that committed this crime that led to this trial, then led to all these costs," Judge Ritchie said at a hearing in August. "That's why people are charged court costs, because it's their actions."

Mr. Rideau has filed for bankruptcy, even though it is not clear that bankruptcy can erase debts of this kind. He has also appealed the decision, saying he is puzzled by the state's efforts.

"Society's interest is in an ex-con becoming solvent and in becoming a contributing member of society," Mr. Rideau said. "They created this court-costs sham to sabotage my efforts to create a life."

John F. Derosier, the district attorney in the case, defended the charges in court papers opposing Mr. Rideau's appeal last month. "He owes a debt to society which must be paid," Mr. Derosier wrote.

The assessment of court costs is common in civil cases. Many state laws allow or require the costs to be imposed in criminal cases, too, though rarely for an amount even approaching that sought from Mr. Rideau. Vanita Gupta, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which also represents Mr. Rideau, said his case might have unintended consequences.

"The prospect of having to pay for court costs is going to dissuade some defendants from going to trial," Ms. Gupta said. Even an innocent defendant, she said, may prefer a guilty plea to a trial if the downside includes not only a longer sentence but also a crushing debt.

Georgia is also aggressive in collecting fees, and it has enlisted private probation companies to help. The companies charge a monthly fee of $30 or $40 for their services. That fee can rival the fine.

"You're basically charging an interest fee that would make a finance company blush," said Stephen B. Bright, the director of the Southern Center for Human Rights.

In 2003, for instance, Sabrina Byrd, a 27-year-old single mother, was ordered to pay $852 for failing to leash and vaccinate her dog in College Park, Ga. Too poor to pay, she was placed on probation while she made 10 monthly installments, along with a monthly fee to a probation company of $39 — about half of the fine. When she fell behind and failed to contact the company, a judge revoked her probation and sentenced her to 25 days in jail.

Though the Supreme Court has said that defendants may not be jailed for failing to pay a fine when they have no money, they can be jailed for failing to report to their probation officer. Many poor people do not appreciate that distinction and fail to report when they have no money.

Judge Thurman, who was not involved in Ms. Byrd's case, said he took pains to tell people to report no matter what. Otherwise, "I have no alternative but to issue a warrant for your arrest," he tells defendants.

But some probation companies, according to court records, effectively use the threat of arrest as a collection tool.

John Cole Vodicka, the director of Georgia's Prison and Jail Project, questioned the current system.

"A $500 fine going into probation translates into $1,500 coming out of probation," he said. "No one's really benefiting, except maybe private companies."

New technologies can also add fees. Isecuretrac, an Omaha company that sells global positioning monitors to local governments to track sex offenders and others, promotes a system that encourages offenders to pay, often on a sliding scale based on financial resources. Thomas E. Wharton Jr., the company's chief executive, said about 70 percent of county agencies that use electronic monitoring charge the offenders for them.

"I don't think the intent really is to gouge offenders," Mr. Wharton said, "because they have a difficult enough time to get back into their communities and to support themselves."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/national/23fees.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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

February 21, 2006

CT: Teen Crimes, Adult Prisons

Teen Crimes, Adult Prisons
Parents, Advocates Seek Change For Offenders Under 18

By COLIN POITRAS
Courant Staff Writer

February 21 2006

Johnna Paradis fought hard to hold it together the day she picked up her 16-year-old son from the Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire.

He was so pale and gaunt, "he looked like someone from a POW camp," Paradis said. "It was horrible."

Paradis said her son, Christopher Wasicki, who suffers from depression and bipolar disorder, didn't get critical medication and thought about killing himself often during his four weeks of hard time at Manson, a high-security adult prison where he was confined to a cell for more than 21 hours a day for the first two weeks.

Teen
Paradis is one of a team of parents, advocates and state legislators making a push this session to keep Connecticut's teenagers under the age of 18 out of the adult criminal justice system. Connecticut is one of only three states - New York and North Carolina are the others - that automatically try and incarcerate teenagers 16 and older as adults, no matter how minor the offense. The majority of the country considers 18 the age of adulthood, although children under 18 can be sentenced to adult prison for certain crimes.

Members of "Raise the Age CT" are staging a press conference, rally and information session this morning in the Legislative Office Building to get attention for their cause. Rep. Toni Walker, D-New Haven, has already introduced legislation this session calling for a change.

"Troubled children need treatment, not jail, to turn their lives around," said Paradis, a single mother from Stamford. "My son needed help and instead he was sent to jail with no programs to help him. It is time to change this law and give our children a second chance."

Talk of changing the age has been circulating in the legislature for more than a decade. The primary obstacle has been the measure's overwhelming cost. Judicial officials last year estimated bringing 16- and 17-year-olds under the auspices of the juvenile court system would create a 50 percent increase in caseloads and cost the state up to $90 million to expand staff, facilities and services appropriately.

Walker and other advocates believe the cost was grossly overestimated, failing to take into account long-range savings that would come with reduced recidivism and the possibility that existing staff in the adult system could be transferred to help ease the burden on juvenile courts. Walker's bill calls for increasing the age gradually over two years to help develop more community diversion programs for older youths and decrease the immediate impact on the state budget.

In what many considered a first-step victory last year, the legislature approved an expansion of the state's youthful offender statutes so 16- and 17-year-olds are automatically considered youthful offenders when they appear in adult court. The move, which is expected to affect about 900 teens a year, limits the maximum incarceration for such defendants to four years, provides for their court hearings to be closed to the public and increases their chances for special probation, counseling and other alternatives to incarceration.

This year, supporters are hoping to gain broader support for their bill in light of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that prohibits the execution of people for crimes they committed before the age of 18. The court's opinion relied in part on recent medical research that appears to show that adolescent brains aren't mature enough to fully understand the consequences of their actions until at least the age of 18.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, noted "a lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility are found in youths more often than in adults and are more understandable among the young. ... These differences render suspect any conclusion that a juvenile falls among the worst offenders. ... The age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood."

The suicide of 17-year-old David Burgos in Manson in July also has brought attention to the issue. Burgos, sent to Manson for violating his probation after allegedly being caught stealing, had a history of mental illness and struggled with bipolar and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, his family said.

Burgos had been at Manson for about four months when he hanged himself with a bed sheet.

"Connecticut's policy of locking up children with adults has failed our youth and our communities," said Abby Anderson, a senior policy associate for the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance in Bridgeport. "It is a waste of money, does not reduce crime and destroys lives."

More than 80 percent of the children and youths tried as adults in Connecticut are arrested for nonviolent property offenses such as larceny or minor crimes such as drug possession, fighting and disorderly conduct, according to Alliance statistics. Christopher Wasicki was sent to Manson in May 2004 as a result of an alleged fistfight with another youth in his neighborhood. His family raised money to cover his $10,000 bail and freed him after four weeks. He remains on probation for that charge.

Each year in Connecticut, approximately 10,000 youths age 16 and 17 are automatically tried as adults, according to the Alliance. Connecticut continues to prosecute them as adults despite research showing that youths held in adult jails and prisons are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted and eight times more likely to commit suicide than youths held in juvenile facilities.

Studies show that between 50 and 60 percent of children admitted to detention in Connecticut have some form of mental illness or disability in need of treatment. At the time Burgos was incarcerated, 18 of the 644 youths at Manson were victims of abuse and neglect committed to the Department of Children and Families and considered wards of the state. An additional 112 boys came from families with active abuse and neglect cases, DCF spokesman Gary Kleeblatt said.

While state correction officials have improved schooling and other services for younger inmates at Manson in the past year, advocates say that when incarcerated with older adults, youths under 18 still do not receive the quality of support, counseling and other services tailored for them in the juvenile court system.

The Manson Youth Institution is the only high-security state prison for serious criminal offenders age 14 to 21. Most youths under the age of 16 are processed in the Superior Courts for Juvenile Matters when they get arrested and many are sent to the Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown or other programs if a judge decides their case warrants confinement. But some youths as young as 14 or 15 have wound up in the adult criminal system due to a 1995 law which automatically transfers serious juvenile felony cases such as murder, armed robbery or rape to adult court. The proposed legislation to raise the juvenile court age to 18 would not change that provision, supporters say.

From 1935 to 1971, Connecticut treated children younger than 18 as juveniles. But like many states, Connecticut responded to a surge in youth and gang violence in the mid-1990s by adopting stronger laws that promoted "adult time for adult crime."

------------------------------------------
Children In Adult Prisons
An effort is underway to persuade lawmakers to raise the juvenile age in Connecticut from 16 to 18 to reduce the number of children under 18 in adult prisons. Children as young as 14 may be sentenced to adult prison for some crimes. This is a look at the prison population for those under age 18. Boys age 14-21 are housed at the Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire, and girls as young as 16 are housed at the York Correctional Institution in Niantic. These figures represent a one-day snapshot from Oct. 1, 2005:

• • •
Unsentenced boys 14-15: 17
Sentenced boys 14-15: 6
(All were 15)
• • •
Unsentenced boys 16-17: 198
Sentenced boys 16-17: 129

• • •

Unsentenced girls 16-17: 13
Sentenced girls 16-17: 6
\
• • •

Source: The Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance, a Bridgeport-based, nonprofit advocacy group.

Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant

http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-juvage0221.artfeb21,0,2929623.story?coll=hc-headlines-local

Posted by lois at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2006

Hawaiian Women Incarcerated in KY--double punishment

The Louisville Courier-Journal
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Doing time a long way from home
For Hawaiians in Kentucky, it's 'double punishment'
By Andrew Wolfson, awolfson@courier-journal.com
WHEELWRIGHT, Ky. -- It harkens back to centuries past, when felons were banished to penal colonies on distant continents.
One hundred and nineteen Hawaiians -- all women -- are locked behind razor-wire fences at an isolated private prison in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, 4,500 miles from their homes and families.

Most will never get a visitor, no matter how long they're incarcerated.
Emerald Nakamura, 26, of Honolulu, who is serving five years for forging checks, sees her 20-month old son Ikaika once a month -- on a video screen. She said he doesn't recognize her.
"It is very sad," she said. "I think about him all the time."
The Hawaiians are housed at the Otter Creek Correctional Center because of severe prison crowding in their native state, and because incarcerating inmates on the mainland saves Hawaii money.
Even with the price of flying inmates across the Pacific and back, it's still cheaper to house them in the continental United States. It costs $56 per day to house each inmate off the islands, compared with $110 in heavily unionized Hawaii, where a gallon of milk is $6.
Ten years after Hawaii started exporting prisoners, nearly half its 3,858 inmates are lodged in the continental United States -- in rural Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arizona and Kentucky, all in prisons owned by Corrections Corporation of America.
The Nashville-based company says it has saved the state $158 million since 1998.
But prisoner-rights advocates in Hawaii say it is a false economy.
"The cost per bed may be cheaper, but not when you include the cost of broken families," said Kat Brady, coordinator for the Community Alliance on Prisons in Honolulu. "It is hard for a woman to come home after three or five or 10 years and say, 'I'm your mom,' when her child has never been able to visit her."
The Hawaii Department of Public Safety doesn't dispute that sending inmates out of state is hard on them, said Shari Kimoto, who runs its mainland branch. But she said the agency has no choice because the people of Hawaii don't want prisons built in their back yards, and the remaining open areas that can still be developed are prized for resorts.
Kimoto acknowledges that separation is particularly hard on women, who traditionally have been the primary caregivers in their families. But that is where her sympathy ends.
"I don't think they had their children or families on their mind when they did their crimes or did their drugs," she said.
The Hawaiians have been held at Otter Creek since September, when CCA reopened it as a women's prison; 399 Kentucky women also are held in the facility, which once housed about 600 men from Indiana and also was the scene of a nine-hour riot in July 2001.
But the Hawaiians went unnoticed outside of Wheelwright, a former coal camp, until Sarah Ah Mau, 43, died mysteriously Dec. 31 after complaining for a month of a stomachache. The cause of her death is still under investigation.
Hawaiian news organizations reported that she'd told family members before her death that her pleas for medical attention went ignored. CCA said in a statement that her care was appropriate.
A Courier-Journal reporter was allowed to interview 10 of the Hawaiians but barred from asking any questions about Ah Mau's death; Warden Joyce Arnold also insisted that the prison's security director monitor the interviews.
Adjusting to Kentucky
About half the women are serving time for using and selling crystal methamphetamine -- known as ice -- which swept through the islands in the 1990s.
The women interviewed said they deserved to be punished but questioned the fairness of being sent so far from home.
"It is like a double punishment," said Deenie Tanele, 33, who has been locked up since 1999 for smoking and selling ice and will serve out her term until 2009.
The U.S. Supreme Court, however, ruled in a case from Hawaii in 1983 that an inmate has no "justifiable expectation that he will be incarcerated in any particular state."
Most states, including Kentucky, ship only a few inmates to other states, usually for security reasons. (Kentucky has 19 housed elsewhere; Indiana has none, according to corrections departments in both states.)
Wisconsin, which six years ago had more than 5,000 prisoners out of state, leading the nation in that category, brought the last of them home last year, said John Dipko, a spokesman for the state corrections department.
The state acted in part so its prisoners would have more family support and be less likely to commit more crimes, Dipko said.
Otter Creek is the fourth stop for many of the Hawaiian women. They were removed from prisons in Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado after other private companies allegedly violated contracts by refusing to provide promised vocational training and drug treatment.
In Colorado, two of the inmates allegedly were sexually assaulted, and inmates had to teach their own vocational classes.
The women say their hardest adjustment in Kentucky has been to the weather. The average February temperature in Wheelwright is 35 degrees, compared with 73 in Honolulu.
"The cold is unbelievable," said Iwalani Carroll-Vierra, 27, who is also serving time for selling ice and noted that she must sleep fully dressed because she is allergic to her blankets.
The Hawaiians also have had to allow for subtle but significant cultural differences, said Catherine Samuel, 65, who is serving 20 years to life for murder.
For example, guards have confused a hand symbol that signifies good luck in Hawaii with a gang sign, she said. Hawaiians also are more likely to touch one another and hold hands, which Samuel said has been confused with prohibited lesbian advances.
Arnold, the warden, said officials are aware of the differences, which she said came into play earlier this month when an inmate innocently put her hand on an officer's shoulder. Arnold said the inmate nonetheless was placed in segregation under the prison's zero-tolerance policy for touching employees. Kimoto said Hawaiian prisons have the same policy.
As a concession to the Hawaiian diet, prisoners are served rice at least once a day and fresh fruit at least once a week. They also may practice hula and other native dances for one hour twice a week, and they will be allowed to celebrate King Kamehameha Day each June 11, to honor the monarch who unified the Hawaiian Islands.
But Arnold acknowledged that it is hard for the Hawaiians to watch as Kentucky inmates get visited weekly by their families and friends, while nobody comes to see them.
A few have received visits from friends from the mainland, Arnold said, but most say traveling from the islands is so expensive that they're not expecting any visits from home.
Even collect phone calls, at $9.75 for 15 minutes, are expensive enough that some have had to stop calling their families.
Norma Tanele, mother of Deenie, said in a phone interview from Waipahu, near Honolulu, that her phone has been blocked from receiving calls from the prison for two years because she's been unable to pay her bill.
Tanele, 62, said that she scraped together money to visit her daughter once, when she was imprisoned in Colorado, but that she can't afford to fly to Kentucky.
Although Hawaiian churches pay for video teleconferences, Deenie Tanele said they became too emotional for her daughter, Mahini, 9, who is being raised by her grandparents. "If I cry, then she cries, and that's no good," Deenie Tanele said.
Inmates such as Patsy Kahaunaele, 36, who is serving 10 years for selling and using ice, said she worries most that her family members will die and she won't be able to bury them.
The state of Hawaii won't pay to fly inmates home for funerals. They are allowed to listen on the phone, and the state will send them a videotape, Kimoto said.
'Life has been taken away'
Several prisoners praised an intensive drug-treatment program offered at Otter Creek, and said they have more freedom there than at Hawaii's single, crowded women's prison on the island of Oahu.

But Samuel said the private prison has been slow to provide them with prescription medicines they got for years at other facilities.
Lorraine Robinson, the director of a Honolulu-based program that helps female inmates re-enter civilian life -- Ka Hale Ho'ala Hou No Na Wahine (Home of Reawakening for Women) -- said that being so far from home makes it hard for the women at Otter Creek to hold out hope.
"They are on shaky ground to begin with," she said of the many who are addicted to drugs, depressed and lacking resiliency, "and this makes it worse."
Deborah Mainnaaupo, 54, who is serving 20 years for attempted assault, said the Hawaiian women feel like "we are all on death row. Life has been taken away from us. It is too cold. They should leave us in Hawaii, where we belong."
Looking out the barred windows of the visiting room to the barbed wire, cliffs and mountains outside, Kahaunaele laughed at the security that keeps the Hawaiians locked inside.
"I don't think it would be possible for us to escape," she said. "But even if we could, where would we go?"

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060219/NEWS01/602190430/-1/rss

Reporter Andrew Wolfson can be reached at (502) 582-7189.

Posted by lois at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)

Forget D.C. The Battle is in the States

IN THESE TIMES

This article is permanently archived at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2509/

Forget D.C. the Battle is in the States
By Nathan Newman and David Sirota February 20, 2006

Speaking to a packed room of 2,000 state legislators and business lobbyists gathered in Grapevine, Texas, last fall, George W. Bush thanked the crowd for its work on behalf of the conservative agenda. He wasn't talking about work they'd done on Capitol Hill, but about their collaboration to push the corporate agenda forward in statehouses across the country. The meeting was the 32nd annual gathering of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a membership association for conservative lawmakers. As its chairman, Georgia State Rep. Earl Ehrhart, said of the president's speech: "It was like the governor of a state talking to his legislative leaders."

This is the critical point: The highest echelons of the conservative movement and corporate America treat state legislators not as members of 50 different institutions, but as a single set of leaders who can be mobilized on a national basis.

Recognizing this reality, the Progressive Legislative Action Network (PLAN) was formed in fall 2005 to create a counterforce to the right in statehouses across the country. Supported by groups like MoveOn and the Center for American Progress, along with unions like SEIU, AFSCME, the AFL-CIO and the Steelworkers, PLAN is working with state legislators across the country to move both a united agenda and strategic plan to take on ALEC and its allies throughout the country.

The conservative march through the states
The need to challenge the right-wing movement in the states is clear. ALEC claims more than 2,400 state lawmakers as members--roughly one-third of all state legislators--and has become one of the critical fulcrums of conservative power in the United States. Backed by many of the largest corporations in the country--including Exxon Mobil, Coors Brewing, Pfizer and Phillip Morris--ALEC is networked into conservative think tanks and allied political operations such as the Heartland Institute and the corporate-backed American Tort Reform Association. At the center of this network, ALEC helps draft and promote legislation that has crippled social service budgets, deregulated industries, slashed medical care for the poor, and undermined consumer and worker protections in state after state.

In 2004 alone, 1,108 ALEC model bills were introduced and 178 were enacted into law, a legislative assault that ALEC and its conservative allies have been repeating year after year. Given the prominence of its legislative supporters--34 state speakers of the house, 25 state senate presidents, 31 state senate leaders and 33 state house leaders are ALEC members--this success is hardly surprising.

Sadly, in the face of this daunting right-wing machine, many progressive leaders and activists remain fixated on Capitol Hill and the White House, leaving state legislators, local political organizations and unions to battle ALEC all alone. The problem is compounded by a national media that barely covers these state struggles. Even the most sophisticated national political commentators typically see fights for control of state legislatures as important only insofar as they impact redistricting of federal congressional races. Except for the occasional media spasm around a particularly virulent state legislative proposal that hands out pork to a corporation or restricts civil rights, the overall march of conservative legislation in the statehouses gets relatively little attention from progressive activists fixated on "serious" politics at the federal level.

Yet the battle for our states is incredibly serious. The conservative strategy is to use the state political arena to leverage control of national policy, and unless progressives get focused and view the battle for the states as crucial to America's political future, no amount of change at the federal level will allow us to take our country back.

Why state policy matters
Most progressives fail to realize that state governments collectively have as much--and in some cases, more--power over the issues they care about as the federal government. State and local revenues are about equal to federal tax revenue, and in an era of "flexibility" and "waivers," federal money is increasingly handed over to the states with few strings attached. In explaining conservatives' focus on state legislation, ALEC's Medicaid specialist James Frogue observed, "Innovations and reforms in Medicaid will come from the states. They will not come from D.C."

Most federal civil rights, consumer and employment laws only modify the baseline of rights established by state governments. In fact, only a tiny minority of legal struggles are pursued under federal statutes. Instead, state courts handle roughly 17 million civil cases every year, including contract, tort and real property disputes, the outcome of which turn overwhelmingly on state, not federal, law. Through state law and liability rules, the states regulate trillions of dollars of commerce.

Similarly, while there were 170,535 federal prisoners in 2004, that number is dwarfed by the 1.9 million prisoners in state and local prisons and jails. The criminal sentencing decisions that have decimated a generation of young people in minority communities were made in statehouses, not on Capitol Hill. And one of the least-understood areas of increasing state power is that wielded by public pension funds, which now control $2.7 trillion in financial assets and can shape financial markets with their investment decisions--a fact that the right is all too aware of as they launch campaigns to privatize those pensions.

With all this power in the hands of the states, conservatives recognize that with a coordinated strategy, a movement can govern the nation from the statehouses. States have been vulnerable to this right-wing takeover because most state legislatures are made up of poorly paid, part-time lawmakers with few--if any--staff to research or evaluate the laws they are asked to approve. The lack of resources means there are few staffers in legislatures who can challenge the expertise presented by ALEC and other conservative operatives, or uncover the hidden payoffs for corporate interests contained in legislation. Thus ALEC provides a stealthy, tax-exempt front for corporate interests to sell their ideas directly to statehouse leaders across the country.

At the most obvious level, ALEC gives a "public interest" sheen to the raw special pleading of Big Money before state legislatures. Here are just a few of these recent corporate campaigns:

Backed by the oil industry, ALEC has lined up legislators to lower taxes on gasoline and to undermine regulations aimed at curbing the carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming.
Backed by the drug companies, ALEC has mounted a full-scale campaign to defeat initiatives by cities and states to promote importing lower-priced select medicines from Canada.
Backed by low-wage employers, ALEC has promoted legislation to block local governments from raising local minimum wages or even requiring government contractors to pay a fair wage to their employees.
Backed by the telephone companies, ALEC has worked to bar or hamstring cities that have sought to build cheaper or even free Internet services for their residents.
Backed by the insurance companies, ALEC has been promoting a campaign to stop state insurance commissioners from requiring insurance companies to meet the same accountability and auditing rules that were imposed on publicly-traded corporations in the wake of the Enron debacle.
And ALEC has been advocating cracking down on seniors who shelter income in a home while using Medicaid to finance long term care, a campaign that would force seniors to buy "reverse annuity mortgages," a new financial instrument promoted by ALEC's financial services industry funders.
The right's strategic agenda
Still, if the right-wing movement in the states only amounted to a series of individual profit-driven campaigns, the threat posed by ALEC would merely be one of a slick, well-funded public relations operation, albeit a nasty and effective one.

But the real danger from ALEC and its associated organizations comes from conservatives' aim to structurally undermine the very capacities of government that restrain corporate power and to fuel campaigns that fracture progressive alliances and political power.

Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and arguably the premiere right-wing strategist, has famously described the conservative goal as cutting government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Key to that objective is cutting tax revenues and using constitutional limits on state taxing powers to make it politically impossible to fund social needs through government action. This strategy serves not just to limit progressive policy but, by creating a limited pool of funds, pits progressive groups against each other in a fight for resources.

Conservatives also aim to shut down the enforcement of business regulations across the states. The very success of state attorneys general in bringing tobacco and financial firms to heel has led to a backlash to limit the power of attorneys general. And where citizens have the ability to enforce regulations in the courts, the right has been gutting those citizens' legal powers. For example, one of the first acts of Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration was forcing through restrictions on the state labor code's Private Attorney General Act, which had given advocates greater power to enforce the state's labor laws.

In the last few years, no issue has consumed corporate America more than shutting the courtroom door to plaintiffs injured by corporate malfeasance under the campaign of "tort reform." Damage awards have been limited and judges have increasingly been granted the right to exclude evidence of corporate wrongdoing by limiting plaintiff witnesses. This is done through the banning of so-called "junk science," with an often-politically connected judge (rather than the jury) getting to decide which witnesses are credible. The end result of this campaign is to make it nearly impossible for poor plaintiffs to get a day in court or to prevent a judge from overturning any judgment in their favor.

Another key strategy for the corporate right is privatization, a strategy that both undermines labor standards for government services and opens the labor market to corporate profiteering. The conservative-induced budget crises in many states have served to help this process along. In 2002, ALEC co-wrote a report with the Manhattan Institute that made privatization a key solution for balancing state budgets. They proposed that Medicaid be replaced with private Medical Savings Accounts and public schools be funded with vouchers. Similarly, prison management would be privatized. Name an area of government and conservatives are seeking to hand its operations over to corporate allies who, in turn, can eliminate labor unions and use the profits to fund more campaign contributions to their political machine.

A special case of privatization has been the recent assault on state employee pension funds. In 2005, Alaska passed legislation ending guaranteed pensions for all newly hired state employees in favor of individual accounts, and legislators in California, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Virginia are heading in the same direction.

The most obvious goal is to cut benefits for union workers by ending guaranteed benefits--using exactly the same rhetoric of "choice" that President Bush employed to sell his Social Security privatization scheme at the federal level. But what really enrages conservatives are decisions by trustees of these pension funds to use their shareholder voting power to challenge corporate abuses, such as the pension funds in Ohio, New York and California that voted to divest in firms involved in privatization. And of course, there is the direct payoff to the financial services firms who will end up administering the millions of private accounts in a privatized state pension system and collecting the billions of dollars in fees.

Defunding the left
The shift in control of financial assets from public trustees to private corporations highlights the most pervasive and dangerous goal of the right's campaign in the states: defunding progressive institutions and thereby leaving corporations--and a few religious conservative allies--as the only forces with significant resources in politics.

Take the 2003 legislation passed in Texas that reserved family planning dollars, including those from the federal government, exclusively for healthcare providers that do not offer abortion services or referrals. This kind of proposal, coupled with "gag rules" and "abstinence only" legislation, not only shifts abortion policy, but strips resources from the broader pro-choice community. Similarly, the push for "faith based initiatives" shifts resources from nonprofits embedded in social justice networks to conservative organizations engaged in active conservative politics.

State-based "Right to Work" campaigns were conservatives' original weapons to cut off union dues, one of the primary sources of funding for political campaigns that oppose conservatives day-in and day-out. The present round of attacks is labeled "paycheck protection"--a nice-sounding term for crippling union workers' ability to donate political contributions through workplace deductions.

The whole right-wing attack on the civil justice system also has the effect of cutting the fees for employment and other trial lawyers, who have been strong sources of political funding for progressive causes. Passing tort reforms nationally, Grover Norquist argued back in 1999, takes "a $5-10 billion a year bite out of trial lawyer fees" and shuts down the progressive "get-out-the-vote effort, funded with money from trial lawyers."

By operating at the state level, Norquist et al have successfully avoided the glare of media attention and the full political focus of progressives. It's as if the right is tunneling under the foundation of progressives; by the time the ground--and financial resources--give way, it'll be too late to save the house.

How progressives fight back
So how should progressives respond to this coordinated assault on every level of progressive policy?

The key is to fight back, coordinate our own battles, think as strategically as ALEC and its allies and win back power at the state level. As People for the American Way said in a 2003 report about ALEC: "Progressives need a collaborative and equally coordinated effort to successfully counter ALEC's influence, expose its corporate and right-wing ties, and defeat dangerous proposals launched by this 'common enemy.'"

While many grassroots efforts have continued across the country since that report, progressives have not established the coordinated response that is needed to beat back the right. To do so, we must take three steps.

First, we need to develop a deep national network of progressive legislators supported by grassroots organizations. We have to establish partnerships between national organizations, grassroots activists and state legislators in each state to find state-specific ideas that represent home-grown progressivism. Not only will these networks help bring progressive-minded people together, but they also will serve as a hotbed of information exchange so progressive legislators can equip themselves with all of the information they need to promote progressive bills.
Second, we need to promote a set of popular issues that define the progressive state agenda in the minds of voters. This could include raising the minimum wage, expanding health care, promoting family issues like paid family leave and pre-K education for all children, protecting free speech in the workplace as well as the political realm, and developing an energy independence policy that creates jobs in each state.
Third, we must develop a set of policies that beat back the right-wing attack and turn the tables on conservatives. We should use legislation strategically to highlight the hypocrisy of groups like ALEC and put conservative legislators in the uncomfortable public position of voting either the interests of their corporate patrons or the desires of their constituents.
For instance, recent legislative initiatives in states ranging from Virginia to Michigan to preserve public lands and stop sprawl divide sprawl developers from a broader population that wants both livable communities and green areas for recreation. Similarly, targeting taxpayer subsidies specifically to entrepreneurial businesses that provide a living wage, as progressives have done in a number of cities, challenges conservatives to justify their fealty to low-wage companies. Supporting paid family leave and expanded child care for working parents forces legislators to confront empty "families values" rhetoric.

Ultimately, each strategic issue will reinforce the others, undercutting opposition coalitions while adding new allies to the progressive side, exposing the hypocrisy of the conservative agenda while clarifying the progressive program, and, step-by-step, entrenching progressive power in ways that the right wing will find harder and harder to dislodge.

Progressives need to use every tool of grassroots mobilization to build unity among our side's state legislators and deploy both strong policies and innovative strategies to beat the conservatives at their own game. Our overarching strategy: find the best public policies and champion them with effective and cohesive messaging. That is what the new Progressive Legislative Action Network (PLAN) is all about. It's time to finally end conservatives' dominance of state policy. It is time for progressives to govern from the states.

This article is being published by In These Times in conjunction with the release of PLAN's report, "Governing the Nation from the Statehouses."

Nathan Newman is the policy director for the Progressive Legislative Action Network (PLAN).

David Sirota is the co-chair of PLAN, and a senior editor at In These Times.

Posted by lois at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)

Prisons Ask for Alternatives to Jailing Deadbeat Parents

Akron Beacon Journal
http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/news/state/13913625.htm
Prisons ask for alternatives to jailing deadbeat parents
Associated Press-
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Prisons officials are asking lawmakers to consider alternatives to putting deadbeat parents behind bars, where they don't earn much money and continue failing to support their children.

The 601 men and 24 women sent to prison in 2004 for not paying child support made $12 to $18 a month working prison jobs, while taxpayers paid about $63 a day for each prisoner's shelter, food, clothing and medical care.

"We strongly think each child should receive the support they are due," said Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. "But we also understand there are going to be some deadbeat dads or parents for whom, if they had an opportunity, an alternative sanction other than prison would be a good option."

About 2.5 percent of inmates admitted to prisons in 2004 were felony child support cases.

Prisons officials want lawmakers to consider work release or other programs that would allow nonviolent child support violators to work under supervision. They say those options could help alleviate crowding and save taxpayers the $23,000 each prisoner costs annually.

Some officials in charge of collecting child support payments say they go through many options before cases are even prosecuted.

The Franklin County Child Support Enforcement Agency tries punishments such as suspending drivers' licenses, withholding money from paychecks and seizing bank accounts before filing charges, agency head Anthony Bond said.

"We've exhausted every possible administrative and judicial remedy before we do this," he said.

Kim Newsom Bridges, director of the Ohio Child Support Directors Association, which represents all 88 counties, said members would be willing to consider any new option that encourages parents to pay up.

"In most circumstances, the county agency and the court have already been through many steps with the obligor and they have failed to comply," she said. "We are not throwing people in prison on the first try."

In Franklin County, there were 51,000 cases with child support court orders, Bond said. Of those, 706 were sent to the prosecutor and 46 were prosecuted.

Failure to pay child support is a fifth-degree felony, punishable by six to 12 months in prison. Repeat offenses rise to fourth-degree felonies, which carry sentences of up to 18 months.

About two-thirds of the child-support prisoners from 1991 to 2004 were white - compared to half of the overall prison population - and about 60 percent had a high school diploma or the equivalent, according to prisons statistics. The average violator was a 37-year-old man.

Prisoners say they didn't pay child support because they were unemployed or working part-time, had a job that paid minimum wage or had a second family and couldn't afford both, according to state documents. Nearly half had full-time jobs before going to prison, statistics show.

About $2 billion in child support was collected in Ohio during the fiscal year that ended June 30, with another $600 million that went uncollected. The state has about 1 million child support cases, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Doug Missman, chief probation officer for Delaware County Common Pleas Court, said his county has work release and other programs, although not all counties can offer them because such programs are costly.

"It seems silly to be spending money to lock up people so the state pays for them and they can't pay the people they owe," Missman said.

Posted by lois at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2006

Report: Alabama's habitual offender laws filling state prisons

Sun, Feb. 19, 2006

SAMIRA JAFARI
Associated Press

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Nearly a third of the inmates serving time in Alabama's overcrowded prisons were sentenced under the state's habitual offender law, deemed one of the harshest in the nation by sentencing experts.

Unlike most states, Alabama's repeat offender law - often known as the three-strikes-and-you're-out law - does not figure in the length of time between convictions or the severity of prior offenses.

More than half of the nearly 8,600 habitual offenders were given tougher or "enhanced" sentences after their latest conviction was for property or drug crimes, according to the Alabama Sentencing Commission's preliminary 2006 report. That doesn't mean they didn't commit a violent crime in the past; but in most cases the law doesn't give any weight to the prior offense.

"Alabama does have one of the most stringent habitual felony offender acts," said Lynda Flynt, executive director of the Alabama Sentencing Commission.

Tomislav Kovandzic, a criminal justice professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said this has created a problem in corrections.

The habitual offender laws in general don't cut down on crime but do result in prison systems that are "busting at the seams" and increasingly demand larger chunks of state budgets, he said.

The majority of states that have such laws introduced them in the 1980s and 1990s, when the nation adopted a "tough on crime" motto, he said.

"These laws don't do anything in reducing crime," said Kovandzic, who has researched three-strikes laws. "They're keeping people in prison and they're seeing the repercussions in an aging prison system that's costing them a fortune."

Habitual offenders are inherently one of the most expensive populations in Alabama's prison system due to the population aging over lengthy or lifelong sentences. They cost the prison system $112 million dollars a year - or 36 percent of the fiscal 2006 budget. That takes a toll on the underfunded, understaffed, dated prison system that's at double designed capacity with more than 27,000 inmates.

"We can be as tough on crime as we're willing to pay for," said professor Greg Weaver, director of the sociology, criminology and criminal justice programs at Auburn University. "That's part of the politics of the matter."

Kovandzic agreed. "It's not politically feasible to say 'OK, we're going to let everyone out,'" he said.

The chairman of the Joint Prisons Committee, Sen. Myron Penn, D-Union Springs, said habitual offender laws are popular because people want to feel comfortable about convicts being kept off the streets and politicians want to preserve their tough stance on crime. But, he added, the number of inmates coming in eventually outpaces the number going out.

"It's easy to have the hard-core image of locking them up and throwing away the key," Penn said. "But it is costly to the overall problem for overcrowding."

Alabama is among 16 states that provide for life imprisonment upon conviction for one prior felony, according to a 2005 state-by-state comparison of habitual offender laws by the Alabama Sentencing Commission. For example, a person with two forgery convictions can be sentenced to life in prison.

"If you have three nonviolent crimes, you could still get the same sentence as someone who has committed three violent crimes," said Brian Corbett, spokesman for the prison system.

For example, a convict with prior convictions for manslaughter and rape may still get the same sentence as a three-time forgery convict.

"To me, that's not fair," Flynt said.

If the most recent crime is a Class A felony, such as murder, kidnapping or first-degree rape, the previous crimes are reviewed in determining any "enhanced" sentence. But in all other cases, the severity of the earlier crimes is not considered.

Alabama also has the highest "range of enhancement," allowing judges to add an additional 15-99 years or life imprisonment to a repeat offender's sentence. South Carolina has the lowest range, with 1-5 years.

Kovandzic said giving judges more discretion is not necessarily a bad thing, because it still gives them the option to add fewer years when determining enhanced sentences for nonviolent crimes.

Eleven states, not including Alabama, have habitual felony offender laws only for certain crimes. Those states, including Southern states Tennessee and Virginia, take into account whether the previous felonies were violent crimes, such as sexual assault, armed robbery and aggravated kidnapping.

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

Idaho Lawmakers Want to Criminalize Drug Use by Pregnant Women

Idaho Lawmakers Want to Criminalize Drug Use by Pregnant Women
February 17, 2006
Women who use illicit drugs during pregnancy could face criminal charges if the Idaho legislature passes a bill now under consideration, the Idaho State Journal reported Feb. 16.
Bill sponsor Sen. Denton Darrington (R-Declo) wants to make it a felony for a pregnant woman to ingest marijuana, LSD, methamphetamine, or other drugs; penalties would include up to five years in prison or a $50,000 fine, but Darrington also includes the option of attending drug court rather than incarceration.
Supporters like Cassia County Prosecutor Al Barrus said the law's intent is to protect children. "What would we do if we found out a 2-year-old or 8-year-old child had been given meth?" he said. "We would go ballistic. We don't want a bill just to send people to jail -- we want healthy babies."
But critics, including some Idaho pediatricians, say the plan could lead to more abortions and fewer women seeking prenatal care. Others, like Bannock County Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Dennis Wilkinson, remain on the fence. "I do worry that some women in the drug culture would be discouraged from seeking medical attention, but the bottom line is we've got to protect the fetus," he said. "I've gone both ways in my mind."

http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2006/idaho-lawmakers-want-to.html

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

February 18, 2006

CA: Marin County Ends Fight Against Death Row Expansion

http://www.marinij.com/marin/ci_3519659>

Marin Independent Journal

2/17/06

Marin ends death row fight
Keri Brenner

Marin's hopes for a spectacular bayfront ferry port, transit hub and scenic wetlands attraction near San Quentin State Prison were dashed Thursday as the state said it will move ahead with a new 768-cell death row complex instead.

State corrections officials said Thursday they will break ground on the $233 million facility on the bayfront near Larkspur Landing in about four months.

"Construction on the project is slated to start in June 2006," said Todd Slosek, press secretary for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "Completion is estimated at November 2008."

The announcement came two days after Marin officials said they are dropping two lawsuits opposed to the death row project. The Board of Supervisors agreed in a closed session Tuesday to abandon a legal battle following two unfavorable court rulings.

"They did agree they weren't going to file notices of appeal on either case involving the condemned inmate complex," said David Zaltsman, Marin deputy county counsel. "I think the board just decided they'd given it their best shot."

Although most of the legal work was handled in-house, Zaltsman said the county spent an estimated $30,000 to $60,000 to hire an outside counsel who specialized in California Environmental Quality Act issues to write the brief for one of the lawsuits.

In that case, the county contended the state's environmental impact report for the new death row was flawed because it failed to analyze impacts on alternative locations outside Marin. Zaltsman said his cost estimate was based on the number of hours put in by an attorney with the San Francisco law firm Morrison and Foerster.

On Jan. 11, Marin Superior Court Judge Vernon Smith ruled against the county, saying it had not shown the environmental report was inadequate.

The second lawsuit concerned a request from the state corrections department to downsize the death row project, after cost overruns pushed its price tag up to $265 million from the original legislative allocation of $220 million.

The state Department of Finance approved plans to cut the 1,024 cells originally planned to 768 cells. Currently, almost 650 condemned inmates are housed in several buildings that make up the existing death row within San Quentin, which has a total prison population of about 5,400.

As part of the downsizing, the new cost for the revised death row complex was set at $233 million.

In that case, the county argued that the corrections and finance departments did not follow proper procedure. The county maintained the revised plans must be submitted to the Legislature for authorization.

But on Dec. 16, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lloyd Connelly ruled against the county, saying Marin did not have legal standing to block construction of a state project on state land.

Slosek said his department had no official response to the county's move to drop the lawsuits, other than to announce the construction schedule.

"We're just going to continue on as planned to construct the new condemned inmate complex," Slosek said. State corrections leaders have maintained they need the new facility because security at the existing aging prison is so lax as to be life-threatening for prison staff and inmates.

Marin officials and neighborhood leaders contend it makes no sense to build the complex on 40 acres of prime bayfront property that could serve the community as a regional transit hub and ferry port. They contend housing the death row inmates at other state prisons or building the new death row in a more rural area would be more cost-effective.

In addition to the legal fees, the county spent at least $15,000 to have prison consultant Mike Pickett prepare a report on the economic feasibility of various alternative options for housing condemned inmates.

Pickett's report was supposed to have been part of a presentation by Marin Supervisor Steve Kinsey and Assemblyman Joe Nation, D-San Rafael, before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's staff. However, the briefing opportunity, promised in December 2004, never took place.

Posted by lois at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

February 17, 2006

Annan Says U.S. Should Close Guantanamo Prison

February 17, 2006
Annan Says U.S. Should Close Gitmo Prison
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:39 a.m. ET

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday said the United States should close the prison at Guantanamo Bay for terror suspects as soon as possible, backing a key conclusion of a U.N.-appointed independent panel.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected the call to shut the camp, saying the military treats all detainees humanely and ''these are dangerous terrorists that we're talking about.''

The panel's report, released Thursday in Geneva, said the United States must close the detention facility ''without further delay'' because it is effectively a torture camp where prisoners have no access to justice.

Annan told reporters he didn't necessarily agree with everything in the report, but ''the basic premise, that we need to be careful to have a balance between effective action against terrorism and individual liberties and civil rights, I think is valid.''

He said he supported the panel's opposition to people being held ''in perpetuity'' without being prosecuted in a public court. This is ''something that is common under every legal system,'' he said.

''I think sooner or later there will be a need to close the Guantanamo (camp), and I think it will be up to the government to decide, and hopefully to do it as soon as is possible,'' the secretary-general told reporters.

The 54-page report summarizing an investigation by five U.N. experts, accused the United States of practices that ''amount to torture'' and demanded detainees be allowed a fair trial or be freed. The panel, which had sought access to Guantanamo Bay since 2002, refused a U.S. offer for three experts to visit the camp in November after being told they could not interview detainees.

Annan said the report by a U.N.-appointed independent panel was not a U.N. report but one by individual experts. ''So we should see it in that light,'' he said.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the report will be presented to the U.N. Commission of Human Rights, which appointed the panel, when it convenes on March 13 in Geneva.

Manfred Nowak, the U.N. investigator for torture who was one of the panel's experts, told The Associated Press in Geneva that the detainees at Guantanamo ''should be released or brought before an independent court.''

''That should not be done in Guantanamo Bay, but before ordinary U.S. courts, or courts in their countries of origin or perhaps an international tribunal,'' he said.

The United States should allow ''a full and independent investigation'' at Guantanamo and also give the United Nations access to other detention centers, including secret ones, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, Nowak said by telephone from his office in Vienna, Austria.

''We want to have all information about secret places of detention because whenever there is a secret place of detention, there is also a higher risk that people are subjected to torture,'' he said.

The United States is holding about 490 men at the military detention center. They are accused of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or to al-Qaida, but only a handful have been charged.

The U.N. investigators said photographic evidence -- corroborated by testimony of former prisoners -- showed detainees shackled, chained and hooded. Prisoners were beaten, stripped and shaved if they resisted, they said.

The report's findings were based on interviews with former detainees, public documents, media reports, lawyers and questions answered by the U.S. government, which detailed the number of prisoners held but did not give their names or the status of charges against them.

Some of the interrogation techniques -- particularly the use of dogs, exposure to extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation and prolonged isolation -- caused extreme suffering, the report said.

''Such treatment amounts to torture, as it inflicts severe pain or suffering on the victims for the purpose of intimidation and/or punishment,'' the report said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is the only independent monitoring body allowed to visit Guantanamo's detainees, but it reports its findings solely to U.S. authorities.

Legislators and journalists have been allowed in on guided tours but few are permitted to see interrogations.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the U.N. report ''clearly suffers from their unwillingness to take us up on our offer to go down to Guantanamo to observe first-hand the operations.''

McClellan, the White House spokesman, echoed Whitman, saying ''it's a discredit to the U.N. when a team like this goes about rushing to report something when they haven't even looked into the facts. All they have done is look at the allegations.''

Although his statement did not address specific allegations, the Pentagon has acknowledged 10 cases of abuse or mistreatment at Guantanamo, including a female interrogator climbing onto a detainee's lap and a detainee whose knees were bruised from being forced to kneel repeatedly.

In Strasbourg, France, the European Parliament condemned the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo and renewed its calls for the detention center to be closed.

Human rights activists also supported the investigators' findings.

Amnesty International said the report was only the ''tip of the iceberg.''

''The United States also operates detention facilities at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq and has been implicated in the use of secret detention facilities in other countries,'' an Amnesty statement said.

Many of the allegations in the report have been made before. But the document represented the first inquiry launched by the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission, the world body's top rights watchdog.

------

Associated Press correspondents Sam Cage and Alexander G. Higgins in Geneva, Jan Sliva in Strasbourg, France, and Jennifer Loven in Washington contributed to this report.

Posted by lois at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)

The Sentencing Project: CT: Parole Disenfranchisement Analysis

Connecticut: Parole Disenfranchisement Analysis

The state of Connecticut expanded voting rights to people on probation in 2001, but parolees are still disenfranchised in the state. Reform efforts are underway to repeal the ban on parolee voting. A new briefing paper by The Sentencing Project analyzes the effect of current policy in the state, and finds that 77% of the affected population is African American and Latino. In addition, Connecticut has experienced a 198% rise in its parole population since 1997, 25 times the average growth rate nationally, thus dramatically increasing the number of citizens who have lost the right to vote.
Find the report at www.sentencingproject.org

Posted by lois at 07:25 PM | Comments (0)

Iowa: Faith-based Prison Program Case in Judge's Hands

Des Moines Register February 17, 2006

Faith-based prison program case in judge's hands

By WILLIAM PETROSKI
Des Moines REGISTER STAFF WRITER
A faith-based Iowa prison treatment program in which inmates immerse themselves in Christian values is unconstitutional and should be shut down, a plaintiff's lawyer said in closing remarks of a federal trial today.

Lawyers for the Iowa Department of Corrections and Prison Fellowship
Ministries countered that inmates participate voluntarily in the program and that they can continue to practice their own religion.

The program, known as the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, has operated since October 1999 at the Newton Correctional Facility under sponsorship of Prison Fellowship Ministries. About 210 convicts spend their days in education, counseling and work with a heavy emphasis on Bible teachings.

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, based in Washington, D.C., has sued Iowa prison officials and Prison Fellowship in U.S. District Court in Des Moines, contending the program violates the First Amendment's establishment of religion clause. State officials have made payments of about $1.5 million to the program, which the plaintiffs claim should be returned to state government.

"There is no question that the program is intended to convert the inmates," Americans United lawyer Alex Luchenitser told Judge Robert Pratt in final arguments today.

Pratt took the case under consideration and is expected to issue a written ruling sometime in the next few months.

Lawyers for the Iowa Department of Corrections and Prison Fellowship Ministries said every inmate who testified during the trial said he had voluntarily joined the program. The program has goals of secular benefits that include improving inmate behavior, reducing recidivism and protecting public safety, defense lawyers said.

"Quite frankly your honor, this is a program that works . . . and it works constitutionally," Deputy Iowa Attorney General Gordon Allen told the court.

If there is a constitutional violation, the program should be changed, not closed, defense lawyers said. A total program shutdown would be a "drastic remedy" and without legal foundation, they said.

The case has received national media attention because it been
described as a test of President Bush's push for faith-based initiatives in government services, ranging from social service agencies to after-school care. Similar programs are sponsored by Virginia-based Prison Fellowship Ministries at prisons in Texas, Kansas, and Minnesota.

Lawyers for Americans United filed documents in federal court
describing the Newton program as an evangelical Christian program that "requires and coerces inmates to take part in religious activities." The program discriminates against other religious beliefs, particularly Catholicism, they said.

Americans United also alleged the program's inmates receive special privileges not afforded to other prisoners, including an opportunity to complete treatment classes required for parole earlier than they could otherwise.

Defense lawyers disputed the allegations, saying no one is forced to participate and they receive no preference for paroles.

"Inmates of all faiths and no faiths are welcome," said Anthony Troy, a lawyer for Prison Fellowship. Catholic inmates who join the program are permitted to pray the Rosary and attend Mass; Native Americans may attend the sweat lodge and pray to the Creator, andMuslim inmates may observe Ramadan and Jumah, defense lawyers said.
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060217/NEWS01/60217014/1001/NEWS

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

AL: Cases of abuse raise questions about private prisons

Cases of abuse raise questions
February 17, 2006
How willing would you be to do business with a company with a record of
legal problems, even if it was the low bidder? Most Alabamians, we'd
wager, would have some reservations about that -- and Alabamians
certainly should have reservations about their state sending prison inmates to a private prison.

For years, the Advertiser has expressed serious concerns about the use of private prisons. Nothing reported from the ones involved in state contracts has eased those concerns.

The Birmingham News reported this week that the Department of
Corrections has begun transferring male inmates to a private prison in Pine Prairie, La. The prison is operated by Louisiana Corrections
Service, which also operates a facility in Basile, La., where Alabama
has housed about 300 female inmates since 2003.

The reason for using these facilities is the chronic overcrowding of
Alabama's prison system, which is the subject of constant litigation.
The transfer of male inmates -- eventually about 500 of them -- is an
effort to ease the backlog in county jails of state inmates who haven't
been sent to state prisons because there is no space for them.

The overcrowding problem is at present intractable, given Alabama's
sentencing structure and its decades of failing to address the
shortcomings of a system now bulging with almost twice as many inmates as its facilities were designed to handle.

LCS will house the male inmates for $29.50 per day per inmate, but how much of a bargain is that? There are important issues inherent in any private prison operation. This is not someone's hobby; this is a
for-profit enterprise.

That's fine in most pursuits; in fact, it is the core of the American
economy. But incarceration is a solemn obligation of the state.
Depriving individuals of liberty is serious business and the state, even though justified in doing so, has an undeniable responsibility to those individuals.

A for-profit prison has financial considerations that a state facility does not. It has profit expectations from its investors, and these could all too easily lead to dangerous corner-cutting that compromises the safety of inmates and potentially the public as well. Unlike the state, a private prison operator has no stake in the rehabilitation of inmates vs. the mere warehousing of them.

Add to those concerns -- inherent in any private prison operation -- the legal troubles at LSC facilities and it is easy to see why Alabamians should be uncomfortable with this arrangement.

Last week, the News reported, a former supervisor at Pine Prairie was
convicted of rights violations and witness tampering in the beating of an inmate. Earlier, four guards at the Basile facility were indicted on sexual abuse charges.

Problems can occur at state prisons, of course, but there the state has direct authority to act, to set employment standards and to otherwise control the addressing of problems. That is largely lost when private prisons are used.

The private prison issue is not going to fade away. LCS is working with officials in Perry County to open a private prison there. The facility, located outside Uniontown, will be ready in a few months.

The Department of Corrections says there is no agreement for it to place prisoners there, but clearly there will be great political pressure to do so.

This is a poor approach to prison issues. A far better one is broad
reform of Alabama's sentencing structure, which now sends to prison far too many people who could serve their sentences in community-based corrections facilities with drug treatment programs and work
opportunities -- without presenting a significant threat to the safety of the populace. Funneling non-violent offenders into prisons is always costly and seldom productive.

Absent this kind of reform of the current system, inherently unsound
practices such as the use of private prisons will continue -- not
because they are better, but because they are cheaper.
http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060216/OPINION01/
602150355/1012/OPINION

Posted by lois at 07:09 PM | Comments (0)

No Future: Pa. leads nation in juveniles serving life sentences

Feb. 15, 2006
By DANA DiFILIPPO, Philadelphia News

ON A WARM Friday night in September 1995, two drug-addled teenage girls went cruising for someone to rob on Penn's Landing.

Nicole Newell and Tamika Bell picked Max Broyko, a 19-year-old Russian immigrant who had just beaten bone cancer and dreamed of being a cop.

He was sitting behind the wheel of his car, chatting with friends, when the armed robbers approached and demanded valuables. Before Broyko could comply, Newell brandished her handgun, blasting him in the chest.

The thugs rummaged over his bloodied body looking for loot, but
Broyko, gasping his last labored breaths, was unresponsive. So instead, the girls pilfered $40, jewelry, jackets and a beeper from Broyko's terrified friends before fleeing the murder scene.

Bell didn't pull the trigger that ended Broyko's life. But the law says she will spend the rest of her life behind bars.

With an exploding number of kids becoming killers, more than 2,225 juveniles across the country now are serving life in prison without parole, like Bell.

Because of tough state laws such as charging murder suspects as adults regardless of their age, Pennsylvania tops the nation in the number of young offenders condemned to life in prison without parole.

Some prosecutors argue that some kids commit such heinous crimes that they deserve to lose their freedom forever. But civil-rights activists say life-without-parole sentences are unfair for young people who are impaired by poor judgment and have a chance of being rehabilitated.

"Tamika Bell had no record and did not pull the trigger. But now, she will never get out of prison short of commutation, which is rarely granted," said her attorney, Dan Stevenson. "Life without parole is a cruel sentence, offers no hope of redemption, and is really inappropriate for juveniles, whose cognitive functions are not fully formed."

But without Bell's cooperation in the crime, others counter, Broyko might be alive today.

"I have very little sympathy for the Amnesty International position, when these little assassins come in with machine guns and submachine guns and kill people. Murder is murder," said Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham.

"If I killed you, would you care whether I was 16 or 80? You're still dead forever."

The way Alison Parker sees it, the law considers children too young to vote, drink beer legally, drive without restriction, buy cigarettes, gamble or serve in the military.

So why, she demands, do they face different rules in American criminal courts?

"Children don't have the same rights as adults, so why should they face the same consequences?" asked Parker, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch. "This sentence is inappropriate, cruel, unnecessary and a serious human-rights violation for people under the age of 18."

Parker authored a report released last fall that found that 42 states permit judges and juries to condemn juveniles to life in prison without parole, despite widespread global rejection of that penalty for young offenders.

Pennsylvania leads the nation in the number of juvenile lifers, with more than 330, even though the state ranks sixth in population, according to the report. The analysis, called "The Rest of Their Lives: Life Without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States," was a joint study with Amnesty International.

The number of juveniles heading to jail for life likely will rise as authorities collar more kid killers.

In Philadelphia, 17 juveniles were arrested for murder in 2000. At least 20 were arrested last year (through November, the most recent month statistics were available), according to police data. Nationally, the number of juveniles arrested for murder rose 37 percent from 1999 to 2004, when 1,300 juveniles were nabbed for homicide nationwide, according to the FBI.

With such statistics in mind, Parker and other civil-rights advocates are calling on legislators to abolish laws allowing life-without-parole sentences for juveniles. Inmates already condemned as juveniles to life should be granted the possibility of parole, they say.

"Children are children, and even though they may do bad things, that doesn't change the fact that their brains haven't developed the way adults' have," said attorney Bradley Bridge, who is appealing the life sentence of Eddie Batzig. Batzig was 16 when he and two friends beat Fishtown teen Jason Sweeney to death in 2003.

"Children shouldn't receive adult sentences," Bridge said. "They should receive sentences commensurate with their age and background."

Batzig, in a brief written response to questions from the Daily News, agreed: "I do believe juveniles, like me, can and will be rehabilitated, in time. Then not only be of no further danger to society, but be a productive member of society. Everybody makes mistakes, right?!"

But some say killers like Batzig are exactly why the law shouldn't be changed.

Batzig swung the first blow, a hatchet chop to Sweeney's head.
Brothers Nicholas and Dominic Coia joined in with a hammer and rocks, and within minutes Sweeney was dead. Coroners determined that only one bone in his head was left intact.

Justina Morley, then 15, lured Sweeney with the promise of sex to the weed-choked lot where he would be butchered. For her role, she was sentenced to 17 ½ to 35 years in prison.

The quartet, all regarded as neighborhood nuisances even before the attack, said they targeted Sweeney for the $500 he'd earned that week working in construction with his father. Afterward, they shared a group hug and "partied beyond redemption," they confessed.

Such atrocity merits no mercy, said state Rep. Dennis O'Brien,
R-Philadelphia.

"Life without parole recognizes the seriousness and heinousness of the crime," he said. "Kids are growing up quicker in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh than they are maybe in Kansas. You can't just say: 'You can do time until you're 21.' That's marking these crimes as being 'on-the-house.' "

Charles Porter, whose 16-year-old brother, Alex, was kidnapped, robbed and murdered in North Philadelphia in 1988, agreed: "These aren't normal, small mistakes. I truly believe people deserve a second chance, but you don't owe someone who murders anything."

The three men and one juvenile involved in Alex Porter's death all are serving life-without-parole sentences.

Tamika Bell was a drug addict and troubled teen who was diagnosed with a mental disorder that made her surly and rebellious.

Yet she - like 59 percent of the juveniles serving life-without-parole sentences nationally - had no prior criminal convictions before being placed in prison for life, according to Parker's report.

Long before the punishment of murderous juveniles ignited national debate, lawmakers fearful of vicious super-predators enacted Pennsylvania's tough laws.

The Juvenile Act of 1972 requires that all children accused of murder in Pennsylvania be charged as adults. While they can petition to be decertified and tried as juveniles, many still end up in adult courts.

Once tried as adults, juveniles face adult sentences.

In Pennsylvania, first-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence with the possibility of death, while second-degree murder gets an automatic life sentence. A U.S. Supreme Court decision last year outlawed executions of young offenders.

State law also allows prosecutors to charge people with murder
regardless of whether they directly, physically caused a death. That means getaway drivers, lookouts and such accomplices often are held just as accountable in murder cases as the thug who did the actual killing.

With such stiff penalties, some victims' families say they understand the desperation some juvenile lifers feel.

"If I'm locked in a cage, I'd want to get out too - I'd say anything to get out. What fool says he's not reformed? I think they're all reformed after their first couple nights in prison," Charles Porter said.

"But how many inmates have gone before the parole board, claimed they were reformed and then got out to commit another crime?"

That's a fear that has kept many inmates in their cells.

Since 1941, parole has been forbidden for anyone serving a life
sentence, unless the governor commutes it.

But worries about recidivism make commutation rare, especially since two members of the five-member state Pardons Board are elected. Just one inmate has been granted clemency since 1994, when paroled murderer Reginald McFadden got out of jail only to kill two people and brutalize a third in New York.

State Sen. Vincent Fumo, D-Philadelphia, supports eliminating
life-without-parole terms for juveniles. But proposing legislative changes would be political suicide in today's conservative climate, he said.

"The minute you do, you're 'soft on crime,' and then your opponents use it against you, and in today's society, that's all they need," he said.

Porter, whose brother was slain, is one example of those dynamics at work.

"I think the lawmakers should maybe try losing someone in their family to murder, and then think about changing the law," he said. "Whenever something hits home, you look at it in an entirely different way."

While Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say life without parole must be abolished for juveniles altogether, some supporters say drastic change isn't necessary to improve the plight of juvenile lifers.

"Mandatory sentences should have a line of separation for the
different actors in crimes, such as the shooter versus the driver of a [getaway] car or the so-called lookout," said inmate Shavonne Robbins, now 29, who has been incarcerated since age 16 on a life sentence for a 1992 robbery in which an accomplice killed the victim.

Fumo advocates eliminating mandatory sentencing altogether for
juveniles, saying: "You've always got to give judges discretion. Judges are closest to the case, and not every situation is alike."

Juvenile lifers at least should be granted the opportunity of parole, Robbins said. "Without the chance to re-enter society, prison can no longer be considered a place of reform, but [rather] a holding pen," she said.

Others point to New Jersey as a model, where murder convicts face a minimum of 30 years in prison without parole. Judges then decide if the case warrants a more severe penalty based on the circumstances. While the Garden State allows juveniles to be sentenced to life in prison without parole, the
Amnesty International study found no juvenile lifers there.

States that don't allow life-without-parole sentences for juveniles are Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, New Mexico, New York and West Virginia; the District of Columbia also forbids them. Lawmakers in Michigan, where at least 306 lifers were juveniles when sentenced, introduced legislation in November to abolish life-without-parole sentences for young offenders.

"Pennsylvania has the most unenlightened laws in the country, and maybe even in the world," said William DiMascio, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society.

"This concept of 'life means life,' and the insistence by politically minded officials that they need to adhere to that, is ridiculous given the growing body of evidence from neurologists who have found that people at the age of 14, 15, and even as far as the early 20s do not have fully developed, fully functioning brains."

In 2004, National Institutes of Health researchers found that the part of the brain that inhibits risky behavior isn't fully formed until age 25. That region affects judgment, values, common sense and related reasoning functions, according to the study.

Robbins, for one, agrees that her youth impaired her judgment. When her older cousin urged her to help rob victim Mitchell Thompson Jr., Robbins, then 16, said she naively complied, blinded by a child's unquestioning trust.

"I was easily influenced by the fast life, the dangerous life, and the negative environment and people I was with every single day," said Robbins, who is incarcerated at the state prison in Muncy in Lycoming County. "It was life to me, so I didn't understand then that there was a different way of doing things."

Some question whether such aggressive sentencing works.

"How much good are we doing by putting all these people away?"
DiMascio demanded. "Are we ending homicides in the city of Philadelphia?"

Last year's homicide rate - 380 - was the highest since 1997. That spike came despite a surge in the number of convicts the city sent to state prisons; Philadelphia committed 2,069 inmates to state jails last year, 5 percent more than in 1997, according to the state Department of Corrections.

"Tough sentencing has not deterred the level of violence or murder in Philadelphia," said state Sen. Anthony Williams, D-Philadelphia, who supports abolishing life-without-parole sentences for juveniles. "We think locking people up and throwing away the key will solve our crime problems. But that is not the answer."

DiMascio agreed: "We're helping to destroy families, not fight crime, when we lock away so many people so thoughtlessly."

Still, some say the state should maintain its hard line on crime.

"You hear case after case across the country of teenagers committing the most horrible crimes," Lynne Abraham said. "They might not have the judgment of an adult, but they know risks. They know rewards. They know what they want. And it's not like they don't know that if they point this gun and pull the trigger that the bullet won't come out and hit somebody."

Posted by lois at 11:56 AM

February 15, 2006

KS: More prisons do not address gang problem

Posted on Wed, Feb. 15, 2006

Mark McCormick, Wichita Eagle
Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams is asking legislators for a new weapon in the war against youth gangs. The proposal, Senate Bill 458, would make it a crime for gangs to recruit at schools, make it easier to keep gang members locked up after an arrest, and define the term "gang member" in state law.

I'm not opposed to such a plan. Some schools are like daily gang-recruiting conventions. We have to do something to stem gang influence there.
If this measure proves as effective at locking up gang members as law enforcement has been in reducing crime generally, it's going to mean more gang members arrested, charged and jailed. Crime has been dropping for the past 10 years. If there's anything we do well, it's lock people up.
But when will we start choking off the pipeline of people filling prison cells? How long can we continue building and filling prisons?
"You can do it as long as you want to continue to pay for it," said Brian Withrow, director of the Midwest Criminal Justice Institute at Wichita State University. "But the reality is, you reach a point where you can't do that anymore."
Society has come full circle to a realization that rehabilitation programs make the most sense, he said.

During the 1960s, the country invested a lot of money in programming, but because the programs were expensive and the short-term results somewhat mixed, critics labeled them ineffective, Withrow said.
It became cheap and chic for politicians to just build more prisons. It got to the point that anything short of locking up criminals got you labeled soft on crime.
What we're figuring out again, though, is that community-based programs are actually tough on crime, he said.

In prison, an offender could divorce himself from the social system that created him. He wouldn't have to confront any of the issues that complicated or frustrated his life.

But in a community program, offenders have people checking on them, pushing them to complete the program. Asking something of them. Forcing them to confront situations they ran from, like responsibility.

"It's harder for them to complete it," Withrow said, adding that many offenders would rather just do the time.
Withrow is right. We need a plan that makes crime prevention more than a platitude.
For every person we jail, there seem to be a dozen more we didn't. We'll not only deal with these convicts when they're released, but chances are, we'll deal with the sons, younger brothers and nephews influenced into following these men to prison. Doubt me?

The Sedgwick County jail opened nearly full.
We have so many people in state prisons that corrections officials have had to hatch programs to slow recidivism rates because a jail bed has become one of the agency's most prized commodities.

Our nation has more than 2 million people incarcerated, more people than almost any other nation in the world.
Withrow says we need more effective rehabilitation, an immense commitment from policy makers to stay the course and research-based programs.

"You can do it," Withrow said. "There are some really quality programs that are available that can be implemented."

In 1903, Harvard sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois wrote:

"The chief problem in any community cursed with crime is not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young from being trained to crime."

We'd better get cracking here. We may not have another 100 years to figure this one out.
Reach Mark McCormick at (316) 268-6549 or mmccormick@wichitaeagle.com.

http://www.kansas.com

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

Pols must ring in on jail call ripoff

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

Monday, February 13th, 2006

A protest in the state Capitol today kicks off what might be the final phase of the battle to end New York State's unconscionable practice of charging the families of prison inmates jacked-up prices to accept collect calls from men and women behind bars. It's up to the Republican-led state Senate to fix this major injustice - not only because it's right, but because it's politically smart.
As noted in this space in the past, a state contract gives MCI exclusive control of prison phone service, and the company has been charging $3 per call plus 16 cents a minute to those who take calls from New York prisoners, meaning a 20-minute call costs $6 - the highest rate of any prison system in America.

Under the terms of the contract, most of the profits going to the Correctional Services Department amount to more than $20 million a year. In the years since the contract was signed in 1996, an estimated $175 million has been paid from the pockets of inmates' families, most of whom live in low-income neighborhoods.
For the Republicans, who are forever calling for lowering taxes, getting rid of what amounts to a sky-high, selective tax on people who have done nothing wrong ought to be a no-brainer. But it has taken years for the Senate's Committee on Crime Victims, Crime and Corrections to finally pass a bill that would end the prison phone ripoff by ordering the department to award its phone contract to the lowest bidder.
One reason for the sudden progress is that the committee's chairman, Sen. Michael Nozzolio of central New York, recently came under fire from the editorial board of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, which called the phone monopoly "unfair and counterproductive."
Another explanation may be that Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno is only a few seats away from losing control of the Senate to the Dems. Nozzolio isn't particularly vulnerable, but other Republican incumbents are - and reforming the prison phone system takes a potent fairness issue away from the Democrats.
But the battle is far from over. Even though Nozzolio's committee approved a reform measure, the bill has been tossed into Albany's budget process, where many good laws go to die.
The families of prison inmates have been disappointed enough times to know they have to take to the streets to shame the politicians and phone company executives who are profiting from human misery. Today's demonstration, for instance, is in front of the Albany headquarters of Verizon, which has acquired MCI and its controversial phone contract.
Those who support ending the prison phone price gouging should call the phone giant at (800) 621-9900 and ask for the office of Ivan Seidenberg, the CEO.
But that pressure, valuable as it is, won't be necessary if Bruno, Nozzolio and the Senate leadership wake up and move to end an unjust and unnecessary tax on the poor.
Errol Louis was born in Harlem, raised in New Rochelle and lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife, Juanita Scarlett. He is the son of a retired NYPD inspector and formerly served as associate editor of The New York Sun. He has taught college, co-founded an inner-city community credit union, run for City Council and was once named by New York Magazine as one of 10 New Yorkers making a difference "with energy, vision and independent thinking." He holds degrees from Harvard, Yale and Brooklyn Law School.
E-mail: elouis @edit.nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/v-pfriendly/story/390977p-331653c.html

Posted by lois at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2006

MA Legislative Cmte Votes in Favor of Fines for Marijuana Possession

Drug Policy Forum of Massachusetts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Whitney A. Taylor
February 13, 2006 (617) 335-1841

MA Legislators Vote in Favor of Fines for Marijuana Possession
The First Time in Over a Decade a Joint Committee of the Massachusetts Legislature
Passes Out a Bill to Decriminalize Marijuana

Boston — The Massachusetts General Court’s Joint Mental Health & Substance Abuse Committee passed out favorably the late Senator Charles Shannon’s Senate Bill 1151 — “An Act to Impose a Civil Fine for the Possession of Marijuana.” The bill, which would require a civil fine of $250 to be paid if an adult is caught possessing an ounce or less of marijuana, is a major step in creating policies in Massachusetts that discern between marijuana and other drugs, substance use vs. abuse, as well as a criminal justice approach vs. a treatment approach for those suffering from addiction.

“The Committee is reflecting the attitude of the majority of Bay Staters — that personal possession of marijuana should not lead to a criminal record that will damage the rest of someone’s life,” stated Committee Chairwoman Representative Ruth Balser (D-Newton). “It is the goal of the Mental Health & Substance Abuse Committee to have drug abuse seen in a treatment context, not a criminal justice context.”

While adults will pay a civil fine for the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana, S.1151 does require that the parent or guardian of any juvenile qualifying for a civil infraction under this law must be notified and the citation will be delivered to them directly. In a 2002 study by Harvard Economist Dr. Jeffery Miron, it was determined that S.1151 would save Massachusetts taxpayers $24.3 million a year in arrest and booking costs alone, with fines generating an undetermined amount of revenue.

"We must be realistic about the differences between various illicit substances and the dangers they present to our communities," said Committee Chairman Senator Steven Tolman (D-Boston). "It is time the legislature had an honest debate on marijuana and our criminal justice system and I look forward to participating in that debate."

Marijuana has been decriminalized in 11 other states across the U.S. with no negative effects. Specifically, California has reported a decrease in youth marijuana use over the last 5 years under their marijuana decriminalization system.

“Massachusetts needs to be smart in our approach to drug control,” commented Committee Member Rep. John Scibak, (D-2nd Hampshire). “We should spend our time and money helping those who are suffering from addiction, not handing out criminal records.”

“It is wonderful to see Massachusetts legislators taking this step toward a sensible debate on marijuana control policies,” concluded Whitney A. Taylor, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Forum of Massachusetts. “We are moving away from policies based on stigma and punishment, to those based on science, efficacy and human dignity.”

###

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

February 13, 2006

CT: Proposed Budget Would Fund Juvenile Facility for Girls

"When we saw it was in the budget, we were delighted," said Sandy Dearborn, president of public employees union AFSCME Local 2663. "The workers are saying the girls really need a place. They deserve a place. If they're in that much emotional turmoil, they need to know there's a safe place for them." Girls walk away from the group homes where they are now housed, Dearborn said, and the facilities can refuse to take them back. "We're delighted that they're finally recognizing it, but we're wishing it was a lot more," she said."

Proposed budget would fund juvenile facility for girls

By Cara Rubinsky, Associated Press Writer | February 12, 2006

HARTFORD, Conn. --Gov. M. Jodi Rell's proposed budget includes money for a group of state residents who advocates say have long been neglected -- troubled girls in the juvenile justice system.

The budget unveiled last week sets aside $1 million in bond money to build a small, secure facility with four to six beds to serve the most troubled girls. A location has not yet been chosen.

Also included is money for three small group homes with four to six beds each for girls who need less restrictive settings. The idea is to help them connect with their communities by attending school and having jobs outside the facilities, which will be scattered across the state. Another 12 slots would be created for specialized foster care.

The judicial branch would get additional money for other programs to serve juvenile girls and boys.

Due to safety and security concerns, the state has had no secure facility for troubled girls in the three years since the coed Long Lane School closed.

Instead, many have gone to hospitals or privately run group homes. A few have been sent to the York Correctional Institution, an adult facility, for minor offenses such as running away from home or breach of peace.

"I think it's extremely traumatizing to send a girl to York Correctional," said Tammy Sneed, who oversees services for juvenile girls in the Department of Children and Families. "These girls really have significant traumas, and without addressing them we really just push them further into the system." DCF's juvenile services division oversees the treatment of about 500 children and teenagers, 115 of them female, who have been referred by judges. The agency also deals with hundreds of others on the verge of entering the court system.

The proposed budget also includes $5 million to start planning and acquiring land for new regional treatment centers to replace the Connecticut Juvenile Training School, which houses boys. Rell has given DCF until 2008 to close the school, which cost $57 million to build and has been plagued with problems since it opened in 2001.

The president of the union that represents former Long Lane and current training school workers said Rell's proposal is a good start, though she would like to see more beds in the secure facility.

Girls walk away from the group homes where they are now housed, Dearborn said, and the facilities can refuse to take them back.

"We're delighted that they're finally recognizing it, but we're wishing it was a lot more," she said.

Don Devore, director of juvenile services for DCF, said agency officials hope devoting resources to smaller group homes will eliminate the need for more restrictive facilities.

"It's clear that the more money we can put into the development of community supports for our girls, the less actual money and time that we'll have to put into the secure, expensive end of things," he said.

Jeanne Milstein, the state's child advocate, worked with Devore and a federal court monitor to develop recommendations for juvenile girls after Long Lane closed. She said she is excited about Rell's proposal because changes have been too long in coming.

"It seems like what they're proposing does address the needs," she said. "For a handful of girls, and I stress a handful, there is a need for a treatment environment that is secure, because there are too many girls spending extraordinary amounts of time in detention, in prison, on the streets."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2006/02/12/proposed_bu
dget_would_fund_juvenile_facility_for_girls/

Posted by lois at 07:08 PM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2006

CA: Plan Puts Women who are incarcerted in Center Near Families

Plan Puts Female Inmates in Centers by Their Families

By Jenifer Warren, Times Staff Writer
February 11, 2006

SACRAMENTO — Radically reshaping their approach to women prisoners, Schwarzenegger administration officials plan to move 40% of the state's female inmates out of their cells and into neighborhood correctional centers.

Most would probably be housed in Los Angeles County, which sends more women to prison than any other county.

The inmates — about 4,500 to start — would be able to live closer to their families and receive education, job training, drug and alcohol counseling, and other help that few now get in California's severely overcrowded penitentiaries.

All of the new centers would be secure facilities run by private companies under contract to the state. Only inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes, such as drug or property offenses, would be eligible. Some prisoners would be allowed to have their children live with them.

The plan, most of which requires legislative approval, reflects a growing consensus among experts nationally that female inmates are ill served by a one-size-fits-all correctional system designed for violent men. If adopted, the initiative would make California a leader among states remaking prison systems to reflect differences between the sexes.

The proposal also offers the state a way to ease the severe overcrowding plaguing the $8.1-billion correctional system.

With the total inmate population at an all-time high of 168,000 — enough to fill Dodger Stadium nearly three times — tensions on cellblocks are rising and wardens are wedging convicts into gyms, TV lounges, even hallways. Almost every prison is packed to twice its intended capacity.

The crowding, coupled with a severe vacancy rate in the correctional officer ranks, requires some guards to work as many as six double shifts each month.

By moving 4,500 women into community beds, officials could free up an entire prison for the overflow of male inmates, providing temporary relief while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pushes his proposal to build two new lockups with bond money.

The plan for female convicts is buried in the state budget the governor proposed last month and has not been widely discussed in public. Officials acknowledge that shifting prisoners into community beds may alarm some neighborhood residents.

Resistance also is likely from the powerful guards union, which wields considerable influence in the Legislature and has long been bitterly opposed to the privatization of prisons.

Others are optimistic, arguing that public wariness will diminish once the profile of the inmates — mostly mothers whose crimes make them a relatively low security risk — becomes known. The large majority of female prisoners — about 66% — are serving time for nonviolent crimes, with an average stay in state custody of 13 months.

"We need to tell our communities who these women are and remind everyone that these offenders are coming home to their neighborhoods sooner or later," Corrections Secretary Roderick Q. Hickman said recently.

Several lawmakers have pledged to back the proposal.

"The overwhelming majority of women in prison are in for low-level crimes that do not require the sort of expensive, high-security setting we're providing them," said Assemblywoman Sally Lieber (D-Mountain View).

"We know there will be people who say this sort of move is soft on crime," said state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles). "But it's really about being smart on crime."

Like other states, California has seen a steady increase in its female inmate population and now houses 11,400 women — almost twice the number in 1990. Most, about 6,700, are in two high-security prisons in the remote San Joaquin Valley town of Chowchilla, far from the big cities where they live and their children await their return.

An additional 2,200 are at the California Institution for Women in Chino and the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco. The rest live in three camps (two in San Diego County, one in Malibu); a private prison in Live Oak, north of Sacramento; and in small programs for new mothers and the drug-addicted that are scattered around the state.

A year ago, the Little Hoover Commission, a watchdog panel appointed by the governor and Legislature, published a report calling California's strategy for female offenders a failure. Among other problems, California remained largely wedded to a policy of punishment and incapacitation designed for violent men, the report said.

As a result, half of these women eventually return to state prison, mostly for nonviolent offenses. The social and economic costs of that statistic, according to the report, includes lasting damage to California's young generation, because two out of three female inmates have at least one minor child.

In response, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation launched plans to remake its prisons to better address women's needs. It hired two prominent experts on female convicts as advisors and invited scholars, legislators, ex-felons and others to join a commission to suggest improvements.

In the last year, the department has ended the practice of allowing male guards to pat down female inmates, halted the shackling of prisoners during labor and childbirth, improved nutrition for pregnant women and increased access to sanitary products — a top complaint in the past.

Officials now are considering allowing relatives or friends to be in delivery rooms when inmates have babies and are retooling visitation practices to enhance bonding between incarcerated mothers and their children.

At the Chino women's prison, Warden Dawn Davison is finalizing plans for a 20-cell wing that will allow inmates who deliver babies to be housed with their newborns for up to 18 months and then moved into special community housing upon parole. With the help of HomeAid Inland Empire, the charitable arm of a builders association, prison officials are remodeling an old, unused cellblock and hope to house the first new mothers there this fall.

"The goal is to keep these mothers and babies together so that they build a strong relationship from the start and, hopefully, avoid problems down the line," Davison said.

Under current rules, the six babies born to California inmates in an average week spend a day or two in the hospital with their mothers before being picked up by relatives or placed in the government's child protective system.

Although the prison nursery is a pioneering step, the most dramatic change is the proposed transfer to community beds. Officials said the typical inmate qualifying for neighborhood placement would be serving a sentence of less than a year for a crime such as forgery, burglary, auto theft, drug possession or sale, or driving under the influence.

The plan has three phases, beginning this year with the shift of 500 women into privately run drug treatment programs. That move does not require legislative approval and could happen by summer, officials said.

Later in the year, officials hope to begin accepting bids from firms interested in housing the additional 4,000 or so women who qualify for a community slot.

The centers would range in size from 75 to 200 inmates. Some would be dormitory-style; others would permit children and have bedrooms surrounding a common living area. Treatment methods would vary according to provider and a center's population.

All would be locked facilities with peace officers on staff, officials said. The level of security would vary according to the facility's population. Locations of the centers would depend on permits.

An overriding goal of the policy change is to keep inmates more closely connected to their families, a link known to decrease the odds that an offender will commit crimes again. Because more than 30% of all convicts are from Los Angeles County, a large proportion of the correctional centers would be there. San Diego, San Bernardino and Riverside counties have the next-largest percentages.

Although the expense of housing women in neighborhoods would be lower than prison costs, the expanded services they receive would initially consume any savings. But
Wendy Still, who occupies the newly created job of deputy director for women's programs, said the new approach would yield long-term financial benefits by reducing the number of parolees who wind up back behind bars.

Those supporting the new strategy agreed.

"This is groundbreaking reform, and it has been a long time coming," said lobbyist Mark Nobili of Cornell Cos. Inc., which operates the minimum-security private prison at Live Oak. "In the past, these women have been warehoused and we've guaranteed their failure. Now, they may finally receive programs that might guarantee their success."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-women11feb11,0,6116670.story?coll=la-home-local

Posted by lois at 01:20 PM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2006

Seized with Heavy Hand at Border

February 10, 2006
Seized With Heavy Hand at Border, for Paperwork Errors
By NINA BERNSTEIN, NY Times

One is a second grader in Manhattan. Over the protests of his American mother, immigration officials have been trying to deport him ever since he returned from a brief visit to his native Canada without the right visa. Another is an Irish professor of literature invited to teach at the University of Pennsylvania last month. He was handcuffed at the Philadelphia airport, strip-searched, jailed overnight and sent back to Europe to correct an omission in his travel papers.

Then there are the seven Tibetan monks who were visiting Omaha two weeks ago. After their church sponsor abruptly withdrew its support, their religious visas were revoked and a dozen immigration officers in riot gear showed up to arrest them.

The details in these cases vary, as do the technical visa infractions committed by each of the foreigners. But they all testify to a larger issue looming on the front lines of immigration enforcement: how low-level gatekeepers and prosecutors in the customs and immigration system are using their growing discretionary power over travelers who pose no security risk.

Officials of the Department of Homeland Security have acknowledged that intensified efforts to keep out terrorists since the 9/11 attacks have sometimes led to the heavy-handed treatment of foreigners whose only offense was an inadvertent paperwork error or being caught in a bureaucratic tangle. In memos issued in 2004 and 2005, agency officials encouraged officers to use discretion and legal shortcuts to resolve such cases quickly, saving resources for more important tasks and showing the world a more welcoming face.

But immigration lawyers say the effort is not working. Though there are no statistics on such cases, the lawyers say they are seeing harsher treatment in situations involving paperwork errors or minor infractions. A political climate more hostile to foreigners, fears of being faulted for leniency and a lack of coordination among immigration agencies, they say, are leading officers to go overboard in cases that fit the government guidelines for prosecutorial discretion.

"I'm desperate," Emily Arroyo, the mother of the second grader, said last week, after prosecutors refused an immigration judge's suggestion that they drop the two-year-old deportation case against her son, José Arroyo Rodas. Instead, they demanded that she buy him a one-way ticket to Canada by next week.

"I'm American — they're making me leave my country, too, because of course I'm not going to let him go alone," said Ms. Arroyo, a hairstylist raised in Guatemala, who calculates that she has spent $10,000 in legal fees trying in vain to fix José's paperwork problem. But on Wednesday, hours after this reporter asked United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Washington for comment about the case, an agency spokesman, Marc Raimondi, said that prosecutors reviewing the matter had found that it met the guidelines for prosecutorial discretion. "A dismissal recommendation to the immigration judge is planned," he said.

Kelly Klundt, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, which is also part of Homeland Security, said that as its officers process 86 million air travelers a year and enforce 400 different laws, "there are unfortunately going to be a few instances that do not demonstrate perfect discretion."

"Achieving a balance of being a welcoming nation and keeping the borders secure is terribly difficult," she added. "We are seeking to improve the way we handle all of these types of situations."

But a case like José's only confirms that without exceptional outside attention or high-level intervention, rigidity prevails, said Diane M. Butler, a Seattle lawyer who heads the American Immigration Lawyers Association committee that works with Customs and Border Protection.

Most officers, she said, "are trying to do the right thing" but lack training in how to apply discretion. But, in some instances, she added, officers seem newly emboldened by campaigns against illegal immigration to express their resentment of foreigners by denying or delaying entry whenever possible. She said her business clients reported remarks like, " 'You're just trying to take jobs away from Americans.' "

Other immigrant advocates say that low-level employees often act out of fear. "The people on the front line are told that if they make a mistake, their jobs are gone," said Amy L. Peck, an immigration lawyer in Omaha who heads the association committee that works with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "So that translates into this rigid — what one could also describe as extreme — policy of turning away and not using discretion in cases that scream for it."

The Irish professor, John McCourt, 40, said that on Jan. 7, an immigration officer at Philadelphia International Airport initially offered to correct a paperwork omission on the spot if he paid a $265 fine. Professor McCourt said he readily agreed, but five minutes later, the officer returned and said she had changed her mind — "that I was a university professor and should have known better" and would be sent back the same night.

In an e-mail message, Professor McCourt, a James Joyce specialist at the University of Trieste in Italy, wrote: "I was told that if I protested I would simply be deported and never be let back."

At 11 p.m., six hours after his arrival, he was transported in handcuffs to the Montgomery County jail, along with another traveler denied entry, Kerstin Spitzl, a pregnant German woman who says that immigration officers abruptly canceled her visa, insisting that she was planning to violate its terms by working.

Worse than the cold, windowless cells at the jail, they said in separate interviews, was a sense of powerlessness. "You're scared," said Ms. Spitzl from her home in Wuppertal. "You have no rights. You cannot contact nobody, nobody can contact you."

In Italy, Professor McCourt quickly fixed his paperwork at the American consulate in Florence, and returned to start his classes at Penn a week late. But in New York last week, where he spoke at Fordham University on "Joyce and Judaism," he said his experience had confirmed his European friends' worst fears about America.

"At the moment, America is easy to hate," he said, "So people say, 'That does it for me. I'm not going to risk that happening.' "

Ms. Klundt, of Customs and Border Protection, said she could not comment on individual cases. But she quoted Robert C. Bonner, who retired as the agency's commissioner in November: "Isolated incidents of rude and hostile conduct reflect poorly on our agency and our country and they are inconsistent with C.B.P. law enforcement professionalism."

In an August 2004 memo, announcing an agency "professionalism initiative," Mr. Bonner also said: "Since the overwhelming majority of travelers pose absolutely no threat to our national security, C.B.P. will use discretion to permit entry, whenever the law allows, for individuals that have committed a technical or inadvertent immigration violation, but who otherwise pose no threat whatsoever."

Guidelines on prosecutorial discretion were also issued last October by the chief counsel to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, William J. Howard, "to reallocate limited ICE resources to priority cases by dismissing appropriate cases," like deportation proceedings against people whose applications to stay in the United States, though backlogged, were likely to be approved.

Sometimes the case for leniency is in the eye of the beholder. In the case of the Tibetan monks, Ms. Peck said they had been abandoned without money in Arizona by their sponsor, the Church of Shambhala, because they refused to recognize its leader as the reincarnation of Buddha and Jesus. They traveled to Omaha for Buddhist workshops, unaware that their visas had been revoked, she said. But Mr. Raimondi defended the arrests, saying that the monks had been notified that their visas were revoked, and became "fugitive aliens" when they left Arizona.

In José Rodas's case, prosecutorial discretion may be the only way to cut through a tangle of law and circumstance — and as of last night, the boy's lawyer, Irwin Berowitz, said he had received no word of the government's change of heart. José cannot automatically derive American citizenship from his mother because she was reared in Guatemala, and his absent father is not American.

A petition to set the boy on the road to United States citizenship has been approved, but obstacles include a two-year processing backlog, his lawyer said. And as long as prosecutors remain opposed, an immigration judge has no authority to dismiss his deportation case.

At one hearing, Ms. Arroyo said, the judge had to take a break to regain her composure after she and José both started crying. "He kept saying," Ms. Arroyo recalled, " 'Mommy, I don't want to leave.' "

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/10/nyregion/10immigration.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)

Univ. of TX: Profiting from prisons

Profiting from prisons

By Michael O'Keefe Cowles
Opinion | 2/10/06
The United States currently imprisons more than 2.2 million people,
giving our country the highest incarceration rate of any in the world. While this should stand as a national crisis, it has instead been opened up as an opportunity for some to turn a profit.

What might amaze many is that one such profiteer may very well be The
University of Texas. UTIMCO, the corporation that invests UT System
funds, manages, at any one time, more than $16 billion. A good deal of this money now, however, may be moving into investments with for-profit, private prisons.

Profiting UTIMCO, according to its last quarterly report, invests over $430 million in a hedge fund named Farallon. Farallon, an organization that has a bit of a sordid past itself, has recently, with the University of Texas and other universities' money, become one of the largest investors in Corrections Corporation of America, the biggest private prison company in the United States.
Because of SEC rules governing firms like Farallon, they are not obliged to reveal information pertaining to individual investors, such as the University of Texas, what exactly they are investing their money in.

What is certain, however, is that Farallon, with investors' funds, has bought 1.77 million shares of CCA and, with the amount of money that the UT System invests with the hedge fund, it's very likely that Farallon has invested a substantial amount of UT's money in this corporation.
Known by prison advocates as the most notorious of private prison
corporations, CCA has been documented in wide-scale abuses of their
inmate population. Human rights organization Amnesty International has been very critical of the for-profit prison corporation.

In a briefing in front of the United Nations Committee on Torture,
Amnesty detailed the ill-treatment of prisoners under CCA's care. These included inmates suffering electro-shock punishment by guards, being given severe beatings and even being sexually assaulted by shampoo bottles.

Because it is a for-profit corporation, CCA looks to cut costs where it can. This has led to inexperienced guards and a high turnover rate among its prison staff, almost three times that of guards in publicly run prisons, according to a 2006 report published by Grassroots Leadership.

One such consequence of this inexperience, revealed in study on CCA by criminologist James Austin, is that CCA prisons have 65-percent higher rates of prisoner assaults on other prisoners and even documented sales of drugs to inmates and assistance in escapes by CCA staff.

All this has led many at other universities to call on their
institutions to divest from Farallon, so long as it invests its clients' money in CCA. Students at Yale, another big university investor, have lobbied university officials to divest from the hedge fund, and many students at UT-Austin are planning to do the same.

The privatization of prisons across the country has quietly become one of the biggest moral issues facing many state legislators.

CCA has fast become the fourth-largest prison system in the country,
behind only the federal government and two states. They have used the
influence their size has brought them to their advantage. CCA and other private prison companies have extensively lobbied state legislators around the country - Texas state legislators are some of their favorite targets. Texas Rep. Ray Allen even co-chaired a meeting, as part of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, which wrote model legislation for state legislatures to introduce a greater role for
private prisons.

Not surprisingly, this and other legislation these corporations have
helped influence and even written has included harsher penalties for
most crimes and fewer opportunities for rehabilitation instead of
incarceration.

Because of the danger that private prisons pose, many faith communities, including the Presbyterian Church and the Southern Catholic Bishops, have called for an end to the for-profit prison industry. The UTIMCO should heed their call and see that its funds are invested in more responsible businesses, not ones that profit from human suffering and abuse. With divestment from Farallon, the University of Texas has the opportunity to take the lead among academic institutions with more responsible money management and to act more like a publicly accountable institution and less like faceless investment firm.

If it neglects to do so, however, UT risks jeopardizing its moral
credibility.

O'Keefe Cowles is a government and Latin American studies senior.
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/media/paper410/news/2006/02/10/Opinion/Profiting.
From.Prisons-1607651.shtml?norewrite&sourcedomain=www.dailytexanonline.com

Posted by lois at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

Sentencing Project: "The War on Marijuana: The Transformation of the War on Drugs in the 1990's"

This paper was published originally last year but now it is published din the Harm Reduction Journal.
The Sentencing Project is pleased to announce that its policy report, “The War on Marijuana: The Transformation of the War on Drugs in the 1990s,” by Ryan King and Marc Mauer, has just been published in the Harm Reduction Journal, at http://www.harmreductionjournal.com/content/pdf/1477-7517-3-6.pdf. The paper finds that 82% of the 450,000 increase in drug arrests from 1990-2002 was for marijuana offenses, and that 88% of the 700,000 annual marijuana arrests are for possession offenses. Overall, the cost of marijuana enforcement and incarceration totals an estimated $4 billion a year. The authors contend that record levels of marijuana arrests have diverted resources from more effective strategies to reduce drug abuse and crime.

Posted by lois at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

MI: Lawmakers: Don't release list of school workers with convictions

Feb 8, 5:14 PM EST
Lawmakers: Don't release list of school workers with convictions
By DAVID EGGERT
Associated Press Writer
LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- Some Republican lawmakers said Wednesday the state Department of Education should not immediately release the names of school workers with criminal convictions, partly echoing a call from the state's largest teachers' union.
Republican Sens. Ron Jelinek of Three Oaks and Mike Goschka of Brant said they have heard from school superintendents or others who say some teachers and others are wrongly included on the list. The report matching criminal history information with more than 200,000 school employees, which was sent to districts last week, should not be made public until the information is accurate, lawmakers said.
"We should reveal those found guilty of crimes but never those law-abiding individuals who have dedicated their lives to educating our children," said Jelinek, who added that school retirees are wrongly listed.

In a Friday memo to districts, state superintendent Mike Flanagan said the search of the State Police's criminal database - prompted by a new law targeting sex offenders - resulted in some "false positives" due to stolen Social Security numbers or matches involving common names. The check is believed to have revealed thousands of felony offenses, though it's unclear how many employees have multiple convictions.
The 160,000-member Michigan Education Association has won a court order temporarily barring the release of names to the media. It says lawmakers should pass a bill immediately withdrawing the list because of "mass" inaccuracies.

Sex offenses will result in firing. Those with felony convictions must receive approval from the superintendent and school board to stay employed.
Lawmakers, however, said the current list needs to be double-checked, not scrapped entirely.
Wednesday's comments from Senate Republicans differ from last's week announcement by House Republicans of a bill forcing the state to release the names.
A spokesman for House Speaker Craig DeRoche, R-Novi, said Wednesday the list should be accurate but stressed that most of it already is, estimating that 24 of 25 names are correct. Matt Resch said the education department must have been confident with the list before sending it to districts last week.
"It is important that while we make sure innocent people aren't on the list by mistake, we also take action to remove those people who aren't innocent before they pose a threat to students," Resch said.
The education department was aware there would be some inaccuracies on the list because fingerprint checks are the only way to be 100 percent accurate, spokesman Martin Ackley said. All school employees aren't required to be fingerprinted until 2008.
Ackley said the department expects local districts to be the final filter to identify false-positives.
"Our primary focus is to identify employees who may pose a danger to children and remove them from the schools," he said.
But Margaret Trimer-Hartley, spokeswoman for the MEA, criticized the department, saying it could have used a more thorough database to check workers' criminal backgrounds. The union has received hundreds of calls from affected employees, she said.
"These are people's lives," Trimer-Hartley said. "Nothing should go public until we've done the kind of checking, the kind of verification that is owed people."
All sides are awaiting a Friday court hearing, when an Ingham County judge may rule on whether to continue an injunction against releasing the names.

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

February 06, 2006

Everything for Sale at Amer. Correctional Assoc. winter conference

LETTER FROM NASHVILLE

Sold with conviction
The offerings of an exhibition of products for prisons captivates Tribune staff reporter Rex W. Huppke.
By Tribune staff reporter Rex W. Huppke on assignment recently in Nashville

February 6, 2006

NASHVILLE -- Whether looking to add a splash of color to your inmates' wardrobe or just shopping for that special corrections officer who has everything, there was no grander place to be last week than the exhibition hall at the American Correctional Association's annual winter conference.

It was a Nashville-style mix of beer, barbed wire and barbecue, as red-white-and-blue-skirted square dancers entertained, and wardens and sheriff's deputies browsed everything from newfangled leg shackles to the latest in prison garb.

Tired of those drab old black-and-white-striped chain-gang get-ups? How about bright green and white, or even a sassy blue-striped number?

Octopus, anyone?

Looking to spice up the selection down at the commissary? Nothing says "exotic prison experience" like a sealed pouch of octopus in oil or smoked kipper snacks, imported from Thailand and distributed by Majestica, the self-proclaimed "King of Pouch Products."

On the more introspective side, a banner hanging over one booth left passersby pondering the question: "How Do You Clothe Your Suicidal Inmates?"

This bizarre range of goods, and the vendors' near-euphoric grins, hinted at both the complexities of operating a modern jail or prison and the astounding amount of money that goes into feeding, housing and clothing the more than 2 million people currently locked up.

"It's big business," said Tim Baltz, regional sales manager for ATD-American Co., which supplies everything from riot gear to inmate underwear. "I've been in corrections for 30 years now, and it's a growth industry--unfortunately."

Unfortunate, that is, unless your business is selling riot gear and inmate underwear.

The country spends more than $60 billion a year on corrections, up from $9 billion in 1982. The state of Illinois spends about $5.2 million a year to clothe its inmates and an additional $40 million to feed them.

With states everywhere tightening their budgets, corrections officials rely on exhibitions such as the one that wrapped up recently in Nashville to make sure they're getting not only the best technology to sweep for hidden cell phones but also the best bulk price on Snickers bars and MoonPies.

The whole affair was held at a resort close enough to the famous Grand Ole Opry that you could toss a Dolly Parton CD from the parking lot and hit it. The 9-acre, glass-enclosed Gaylord Opryland resort is about as far removed from a prison as possible, unless there's one somewhere with expansive tropical gardens, gourmet restaurants and the occasional decorative waterfall. (Just because you work with prisoners doesn't mean you have to live like them.)

But what better place to be charmed and cajoled by hundreds of eager salespeople, each greeting conventioneers with free candy and ice cream bars, pens and magnets, and glossy photo spreads of high-tech monitoring devices and glistening aluminum urinals?

A knockout product

For corrections officers, there was the new OC-B7 baton, made of sleek, aircraft-grade aluminum, aerodynamically perfect for bonking out-of-line inmates and, best of all, equipped with a thumb trigger that releases a jet of pepper spray.

There were a slew of booths advertising courses on parenting, drug and alcohol treatment and something called Moral Reconation Therapy, which, though Webster's dictionary doesn't list the word "reconation," certainly sounds like an effective way to get inmates morally reconated.

Suicide prevention was a hot topic as well, with Lonna and Dennis Speer proudly touting their "safety smock," a dark blue robe, lightly padded and made of thick backpack material that can't be torn. Dennis Speer explained that inmates deemed suicidal can't wear regular clothes because they could roll them up or rip them up to make a noose.

That's where the safety smock comes in. It looks a bit like a stiff garbage bag with holes for the arms and head, but it's actually fastened around the body with easy-release velcro, so none of the holes can be used for self-strangulation. It's big enough to put on over shackles and thick enough that it can't be used as a noose.

At just $240 a pop, the safety smock has become a popular alternative in prisons across the country and, according to Dennis Speer, was even worn by infamous California murderer Scott Peterson.

Dave Bernhardt, a sales manager for an Indianapolis company that crafts stainless steel bathroom fixtures, explained the complexities of making suicide-proof products.

Toilet selling points

"Everything's got to be smooth and rounded, so you can't attach anything to hang yourself," he said, pointing out the gently sloping tapers of a well-polished toilet. "Even our towel hooks, they break away if you put more than a few pounds of pressure on them."

Along with being suicidal at times, some inmates tend to be a bit sneaky, thus the success of Swintec Corp.'s typewriters, which are housed in see-through plastic to prevent prisoners from stashing weapons or contraband.

Illinois inmates can earn anywhere from $10 to $45 a month working in prison. Those who haven't saved enough for a $192 transparent typewriter often turn to the commissary for a taste of home or, perhaps, a taste of the aforementioned octopus in a pouch.

John O'Brien had corrections people lining up outside his booth to try samples of his company's sausage and dried meats. He earns more than $5 million a year in sales to prison commissaries.

"That," O'Brien said, proudly, "is a lot of jerky."

Indeed. And a lot for inmates to chew on while they sit there serving time.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0602060191feb06,1,7168647.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

Posted by lois at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

Everything for Sale at Amer. Correctional Assoc. winter conference

LETTER FROM NASHVILLE

February 6, 2006

Tired of those drab old black-and-white-striped chain-gang get-ups? How about bright green and white, or even a sassy blue-striped number?

Octopus, anyone?

On the more introspective side, a banner hanging over one booth left passersby pondering the question: "How Do You Clothe Your Suicidal Inmates?"

Unfortunate, that is, unless your business is selling riot gear and inmate underwear.

A knockout product

At just $240 a pop, the safety smock has become a popular alternative in prisons across the country and, according to Dennis Speer, was even worn by infamous California murderer Scott Peterson.

Dave Bernhardt, a sales manager for an Indianapolis company that crafts stainless steel bathroom fixtures, explained the complexities of making suicide-proof products.

Toilet selling points

John O'Brien had corrections people lining up outside his booth to try samples of his company's sausage and dried meats. He earns more than $5 million a year in sales to prison commissaries.

"That," O'Brien said, proudly, "is a lot of jerky."

Indeed. And a lot for inmates to chew on while they sit there serving time.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0602060191feb06,1,7168647.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

Posted by lois at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

February 05, 2006

MN:Two who were incarcerated say current system is counterproductive

Star Tribune
Editorial
Lori Sturdevant: Needed: a better prison system

Two ex-inmates saw firsthand why current corrections efforts are counterproductive.

Last update: February 05, 2006 12:06 AM

A new question confronted this old newshound the other day. What's a journalist to do when a pair of longtime sources get out of prison?

Turn on the tape recorder, I concluded. Winston Borden and Roland Amundson are too quotable, and what they have to say about the criminal justice system is too important, for any other response to suffice.

To recap their cases: Borden, a former state senator, business lobbyist and attorney, was released in October after 11 months at a federal minimum security prison camp in Yankton, S.D., for failure to file tax returns. Amundson, a former Minnesota Court of Appeals judge, served 40 months, most of them at the state correctional facility in Lino Lakes, for stealing some $300,000 from the trust fund he managed for a mentally retarded woman.

Both pleaded guilty. Both cited, and were treated for, serious mental health disorders in connection with their crimes. Neither is speaking out now to make excuses for their behavior or to rehabilitate their reputations. They got what they deserved, they say.

But they also say that Minnesota and the nation deserve a better corrections system -- not so much for the sake of the inmates as for the communities to which they will return.

I'll let them elaborate:

Borden: Almost everybody gets out. That's the reality of the prison system. Do [inmates] get out better, or worse? Almost every component of the system is designed to send them out worse than when they went in.

Amundson: There's a lot of learning that goes on in prison. I've never so much as smoked a marijuana cigarette in my life. But I can tell you three or four different ways to cook meth, where to get the material, where the best fields are in southern Minnesota to cook it. I can tell you where to sell it in Minneapolis and St. Paul, what the going price is. I can tell you a lot about what the best weed is to buy, how to take ink off of bank notes, how alarm systems are disabled. I've never had a single conversation about any of this, mind you. I just sat at dinner and listened.

Very, very little rehabilitation goes on. At Lino Lakes, supposedly the principal drug and alcohol treatment facility in Minnesota, the so-called treatment is almost universally considered a joke.

Borden: I have, for more than 30 years, said public service is a high calling. What I saw in terms of the federal prison staff was a group of cynical, burned-out people. If they were paid the same rate I was paid as an inmate, 12 cents an hour, they would have been overpaid. There wasn't one that demonstrated the kind of work ethic that you would want an inmate to duplicate on the outside.

Amundson: I knew some very good people on staff, but they were trying to run a clean sewer. Prison is an atmosphere of cynicism, anxiety and bitterness.

The worst is what happens in the visiting room, when you have employees who are completely insensitive to family matters. They care nothing about keeping families together. They were abusive to my kids [he has four school-age sons] and abusive of me in front of my kids. How many times my kids left there with tears, I can't tell you. How do you come back out and resume your role as a father, after that?

We used to think that the juvenile justice system fed the adult system. In fact, the adult justice system feeds the juvenile system. When a father is in jail, his children are seven times more likely than other kids to land in prison.

Borden: Ninety-five percent of the inmates, the men, leave divorced. This system destroys families. It begins with the fact that we have urban prisoners serving in rural areas, miles away from home.

Amundson: Prisoners who work make 12 cents an hour, and from Lino Lakes it costs 38 cents a minute to call home. How can families stay in contact?

Borden: About that work -- at Yankton, it was makework. It's cleaning tables three times a day. It's nothing that would prepare you for a job.

Amundson: The Minnesota statutes provide for something called "productive day," that allows prisoners on minimum [security] to leave, under supervision, and go to work somewhere. But the staff discourages it. By the commissioner's fiat, it's only available the last eight months of sentences. The Legislature intended for half of sentences to be served on work release.

We don't need any more prisons in this state. You could empty out the prisons, and put these people on work release. They'd be paying their own way, earning a wage, paying taxes, and staying with their families. They could be monitored with electronic surveillance.

Borden: If you want to talk about a crime, it's the economic robbery of the taxpayer by locking up thousands of people who are of no threat to anyone. ... We have 734 of every 100,000 Americans in prison today. That's more than Stalin had in Russia at the height of the gulag system. The question is, are we safer because of it?

€ € €

Readers, that's a good and timely question. Minnesota's incarceration rate, long one of the lowest in the country, is now rising rapidly. Gov. Tim Pawlenty is asking the 2006 Legislature to authorize a $70 million bond sale to pay for new, improved and expanded prison facilities.

That's a worthwhile expenditure if it buys a safer society and puts broken lives back on productive tracks. But if that money is spent on more of what Win and Rollie describe, it will yield neither safety nor redemption. Legislators should be demanding better results.

http://www.startribune.com/314/story/225221.html

Posted by lois at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)

IL: State Leaders Tout "meth" Prisons

02/04/2006
State leaders tout ‘meth’ prisons
SANFORD J. SCHMIDT , The Telegraph

EDWARDSVILLE -- A large group of state officials was in town Friday to tout Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s idea of building "meth prisons" to deal with the ever-growing threat of methamphetamine crimes.
The prisons, one of which would be in East St. Louis, would offer treatment aimed at reducing the number of people addicted to methamphetamine who return to the prison system after being released.

People convicted of drug crimes have a 60 percent rate of returning to prison after being released, said Roger E. Walker Jr., director of the Illinois Department of Corrections, at a news conference Friday at the Madison County Administration Building in downtown Edwardsville.

"They are put back in jail before the ink is dry on the parole papers," he said.

Meth is a particularly addictive drug, so treatment is especially important to prevent a relapse, Walker said.

The state has one meth prison, the Sheridan Correctional Center in northern Illinois, where offenders who participate have had significant success in staying out of jail, officials said. The Sheridan prison would be expanded under the governor’s proposal.

"At Sheridan, we’ve seen a 50 percent reduction in recidivism (returning to prison after being released)," state Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Collinsville.

The governor’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year includes $7 million to create a 200-bed meth prison at the Southwestern Illinois Correctional Center in East St. Louis and to make the entire prison a fully dedicated drug prison and "re-entry program," state officials said.

Walker said that after an offender was convicted and sentenced, his staff members would determine whether that offender would be eligible to get treatment at the meth prison.

Inmates selected for the program would have to show that they are ready, he said. An addict taped in a video shown at the news conference said it takes two years before meth users can get their minds away from the meth "high" long enough to concentrate on treatment.

Another top state official urged people not to be too cynical about offering treatment for meth addiction.

"I am here to tell you, based on evidence, science and research, that one can conclude that treatment works," said Theodora Binion-Taylor, director of the Division of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse under the Illinois Department of Human Services.

Walker said offering treatment is a way to prevent addicts from committing the violent crimes that concern the public. The parolees will be held accountable, he said.

"Making offenders feel more accountable for their actions increases public safety," Walker said.

"Once you get out, we’re going to watch you. If you fail, you will go back to prison," Hoffman said.

"The impending threat of immediate incarceration does focus one’s mind," said state Sen. William Haine, D-Alton.

However, Haine cautioned that people should not expect immediate results.

"It will work over time," he said. "It is not a silver bullet. It’s trench warfare."

Posted by lois at 05:46 PM | Comments (0)

February 04, 2006

More on KBR's Money for Immigration Emergency

Article Last Updated: 2/02/2006 11:19 PM
Customs `camps' cause for concern
Tom Hennessy, Columnist
Long Beach Press Telegram
Maybe a lifetime in the news business makes one paranoid. Or maybe it was just a matter of timing.
The story showed up in Tuesday's Press-Telegram, as I was reading "Night," Elie Wiesel's horrifying autobiography of a teenager in Buchenwald and Auschwitz.

Appearing on page A5, the story said the federal government had awarded a $385 million contract for the construction of "temporary detention facilities." These would be used, the story said, in the event of an "immigration emergency."

Jamie Zuieback, an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), explained such an emergency like this: "If, for example, there were some sort of upheaval in another country that would cause mass migration, that's the type of situation that the contract would address."

That sounds a tad fuzzy, but let's concede that the camps do have something to do with immigration, illegal or not. In fact, there already are thousands of beds in place at various U.S. locations for the purpose of housing illegal immigrants.

But for anyone familiar with history U.S. or European the construction of detention camps for whatever purpose should prompt a chilling scenario.

Same folks
The new detention camps will be built by Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. The latter, as you likely know, is the defense-related corporate giant with fists full of contracts involving the war in Iraq.

Halliburton was led by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000. Democrats in Congress have accused the administration of favoring the company via no-bid contracts. But KBR says the detention contract was competitive.

Tuesday's story also said the contract was awarded by the Army Corps of Engineers. However, Halliburton says it was awarded by the Department of Homeland Security in support of ICE.

The contract is for a year, but includes four one-year options. It is a renewal of an existing ICE contract, notes Halliburton.

KBR, in fact, had the $9.7 million contract to build the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. This facility, popularly dubbed "Gitmo," holds 660 prisoners classified by the government as "enemy combatants."

Anyone care?
This column is written with the distinct feeling that not many people will give a hoot about any or all of this. But as already noted, a news story about construction of government detention centers should give us all pause.

Considering what took place in Nazi Germany, as well as the shameful incarceration of Japanese-Americans in 1942, no detention camp should be built without the widest possible public scrutiny.

Bottom line: The contract cries out for greater attention. So far, the government's expressed reason for building them is insufficient and ill-defined. And even if the camps do relate to illegal immigration, their purpose could be changed overnight.

This is an instance in which we could be well served by our representatives in Congress. They need to look at this and give constituents a better picture of what is going on.

Let's not have it said, years from now, that no one ever questioned this.

http://www.presstelegram.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?article=3470080

Posted by lois at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)

KBR-Halliburton Get $385 million contract to build detention centers just incase they are needed

February 4, 2006, NY Times
Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Contract to Add Temporary Immigration Detention Centers
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq.
KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. KBR, which announced the contract last month, had a similar contract with immigration agencies from 2000 to last year.

The contract with the Corps of Engineers runs one year, with four optional one-year extensions. Officials of the corps said that they had solicited bids and that KBR was the lone responder. A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jamie Zuieback, said KBR would build the centers only in an emergency like the one when thousands of Cubans floated on rafts to the United States. She emphasized that the centers might never be built if such an emergency did not arise. "It's the type of contract that could be used in some kind of mass migration," Ms. Zuieback said.
A spokesman for the corps, Clayton Church, said that the centers could be at unused military sites or temporary structures and that each one would hold up to 5,000 people.
"When there's a large influx of people into the United States, how are we going to feed, house and protect them?" Mr. Church asked. "That's why these kinds of contracts are there." Mr. Church said that KBR did not end up creating immigration centers under its previous contract, but that it did build temporary shelters for Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Federal auditors rebuked the company for unsubstantiated billing in its Iraq reconstruction contracts, and it has been criticized because of accusations that Halliburton, led by Dick Cheney before he became vice president, was aided by connections in obtaining contracts. Halliburton executives denied that they charged excessively for the work in Iraq. Mr. Church said concerns about the Iraq contracts did not affect the awarding of the new contract. Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, who has monitored the company, called the contract worrisome. "With Halliburton's ever expanding track record of overcharging, it's hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars," Mr. Waxman said. "With each new contract, the need for real oversight grows." In recent months, the Homeland Security Department has promised to increase bed space in its detention centers to hold thousands of illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. In the first quarter of the 2006 fiscal year, nearly 60 percent of the illegal immigrants apprehended from countries other than Mexico were released on their own recognizance.
Domestic security officials have promised to end the releases by increasing the number of detention beds. Last week, domestic security officials announced that they would expand detaining and swiftly deporting illegal immigrants to include those seized near the Canadian border.
Advocates for immigrants said they feared that the new contract was another indication that the government planned to expand the detention of illegal immigrants, including those seeking asylum.
"It's pretty obvious that the intent of the government is to detain more and more people and to expedite their removal," said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami. Ms. Zuieback said the KBR contract was not intended for that.
"It's not part of any day-to-day enforcement," she said.
She added that she could not provide additional information about the company's statement that the contract was also meant to support the rapid development of new programs.
Halliburton executives, who announced the contract last week, said they were pleased.
"We are especially gratified to be awarded this contract," an executive vice president, Bruce Stanski, said in a statement, "because it builds on our extremely strong track record in the arena of emergency management support."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/national/04halliburton.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Posted by lois at 03:36 PM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2006

UK: Racial Profiling and anti-terror stop and search

COMMENT
Racial profiling and anti-terror stop and search
By Arun Kundnani
31 January 2006, 4:00pm
Amid growing public concern about stop and search powers under terror laws and the challenge by Liberty in the High Court over their misuse, Arun Kundnani examines some of the key issues in the debate.

The new powers introduced under the Terrorism Act

Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984) stops could only be carried out by police if they had 'reasonable suspicion'. But in Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 new powers were introduced to allow stops and searches in order to prevent terrorism - no such suspicion was required. To regulate the use of such wide powers a special process of ministerial authorisation was set up to restrict such stops to a limited place and time where it was thought, on the basis of specific intelligence, necessary to prevent terrorism. And before police forces could use these powers, an authorising officer of Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) rank had to issue an order with the reasons for the authorisation. The order could last no longer than 28 days and the Secretary of State had to approve the authorisation within 48 hours.

However, in practice, the Metropolitan police has had a rolling authorisation across its whole district since February 2001. This has been justified on the grounds that the whole of London has been under permanent threat of terrorist attack over this time. And this fact only emerged by chance. It was only during a court hearing into the policing of protests at an arms fair in the Docklands in October 2003 that it emerged that the Section 44 powers had, in fact, been renewed every 28 days since the Act came into force in February 2001. Till then, the public had not even been told that these powers were in permanent effect.

The operation of these powers is surrounded with a climate of secrecy and non-accountability that cannot be justified by operational reasons alone.

The Terrorism Act 2000 has led to 'racial profiling'

The so-called 'code A guidance' on Section 44 advises first that: 'Officers must take particular care not to discriminate against members of minority ethnic groups in the exercise of these powers.' But it goes on to say that: 'There may be circumstances, however, where it is appropriate for officers to take account of a person's ethnic origin in selecting persons to be stopped in response to a specific terrorist threat (for example, some international terrorist groups are associated with particular ethnic identities).'[1] There is a concern that this clause effectively gives a licence to the police to stop and search people on the basis of an 'ethnic' profile of terrorist suspects, what US civil liberties activists would describe as 'racial profiling'.

Specifically, there is concern that police forces may be using Section 44 to target people who appear to police officers to be Muslim. The Home Office's Stop & Search Action Team Interim Guidance, which is a guidance document for police managers published in 2004, suggests this interpretation when it states that: 'There may be circumstances where it is appropriate for officers to take account of a person's ethnic background when they decide who to stop in response to a specific terrorist threat (for example, some international terrorist groups are associated with particular ethnic groups, such as Muslims).'[2] Of course, as the authors of this document ought to know, there is no such ethnic group as 'Muslims'. What is revealed here is anti-terrorism being used as a justification for racial profiling against Asians, Blacks and people of Middle Eastern appearance - the ethnic groups police officers would most likely associate with Islam. This may explain why Blacks and Asians were both four times more likely than Whites to be stopped under these powers in 2002/03.[3] Furthermore, according to one recent report, the number of Asian and Black people stopped and searched in London streets by police using anti-terrorism powers increased more than twelve-fold after the July 7 bombings.[4]

There seems to be confusion within the authorities as to whether such discriminatory stops are justifiable on this matter. In March 2005, Home Office minister Hazel Blears stated that Muslims should accept as 'reality' that they would be stopped and searched more often than others - going against the grain of much of the post-Macpherson agenda on stop and search.[5] On the other hand, documents such as the Association of Police Authorities' Know your rights leaflet, which is widely used as a guide for the public on their rights during a stop and search, states that: 'You should not be stopped or searched just because of: your age, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion or faith; the way you look or dress, the language you speak.'[6] Two different messages are being sent out here. It is likely that Hazel Blears' message is a truer reflection of actual policing practices. Stops found no terrorists

In the year 2002/3, police in England and Wales stopped and searched an average of 60 people a day as suspected terrorists, the majority while driving. That amounted to 21,577 stops and searches in one year under Terrorism Act powers. Whereas 13 per cent of stops and searches under normal police powers resulted in an arrest, the arrest rate for stops and searches on suspicion of terrorism was just 1.7 per cent. And the overwhelming majority of these arrests had nothing to do with terrorism. Only eighteen arrests in connection with terrorism were made in that year as a result of the 21,577 stops and searches carried out. None of these arrests resulted in a conviction for terrorist offences.[7] In other words, although tens of thousands of people were stopped and searched under suspicion of terrorism, these searches did not lead to a single conviction. The figures recorded in the following year showed a similar pattern.[8] By 2004/5 when one hundred people were stopped each day, 455 arrests were made out of 35,776 searches, a rate of 1.2 per cent.[9] Can the powers be justified as a deterrent?

Police forces themselves know that they cannot justify anti-terrorist stops and searches in terms of convictions. That is why they now say that the real value of anti-terrorist stop and search is as a deterrent to would-be terrorists. Police authorities have given evidence in parliament that a terrorist who is planning to attack Westminster tube station, for example, may be deterred if he sees that he may be stopped and searched by police officers.[10]

But these powers were never justified to parliament on the basis of a general deterrent effect resulting from searches of people. The intention was that their use would be tied to specific intelligence and used with a view to disrupting and arresting terrorists. Furthermore, any plausible deterrent effect would require a reasonable likelihood that any terrorist would be stopped and searched in the midst of carrying out a terrorist operation. That would require such a massive use of stop and search powers as to severely disrupt the daily lives of millions of people in London, especially if, as the Metropolitan Police argue, there is a permanent London-wide threat of terrorist attack. To swamp the capital with such a large degree of arbitrary stops and searches that terrorists are likely to be deterred from attacking London is not only a huge waste of police resources which could be used more efficiently in preventing terrorism; it is also a hugely disproportionate price to pay in terms of particular communities' civil rights. Finally, it is hardly credible that terrorists will just give up a planned attack if they think that they might be searched by a police officer. Criminalising communities

The result of anti-terrorist stop and search is the criminalisation of entire communities and the placing of tens of thousands of innocent people under suspicion. None of the lessons of the past - in relation to policing Black and Irish communities - appear to have been learnt. The damage to community relations is already clear. Youth workers in areas of London where police are targeting large numbers of Asian youths for stops and searches, such as in Tower Hamlets, describe an increasing atmosphere of tension. One youth worker reported that the situation locally was, in his words, like 'cowboys and Indians'. Even before 7/7, there were numerous anecdotes of young Asian men being stopped and searched, getting abused, being accused of membership of al-Qaida or even being beaten up. In many communities, there is a growing climate of fear; underground stations and bus stops have become places where police and immigration officers stop everyone whose skin colour or accent marks them out as suspect. No redress

Though the Independent Police Complaints Commission can take up complaints about the manner in which Section 44 stops and searches are carried out, there appears to be no provision for complaints about the fact that the stop and search was carried out at all, even though this is the main cause of public concern. Complaining, as commonly happens, that a police officer carried out a stop and search without any reason is redundant when there is no requirement in the guidelines that there be 'reasonable grounds for suspicion'. Misused on legitimate protestors

When the Terrorism Act 2000 was presented to parliament, it was argued that its measures were essential to meet the threat of international Islamic terrorism. Yet its powers are being used today against people who are protesting peacefully against the government. The very loose definition of terrorism in the 2000 Act leads to a real danger of Section 44 stop and search powers being used to suppress political dissent. Section 44 was used to search protestors outside the DSEi Arms Fair at the Excel Centre in Docklands in October 2003 and against anti-war protestors on their way to the Fairford Air Base earlier in 2003. It appears that stop and search was used on both these occasions for no other reason than to intimidate legitimate protestors. One protestor at the Fairford military base, for example, was reportedly ordered by police to strip down to his vest and wait in the cold for twenty minutes during a search at night when the temperature had fallen to minus four degrees. The new powers should be repealed

There is no evidence that Section 44 has helped prevent, detect or prosecute terrorism in any form and therefore new provisions should be repealed. For, if police officers have a reasonable suspicion that a criminal act, including terrorism, is about to be committed, they can in any event stop and search under the old PACE powers and go on to arrest a suspect if there are reasonable grounds.
Footnotes:
[1] Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 Code A: Exercise by police officers of statutory powers of stop and search, pp8-9. [2] Home Office, Stop & Search Action Team, Interim Guidance, 2004, p12. [3] Section 95 Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System - 2003, Home Office, 2004. [4] Vikram Dodd, 'Surge in stop and search of Asian people after July 7', Guardian, 24 December 2005. [5] Vikram Dodd and Alan Travis, 'Muslims face increased stop and search', Guardian, 2 March 2005. [6] Association of Police Authorities, Stop and Search: know your rights, April 2005. [7] Arun Kundnani, 'Analysis: the war on terror leads to racial profiling', IRR News, 7 July 2004. [8] Section 95 Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System - 2004, Home Office, 2005. [9] Ben Russell, 'Police stop and search 100 people a day under new anti-terror laws', Independent, 25 January 2006. [10] Oral evidence by Sir John Quinton, Metropolitan Police Authority, to House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, 8 July 2004.

http://www.irr.org.uk/2006/january/ha000025.html

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

TX: Advocates Decry Detention "Gold Rush"

02/02/2006

By SUZANNE GAMBOA / Associated Press

The post-Sept. 11 push to lock up immigrants is creating a detention bed "gold rush" without the equivalent enforcement to ensure detainees' legal and human rights are protected, a panel of immigration advocates said Thursday.

Private prison corporations and local governments are benefiting from Congress' rush to crack down on immigrants as some lawmakers look to score political points by getting tough on immigration, the advocates said.

"This cash cow feeds expansion even as the nation's prison population declines," said Andrea Black, Detention Watch Network coordinator. Black moderated the panel discussion organized by the American Bar Association.

Other panel members said they already have difficulty ensuring detainees get access to lawyers, phones, translators, timely medical care and other basics and are concerned how such things will be provided as more beds are built or contracted for with local governments.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Dean Boyd rebuffed the assertions, saying the agency will not loosen its standards and enforcement of standards as it builds more detention space to house immigrants.

Boyd said all detention facilities and contracted beds must comply with ICE national standards, which were crafted by ICE and the ABA. They also must be accredited by the American Correctional Association. ICE standards "are more stringent than Federal Bureau of Prisons" standards, he said.

The facilities are inspected annually by an internal inspections division. He did not know how many inspectors are in the division. Any allegations of wrongdoing are referred to the Inspector General for investigation, he said.

Black said the Department of Homeland Security has been appropriated $1 billion for detention this year, including $90 million for detention beds. But that may grow. A House bill mandates more detentions with changes in law that would make more immigrants felons.

The private prison industry has attributed its industry rebound, in part, to the rapid increase in immigration detentions. Many detainees are housed at facilities run by Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut.

Some groups consider Texas "ground zero" for what they call the immigration detention boom. The state has at least 7,000 recently built or proposed private prison beds for housing immigrant detainees for ICE or the U.S. Marshals.

"Since 9/11 there's just been an immigrant gold rush to the border, particularly in South Teas where there is an enormous amount of developmental activity going on with private consultants who contact local county officials and offer them promises there will be federal contracts if they will expand their jails," said Judith Greene, a policy analyst for Justice Strategies, a New York research group.

Private prison companies are competing for a "superjail" in Laredo, a 2,800-bed facility, that would mostly hold immigration detainees, Greene said.

In December, Corrections Corporation of America announced a contract with ICE to hold up to 600 immigrant detainees at its correctional center in Tyler.

KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., has an up to $385 million contract with the Army Corps of Engineers to set up temporary processing, detention and deportation facilities for ICE.

ICE told The Associated Press Tuesday the contract was a "contingency contract" in which KBR would build the detention space "should there be some sort of emergency, say some sort of upheaval in Latin America, that would cause a mass migration." KBR had a similar contract for 2000 to 2005.

Halliburton, whose chief executive was Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000, has been criticized for multibillion-dollar government contracts granted it for work in Iraq without a bid process. KBR is a construction and engineering company.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8FH8JOO5.html

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

MD: Bill Could End Voting Restrictions for People Who Have Been Incarcerated

Bill Could End Voting Restrictions for Released Felons

By MATT D. WILSON
Capital News Service
Wednesday, February 1, 2006

ANNAPOLIS- In what they describe as an effort to "put Maryland in the political mainstream," a group of legislators and civil rights advocates is backing legislation to abolish voting restrictions on convicted felons who have served out their prison sentences.

Accompanied by representatives from the Maryland Democratic Party, Justice Maryland, Progressive Maryland, the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters and the Maryland Legislative Black Caucus, Del. Salima Siler Marriott, D-Baltimore City, told a news conference Wednesday that she will introduce a bill that would "ensure that any individual who has completed their incarceration has the right and the responsibility to vote."

"We believe the re-integration back into society is the most important aspect in decreasing recidivism," she said from a lectern surrounded by signs reading, "Maryland: Got Democracy?"

Current state law prohibits anyone convicted of "theft or other infamous crime" from voting at any point during his or her sentence, including parole, probation and community service. Repeat offenders must wait an additional three years beyond completion of the sentence to vote.

Marriott's bill would allow any convict who is not imprisoned or waiting to serve a prison sentence to cast a ballot.

In her written statement on the bill's goals, Marriott said that she wants to eliminate confusion surrounding the definition of an "infamous crime" and "put Maryland in the political mainstream" by making its voting laws more like those of other states.

"This affects 140,000 people in the state," said Maryland Democratic Party Chair Terry Lierman. "Only 13 states, including Maryland, deny the vote to these people. This is a no-brainer."

Maryland Republican Party spokeswoman Audra Miller declined to speak about Marriott's bill directly, but said that legislation that eases voting restrictions could lead to more instances of fraud in the state.

"Because of these laws passed by some Democratic legislators, the integrity of our election system in Maryland has been seriously damaged," she said in an interview.

Michael Blain, who served a prison sentence for robbery between 1995 and 2001 and who now is a national spokesman for formerly incarcerated people, said that the current voting law should be changed because it singles out specific groups.

"The disenfranchisement of people with felony convictions is not coincidental," he said. "It affects primarily people of color and poor people."

In a separate interview, George Liebmann of the Calvert Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think tank based in Baltimore, was more skeptical about the bill. He stressed the need for "a reciprocal relationship between duties and rights."

"My feeling is that if someone is still under the criminal justice system, he shouldn't be given the franchise," Liebman said.

Still, Marriott said she thinks that her bill has the potential to pass this year.

"Through the veto overrides, this General Assembly has demonstrated that it wants to expand democracy," she said.

Del. Anthony J. O'Donnell, R-Southern Maryland, the House minority whip, said he does not think support for the bill exists. "That's a particularly volatile issue, especially for an election year," he said.
http://www.journalism.umd.edu/cns/wire/060201-Wednesday/ConvictVoting_CNS-UM
CP.html

Posted by lois at 09:24 PM | Comments (0)

CO: Bids Sought for Private Prison for 750 Women

Denver Post
02/03/2006

Bids sought for private prison for 750 women

By Kirk Mitchell
Denver Post Staff Writer

With a burgeoning number of Colorado women going to prison, the state is asking private companies to submit bids for a new women's prison that will house up to 750 inmates, state officials say.

The company with the winning bid will build the prison and then be paid for each inmate, said Dave Schouweiler, purchasing agent for the Department of Corrections.

The number of women in Colorado prisons more than doubled from 768 in 1998 to 1,560 in 2004, according to department statistics.

Two Colorado prisons for women, in Denver and Cañon City, are already at capacity, and one in Pueblo is near capacity, Schouweiler said.

The state prefers that the prison be built along Interstate 25. The deadline for initial bids is in April.

The state has also sought bids to build a 2,250-bed medium-security facility for men.

The woman's prison would need to have programming for inmates nearing completion of their sentences, including substance- abuse and life-skills classes.

There are four private men's prisons in Colorado. Private prisons have come under scrutiny after a riot at a facility in Olney Springs in 2004.

According to state forecasts, the total prison population of 20,000 will increase by up to 7,000 in five years.

Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_3470268

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

The New Immigration Cops

Cities and States Take On Difficult Duty
Of Handling Undocumented Workers

By MIRIAM JORDAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
February 2, 2006; Page B1

Alabama state trooper Gary Hetzel usually stops people for going over the speed limit. Now, he sometimes arrests them for illegally crossing over the U.S. border, too.

Recently he pulled over a van for speeding and ended up detaining 14 undocumented immigrants who had paid smugglers at the Mexican border to transport them to Atlanta. The van's driver and co-driver were charged with human smuggling; the 14 immigrants were deported. "If I hadn't been trained, I would have just ticketed the driver for speeding and sent them on their way," said Mr. Hetzel.

Such actions are normally the province of federal immigration agents. But even though some police groups have concerns, a slew of cities and states in the U.S. are increasingly taking on the duty of verifying the immigration status of people stopped for traffic infractions and other violations. In Alabama, about 160 illegal immigrants have been arrested since the state entered a special partnership in 2003 with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit of Homeland Security, or ICE as it is known. Under this arrangement, officers such as Mr. Hetzel are specially trained in some immigration enforcement duties.

Alabama decided to join the program because local officials believed ICE's small staff in the state was unable to cope with the swelling numbers of illegal immigrants. Last fall, Gov. Bob Riley pledged to double the number of state troopers trained to deal with illegal immigrants, saying: "Alabama welcomes those who enter the country legally, but we won't stand idly by and do nothing when we catch illegal immigrants in our state."

Forty-four of the 650 state troopers in the state, a figure that includes administrative and field officers, have taken the five-week training course and are now authorized to enforce federal immigration law. That training involves detecting false identification, understanding the details of federal immigration law as well as the pitfalls of racial profiling and other possible civil-rights violations.

The ICE partnership empowers local officers to temporarily detain someone who has violated federal immigration law -- something that they are typically not allowed to do. That is a valuable tool in states where there are few ICE agents. The trained officers usually don't participate in sweeps or actively search for illegal immigrants; the emphasis is on human smugglers and convicted felons that officers come across during the course of their duties.

The federal program to train local police officers in such duties has existed since 1996. Florida, the first state to join the federal program in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, tailored its version to help block possible terrorist infiltrators. Interest in the program has taken off recently as the national debate over illegal immigration has heated up.

In recent months, ICE has received requests from several states in New England and the Midwest, as well as counties in Texas and California, which are interested in immigration training.

"It has proven very difficult for the federal government to increase manpower in the enforcement of immigration law fast enough," says Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who oversaw the application of the program when he served as counsel to the U.S. attorney general from 2001 to 2003. "This provision allows those states that want to help to fill in the gap."

The ICE program has sparked emotional debate in some regions. In December, the city council of Costa Mesa in southern California became the latest jurisdiction to decide to enter the ICE program. Mayor Allan Mansoor, who proposed joining, said the initiative would designate specialized officers, such as gang specialists and investigators, to do immigration checks. The program's primary focus would be on identifying criminals.

Mr. Mansoor, who is also a deputy sheriff of Orange County, estimates that 10% to 15% of all inmates in the county's jails are illegal immigrants. He said that many undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes were released into the streets of the U.S. after serving their prison term rather than being sent home. "We want to make sure they are deported," he said.

But Costa Mesa wasn't unanimously behind the mayor. Before the vote, several city council meetings were rocked by opponents shouting that the plan was discriminatory and would undercut fragile ties between immigrants and the police. Ultimately, the council voted 3 to 2 in favor.

Some police organizations and human-rights groups are concerned that deputizing local officers to handle immigration enforcement might violate civil liberties -- and undermine safety.

"A key concern is that state and local enforcement involvement in immigration can have a chilling effect on the relationship with the immigrant community in their jurisdiction," says Gene Voegtlin, legislative counsel for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. That could lead immigrants to become reluctant to report crimes or cooperate with officers investigating incidents. While the association, which has 20,000 members, hasn't taken an official stance on the ICE program, he said it also was concerned that the complexities of immigration law can create liability issues.

Some critics argue that federal authorities are specialists and therefore better suited to handling specific tasks such as immigration enforcement. Lisa Navarrete, a vice president for the National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic advocacy group in the U.S., says that local police officers who enforce immigration law are bound to engage in racial profiling, in part because they are stopping people they meet during the course of the day instead of pursuing specific investigations based on solid leads.

"That can result in harassment of immigrants who are here legally, simply because they are Latino and speak accented English," she said.

Some also worry that the federal government is trying to spread the burden of rounding up illegal immigrants at a time when state and local police departments are already strapped for resources. Virginia Kice, an ICE spokeswoman, stresses that the program is entirely voluntary. "We are not going out and soliciting participation," she says. But, "we are receiving inquiries from all over the country."

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa recently said that the city wouldn't follow the lead of Costa Mesa and involve police officers in identifying illegal immigrants.

However, civilian jail personnel in Los Angeles and San Bernadino counties who have undergone ICE training are screening foreign-born inmates to determine whether they can be deported, according to an ICE spokeswoman.

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

February 01, 2006

Florida Civil Committment Center---a bad, dangerous & expensive idea

"The program doesn't work because it's not designed to work," said Dean Cauley, a former clinician at the center.

"This was a harebrained idea and an expensive idea that really wasn't thought out very well, and now we are seeing the result of it."

The Florida Civil Commitment Center...

"This was a harebrained idea and an expensive idea that really wasn't thought out very well, and now we are seeing the result of it."

http://www.miami.com/multimedia/miami/news/archive/sexpred/part2/1.html
Miami Herald
Published January 30, 2006

Chaos, coverups, boredom and death: ŒThis place is a powder keg ready to explode'

By Jason Grotto
jgrotto@MiamiHerald.com

ARCADIA -- For seven years, Florida taxpayers have pumped more than $100 million into the Florida Civil Commitment Center, a facility set up to treat the mental disorders of the state's most dangerous sexual predators.

What taxpayers got: a place where child pornography arrived in the mail, stashed inside transistor radios. Bags of marijuana came in care packages, stuffed in the guts of peanut butter jars, and men brewed gallons of homemade alcohol under the noses of a shoestring staff.

The cornerstone of a program named after a slain 9-year-old boy, the center eroded into a place where boredom, violence and the fog of drugs and alcohol became as common as group therapy sessions -- with one man dying after a fight over a bag of Cheetos.

Overcrowded and short-staffed, with less than half of the men actually in treatment, the center lies at the heart of what is wrong with the Jimmy Ryce Act, an investigation by The Miami Herald found.

"It's a terribly, terribly run program," said Kelly Summers, a former investigator for the (Florida) Department of Children & Families, who uncovered a slew of problems at the center. "Because no one wants to appear soft on sex offenders, no one wants to address what's going on down there."

THE FINDINGS
DYSFUNCTION AT THE CENTER

A review of hundreds of pages from internal documents, state investigations and audits, along with interviews with mental health experts, offenders, facility staff members, attorneys and advocates, sketch the story of a therapy center run amok.

Among the newspaper's findings:

€ Employees struggle to manage a facility plagued with fights, substance abuse and suicide attempts. Guards have been caught covering up mistakes by erasing security tapes and altering reports, while others have been accused of selling drugs and having sex with offenders.

€ While the state has sent more men to the center, staffing hasn't kept pace because the Legislature refuses to provide enough funds -- creating a dangerous disparity that reached an all-time high in the months before authorities were forced to conduct a raid last February to restore order.

€ The number of clinicians also has failed to keep pace with the ballooning population. Since the facility opened six years ago, psychologists' caseloads have quadrupled, leaving hundreds of men pacing the yard, dwelling in doldrums and stirring up trouble.

€ Nearly three dozen men who suffer from severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder receive little or no specialized treatment -- let alone therapy for their psychosexual disorders -- a direct violation of federal law, several civil rights attorneys say.

€ Meanwhile, a treatment center originally slated to house 460 men now holds more than 520, creating more tension.

Steven Hoo, 50, waited six years before he got treatment because he thought personal information shared in therapy would hurt his efforts for release. Photo by Patrick Farrell/Miami Herald Liberty Behavioral Health, the private company that runs the center, insists that security is now under control and that problems at the center are no different from those found at any institution of a "correctional nature."

"To characterize the facility as rife with trouble . . . is a gross exaggeration," the company wrote in a response to The Miami Herald's findings

But the center never was intended to be a correctional facility, according to the legislation. In fact, the Department of Children & Families, which hired Liberty to operate the center, told The Miami Herald that it has "identified numerous deficiencies in Liberty's performance," including inadequate supervision and "mismanagement'' of security.

Several men recently interviewed at the center by The Miami Herald said disruptions and fights continue at the facility. "This place is a powder keg ready to explode," said Richard Lincoln, an offender at the center.

Diagnosed as a pedophile, Lincoln should be learning to control the impulses that landed him behind bars 10 years ago.

But because he already served his sentence, the state can't force him to take part in treatment -- a loophole in the law that helps explain why so many men are not in counseling.

Another explanation: The state pays for only 150 of the roughly 520 men to receive therapy.

That leaves six out of every 10 offenders with nothing to do -- posing a serious challenge for those trying to keep order.

Lincoln spends his days napping, watching television, listening to the radio and eat- ing three meals a day -- cost ing taxpayers nearly $50,000 a year in the process.

"Basically, there's nothing for me to do here," said Lincoln, 59, a lanky man with long, stark-white hair and a gray mustache who was convicted of two counts of lewd and lascivious acts against a child in 1995. Sent to the center in 2000, he has done more time there than he did in prison but still refuses to participate in treat- ment.

His sentiment -- that therapy does not offer a way out -- is shared by hundreds of others at the facility, with the numbers tripling since 1999 and exceeding more than 300 last year.

Interviews with men at the center reveal several reasons: Their records are not kept confidential and can be used against them at their civil commitment trials, and the state has no criteria for graduating them from treatment.

Steven Hoo, 50, convicted of molesting a 2-year-old girl, waited six years before he entered treatment because he thought that sharing personal details in therapy would hinder his efforts for release.

"And therein lies the problem," Summers said. "You have violent sex offenders that have nothing to do all day long and all night long."

GROWING TENSION
AN UPRISING, THEN A RAID

The boredom and frustration felt by the offenders boiled over on Feb. 9, 2005, when more than 300 officers clad in riot gear and armed with billy clubs and pepper spray began to assemble before dawn.

At sunrise, they descended on the cluster of concrete buildings tucked into the sprawling prison compound that houses the treatment center. Their
mission: Restore order.

Conditions at the center had deteriorated so badly that a lockdown was under way to force the men to obey orders from the state fire marshal.

Dozens of offenders refused to leave the yard, where they dragged mattresses from their dorms and draped sheets on extension cords running from buildings to television sets outside.

Minutes after storming the center, police confronted men who were brandishing broom handles. In one dorm, officers had to call for reinforcements and shoot bursts of chemical agents into the air to regain control.

The raid was a culmination of events building inside the facility for many years.

When the center opened in Martin County in 1999, there was nearly one staff member for every man -- a ratio recommended for secure mental health facilities.

But, after the center moved to Arcadia in Central Florida in 2001, the population quadrupled while staffing levels failed to keep pace.

With the growing number of men, came problems.

Calls to the DeSoto County Sheriff's Office -- including sexual battery and assault -- increased nearly 20 percent since 2003, the first full year of data available.

By 2004, the men outnumbered employees more than 2-1, a disparity so lopsided that many guards felt inclined to let bad behavior pass, according to internal documents and interviews with several workers.

"As long as they are happy, we let them go," one staff member told corporate officers from Liberty Behavioral Health during a tour of the facility in July 2004.

According to an internal memo obtained by The Miami Herald, Liberty's officers described fights breaking out between drunken offenders, bikini posters hanging in the rooms of sexual offenders, and a facility where "residents appear to have the run of the cafeteria." In one packed dorm, men outnumbered staff members 45-3.

To this day, Liberty has had difficulty attracting and keeping staff members because of stressful working conditions and because Arcadia's labor pool is so small, according to state investigators.

With few resources, there is little training to help employees deal with violent sexual offenders who feel they have nothing to lose. Until last year, staff members at the center received just one week of computer-based training. Liberty says employ- ees now get two weeks of training.

DCF The Department of Children & Families -- the agency tasked with overseeing the program -- has struggled for years to persuade the Legislature to increase the budget to maintain order at a facility that has been absorbing more offenders every year.

As the population soared more than 300 percent, the center's budget increased just 46 percent. In fact, when broken down by the amount spent per offender, funding for the treatment center has actually decreased.

In the program's first year, the DCF estimated that it would cost $27 million to run the program. The Legislature provided $17 million.

In 2002, the agency requested an increase of $8.6 million to "meet the public safety goal of the Jimmy Ryce Act." It received no additional funding.

In 2003, it asked for $1 million because "the need for new funding to operate the facility in a safe manner has become quite critical." Again, no increase.

So in 2004, as drugs, alcohol, sex, child pornography and a band of disgruntled offenders disrupted what is supposed to be a calm, therapeutic setting, the facility had no way of maintaining order.

The DCF had to pay the Department of Corrections $2 million to ship in 300 officers and conduct a raid on the center just to get the men to comply with orders from the state fire marshal. During the raid, officers searched offenders' rooms and found more than eight gallons of homemade alcohol and other contraband.

After the raid, the Legislature provided an additional $2.6 million in last May for more security at the center. But experts say that's not enough to fix the center's woes.

"Those of us who are in this business know what it costs to fund a top-notch program that does the job. It's not a mystery," said Ted Shaw, a Gainesville psychologist who is one of Florida's leading sexual offender experts.

While Florida spends about $50,000 per offender for its treatment program, states including California, Washington, Wisconsin and Minnesota pay twice as much.

THE F DORM
STRUGGLING WITH MENTAL ILLNESS

On the second floor of a stout two-story building called F Dorm, nearly
three- dozen men who suffer from the most severe mental illnesses are tucked away with little hope of getting out.

The men struggle with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and developmental disabilities with little or no specialized treatment for mental illnesses that are so severe that it's almost impossible to treat them for their sexual disorders, staff members say.

Doug Shadle, a former clinician at the center, said that because the men are sexual offenders, "nobody cares'' about the severity of their condition.

"You couldn't get away with it anywhere else," he said.

Shadle wrote a proposal two years ago to provide more intensive care for the men of F Dorm Quad 2 as part of a larger plan pitched by Liberty for more money.

"This is an issue with constitutional implications," Liberty's $2.5 million request said. "The state has an obligation . . . to address treatment of mental illness and developmental disabilities."

But the DCF -- repeatedly turned down for increases in the past -- did not include it in its budget request.

Now the state is being sued in federal court because civil rights attorneys claim that offenders are not receiving proper care -- let alone sexual offender treatment.

"You have to make sure that people being detained at the facility are receiving constitutionally proper care and treatment. Clearly, that's not happening," said Kristen Cooley Lentz, an attorney for the Florida Institutional Legal Services in Gainesville and one of the lead lawyers in the class-action lawsuit.

Liberty said it created a special mental health unit in August 2004 -- five years after the program started.

A man housed in the quad died after a brawl over a bag of cheese curls. Donnelly

Daniel Donnelly, 38, sat at a table in the bay area of F Dorm Quad 2 when Alfredo Roebuck, 48, called in payment for two rolled cigarettes he had given Donnelly earlier.

Owed to Roebuck: a bag of Cheetos.

Donnelly, five- feet, four- inches tall, 134 pounds, had a history of reneging on barters, common at a facility where many men have no money. He refused to give the bag to Roebuck -- who was five inches taller and nearly 100 pounds heavier.

Offenders in F Dorm say no guards were watching when Roebuck and Donnelly began to scuffle.

State reports say there was one staff member present, a 51-year-old therapeutic assistant responsible for monitoring all four quads in the dorm while most offenders were at lunch -- a deficiency noted in reports conducted after Donnelly's death.

After the altercation, Donelly's condition rapidly deteriorated. He later slipped into a coma. Paramedics airlifted him to Lee Memorial Hospital, where he was placed on life support.

Donnelly died nine days later, after his family decided to remove his feeding tube.

Donnelly's death came as no surprise to Kenneth Dud- ding, a former Washington, D.C., police detective, hired by the center as an internal investigator in March 2004.

INVESTIGATIONS
DETECTIVE BLOWS WHISTLE

During the next year, he conducted investigations at a facility that had completely broken down as an inadequate, untrained staff struggled to handle hundreds of men.

In one case, Jerome Wager, an offender with severe mental illness, was able to climb onto the roof of one of the buildings in April 2004. Instead of trying to coax him into climbing down, staff on duty rushed him. So Wagner jumped off the roof and injured his left leg. He was later treated by DeSoto County emergency medical workers.

In another case, a two-time sexual offender named Jorge Delgado stabbed offender Marshal Watson 12 times, using a 10-inch metal shank with a white-taped handle in October 2004.

After the incident, staff ordered offenders in the dorm to clean up the crime scene with bleach, ruining an investigation by the DeSoto County Sheriff's Office, according to an internal report.

Kenneth Dudding, a former police detective in Washington, is considered a whistle-blower who unearthed coverups, tampering and chaos within the commitment center. Photo by Patrick Farrell/Miami Herald

A REVIEW
FINDINGS OF A COVERUP

In both cases, Dudding went back to review security tapes and read reports of the incidents but found that they had been erased or tampered with.

"During these investigations, staff immediately began covering up what happened -- destroying tapes, altering reports. I was being hampered," Dudding said.

He said that when he complained, he was told that he was being too aggressive.

Fed up after just two months on the job, Dudding blew the whistle on the facility in May 2004. Investigators from the DCF's Office of Inspector General spent the next four months picking the facility apart. Records show that the investigators corroborated nearly every problem outlined by
Dudding: widespread use of alcohol and drugs, sex among offenders and staff.

There were also instances of tampering of with security tapes and incident reports and a general lack of control, the inspector general's report stated.

Additionally, the investigation reported that marijuana arrived in care packages, with some stashes stuffed in peanut butter jars. Cocaine was found in one room, but was flushed down a toilet by a staff member. No one was ever charged.

But when DCF investigator Summers and her boss issued their report in September 2004, little changed at the facility at first.

"When my supervisor and I sent up our preliminary reports, we were surprised about the minimal attention it got," Summers said.

She said they pushed harder to help persuade the DCF to conduct the raid in February, after offenders refused to comply with orders from the state fire marshal.

"Part of the problem is that DCF is not equipped to handle a facility that is responsible for violent criminals," she said.

MORE MONEY
PROGRAM ŒNOT DESIGNED TO WORK'

The Legislature provided an additional $2.6 million for new additional staff following after the February raid, and the DCF says it contracted with the Florida Department of Corrections in October to monitor safety and security at the center.

But even with the additional money and oversight, problems persist. Donnelly was killed four months after the increase, while Delgado repeatedly stabbed another man with a metal shank in December.

"The program doesn't work because it's not designed to work," said Dean Cauley, a former clinician at the center.

"This was a harebrained idea and an expensive idea that really wasn't thought out very well, and now we are seeing the result of it."

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