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March 31, 2006

Los Angeles: Youth Walk-Out

From the Los Angeles Times
THE STATE
Student Protests Echo the '60s, but With a High-Tech Buzz
Youths used a popular website to organize their walkouts. And some did know what a 'sit-in' was.
By Scott Gold
Times Staff Writer

March 31, 2006

Shuffling her feet in her Garden Grove home last weekend, Mariela Muniz stared into the carpet and suffered, as teenagers do, the silent deliberation of her parents. Soon, her father nodded and her mother uttered the words she'd been waiting to hear: "Lo puedes hacer." "You can do it."

The next morning, the 15-year-old sophomore at Garden Grove High School — with the permission of her parents, both of whom are factory workers and Mexican immigrants who became U.S. citizens after entering the country illegally — skipped school for the first time in her life.

Following in the footsteps of those who led the first of the student walkouts March 24 and the adults who organized last Saturday's massive protest against proposed immigration legislation, Muniz became one of a few dozen students in Southern California who helped spearhead a national exhibition of civil unrest, one of the largest and most boisterous since the civil rights movement four decades ago. By the end of today — in Fresno, in Monterey Park, in San Diego — more than 40,000 students in California will have walked out of their schools to protest the proposed reforms.

There is little question that some students took advantage of the protests to ditch school. Some acknowledged they had little idea what all the fuss was about. Others took the opportunity to throw bottles at police and to shut down freeways. Law enforcement officials criticized them for diverting resources from more pressing needs, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told them to go back to school.

But for the small group of students who instigated the walkouts, most of whom hadn't been politically active but were well-connected on campus and online, it was a transformative week.

Using modern technology — mostly their communal pages on the enormously popular MySpace website — they pulled off an event with surprising speed and dexterity. Planned in mere hours on little sleep, lacking any formal organization, the protests were chaotic and decentralized and organic.

They were also a reminder that there are more than 35 million Latinos in the United States, about 40% of them in California. At least 8 million are in the country illegally. But many of their children — including many of the student leaders — are citizens by birth. And they represent a voting bloc that could help shape the politics of the West for years to come.

"I think it is the beginning of something," said Louis DeSipio, a professor of political science at UC Irvine. "You have the foundation for a new kind of Hispanic politics."

Many of the student leaders attended last weekend's Gran Marcha — which brought 500,000 demonstrators to downtown Los Angeles, stunning even the event's organizers — and said they were awed by the event.

"I've always been proud to say that I'm Hispanic," said Rafael "Ralph" Tabares, 17, a Marshall High School student and an organizer of his school's walkout. "But on Saturday, I thought: Whoa. We can do something. And we can do it right."

Others said they were inspired by the recent airing of the HBO film "Walkout," which re-created the Chicano-era school walkout by 20,000 Los Angeles students in 1968.

Since that tumultuous time, many Latinos in California had come to favor quiet, somber assimilation over loud, showy rebellion. To many, the student protests — and the Gran Marcha — represented a reawakening.

"It hearkens back to 1968," said Andres Jimenez, director of the California Policy Research Center at the University of California. "There was a sense of frustration that they saw with their parents in terms of the tenor of the immigration debate. This group is being singled out as a 'problem group.' And they wanted to seek an avenue to respond to that, to show that on the contrary, this group is very much a part of the broader society."

To be sure, students revealed both their youth and their naivete at times. When thousands of Los Angeles students descended on City Hall on Monday, for example, one student said she remembered something about civil rights protesters in the 1960s sitting down during demonstrations. It was a reference to the "sit-in," but it wasn't entirely clear whether the students recognized the pedigree of their decision to plop down on the steps.

"That was the idea of a girl from Belmont" High School, said Tabares. "In the '60s, the way they did it was sitting down. So we told everybody to sit down."

Just as often, however, students evidenced a surprising amount of savvy. They carried trash bags in their backpacks so they could not be accused of littering. They corralled students who tried to stray into stores and restaurants so they would not be seen as marauders.

Tabares even ordered classmates to put away Mexican flags they had brought to the demonstration — predicting, correctly, that the flags would be shown on the news and that the demonstrators would be criticized as nationalists for other countries, not residents seeking rights at home.

Stephanie Cisneros, a senior at Los Angeles Downtown Business Magnet, had to contend with the fact that many of her classmates were concerned about the police in squad cars following the marchers.

"Living in a low-income neighborhood, you just don't have a really good image of the police," said Cisneros, who became one of six students invited into City Hall to meet privately with Villaraigosa. "People thought we were going to get arrested. But I told them: 'No. We are exercising our right to free speech. As long as we don't do anything wrong, we won't be arrested.' "

Cisneros and a few others directed demonstrators to cross the street with the light and to remain on the sidewalk so they couldn't be accused of trespassing. "We were respectful. But we fought for something," she said.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The protest staged by Muniz and two friends in Orange County was typical of the student leaders' efforts.

They had heard about the March 24 walkouts at several high schools in Los Angeles, and decided to launch a protest of their own. On Sunday afternoon, they posted a bulletin on MySpace — since discovered by school administrators, who were not pleased — announcing that anyone wishing to participate should stand up at the 8 a.m. tardy bell Monday and "meet in front of the school."

In the scattered, rapid-fire text typical of students' MySpace missives, the bulletin continued: "dOnt b scared…. All these politic officials are trying to make their dreams come true by destroying ours, AND THEY WILL, unless we do something about it!!"

On the Internet site, which serves as a free-of-charge, virtual gathering place, users can send bulletins to all of their MySpace "friends." The lists can include dozens of people and the bulletins can be passed along in seconds.

It didn't take long before most of Garden Grove High's roughly 2,200 students knew what was coming, without the knowledge or involvement of teachers or parents.

Soon, the bulletin crossed over an invisible but critical line between teens who were friends but attended different schools. Students began posting their telephone numbers, and soon dozens more pledges to participate were obtained through phone calls and instant text messages.

Still, when the tardy bell rang Monday morning, Muniz had no idea what to expect. Teenagers can talk a big game. But would they follow through?

She waited in front of the school. Soon, the doors opened, and scores of students — most of them Latino, but a handful of whites, African Americans and Asian Americans too — joined her. They marched through Garden Grove and Anaheim, picking up students at several other schools as planned through MySpace bulletins. By 1 p.m., they had covered 10 miles. An estimated 1,500 students had walked out. Muniz was a truant — and, to her friends, a hero.

School administrators have since informed her that she'll have to perform community service as penance. Back at her home, a humble ranch-style house with family photographs on the wall and avocados on the dining room table, she said it was worth it.

"Sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in," she said. "We did. And it worked."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-students31mar31,0,2965460,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Posted by lois at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Plans to build pychiatric facilities on prison grounds

Sacramento Bee
CALIFORNIA POLITICS
Inmate care to expand

By Crystal Carreon -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Friday, March 31, 2006
Story appeared on Page A3 of The Bee

More than a decade after a legal victory for mentally ill inmates, state officials Thursday announced plans to build several new psychiatric facilities on prison grounds, with the largest site slated for California State Prison, Sacramento, in Folsom.

In a letter submitted to the Legislature on Thursday, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation asked for $37.8 million next fiscal year to begin plans to build the centers or augment existing facilities at four sites across the state. About 60 percent of the funds will be earmarked for the Folsom prison.

The other sites are the California Institution for Women in Corona; California Medical Facility in Vacaville; and Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad.

The expansive project, expected to cost $593 million over the next five years, emerged partly in response to a 1995 federal court order to upgrade the level of mental health care services provided to inmates.

At the time, a federal judge chastised the department for "gross systemic deficiencies" that put some of the most vulnerable inmates at an "intolerable risk of harm." A special master was appointed to oversee reforms.

Scott Kernan, the warden at the Folsom prison and acting liaison with the CDCR, said the centers will provide more beds and staff to treat inmates with the most serious mental disorders - a population that is projected to more than double by the time construction is completed in 2011.

"The work is really just now beginning," Kernan said. "This is really the first effort ... to try to get these needed mental health facilities built."

Michael Bien, one of the lead attorneys who represented inmates in the class-action suit, Coleman v. Wilson, that led to the court mandates, applauded the state's initiative but said it should have started sooner.

"We've been fighting for this for about 10 or 15 years," Bien said. "This need has been clear for years and years and years. People are literally dying because they don't have enough beds."

In 1996, about 8 percent of the prison population required the most intense psychiatric treatment, according to Terry Thornton, CDCR spokeswoman. This year, she said, about 20 percent of the state's nearly 170,000 inmates receive such treatment.

These inmates, she said, have serious mental disorders, have marked impairment, or pose a heightened danger to themselves or others. They must be separated from a prison's general population, but there is a shortage of beds available to house them at the appropriate treatment sites.

Thornton said that there are now only 100 beds available at two different prisons - Salinas Valley State Prison and the California Medical Facility.

The project is expected to add space for nearly 700 more beds; 478 of those beds for intermediate and acute care will be at the psychiatric complex to be built at the Folsom prison.

Kernan said the four sites were selected because of the number of inmates there who already need mental health services and the likelihood that those locations could attract mental health professionals.

For example, more than 620 psychiatric staff will be added to the acute care facility slated for Folsom, which will house 350 beds for inmates.

Bien said recruiting qualified professionals has proven problematic in the past.

"There is a very serious need," he said. "Let's do it right, and let's do it as rapidly as we can."

http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/ca/story/14237189p-15057977c.html

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

March 30, 2006

MA: Countywide Prayer Vigil in Response to 2 year sentence for youth with 2 marijuana cigarettes

Countywide Interfaith Prayer Vigil in Response to the Sentencing of
Mitchell Lawrence
The Superior Courthouse Pittsfield MA
Sunday April 2nd 7:00 p.m.

A group of clergy from throughout Berkshire County has organized to
hold a prayer vigil at the courthouse in Pittsfield this Sunday April
2nd, at 7:00.

Many people in our community were moved with a sense of collective
sadness at the recent sentencing of Mitchell Lawrence to a mandatory
two years in prison for selling a small amount of marijuana. Like many others, the Reverend Steven Bridges of the First Congregational Church in Stockbridge and John Whalan of Stockbridge were puzzled by the severity of the punishment and began to discuss faith perspectives on what constitutes justice in such cases. “True justice is only possible in a larger context which includes not only the power of enforcement but the exercise of wisdom and mercy in the application of such power,” concluded Rev. Bridges.

“The response to the school zone charges for those arrested in the
Taconic Parking lot has been largely a political one.” Whalan said “The community is polarized, with a group of concerned citizens on one side calling for discretion and more appropriate sentencing and the District Attorney on the other standing by his conviction that he must invoke the law in all of these cases.

The aim of this interfaith prayer vigil is to provide an opportunity to transcend the purely political and allow people come together with an affirmative aim.
Members of the Clergy from nearly every city and town in the county
will lead the vigil with prayers and words of support for Mitchell
Lawrence, his family and the families of others involved in cases like this. And also, for those involved in the community, in law enforcement and in the judicial system, that in these cases and cases like these, justice will be administered with wisdom and mercy.

Posted by lois at 11:27 PM | Comments (0)

March 29, 2006

Yale Students call for divestment from CCA

GESO calls for divestment from prison corporation
ACIR members question arguments against CCA

BY JESSICA MARSDEN, Staff Reporter
Published Tuesday, March 28, 2006
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=32359

Campus activists renewed their calls for the University to divest from investments in Corrections Corporation of America at a rally and a meeting with the Advisory Committee for Investor Responsibility on Monday afternoon.

Approximately 150 protesters gathered on Beinecke Plaza Monday for a rally supporting divestment from CCA, the country's largest private prison operator. After the rally, which was organized by the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, two representatives for the group spoke at a public hearing of the ACIR, which proposes investment resolutions to the Yale Corporation on ethical grounds.

Earlier this month, Farallon Capital Management -- the hedge fund through which Yale invests in CCA -- sold about two-thirds of its holdings in the prison company, reducing the value of Yale's indirect investment in the company from approximately $1.5 million to approximately $500,000. But opponents of the investment in CCA said the University should pressure Farallon to divest fully from the company in light of a reported history of prisoner abuse and cost-cutting at CCA facilities.

"We all remain participants as long as we refuse to turn a blind eye," said Tasha Eccles '07, who spoke at the protest.

After the rally, about half the crowd marched up Prospect Street to the School of Management for the annual open meeting of the ACIR. The 34-year-old ACIR has only recommended divestment twice before, from energy companies in Sudan last month and previously from companies with interests in South Africa under apartheid. The committee's chairman, SOM professor Geert Rouwenhorst, said divestment should be used only after attempts to encourage a company to change its policies have failed.

"Divestment is an action of last resort for the endowment," Rouwenhorst said. "We believe that selling the shares to someone who cares less than us [does] not necessarily [make] a good world."

In December, ACIR concluded that CCA did not meet its standard of causing "grave social injury" that would prompt divestment, based on the standards set out in the 1972 book "The Ethical Investor," which the committee uses as a guide.

But Sarah Haley GRD '09, who authored GESO's report about CCA, "Endowing Injustice," said divestment is a moral imperative for the University based on the prison company's record. Along with GESO chair Melissa Mason GRD '08, Haley presented the case for divestment to ACIR.

"Ultimately, I think the only rational, sane, humane thing to do is to divest," she said.

In their presentation, Haley and Mason described the July 2004 death of Estelle Richardson, who died following a skull fracture, four broken ribs and damage to her liver sustained while she was a prisoner at a CCA facility. The Nashville medical examiner, Dr. Bruce Levy, told the Nashville Tennesseean after her death that the injuries might have been expected from a car accident or a fall from a high building.

Alex Friedman, the associate editor of Prison Legal News and a former CCA inmate, said the abuses reported at private prisons stem from the company's impulse to maximize its profit, which results in cost-cutting measures such as reducing salaries and training -- as well as the total number -- of prison employees.

"We're treating people as commodities," Friedman said. "We're not just giving prisoners numbers, we're giving them numbers with a dollar sign in front of them."

At the ACIR meeting, committee members and GESO members clashed over questions about legislators' responsibility for problems with the prison system. In their presentation, Haley and Mason argued that CCA's lobbying for stricter sentences, mandatory minimums and "three strikes" is immoral because the company stands to profit from more prisoners serving longer terms. But several ACIR members asked the presenters whether legislators, who voted to support the laws, are actually responsible for their consequences.

"What we're trying to get at is, is it clear that there is a strong connection between this company and the passage of this legislation?" said committee member John Mayes, Yale's chief procurement officer.

Other ACIR members questioned how CCA's practices compare to those of other private prison companies, and how private prisons in general compare to public prisons. They also suggested that engagement with the company, rather than divestment, would be a better tactic to spur policy changes toward improving prison conditions.

At times, audience members expressed anger and frustration with the committee's questions, particularly when Rouwenhorst declined to provide a timeline for the committee to make a recommendation about investing in CCA. After the meeting, Rouwenhorst said the next step will be for the ACIR to meet and discuss the information they received at this year's presentation.

Yesterday's rally was coordinated with actions at 10 other campuses nationwide, including the University of Michigan, Duke University and Case Western Reserve University.

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

WA: People with felony convictions can vote even with court ordered fines

Tuesday, March 28, 2006 - 12:00 AM

Limits on felons' voting eased

By David Postman and Ralph Thomas
Seattle Times staff reporters

OLYMPIA — A King County Superior Court judge Monday ruled that thousands of Washington felons should be able to vote even though they have yet to pay off court-ordered fines.

"It is well recognized that there is simply no rational relationship between the ability to pay and the exercise of constitutional rights," Judge Michael Spearman wrote in a ruling backing the challenge of three indigent felons.

Spearman said the state law requiring payment of all court-ordered fines and fees before a felon can vote again violates the equal-protection clause in the U.S. Constitution and the state constitution. He said "discrimination on the basis of wealth and property has long been disfavored."

Under state law, felons can petition the state to have their voting rights restored, but only after they have completed their sentences — including any probation or community service — and have paid all of their court-related costs.

State lawyers argued that the judge shouldn't make a distinction between court-ordered payments and other parts of a felon's sentence, such as jail time.

"It's rational for the Legislature to say we want you to complete everything, as opposed to start separating out sentence elements," said deputy solicitor general Jeff Even.

State officials said they hadn't yet decided whether to appeal.

"We're still weighing our options," said Trova Heffernan, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Sam Reed.

It also was unclear how many people the ruling will affect. But, based on past estimates, it could add tens of thousands of convicted felons to the voter rolls.

In Monday's ruling, Spearman said the state could not show a "rational relationship" between a felon's ability to pay the fines and his willingness to abide by the law.

In fact, he wrote, "the better example of respect for our justice system may very well be the indigent who manages for years to make monthly payments toward the obligations."

The lawsuit was filed in late 2004 by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of three felons who cannot afford to pay their court-ordered fines: Dan Madison of King County, Beverly DuBois of Spokane County and Dannielle Garner of Snohomish County.

DuBois, 49, a former state park ranger from Spokane County, has been trying in vain to pay off her court debt.

She spent nine months in jail for growing and selling marijuana, and she faced $1,610 in court fees and fines. Disabled after a car accident, DuBois was making $10 payments each month. But, with interest accruing at 12 percent, she was falling behind. She said Monday her debt is now about $2,000.

"I get disability every month, and I can barely afford to pay the $10," Dubois said.

She said she plans to try to register to vote today. "It will make me feel great to be able to feel like a citizen again," DuBois said. "Right now, I don't feel like I'm a part of society. I feel like an outcast."

Under Spearman's ruling, a felon who completes a prison sentence and community supervision would be able to vote while still making court-ordered payments.

"It really strikes to the heart of our democracy in terms of the judge recognized that people shouldn't be prevented [from voting] just because of their financial means," said ACLU spokesman Doug Honig.

In a written statement, Gov. Christine Gregoire said that convicted felons still have a responsibility to their debt, but that "once they have served their time, withholding certain rights due to fines becomes a virtual debtors' prison."

Katie Blinn, Reed's assistant director of elections, said the state does not know how many felons are barred from voting simply because they have not paid off their court-related debts. But in 2002, the state Department of Corrections put that figure at 46,500 felons, according to the ACLU lawsuit.

The state Republican Party made a big issue of felon voters last year during its unsuccessful effort to overturn Gregoire's 2004 election victory.

The Legislature last year passed a law requiring the state to screen its voter-registration database each quarter to make sure there are no deceased people, duplicate voters or ineligible felons on the rolls.

The state was nearing completion of its first screening for ineligible felons but put everything on hold Monday.

In light of Spearman's ruling, Blinn said, her office would have to work with the State Patrol and prison officials to figure out which felons have paid off their fines and court fees.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Posted by lois at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2006

How DJs Put 500,000 Marchers in Motion

By Teresa Watanabe and Hector Becerra
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

March 28, 2006

He's one of the hottest Spanish-language radio personalities in the nation. So when Los Angeles deejay Eddie Sotelo joined hands with his radio rivals to urge listeners to turn out for a pro-immigrant rally in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, organizers hoped for a big turnout.

But many said Monday that they were stunned by how many responded to the call to march against federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants and penalize those who assist them.

As a result, what was initially expected to draw fewer than 20,000 ballooned into a massive march that police estimated at 500,000 and said was one of the largest demonstrations in Los Angeles' history. The march topped a wave of protests drawing hundreds of thousands of participants in cities around the nation, which organizers said influenced the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's approval Monday of legislation that includes legalization for undocumented immigrants.

Rally supporters, including immigrant-rights activists, churches, and labor and community groups, agreed that the active advocacy of the region's top Spanish-language radio personalities was critical in drawing the enormous crowds, who marched more than 20 blocks along Spring and Main streets and Broadway to City Hall, wearing white "peace" shirts and waving American and Mexican flags.

The promoters included such on-air celebrities as KHJ's Humberto Luna, KBUE's Ricardo "El Mandril" (The Baboon) Sanchez, Renan "El Cucuy" (The
Boogeyman) Almendarez Coello - whose often risque show has cast him as a sort of Latino version of Howard Stern - and Sotelo, better known to listeners as "El Piolin," or Tweety Bird. Coello's and Sotelo's morning talk shows are among the highest-rated programs in any language in Los Angeles.

"They were the key to getting so many people out," said Mike Garcia, president of Local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union. "If you listened to Spanish-language media, they were just pumping, pumping, pumping this up."

For his part, Sotelo said he decided to promote the cause - by calling a summit of his rival deejays to encourage them to do the same - after rally organizers told him about the ramifications of the legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last December. The bill, by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), would make undocumented immigrants and those who assist them felons and erect a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexican border.

"I told God that if he gave me an opportunity as a radio announcer, I was going to help my people," said Sotelo, who himself illegally crossed the border in the trunk of a car in 1986 and gained legal status a decade later. "I think we have to make sure the message went through to Washington, to let them know we're not criminals."

The idea for the march first sprouted in February in the oldest church in Los Angeles: Our Lady Queen of Angels, which has historically served as a sanctuary for undocumented migrants.

The church near Olvera Street has become one of the city's organizing hubs against the House bill, playing a leading role in promoting the Roman Catholic Church's national "Justice for Immigrants" campaign. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony last December appointed a committee to promote the national campaign throughout the 5-million-member Los Angeles Archdiocese.

The coalition of religious, community and civil rights activists meeting at the church had begun planning several small-scale events: news conferences, a petition drive and protest marches to Republican and Democratic party offices.

But when two visitors joined the group in January, the vision suddenly expanded.

Jesse Diaz, a doctoral candidate in sociology at UC Riverside, had worked with day laborers in Pomona and organized marches against Proposition 187, the 1994 state initiative that cut public benefits to undocumented immigrants but was struck down in federal court. Javier Rodriguez, a journalist, had also worked with immigrants and organized black-Latino political alliances.

The two men called for something dramatic: a massive protest march.

"It was time," Diaz said. "The Sensenbrenner bill had passed. We have 10 [million] to 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country, but their voice can't be heard at the ballot box. We felt a march would be a way for them to speak out."

The coalition was initially wary, he said. The group had little money or organization. At the time, none of the big labor or civil rights organizations had yet signed on, such as the service employees union or the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. At the table, aside from the Catholic priests and some Spanish-language journalists, were such groups as the Central American Resource Center, Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana, the Pomona Day Labor Center and the Southern California Human Rights Network.

But Diaz and Rodriguez kept pushing. On March 2, the group held a news conference at the church to announce the march and call for political and Spanish-language media to get involved.

On March 13, the group got extensive coverage from KMEX-TV Channel 34, including promos, leading up to a "media breakfast" the next day. Later that day, Rodriguez and other leaders spoke to a producer on Sotelo's program. The day after that, they were on "Piolin Por La Mañana" for four hours, Rodriguez said.

"That was it, man!" Rodriguez said. "They gave us four hours and we went at it. We talked about the need for people to come out."

The next day, Rodriguez and other leaders went on the air with Sanchez of KBUE-FM (105.5) "Que Buena." During that show, Rodriguez said, he proposed that the deejays join together for the cause.

Sanchez called Sotelo and they had an on-air conversation during their programs, Rodriguez said. Later that day, Sotelo would make the calls that would bring the other deejays together on the air.

By March 20, all of the major Spanish-language disc jockeys got together on City Hall's south steps to promote the big march.

"From there, it just blew up," Diaz said.

The deejays did more than publicize the march. Working with the organizers, they also helped develop some ground rules: Marchers had to be peaceful and clean up after themselves.

They were also encouraged to wave American flags.

"We wanted them to show that we love this country," Sotelo said. "Bringing the U.S. flag, that was important. There are so many people who say, 'I'm glad my parents came here and sacrificed like they did for us.' "

By this time, other organizations had begun to join the effort.

Local 1877, which represents janitors, took care of security. The union trained nearly 500 people in how to deal with conflicts and herd marchers along the route, posting nearly two dozen on each block in orange T-shirts donated by an L.A. apparel firm, according to union organizer Ernesto Guerrero.

The union also coordinated the more than 100 buses that dropped off marchers from throughout California, Las Vegas and a few Southwestern cities, he said.

All of the planning paid off. The "Great March of March 25," as some dubbed it, was peaceful.

"I was saying, 'Man, we did it, we did it!' " Sotelo said.

The strong advocacy of the disc jockeys and other Spanish-language media contrasted sharply with other outlets, said Felix Gutierrez, a journalism professor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication.

"The Latino media played it more as how will this affect you, how will it affect your job, how will it affect your kids," Gutierrez said. "They were much closer to their audience, in terms of the direct effect."

Gutierrez lauded the organization behind the event and contrasted it with the angrier assemblies of the Chicano movement of the 1960s, in which he was a media liaison.

By comparison, Saturday's rally was festive, featuring kazoos, mariachi music, cotton candy and families with children. "The messages I heard last week was show up, bring your family, bring your children, don't get pulled into violence, there may be people trying to provoke you," Gutierrez said.

Meanwhile, Diaz and Rodriguez planned to announce today their next major
action: a call to boycott work, school and all consumer activities May 1. They are calling it "The Great American Boycott of 2006."

Times staff writer Scott Martelle contributed to this story.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-march28mar28,0,3303231.story?coll=la-hom
e-headlines

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

Another day of protests against the further criminalization of immigrants.

For some great photos of the marches, see: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-032806walkout_lat,0,6123606.story

Rain Dampens Student Protests Over Immigration Reform
By Cynthia H. Cho and Anna Gorman
Times Staff Writers

March 28, 2006

Nearly 40,000 students from across Southern California staged walkouts to protest proposed immigration legislation Monday, blocking traffic on four freeways and leaving educators concerned about how much longer the issue will disrupt schools.

With steady rain falling this morning, a scattering of walkouts were reported, including one in Compton and another in Wilmington. Television broadcast reports showed a small group of students, holding their hands over their heads, as they were detained and later escorted by police along one road in San Pedro.

Monday's protests are believed to eclipse in size the demonstrations that occurred during the anti-Proposition 187 campaign in 1994 and even a famous student walkout for Chicano rights in 1968.

Some principals put their schools on lockdown Monday to keep students from leaving campus, and Los Angeles Unified School District officials said all middle and high schools will be on lockdown today.

Monday's demonstrations appeared to start in Los Angeles but quickly spread to San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange and Ventura counties. Though the protests were mostly peaceful, there were a few clashes and several arrests.

Motorists were left in gridlock as youths marched down Sunset Boulevard, Melrose Avenue, Laurel Canyon Boulevard and other major thoroughfares.

At one point, protesters marched onto the Hollywood Freeway in downtown Los Angeles and two sections of the Harbor Freeway, downtown and in San Pedro, briefly halting traffic.

Students in Orange County briefly blocked the Riverside Freeway and Santa Ana Freeway in Fullerton, waving Mexican flags and tossing a rock that smashed the window of a CHP cruiser.

By noon, thousands of youths had gathered in front of Los Angeles City Hall, with student leaders meeting privately with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The rally took on a festive tone, with many waving Mexican flags and yelling, "Latinos Stand Up!" and "Viva Mexico!"

"It was my dad's and grandfather's sweat and tears that built the city of Los Angeles," said Marshall High School senior Saul Corona, whose father came to the United States illegally before getting a green card. "People like them did things no one else wanted to do because they wanted me to have a better future."

The protests appeared to be loosely organized, with students learning about them through mass e-mails, fliers, instant messages, cellphone calls and postings on myspace.com Web pages. By contrast, the massive rally Saturday that drew 500,000 people to downtown Los Angeles was highly organized, with demonstrators urged to wear white and bring American flags.

Many students said they were marching in opposition to a bill sponsored by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) that passed the House in December. The bill would give police more power to enforce immigration law and would lead to 700 miles of additional fencing along the border.

Even as the students marched, a Senate committee approved an immigration package Monday that would enable some of the about 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country to become U.S. citizens.

As immigrants or children of immigrants, several marchers said they would be personally affected by Sensenbrenner's pending bill.

"If this law passes, what will happen?" said Yadira Pech, 16. "There would be no more Los Angeles High School. Nearly all of us are immigrants."

Added Antonio Chavez, an eighth-grader at University Heights Middle School in Riverside: "Our parents, our families came here from Mexico. We want other families to be able to come here too."

Some students said they did not know exactly what the bill said but believed that it was part of an anti-immigrant movement taking hold nationwide.

"We just walked out because we didn't want to be at school," said Diana Hernandez, a senior at Dorsey High School in Los Angeles. "But we also believe [the legislation] is wrong."

The demonstrations became violent in some areas. In San Diego County, two dozen protesters were arrested in Escondido after refusing orders from police to disperse. Two patrol cars were reportedly vandalized.

In Riverside, a peaceful student protest unfolded downtown as six youths and one adult were arrested across town after scuffles with police clad in riot gear and carrying nightsticks, authorities said. After following students throughout the city and calling for them to disperse, officers confronted the group. Students responded by hurling rocks and bottles at police.

"They're pushing us around," said Pati Sanchez, a Norte Vista High School senior. "People should be able to say what they think."

In Santa Ana, officers used nightsticks and pepper spray to control students throwing bottles and rocks. They also set up barricades to prevent the protesters from disrupting traffic. One student was arrested and a few others suffered minor injuries, police said.

Four adults were arrested during a protest in Van Nuys, but no major violence occurred in Los Angeles County. The demonstrations prompted a tactical alert by Los Angeles police so the department could deploy officers to areas where they were needed.

"They're noisy but well-behaved," said LAPD Chief William J. Bratton as he walked through the downtown crowd. "Let them have their say."

In a district with about 358,000 middle and high school students, an estimated 26,000 walked out of more than 50 Los Angeles Unified campuses. Teachers, principals and school police urged students to demonstrate on campus, but students flooded through gates and onto city streets and sidewalks.

"It's very disruptive," said Ellen Morgan, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District. "We want them to express their opinions, but there are venues, there are forums for them to do so. We'd like them to stay in school and get an education."

Not only did the mostly high school students miss class time, administrators said, but the district could lose money if students did not show up. And with postings on myspace.com promoting more walkouts today, principals were doing whatever they could to encourage students to stay on school grounds.

All L.A. Unified middle and high schools will be on lockdown today, which means no one will be allowed to leave school once they enter, officials said. The district plans more stringent measures this morning, prohibiting students from going from class to class as usual.

Teachers are planning lessons on the immigration issue, and administrators are setting aside spots on campus for rallies and sit-ins. Some school officials plan to punish students who left campus with enforced attendance at Saturday school.

In Los Angeles, principals sent notes home that urged parents to tell their children to stay on campus and warned of disciplinary action for those who did not.

On Monday, some principals locked down their campuses in an attempt to prevent students from leaving school grounds. Nevertheless, students from at least one campus climbed over a fence to leave.

Lucy Delgadillo, whose children attend South East High School in South Gate, said she knows that lockdowns promote school safety.

"There are some kids who don't know what the protest is about," she said. "But there are kids who understand and feel strongly about this, and I think they should be allowed to protest."

At some campuses where students did walk out, staff members marched alongside the youths to ensure their safety, officials said. In addition, Los Angeles school administrators dispatched about 30 buses to City Hall and other locations to ferry students back to their campuses in the afternoon.

In a noontime speech outside City Hall, Villaraigosa told the students that he opposed the Sensenbrenner bill.

"I know that all of you are fearful about what's going on," Villaraigosa said, referring to the pending legislation. "I know it would criminalize 12 million people."

But later in the afternoon, when he came out to tell students to go home, he was met with chants of, "Hell no, we won't go."

Administrators expressed differing views on the protests, which took place on the Cesar Chavez holiday. Some complained about a wasted day, while others praised the youths' activism.

"What pleases me is that our kids are politically active," said Ventura Unified School District Supt. Trudy Arriaga. "Isn't that what we want for the future?"

But Oxnard Union High School District Supt. Joy Dunlap said she hoped that it was over and that students had fulfilled their need to express their opinions.

"They've had that opportunity and now they'll come back and get back to studies on a normal basis," she said.

Santa Ana Unified School District Supt. Al Mijares said the students should use the classroom to engage in the immigration debate.

"The students are generally interested in the subject," he said. "But our quest is to make sure they're safe. We don't want them to miss school."

For the most part, students were met with support from honking motorists and cheering observers. (The demonstrations occurred a week after HBO premiered a movie about the 1968 student walkouts in East Los Angeles to protest the treatment of Chicanos.)

"I'm so proud of these kids," said social worker Robin Sheiner, as she watched the crowd pass on Melrose. "They're showing what they believe in."

Times staff writers Hemmy So, Juliet Chung, Jennifer Delson, Gregory W. Griggs, Stephen Clark, H.G. Reza, Sara Lin, Kelly Anne Suarez, Michelle Keller, Tony Perry, Joel Rubin, Carla Rivera, Jessica Garrison, Mai Tran, Susannah Rosenblatt, Andrew Blankstein and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

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

March 27, 2006

MA: Drug Tally Shoots Down a Racial Myth-Whites Top City's Rising Toll from Drug Abuse

Drug Tally Shoots Down a Racial Myth - Whites Top City's Rising Toll From Abuse

By Michael Levenson, Boston Globe Staff | March 25, 2006

A new report by the Boston Public Health Commission explodes the myth that drug abuse is centered in the city's minority communities, indicating that while whites make up half of city residents, they comprise two-thirds to three-fourths of those who have died from drug abuse in recent years.

The figures show the deadly grip of heroin, OxyContin, and other drugs tightening in Boston, where 50 percent more residents died from drugs in 2003 than in 1999, the time period covered by the study. Of the 145 drug-related deaths in 2003, most from overdoses, 94 of victims were white, 32 black, and 19 Hispanic.

The gap between whites and minority group members in drug-related deaths persisted over the five years studied, although the size of the difference fluctuated. Death rates rose for all racial groups studied: whites, blacks, and Hispanics.

Drug abuse counselors said yesterday that the increase in drug-related deaths is fueled by the availability of $4 bags of heroin and an increasing number of people using combinations of substances: crystal methamphetamine, heroin, and alcohol, for example. At the same time, they said, there is less treatment available for addicts trying to kick their habits.

Drug counselors confirmed the city's findings on racial differences in mortality rates, part of an exhaustive annual report on the health of Bostonians. For example, among the 1,000 people treated in 2004 by Victory Programs Inc., a network of 18 residential treatment centers in Boston, 62 percent were white, 22 percent were black, and 11 percent were Hispanic, officials there said.

Most were addicted to heroin, the leading cause of drug-related deaths in Boston, said John Auerbach, executive director of the Health Commission.

City treatment centers are reporting that more white residents are abusing heroin than blacks and Hispanics, who tend to use crack or cocaine, which can be less lethal than heroin. Part of the reason may be the strength of heroin being peddled in South Boston and Charlestown, neighborhoods with large white populations, he said.

''There is a much larger use of heroin now in the white neighborhoods than there ever was before," said state Representative Brian P. Wallace, a South Boston Democrat who has been trying to boost funding for drug treatment programs.

''The heroin is rampant," he said yesterday. ''It's cheaper, purer, and people are buying it. We're seeing people in their 40s who are OD-ing."

The city's figures show that the per capita rate of deaths caused by drugs is highest in South Boston and Charlestown, followed by North Dorchester and East Boston, all communities with large proportions of white residents. In South Boston and Charlestown, 69 people per 100,000 died from drug use in 2003, more than double the citywide rate of 26.3 per 100,000.

Jonathan D. Scott -- president of Victory Programs, which runs treatment centers in Jamaica Plain, the South End, Dorchester, Mattapan, and other neighborhoods -- said that ''it drives me crazy" to hear people talk about drug problems disproportionately affecting minority communities.

''It's just one of the fallacies that gets perpetuated, that this is a ghetto problem in minority housing projects," Scott said. ''It really is affecting every community in this city."

Yet even as cheaper, purer heroin is being sold on the streets of Boston, the number of detoxification beds available in the city has plummeted by 39 percent, from 311 in 2001 to 189 in 2003, Auerbach said. The number of residents receiving treatment fell in 2004 to its lowest point in at least three years, with 16,532 people admitted to city drug treatment centers. The Public Health Commission blamed state budget cuts for the decline.

''Obviously, we need more beds," said John McGahan, executive director of Cushing House, a treatment center for teens in South Boston. Cushing House, with its 16 beds for boys and 12 for girls, has been full since the center opened in 1999, McGahan said, ''and that's probably always going to be the case for some time."

He said he also has seen people of different races generally coming in for treatment for addiction to different drugs. ''We don't see a lot of minorities that actually use heroin -- they tend to use crack and cocaine, marijuana and alcohol -- and you're going to have many more deaths from opiates than cocaine or crack," he said.

Drug counselors said they also are treating increasing numbers of young people using lethal combinations of drugs. Sometimes, teenagers using OxyContin switch to heroin because it is cheaper and so pure that it can be snorted instead of injected, making it easier to use. Young people also mix heroin with prescription antianxiety drugs or crystal methamphetamine. Scott compared the cocktail's effect on the body to trying to drive a car with the gas and brakes on at the same time.

''When you mix those drugs it doesn't take long for the car to combust, explode," he said.

In 2003, 32.9 whites per 100,000 died of drugs, compared to 25.2 blacks and 22.6 Hispanics per 100,000, the health commission study said. The figure for all races was 26.3 per 100,000. The Public Health Commission said it did not tally other races because deaths among them were too few to separate statistically.

Among men in Boston, drugs were the sixth-most common cause of death in 2003, behind heart disease, cancer, injuries, chronic pulmonary disease, and stroke and ahead of HIV, AIDS, and diabetes, the study said. Substance abuse is not among the dozen leading causes for women.

Auerbach said he hopes the report draws attention to the danger of reducing treatment services. ''We knew this was a growing problem, and the number of deaths illustrate it tragically," he said.

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

March 26, 2006

Probably the largest demonstration in LA history....

500,000 Pack Streets to Protest Immigration Bills

The rally, part of a massive mobilization of immigrants and their supporters, may be the largest L.A. has seen. By Teresa Watanabe and Hector Becerra Times Staff Writers

March 26, 2006

A crowd estimated by police at more than 500,000 boisterously marched in Los Angeles on Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall along the U.S.' southern border.

Spirited but peaceful marchers - ordinary immigrants alongside labor, religious and civil rights groups - stretched more than 20 blocks along Spring Street, Broadway and Main Street to City Hall, tooting kazoos, waving American flags and chanting, "Sí se puede!" (Yes we can!).

Attendance at the demonstration far surpassed the number of people who protested against the Vietnam War and Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that sought to deny public benefits to undocumented migrants but was struck down by the courts. Police said there were no arrests or injuries except for a few cases of exhaustion.

At a time when Congress prepares to crack down further on illegal immigration and self-appointed militias patrol the U.S. border to stem the flow, Saturday's rally represented a massive response, part of what immigration advocates are calling an unprecedented effort to mobilize immigrants and their supporters nationwide.

It coincides with an initiative on the part of the Roman Catholic Church, spearheaded by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, to defy a House bill that would make aiding undocumented immigrants a felony. And it signals the burgeoning political clout of Latinos, especially in California.

"There has never been this kind of mobilization in the immigrant community ever," said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. "They have kicked the sleeping giant. It's the beginning of a massive immigrant civil rights struggle."

The demonstrators, many wearing white shirts to symbolize peace, included both longtime residents and the newly arrived, bound by a desire for a better life.

Arbelica Lazo, 40, illegally emigrated from El Salvador two decades ago but said she now owns two businesses and pays $7,000 in income taxes each year.

Jose Alberto Salvador, 33, came here illegally four months ago to find work to support the wife and five children he left behind. In his native Guatemala, he said, what little work he could find paid $10 a day.

"As much as we need this country, we love this country," Salvador said, waving both the American and Guatemalan flags. "This country gives us opportunities we don't get at home."

On Monday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to resume work on a comprehensive immigration reform proposal. The Senate committee's version includes elements of various bills, including a guest worker program and a path to legalization for the nation's 10 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants proposed by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.)

In addition, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has introduced a bill that would strengthen border security, crack down on employers of illegal immigrants and increase the number of visas for workers. Frist has said he would take his bill to the floor Tuesday if the committee does not finish its work Monday.

Ultimately, the House and Senate bills must be reconciled before a law can be passed.

President Bush has advocated a guest worker program and attracted significant Latino support for his views.

In his Saturday radio address, Bush urged all sides of the emotional debate to tone down their rhetoric, calling for a balanced approach between more secure borders and more temporary foreign workers.

Largely in response to the debate in Washington, hundreds of thousands of people in recent weeks have staged marches in more than a dozen cities calling for immigration reform.

In Denver, police said Saturday that more than 50,000 people gathered downtown at Civic Center Park next to the Capitol to urge the state Senate to reject a resolution supporting a ballot issue that would deny many government services to illegal immigrants in Colorado.

Hundreds rallied in Reno, the Associated Press reported.

On Friday, tens of thousands of people were estimated to have staged school walkouts, marches and work stoppages in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Atlanta and other cities.

In addition, several cities, including Los Angeles, have passed resolutions opposing the House legislation. At least one city, Maywood, declared itself a "sanctuary" for undocumented immigrants.

Despite the significant opposition to the crackdown on illegal immigrants shown by the turnout in recent rallies, a recent Zogby poll found 62% of Americans surveyed wanted more restrictive immigration policies, and a Field Poll last month found that the majority of California voters surveyed believed illegal immigration was hurting the state.

"Polling has consistently shown that Americans don't want guest workers or amnesty," said Caroline Espinosa, spokeswoman for NumbersUSA, a Washington-based immigration control group that says its e-mail list of 1 million and 140,000-member roster of activists have more than doubled in the last year.

Espinosa said current levels of both legal and illegal immigration would push the U.S. population to 420 million by 2050, "leading to a tremendously negative impact on the quality of life in the United States."

According to a U.S. Census Bureau survey a year ago, the nation's 35.2 million immigrants - legal and illegal - represent a record number. California led the country with nearly 10 million, constituting 28% of the state's population overall and one-third of its work force.

The swelling number of immigrants has clearly influenced the political calculus of those involved in the issue, including political and religious groups. The Republican Party, for instance, is split among those who want tougher restrictions, those who fear alienating the Latino vote and business owners who are pressing for more laborers - mostly Latin Americans
- to fill blue-collar jobs in construction, cleaning, gardening and other industries.

Some Republicans fear that pushing too hard against illegal immigrants could backfire nationally, as with Proposition 187. Strong Republican support of that measure helped spur record numbers of California Latinos to become U.S. citizens and register to vote. Those voters subsequently helped the Democrats regain political control in the state.

"There is no doubt Proposition 187 had a devastating impact on the [California] Republican Party," said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican political consultant. "Now the Republicans in Congress better beware: If they come across as too shrill, with a racist tone, all of a sudden you're going to see Republicans in cities with a high Latino population start losing their seats."

The effects of the nation's growing Latino presence also are evident in religious communities. This week, for instance, the president of the 30-million-member National Assn. of Evangelicals is scheduled to issue a statement supporting immigration reform, including a guest worker program. It will be in concert with the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, conference president.

Rodriguez, whose Sacramento-based group serves the nation's 18 million evangelical Christian Latinos, said it took "a lot of persuasion" to broker the joint statement with Ted Haggard, president of the evangelicals group. Rodriguez said he warned the group that failure to support comprehensive immigration reform would have long-term political repercussions.

Latino evangelical Christians voted for Bush at a 40% higher rate than Latinos overall, he said, but they would probably turn away from conservative candidates and causes without support on immigration.

"I had to do a lot of asking: Will Hispanics ever vote for conservative candidates again, or partner with white evangelicals if they were silent while our brothers and sisters and cousins were being sent out of the county on buses?" Rodriguez said.

Churches were just one force behind Saturday's rally.

Several immigrant advocates said that the ethnic media were a significant factor in drawing crowds. News outlets repeatedly publicized it and even exhorted marchers to wear white shirts. Churches announced the rally too. Although a police spokeswoman estimated the crowd at 500,000 based on helicopter surveillance, rally organizers said it was closer to 1 million.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa briefly addressed the rally.

"We cannot criminalize people who are working, people who are contributing to our economy and contributing to the nation," Villaraigosa said.

In contrast to demonstrations 12 years ago against Proposition 187, Saturday's rally featured more American flags than those from any other country. Flag vendors were soon overwhelmed by demonstrators holding out dollar bills.

Father Michael Kennedy, a longtime immigrant advocate and pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, said that past demonstrations were more heavily Mexican or Mexican American, but the House bill had rallied protesters across religious, national and ethnic lines.

One was Korean immigrant Dae Joong Yoon, executive director of the Korean Resource Center in Los Angeles. Yoon said the Korean community was more inflamed over the House bill than Proposition 187 because it would penalize not only undocumented immigrants but also businesses that hired them and anyone who helped them.

He said the Korean-language media has intensified coverage of the House bill in recent weeks.

"The Korean community is shocked and outraged over this inhumane legislation," Yoon said. "Everybody would be affected by it."

*

The Associated Press was used in compiling this report.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immig26mar26,0,7628611.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Posted by lois at 04:55 PM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2006

Editorial: NY Times: Go Away: You Can't Vote

March 25, 2006
Editorial, NY Times
Go Away: You Can't Vote
The right to vote should never be curtailed in a way that disenfranchises a whole class of people. This view is gaining traction even in the Deep South, which pioneered the shameful state laws that barred nearly four million ex-felons, parolees and probationers from voting in the last national election. It's heartening to see those laws being modified or repealed across the country. But states will need to re-educate elections officials, who are often dismally ignorant of election laws and biased against people who have been convicted of even minor crimes. As a result, many men and women who have paid their debts to society remain disenfranchised, even in states that guarantee them the right to vote.

One good example is New York, where the State Board of Elections has failed to uphold a state law that guarantees voting rights for people on probation, as well as for those who have completed their maximum sentences or been discharged from parole. As is completely appropriate, the law presumes that ex-offenders are as eligible as anyone else once they meet age, citizenship and residency requirements.

Unfortunately, the law isn't being followed, as was vividly documented in a new study by two civil rights groups, the Brennan Center for Justice, and Demos. Canvassers who contacted all of the state's county election boards found that nearly 40 percent were actually ignorant of the state's voting rights law and that nearly one-third continued to disenfranchise probationers and former inmates who were eligible to register and vote under state law.

This is all the more distressing because the State Board of Elections was made aware of all these problems after a similar survey three years ago. New promises to look into the matter aren't good enough.

State officials need to require every worker at every local board of elections to know the law, and make their own spot-checks to make sure that the law is being followed. It should do this quickly, before prisoners' rights advocates file a lawsuit that could well put the state's elections under a layer of court supervision that would be far more difficult to contend with than simply doing the right thing now.

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

NY Times: Marc Mauer Letter on Incarceration of Young Black Men

NY Times- 3-22-06
To the Editor:
A complex array of factors has come together to produce high rates of unemployment and incarceration for young black men, but one cannot help but conclude that the racial dimension of the problem skews the public policy response.
Consider the national response to Depression-era poverty, a social ill that crossed racial lines.
Major resources and political attention were devoted to W.P.A. job creation and construction of a safety net through Social Security. But as the image of poor people focuses on communities of color, the national response is one of wars on crime and drugs that emphasize harsh punishments over prevention and community-building.
One of every three black men born today can expect to go to prison if current trends continue. This is but one result of the crime policies of recent years that many political leaders tout as successful.
It is difficult to imagine such congratulatory messages being pronounced if we were talking about one in three white men.
Marc Mauer
Executive Director
The Sentencing Project
Washington, March 20, 2006

Posted by lois at 01:33 PM | Comments (0)

CT: Drug-Free Zones Are Bill's Targets, Measure Would Shrink Them And Remove Some

By MATT BURGARD
Courant Staff Writer

March 24 2006

In a move likely to renew debate over the war on drugs, state legislators plan to consider a bill today that would reduce the size of drug-free school zones after a national report tagged them as unfair to cities and racially discriminatory.

Under Connecticut law, any drug activity - whether selling or buying - is subject to stiffer criminal penalties if it takes place within 1,500 feet of a public school, housing project or day-care center.

The idea behind the law, which was drafted in the late 1980s and mirrors similar laws in several other states, was to protect children from an outbreak of urban drug dealing as the crack epidemic hit its peak.

But the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington-based group known for supporting drug laws with the goal of treating offenders rather than punishing them, says that the law has contributed to a yawning disparity between the way whites and non-whites are treated by the courts.

Because the drug-free zones are so predominant in high-density cities such as Hartford and New Haven, the higher minority populations in those cities face stiffer penalties, the institute says.

In contrast, sprawling suburban towns such as Glastonbury and Madison, with higher white populations, are not nearly as saturated with the zones.

That makes it easier for drug users or sellers in suburban areas to avoid the extra penalties that come with being caught in a drug-free zone, critics say. Under current law, anyone convicted on a first offense for selling or possessing drugs in a drug-free zone faces a mandatory prison term of three to 15 years.

By comparison, anyone convicted on a first offense for selling or possessing drugs outside of a drug-free zone faces no mandatory minimum prison sentence, ostensibly making it easier to plea-bargain for probation or another sentence that does not include jail.

"No one wants drug dealing in their neighborhood, least of all poor people in the cities, but people who get caught using drugs in one area should get the same treatment as someone doing the same thing in another area," said state Rep. Marie Kirkley-Bey, D-Hartford, a proponent of the bill.

The measure, scheduled for a public hearing today by the legislature's judiciary committee, would reduce the reach of drug-free zones, from within 1,500 feet of a public school to within 200 feet. The proposal would also drop housing projects and day-care centers from the law.

But the plan has met with opposition from those who view it as a sign of surrender in the effort to combat drug trafficking in the state's cities. Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano said the proposal would give urban drug dealers more incentive to ply their trade.

"I recognize the anecdotal evidence that there are disparities between the cities and the suburbs, but I don't think that outweighs the need to protect our most vulnerable citizens from the scourge of drug dealing, namely our children," he said. "The bottom line is, we shouldn't give up."

Carol Coburn, a Hartford neighborhood activist who works closely with the police to fight drug dealing in the Barry Square and South Green areas, said the effort is misguided.

"It's obvious the people who support this bill don't care about families trying to raise their children in the city," Coburn said. "It seems like they care more about drug dealers."

While citing evidence from other states, the report acknowledges that there is no statistical information available from Connecticut that shows that those who are convicted for drug-related offenses in drug-free zones receive harsher sentences than those in areas outside of the zones.

And while state Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, D-East Haven, co-chairman of the judiciary committee, said the idea of reducing the zones might sound like raising a white flag in the war on drugs, it's actually meant to put the battle on a level field.

"I don't think anyone wants to see different penalties for those caught dealing drugs in one area compared to another, but that's what's resulted with these zones," said Lawlor, who supports the measure.

"I can see how it might strike people as controversial," he said, "but if these drug-free zones were really meant to discourage people from engaging in drug activity near schools and other public areas, you have to ask yourself, `Have they worked?' I would say they haven't."

Lawlor cited statistics gathered over the past five years that show that, of all the people arrested on drug-related charges in Connecticut, about 55 percent were black or Latino, while almost 45 percent were white.

At the same time, he said, the breakdown of all those who have been imprisoned on drug-related convictions amounts to roughly 90 percent black or Latino, and 10 percent white.

Lawlor said that disparity is exacerbated by the concentration of drug-free zones within cities.

Cities' populations are made up mostly of minorities, which means minorities are more likely to be the ones receiving mandatory prison terms for drug violations in drug-free zones.

The mandatory sentences also give prosecutors added leverage when negotiating plea bargains with those pleading guilty to drug charges, he said.

"If you're a black kid from the city, you're looking at prison time no matter what, while a white person from the suburbs will have more leverage to avoid any time at all," Lawlor said.

The report by the policy institute reviewed 300 drug cases in Connecticut and New Jersey - both states with drug-free zone laws - and concluded that not only are the laws discriminatory, but that they do little to discourage drug activity in areas near schools and other places.

Other opponents of the proposal have argued that, instead of shrinking existing zones, the legislature should extend them, so crimes committed in larger swaths of suburban areas are also subject to the mandatory minimum sentences.

But Kevin Pranis, one of the report's authors from the policy institute, said such a measure would only further diminish the effectiveness of existing drug laws.

"Just because you make a law saying that from now on there will be no drug dealing anywhere in the city or the suburbs doesn't mean it's going to happen," he said.
Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-drugzones0324.artmar24,0,7326531.story?coll=hc-headlines-politics-state

Posted by lois at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2006

NH: Op-Ed: No Mandatory Minimums for Child Molesters

Linda Griebsch: No mandatory minimums for child molesters

By LINDA GRIEBSCH,

NH Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence
Monday, Mar. 20, 2006, Manhchester Union Leader, NH

REGARDING YOUR March 8 editorial "A heinous crime," referencing the House bill regarding child sexual assault, Rep. David Welch is a man of remarkable integrity and is respected on both sides of the aisle. He has provided support for his committee, Criminal Justice and Public Safety, as it continues to put a great deal of work and energy into this bill. These representatives, with varied backgrounds in law enforcement, child and family law and education, have met day after day to craft the most effective sexual assault prevention bill possible.

No one involved in the work sessions is soft on crime, nor is there any wish to protect dangerous sexual offenders from punishment or incarceration, even lifetime confinement when appropriate. Everyone is working hard to craft a bill without unintended consequences.

Last August, when Bill O'Reilly attacked our state, the Union Leader wrote an editorial reasoning that a law that works in one state is not necessarily good for any other state. The editorial stated that care should be taken, study was required and we should look to see what was needed specifically to improve New Hampshire statutes.

Therefore, we should not limit our legislators to focus on mandatory minimum sentences, especially 25 years for a first offense. No basis for pursuing the mandatory minimum is prescribed in the bill, no mention of risk assessment or classification, nor any objective data-driven tool.

A mandatory minimum 25 year sentence requires large amounts of money for the lengthy incarceration.

Valuable limited public resources will be used for every offender regardless of the risk presented to the community. Not every offender is at the same risk level or is likely to recidivate or is incurable. With proper early intervention, many juvenile offenders are amenable to treatment and can go on to live productive, crime-free lives. Among adult offenders, only through careful and frequent risk assessment can we be sure we are adequately addressing correction, prevention and reintegration. In this way we will know we are using taxpayer dollars effectively.

The board of directors of the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence has drafted a policy statement pertaining to lengthy mandatory minimum sentences. They speak to the need for consideration of the impact on the victim and the victim's family.

"Long mandatory minimum sentences can have a number of negative consequences that serve to decrease, rather than increase, public safety. For example, lengthy mandatory minimum sentences sometimes result in prosecutors not filing charges or filing charges for a lesser crime than a sex offense, as well as increased plea bargains down to a lesser crime. Similarly, judges or juries may be less inclined to convict a defendant on a sex offense because of the mandatory minimum sentence. Long mandatory minimum sentences can also keep victims who were assaulted by someone they know from reporting the crime."

In addition to the above objections, a mandatory 25-year minimum will force defendants to request jury trials more frequently. Trials will last longer and extreme pressure will be placed on the child victims. This is not child-friendly or victim-centered thinking. In the end there will be less reporting, fewer prosecutions and far fewer convictions, the very opposite of the intended result of creating safer communities.

One last question about this approach. What kind of treatment is effective for someone with a 25 year sentence? Currently the DOC offers a one-year treatment program. Nothing in this bill increases the time or resources for the program offered or alternative treatment.

Due to a long history in this field, I am aware of the many complicated emotions that individual victims experience in response to this crime. In more than 90 percent of cases the perpetrator is a family friend or relative. We don't need a simple knee-jerk reaction or slick politics. This is an opportunity to craft a well thought out legislative response, which takes into account all the available knowledge and research. And that's how representatives truly protect our children.

Linda Griebsch is the public policy director of the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?articleId=37b9599b-5202-4c30-927f-60
7697600452

Posted by lois at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)

GA: 4,300 more cells and 1,000 more pre-kindergarten slots

State Sennate passes 2007 budget
The Associated Press - ATLANTA

The state Senate on Thursday approved a $18.65 billion spending plan which boosts salaries for police and teachers and would funnel money to more disabled Georgians for community-based care.

The budget would also provide money for 4,300 more prison beds to handle the state's booming inmate population and add 1,000 more slots for pre-kindergarten.

It sailed through the Senate 53-0 on Thursday.

The state's tax collections continue to swell, which has made the budget process relatively painless for lawmakers, most of whom are seeking re-election in the fall.

"Our revenues are growing this year at a good clip," Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Jack Hill told the chamber on Thursday.

The budget for fiscal year 2007 would increase spending by $800 million over the recently amended budget for fiscal year 2006. The state's fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30.

Lawmakers on Thursday rejected an amendment that would have provided $4 million to the state's trauma centers.

State Sen. Valencia Seay, D-Riverdale, said the shortage of trauma care in Georgia was placing people's lives at risk.

But state Sen. Renee Unterman, R-Buford, said a study committee was being formed over the summer to investigate shortcomings in trauma care more broadly

"We all recognize the seriousness of the issue," Unterman said.

Sen. Tim Golden complained that the state's debt _ at just under $1 billion _ was too high.

"This borrow and spend philosophy from Washington is moving it's way south and it's got to stop," the Valdosta Democrat said.

The House has already passed its version of the budget and the two chambers must now work out their differences in conference committee.

One of the larger discrepancies was in disability funding. The Senate provided $35.7 million for some 3,000 slots for care for the mentally and developmentally disabled. The House had included funding for just 1,500 slots. The waiting list for services is more than 6,000 people.

The Senate also added $250,000 to open a Georgia trader office in China.

Raises of up to 7 percent for the state troopers, Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents, prison guards and parole officers were included in both chambers. But the Senate stripped out money for two new 50-cadet trooper classes and 16 secretaries for the Georgia State Patrol. Law enforcement officials say the administrative help would free up more troopers for patrol.

State law enforcement officials say they have had a tough time recruiting and retaining qualified officers because of sluggish pay and benefits.

The budget that passed on Thursday included the 4 percent pay raise Gov. Sonny Perdue proposed for teachers.

The budget includes a raise of between 2 and 4 percent for all state employees and freezes health premiums.

The budget eliminated $2 million for improvements to the Riverwalk in Savannah, home to the powerful Republican leader of the Senate, Eric Johnson. Instead, the project is being funded by $8 million in state bonds.

The Senate and the House both rejected a proposal by Perdue to increase funding for the homeowner tax relief grant by $1.7 million.
http://www.accessnorthga.com/news/ap_newfullstory.asp?ID=73044>

Posted by lois at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)

MA: Many in Jail Eligible to Vote, but Need Access

This was printed in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA
March 23, 2006
Many in jail eligible to vote, but need access

To the editor:
I agree with Yvonne Freccero and Osa Flory's guest column that we must eliminate barriers to voting in order to expand democratic participation. In fact, there are thousands of men and women held on bail prior to trial and sentencing who are eligible to vote but have no access to the ballot. Additionally, there are the tens of thousands of our fellow citizens who have finished serving their prison or jail sentence and are eligible to vote but are uninformed about their rights.

This can be corrected through proposed unconditional absentee voting which would allow people being held pre-trial to vote. Other barriers would fall if Election Day voter registration took place at polling places. However, for these good ideas to work, jails must be willing to inform those being held pre-trial how they can vote absentee. Departments of probation and parole need to inform people that they are eligible to vote upon release from jail or prison.

This can be facilitated by having voter registration forms on hand at probation and parole offices and signs posted explaining voter eligibility.

The Sentencing Project estimates there are 4.7 million Americans who have currently or permanently lost their voting rights as a result of a felony conviction. The United States is the only democracy that permanently disenfranchises almost 2 million of its citizens. In 2000 Massachusetts voters passed a law prohibiting people who are incarcerated from voting. As a result of this law and the permanent disenfranchisement of millions, many of Massachusetts' citizens who were incarcerated incorrectly believe that they are prohibited from voting. Groups like the League of Women Voters, political parties and people working in the criminal justice system need to actively inform everyone of their voting rights.
Lois Ahrens
Northampton

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

KS: Keep Private Prisons Out of Kansas

Posted on Fri, Mar. 24, 2006
Keep private prisons out of Kansas
BY FRANK SMITH
With an appalling display of lobbyist strength, special interest legislation meant to solely enrich the out-of-state for-profit prison industry was recently forced through a Kansas House committee.

Then Wednesday, a bill authorizing privately owned and operated prisons cleared the full Senate.

The ostensible rationale for bringing nonliving wages to Kansas corrections is alleged taxpayer savings. But repeated legitimate research fails to demonstrate any such thrift. And there's no guarantee the proposed private prisons would ever hold a single Kansas inmate.

For-profit operator GEO Group enlisted economically depressed Woodson County in eastern Kansas to strengthen its ploy to enable proliferation of its "Rent-a-Pens." Studies conducted by professors from five universities and an independent think tank, however, conclusively demonstrate that even public prisons, where wages are sometimes twice as high, do not improve faltering rural economies. Prisons dissuade safer and better-paying industries from locating in host counties. No economic feasibility assessment has ever been done in Woodson County, which simply couldn't recruit sufficient low-paid employees.

A survey comparing similar-sized populations of a public prison system with national for-profits indicated the privates had 30 times as many escapes. Liability damage language has rarely protected any hosting state.

And might for-profits bring corruption? Prosecutors accused former Reno County Sheriff Larry Leslie of taking $284,000 to privatize his jail.

To test the efficacy of the services provided, look no further than the GEO Group's Jena, La., prison and the Cornell Companies' New Morgan Academy in Morgantown, Pa. Both have been closed for years after horrendous abuse of scores of juveniles. Management and Training Corp. closed its prison in Eagle Mountain, Calif., after rioting and murders.

I've visited Corrections Corporation of America prisons in Kentucky, Colorado and Arizona following such riots. It took law enforcement from four states to quell the previous riot at the Crowley County, Colo., prison.

After extensive study, numerous denominations -- including Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal and the Church of Christ -- condemned this industry. Kansas would do well to heed their call.

Frank Smith lives in Bluff City.

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/editorial/14170975.htm

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

March 23, 2006

Disparity by Design--New National Report on Drug Free Zones

New national report shows that drug-free zone laws fail to protect youth from drug sales, worsen racial disparity in prison. Laws that heighten penalties for drug activity near schools, public housing and other designated locations fail to protect youth, according to a new report from the Justice Policy Institute (JPI). While not achieving the intended goals, these laws contribute to unacceptably high levels of racial disparity in the use of incarceration and subject people of color to stiffer punishment than whites engaged in similar conduct. Several states are considering proposals to either eliminate or narrow the scope of the drug-free zone laws, in order to enhance public safety and minimize unintended consequences.

The JPI report, authored by Judith Greene, Kevin Pranis and Jason Ziedenberg, was commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance, and is available at www.justicepolicy.org

Drug-Free School Zone Laws Questioned

By DAVID CRARY,, Washington Post

The Associated Press

Thursday, March 23, 2006; 1:30 AM

NEW YORK -- In reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, laws creating drug-free zones around schools spread nationwide. Now, hard questions are being raised _ by legislators, activists, even law enforcement officials _ about the fairness and effectiveness of those laws.

In New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington state, bills have been proposed to sharply reduce the size of the zones. A former assistant attorney general in Massachusetts reviewed hundreds of drug-free-zone cases, and found that less than 1 percent involved drug sales to youths.

Citing such developments, the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute is issuing a report Thursday that contends such laws, which generally carry extra-stiff mandatory penalties, have done little to safeguard young people and are enforced disproportionately on blacks and Hispanics.

"For two decades, policy-makers have mistakenly assumed that these statutes shield children from drug activity," said report co-author Judith Greene, a New York-based researcher. "We found no evidence that drug-free zone laws protect children, but ample evidence that the laws hurt communities of color and contribute to mounting correctional costs."

New Jersey's sentencing review commission reached similar conclusions in December, when the panel _ made up of state officials and criminal justice experts _ found that students were involved in only 2 percent of the cases it examined. It said drug-free zones around schools, parks and housing projects cover virtually all of some cities, and 96 percent of offenders jailed for zone violations were black or Hispanic.

Instead of declining, drug arrests in the zones have risen steadily since the law took effect in 1987, the commission found.

A bill based on the panel's recommendation has been introduced that would reduce the zones to 200 feet from the present size of 1,000 feet around schools and 500 feet around parks and public housing. Drug dealers in the smaller zones would face five to 10 years in prison, compared to three to five years under current law _ but judges would have more discretion in sentencing.

"When the overlap of zones in densely populated areas covers the entire city, the idea of special protection loses its meaning _ people don't know they're in a school zone," said Ben Barlyn, a deputy attorney general and executive director of the sentencing review panel. "It would be as if we made the entire New Jersey Turnpike a reduced speed zone."

Barlyn said New Jersey prosecutors and police chiefs had no objection to shrinking the zones.

In Washington, state Sen. Adam Kline has proposed reducing drug-free school zones from 1,000 feet to 200 feet, and limiting the law's application to regular school hours. In Connecticut, a hearing is scheduled Friday on a bill that would reduce school zones from 1,500 feet to 200 feet.

At recent meetings, activists with Connecticut's A Better Way Foundation _ which supports the bill _ have displayed maps of major cities showing huge sections designated as drug-free zones. A map of New Haven indicated that Yale University's golf course was the only large part of the city not encompassed in one of the overlapping zones.

Most states have drug-free-zone laws; they often entail mandatory prison terms that preclude such options as probation or treatment.

Lolita Buckner Inniss, a Cleveland State University law professor, is a vocal critic of the laws. Her research found that drug dealers in inner cities and compact rural towns were disproportionately likely to incur the extra penalties, in contrast to dealers in suburbs where zones covered relatively small portions of the communities. That urban-suburban split has the effect of making minorities more likely to bear the brunt of tougher sentencing rules, she said.

"I've been dissatisfied by how the public mutely accepts these laws," she said.

Though intended to deter drug sales to youths, the laws have been applied mostly to adult-to-adult transactions, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a private research group advocating alternatives to prison.

It cited a study by William Brownsberger, a former Massachusetts assistant attorney general who reviewed 443 drug cases in three cities. He found that 80 percent of the cases occurred in drug-free school zones, but only 1 percent involved sales to minors.

"The laws have an undeniable appeal _ nobody wants drugs near schools," Brownsberger said in a telephone interview. "But the evidence suggests they're not effective in moving drug dealing away from schools. If every place is a stay-away zone, no place is a stay-away zone."
-----------
A link to this paper can also be found at www.realcostofprisons.org under Papers, Workshop Materials, and Other Documents which has links to current research useful to organizers.

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

March 21, 2006

Springfield MA: Studies Show Uphill Fight For More Black Men Today

Studies show uphill fight for more black men today
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
By PATRICIA NORRIS
SPRINGFIELD - Something alarming is happening to black men.

Their plight in this country and locally is far more dire than previously portrayed in employment and education statistics, according to studies by researchers at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions.

While there are many success stories in cities such as Springfield, statistics show that young black and Latino men here are also more likely to get caught up in a web of urban violence even as their education suffers.

There were 18 homicides in Springfield in 2005, a 12-year high. Most of the victims and suspected perpetrators are black and Hispanic males. The slayings fit a national pattern in which homicide is a leading cause of death for young black men.

The persistent negative statistics are rooted in everything from institutional racism to barriers to success and a culture of low expectations, all fueled by poverty, many agree.

"It comes down to a question of humanity. How much value today do you place on black life and black youth?" asked Henry M. Thomas III, president and chief executive officer of the Urban League of Springfield Inc.

Thomas said the question is both aimed at the black community and the rest of society.

"There has to be a tipping point where the community and institutions realize the gravity of the problem and correct it on a priority basis with the institutions that have the most impact," said Thomas.

His organization has devised a parent empowerment program to help strengthen familial bonds, a move he believes will aid the community's overall health and help turn the problems around.

A community coalition also is planning a May 6 summit at the High School of Commerce to connect Springfield parents with the resources needed to help ensure a successful future for their sons and daughters. Denise Jordan, co-chairwoman of the city's Youth Commission, is chairwoman of the City of Hope Summit Committee, which soon will be making pre-registration material available.

The summit, called "City of Hope: Empowering Parents," is co-sponsored by The Republican. It is expected to include an appearance by entertainer Bill Cosby as well as eight workshops featuring panelists ranging from college to vocational counselors to experts on communicating with teens.

Such efforts couldn't come at a more critical time.

Among some of the disturbing trends university scholars uncovered:

The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990s. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20s were jobless - that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white dropouts and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts.

Incarceration rates reached historic highs in the last few years. In 1995, 16 percent of black men in their 20s who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21 percent were incarcerated. By their mid-30s, six in 10 black men who have dropped out of school have spent time in prison.

In the inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school.

In Springfield and statewide there are more similarities. Blacks have the second highest dropout rate in the city at 7 percent, while black men over 18 are the majority population in the state's correctional system.

Latinos have the highest dropout rate in the city at nearly 11 percent and reflect the largest population in county jail, at 46 percent of inmates in 2005, compared with 31 percent white and 23 percent black. Critics of mandatory drug sentencing laws say they fuel the high rates of incarceration with more severe penalties for crack cocaine and drug sales near schools, both of which are more prevalent in densely populated urban centers.

Cosby said the new studies regarding black men in America should come as nothing new to anyone who is watching society and the political world.

Cosby, who lives in Shelburne but has cemented ties with Springfield after sponsoring the college education of several young city men, said the black man's plight leaves him feeling very angry and very sad.

Young black men in particular get the wrong messages from commercial interests, he said.

"What do they buy, what kind of music do they listen to, and what's the value of the things they're being taught? These things are driven by someone," he said.

In response to the worsening situation for young black men, a growing number of programs are placing as much importance on teaching life skills - like parenting, conflict resolution and character building - as teaching job skills.

But leaders here say that reaching young people, whether it is through education or the importance of preventive health care, requires challenging the status quo.

Darryl Moss, outreach coordinator for U-turn Street Workers at the Mason Square Community Center, said in order to make education, religion and other things valuable to young people, you need to make them relevant to their lives and futures.

"This might be unpopular but I believe in neighborhood-based schooling and residency rules. It is hard for someone coming from suburbia to teach in an impoverished school district. There is a cultural clash and people take that for granted," Moss said. "If you don't speak my language, understand how I talk, walk and dress, how can you teach me?"

Part of the Caring Health Center's success in connecting with black male patients is reaching out to them in the not-so-usual places.

"It is the way you present information that determines whether they are going to listen," said Michael Wallace, director of the men's health outreach and education coordinator at the city clinic.

For Wallace, that sometimes requires him to go to work in a sweat suit and to take his health-care information on the road and into places like bars and basketball tournaments.

"They are not going to talk to this guy in a suit. They are going to think what does this guy want from me, not what can this guy do for me," he said.

Material from The New York Times and staff writer Mary Ellen Lowney was used in this report.

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

OH: Reggie Wilkinson to retire as head of DOC

Article published Mar 20, 2006
State prisons director will retire next month
Wilkinson's tenure includes Lucasville riot, resumption of executions
The Associated Press

COLUMBUS — The director of the state prisons department is resigning at the end of April, ending a 15-year tenure that included the 1993 Lucasville prison riot and the return of Ohio’s death penalty.

Reginald Wilkinson, 55, will leave his post at the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to become executive director of the Business Alliance on Higher Education and the Economy. The alliance is a nonprofit group that emphasizes the role Ohio colleges and universities play in the state’s economic growth.

Former Gov. George Voinovich appointed Wilkinson as the prisons department director in 1991 and Gov. Bob Taft reappointed him in 1999. He joined the department in 1973 and served as a warden, supervisor of training and deputy director before assuming the top post. As director, he makes $124,464 a year.

Ross County includes two prisons – Ross Correctional Institution and Chillicothe Correctional Institution – which employ about 1,200 people.

He oversaw the resolution of the 1993 riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in which one guard and nine inmates were killed. He also has supervised the execution of 20 inmates since the death penalty was reinstated in 1999.

Taft plans to appoint a new director before Wilkinson leaves on April 30.

About Reggie Wilkinson

Reginald A. Wilkinson has been employed by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction since 1973.

He has served in a variety of positions including superintendent of the Corrections Training Academy, warden of the Dayton Correctional Institution, and deputy director of prisons. He was appointed Director of the Department in 1991.

He is a Past President of ACA, the Ohio Correctional and Court Services Association; the Ohio chapter of the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice; the State of Ohio Training Association, in addition to ASCA.

He has received numerous awards from a variety of organizations including the National Governors’ Association, the International Community Corrections Association, the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice, the Volunteers of America, the Ohio Community Corrections Organization, and the Ohio Correctional and Court Services Association. He is a recipient of the Michael Francke Award, the highest honor bestowed by ASCA, and the E. R. Cass Correctional Achievement Award, ACA’s most prestigious honor.

http://www.chillicothegazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060320/NEWS01/60320003

Posted by lois at 08:39 AM | Comments (0)

Forbes: U.S. Prisons Not Safe for the Aged

U.S. Prisons Not Safe for the Aged: Study
03.20.06, 12:00 AM ET, Forbes Magazine

MONDAY, March 20 (HealthDay News) -- Incarcerated Americans are a graying population, and a new study suggests that U.S. prisons need to meet the challenge of caring for older prisoners.

"Prison is not a safe place for vulnerable older people to be," study author Dr. Brie Williams, a geriatrician at San Francisco VA Medical Center, said in a prepared statement. "Prisons aren't geared to the needs and vulnerabilities of older people. In the prison environment, there are a number of unique physical tasks that must be performed every day in order to retain independence. They're not the same tasks that are called for in the community."

Williams' group analyzed questionnaires filled out by 120 female prisoners, aged 55 and older, in the California prison system and found that 69 percent of the women reported that they had great difficulty performing at least one daily living activity in prison such as climbing onto a top bunk, hearing orders from correctional officers, standing in line to be counted, walking to the dining hall, or dropping to the floor rapidly when an alarm goes off.

Sixteen percent of the survey respondents reported that they needed help with one or more daily activity. That's twice the rate of the general U.S. population aged 65 and older. In addition, 51 percent of the respondents reported falling within the previous year.

The inmates were also less healthy than the general population. They reported significantly higher rates of high blood pressure, arthritis, and asthma or other lung diseases.

The study appears in the early online issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, and will appear in the April print issue.

Williams noted that the number of older prisoners in the United States is increasing rapidly and that by 2030, about a third of the U.S. prison population will be geriatric.

Specific measures could help older inmates, she said.

"Every prisoner over 55 and over should be assigned to a bottom bunk unless the person specifically requests otherwise, and should be in a cell with grab bars near the toilets. They should be housed closer to the dining hall, and given more time to drop to the floor during alarms. There should be grab bars in showers, and rubber mats on shower floors," said Williams, who is also a fellow in aging research at the University of California, San Francisco. http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2006/03/20/hscout531580.
html

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

March 20, 2006

MA: Prisons guards doing sick time and lots of it

"The Massachusetts numbers are significantly disproportionate to state prison systems that employ the same number of officers. For instance, in Colorado last year the 3,525 correction officers used 20,316 sick days - meaning Massachusetts officers used over 2.5 times the amount of sick days."

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=131288

Prison guards doing (sick) time and lots of it

By Maggie Mulvihill/ Exclusive
Monday, March 20, 2006

State correctional officers called in sick a startling 52,399 days last year, averaging 15 sick days each and costing taxpayers an additional $3.5 million in overtime to pay for their replacements, according to state records.

    And that¹s an improvement.

    "The numbers are staggering," said Department of Correction Commissioner Kathleen M. Dennehy, who has been cracking down on sick time abuse since she was appointed in 2003.

    Sick time use by correction officers has actually come down about 15 percent under Dennehy.

    In 2004, correction officers took a total of 62,012 sick days or roughly 17.3 days per officer, DOC statistics show. Last year, the officers averaged 14.9 days per year or three weeks of sick time.

    Roughly 3,500 correction officers work in the state prison system and their union contract allows them 15 sick days a year, including five unsubstantiated days that don¹t require a doctor¹s note, said Steve Kenneway, president of the Massachusetts Corrections Officers Federated Union.

    "As far as I¹m concerned, if there were 100,000 sick days, as long as the doctor signed off that is an authorized absence," he said.
    Dennehy acknowledges DOC management has not addressed the problem aggressively enough in past years.

    "We as an agency have to accept some of the responsibility for not having vigilantly monitored these numbers over the years," Dennehy said. "The vast majority of the staff don¹t abuse sick time."

    But correction officers have faced tough discipline under her command. Fourteen officers were disciplined last year, including one officer who worked at MCI-Norfolk. The $54,000-a-year officer was terminated after taking 256 sick days.

    Dennehy has referred seven cases in the past two years to Attorney General Tom Reilly for possible criminal prosecution.

    The Massachusetts numbers are significantly disproportionate to state prison systems that employ the same number of officers. For instance, in Colorado last year the 3,525 correction officers used 20,316 sick days - meaning Massachusetts officers used over 2.5 times the amount of sick days.

    High sick time usage was highlighted as an issue by two panels convened by Romney to revamp the entire state prison system. More correction officers call in sick at MCI-Cedar Junction, one of the state¹s two maximum security prisons, than any other facility.

    Kenneway said Walpole is the most difficult facility to work in.
    ³Walpole is, bar none, the most violent facility in the Northeast to work in. There is a feeling of dread when you go to work there because you never know what the next eight hours will bring.My hat¹s off to those guys because they do a fantastic job keeping the level of violence down,² Kenneway said.

     He said the union does not brook abuse of sick time and blames understaffing for the high numbers.

    ³We are far more serious than we have been given credit for about this sick time stuff. When I am working a block, I want my partner next to me,² Kenneway said. ³But they can¹t even cover the vacations anymore. They don¹t have the staff to work these prisons.²

Posted by lois at 07:02 PM | Comments (0)

NY Times: Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn

March 20, 2006
Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn
By ERIK ECKHOLM, NY Times Page 1
BALTIMORE — Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years even as an economic boom and a welfare overhaul have brought gains to black women and other groups.

Focusing more closely than ever on the life patterns of young black men, the new studies, by experts at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions, show that the huge pool of poorly educated black men are becoming ever more disconnected from the mainstream society, and to a far greater degree than comparable white or Hispanic men.

Especially in the country's inner cities, the studies show, finishing high school is the exception, legal work is scarcer than ever and prison is almost routine, with incarceration rates climbing for blacks even as urban crime rates have declined.

Although the problems afflicting poor black men have been known for decades, the new data paint a more extensive and sobering picture of the challenges they face.

"There's something very different happening with young black men, and it's something we can no longer ignore," said Ronald B. Mincy, professor of social work at Columbia University and editor of "Black Males Left Behind" (Urban Institute Press, 2006).

"Over the last two decades, the economy did great," Mr. Mincy said, "and low-skilled women, helped by public policy, latched onto it. But young black men were falling farther back."

Many of the new studies go beyond the traditional approaches to looking at the plight of black men, especially when it comes to determining the scope of joblessness. For example, official unemployment rates can be misleading because they do not include those not seeking work or incarcerated.

"If you look at the numbers, the 1990's was a bad decade for young black men, even though it had the best labor market in 30 years," said Harry J. Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and co-author, with Peter Edelman and Paul Offner, of "Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men" (Urban Institute Press, 2006).

In response to the worsening situation for young black men, a growing number of programs are placing as much importance on teaching life skills — like parenting, conflict resolution and character building — as they are on teaching job skills.

These were among the recent findings:

¶The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990's. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20's were jobless in 2004, up from 46 percent in 2000.

¶Incarceration rates climbed in the 1990's and reached historic highs in the past few years. In 1995, 16 percent of black men in their 20's who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21 percent were incarcerated. By their mid-30's, 6 in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had spent time in prison.

¶In the inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school.

None of the litany of problems that young black men face was news to a group of men from the airless neighborhoods of Baltimore who recently described their experiences.

One of them, Curtis E. Brannon, told a story so commonplace it hardly bears notice here. He quit school in 10th grade to sell drugs, fathered four children with three mothers, and spent several stretches in jail for drug possession, parole violations and other crimes.

"I was with the street life, but now I feel like I've got to get myself together," Mr. Brannon said recently in the row-house flat he shares with his girlfriend and four children. "You get tired of incarceration."

Mr. Brannon, 28, said he planned to look for work, perhaps as a mover, and he noted optimistically that he had not been locked up in six months.

A group of men, including Mr. Brannon, gathered at the Center for Fathers, Families and Workforce Development, one of several private agencies trying to help men build character along with workplace skills.

The clients readily admit to their own bad choices but say they also fight a pervasive sense of hopelessness.

"It hurts to get that boot in the face all the time," said Steve Diggs, 34. "I've had a lot of charges but only a few convictions," he said of his criminal record.

Mr. Diggs is now trying to strike out on his own, developing a party space for rentals, but he needs help with business skills.

"I don't understand," said William Baker, 47. "If a man wants to change, why won't society give him a chance to prove he's a changed person?" Mr. Baker has a lot of record to overcome, he admits, not least his recent 15-year stay in the state penitentiary for armed robbery.

Mr. Baker led a visitor down the Pennsylvania Avenue strip he wants to escape — past idlers, addicts and hustlers, storefront churches and fortresslike liquor stores — and described a life that seemed inevitable.

He sold marijuana for his parents, he said, left school in the sixth grade and later dealt heroin and cocaine. He was for decades addicted to heroin, he said, easily keeping the habit during three terms in prison. But during his last long stay, he also studied hard to get a G.E.D. and an associate's degree.

Now out for 18 months, Mr. Baker is living in a home for recovering drug addicts. He is working a $10-an-hour warehouse job while he ponders how to make a living from his real passion, drawing and graphic arts.

"I don't want to be a criminal at 50," Mr. Baker said.

According to census data, there are about five million black men ages 20 to 39 in the United States.

Terrible schools, absent parents, racism, the decline in blue collar jobs and a subculture that glorifies swagger over work have all been cited as causes of the deepening ruin of black youths. Scholars — and the young men themselves — agree that all of these issues must be addressed.

Joseph T. Jones, director of the fatherhood and work skills center here, puts the breakdown of families at the core.

"Many of these men grew up fatherless, and they never had good role models," said Mr. Jones, who overcame addiction and prison time. "No one around them knows how to navigate the mainstream society."

All the negative trends are associated with poor schooling, studies have shown, and progress has been slight in recent years. Federal data tend to understate dropout rates among the poor, in part because imprisoned youths are not counted.

Closer studies reveal that in inner cities across the country, more than half of all black men still do not finish high school, said Gary Orfield, an education expert at Harvard and editor of "Dropouts in America" (Harvard Education Press, 2004).

"We're pumping out boys with no honest alternative," Mr. Orfield said in an interview, "and of course their neighborhoods offer many other alternatives."

Dropout rates for Hispanic youths are as bad or worse but are not associated with nearly as much unemployment or crime, the data show.

With the shift from factory jobs, unskilled workers of all races have lost ground, but none more so than blacks. By 2004, 50 percent of black men in their 20's who lacked a college education were jobless, as were 72 percent of high school dropouts, according to data compiled by Bruce Western, a sociologist at Princeton and author of the forthcoming book "Punishment and Inequality in America" (Russell Sage Press). These are more than double the rates for white and Hispanic men.

Mr. Holzer of Georgetown and his co-authors cite two factors that have curbed black employment in particular.

First, the high rate of incarceration and attendant flood of former offenders into neighborhoods have become major impediments. Men with criminal records tend to be shunned by employers, and young blacks with clean records suffer by association, studies have found.

Arrests of black men climbed steeply during the crack epidemic of the 1980's, but since then the political shift toward harsher punishments, more than any trends in crime, has accounted for the continued growth in the prison population, Mr. Western said.

By their mid-30's, 30 percent of black men with no more than a high school education have served time in prison, and 60 percent of dropouts have, Mr. Western said.

Among black dropouts in their late 20's, more are in prison on a given day — 34 percent — than are working — 30 percent — according to an analysis of 2000 census data by Steven Raphael of the University of California, Berkeley.

The second special factor is related to an otherwise successful policy: the stricter enforcement of child support. Improved collection of money from absent fathers has been a pillar of welfare overhaul. But the system can leave young men feeling overwhelmed with debt and deter them from seeking legal work, since a large share of any earnings could be seized.

About half of all black men in their late 20's and early 30's who did not go to college are noncustodial fathers, according to Mr. Holzer. From the fathers' viewpoint, support obligations "amount to a tax on earnings," he said.

Some fathers give up, while others find casual work. "The work is sporadic, not the kind that leads to advancement or provides unemployment insurance," Mr. Holzer said. "It's nothing like having a real job."

The recent studies identified a range of government programs and experiments, especially education and training efforts like the Job Corps, that had shown success and could be scaled up.

Scholars call for intensive new efforts to give children a better start, including support for parents and extra schooling for children.

They call for teaching skills to prisoners and helping them re-enter society more productively, and for less automatic incarceration of minor offenders.

In a society where higher education is vital to economic success, Mr. Mincy of Columbia said, programs to help more men enter and succeed in college may hold promise. But he lamented the dearth of policies and resources to aid single men.

"We spent $50 billion in efforts that produced the turnaround for poor women," Mr. Mincy said. "We are not even beginning to think about the men's problem on similar orders of magnitude."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/national/20blackmen.html?incamp=article_po
pular&pagewanted=all

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

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March 19, 2006

Activist for arts programs in prisons on its benefits

March 17, 2006, 3:56PM
The rehabilitation factor
Activist for arts programs in prisons runs down the benefits
By FRITZ LANHAM
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
For 25 years Austin-based poet and translator Grady Hillman II has worked in correctional facilities, teaching creative writing and helping design and implement arts-in-the-prisons programs.
He's been a guest artist at more than 100 prisons, from California to Peru to the United Kingdom. From 1981 to 1984 he was writer in residence for the Texas Department of Corrections, where his work was the subject of the documentary film Lions, Parakeets and Other Prisoners.

He's published two monographs on community arts. Recently he's been a consultant on two federal initiatives, one dealing with youthful offenders, the other on developing arts centers in housing developments.
So we asked him: Do the arts make you a better person?
Q: You've seen participation in arts programs having a beneficial effect on prison inmates?
A: The primary benefit is it counteracts the effects of institutionalization. Prisons breed mistrust. They operate with a severe hierarchy of power, externally imposed rather than internally imposed discipline. It's enormously boring and occasionally dangerous and an exploitative arena.
The greatest benefit was that it gave this inmate population an opportunity to be human for a little while, that they had these arts programs as safe havens where their ideas mattered and their lives mattered and they were respected by others.
It's almost a prophylactic to prevent them from becoming worse than they were when they came in.

Q: Did it change their behavior in prison?
A: Absolutely. In all the studies you almost always see the same figures: 60 to 90 percent reduction in incidents of misbehavior, everything from violent offenses to misdemeanor infractions.
A lot of people see this music-soothes-the-savage-breast scenario. It can also be due to the fact that they know they can be removed from these programs if their behavior goes down, so there's also an incentive. It's valuable enough to them that they want to keep their noses clean.

Q: Many of them obviously feel anger, bitterness, frustration. Do things like poetry and painting provide a way of channeling those negative feelings into something more benign?
A: Absolutely. But it's interesting. When you think about prison populations, it's a highly diverse group. A very tiny percentage of the folks in correctional facilities are sociopaths. The vast majority are substance abusers whose behavior has been as self-destructive as it has been destructive toward others. About 10 percent of the population is mentally retarded. Most come from poor backgrounds. In a sense, prisons have become our receptacles for all of our undesirables.
So what we get are people who don't care about themselves or about others. They're depressed. You find an enormously depressing environment where depression is just prevalent.
Creating a piece of art, whether it's dance or music or creative writing, is an act of critical thinking. It's connecting the internal world to an external reality and trying to communicate. Just engaging in the creating of art -- which is a form of strategizing, figuring out, a process of discovery -- that helps take people away for a little while. They get very engaged in this process, and it's therapeutic, even if they're writing about anger or bitterness. For a while they're transcending it ...
It requires considering the needs of the audience, which means they have to look at what they've done from the point of view of others. That's one of the fundamental premises of corrections -- to be penitent, think about what you've done to others, try not to be totally in the moment but think about the consequences of your actions and how what you do affects the lives of others.

Q: Do studies show lower recidivism rates on the part of inmates who have passed through these arts program?
A: Yes. The California numbers -- between 1980 and '87, six months after parole, among the arts-in-corrections participants 88 percent had not gotten in trouble again, compared to 72 percent (for other parolees). After a year their favorable rate was 74.2, but for other parolees it was only 49.6. Then it was 69.2 after two years to 42 percent for all releases. There's kind of a hurdle six months or a year after you get out. If you can make it 18 months, you can typically make it. Essentially (participating in arts activities) just gives them another internal resource which they carry out in the world.
Obviously it's no panacea.
No. I don't think it's a panacea. But having worked in all these prisons and looked at vocational programs and educational programs and counseling and all these other things, I think arts programs work as well or better than any other treatment program I've seen.

HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Books

This article is: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/books/3730888.html

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NJ: State Gives Details of Abuses by Guards

The other offenders in Jersey prisons
State gives up details of abuses by guards
Sunday, March 19, 2006
BY RICK HEPP
Star-Ledger Staff
The first firing of a New Jersey prison guard in 2005 came just two days into the year -- after colleagues caught him passing a straight razor between inmates at New Jersey State Prison.

Another was dismissed eight months later for leaving the prison's main gate wide open at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women.

A third was let go in September for punching an inmate.

In all, the Department of Corrections fired 33 guards and other employees in 2005. The infractions ranged from mistreating inmates and jeopardizing prison safety to incompetence and absenteeism, according to records obtained by The Star-Ledger under the Open Public Records Act.

The 274 pages of records reveal actions by guards that often put inmates and employees in peril.

Guards assaulted prisoners, allowed inmates to attack one another and even released them from custody without proper authorization, records show. They put a gang member in a holding pen with members of a rival gang, left the keys to the weapons room hanging on a door knob and failed to account for a machete and other work tools after inmates returned from work duty.

They also failed to aid inmates in distress, according to the documents. One guard failed to report an inmate had been brutalized. Another denied an inmate medical attention. A third never notified superiors an inmate lay dead in his cell.

None of the employees was named in the documents because, state officials said, in many cases those disciplined were challenging the action taken against them.

The Star-Ledger requested the records in response to the increased scrutiny the department has faced since a New Year's Day 2005 inmate uprising at Bayside State Prison left 28 corrections officers injured.

During legislative hearings on the melee, then-Corrections Commissioner Devon Brown said the prison's supervisors failed to follow procedures that called for the doors of a dormitory to be closed at all times. That, he said, allowed four inmates to get the jump on corrections officers and attack them with objects that included a clothes iron and combination locks.

The state's prison system is at maximum capacity, with 27,000 inmates being housed in 15 facilities, and another 2,000 or more kept in county jails until a cell is available.

A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION

Corrections spokesman Matthew Schuman said the disciplinary actions taken against employees is evidence the department "meticulously polices itself" and takes seriously accusations of wrongdoing against the inmates it oversees.

"We don't think that the numbers, considering the size -- we're talking about nearly 10,000 employees -- and the stress level under which they work, are anything to be ashamed of," Schuman said. "At the same time, we don't try to sweep these kinds of incidents under the carpet, and we deal with them swiftly and effectively."

Corrections union leaders and prisoner advocates, however, say the incidents show the state must do more to provide training and improve prison conditions.

Union officials and correctional experts say prisons are a volatile environment where guards must remain vigilant at all times and rely heavily on the cooperation of the inmates, who outnumber them more than 4-to-1. In such a setting, they said, the most innocent mistake can become a major safety hazard.

"It's not like you're working on a computer terminal or a car engine," said Tom Moran, president of the New Jersey Law Enforcement Supervisors Association Lodge 185. "You're working with society's worst, and they work you just like they did on the outside. It's a very stressful job."

MOST CASES ARE MINOR

Moran and other union officials point out that a very small percentage of the department's employees faced major disciplinary actions last year.

Overall, the department filed 1,023 disciplinary actions against 778 employees last year, which officials say was in line with previous years. About 300 of the disciplinary actions were for what officials consider serious infractions. The state prison system has about 9,800 employees, 6,900 of whom are uniformed officers.

Most disciplinary cases involved absenteeism; nine employees were fired for consistently failing to report for work.

Inmate advocate Bonnie Kerness, associate director of the Newark-based American Friends Service Committee's Prison Watch program, questioned whether the disciplinary actions show the department is truly policing prisoner abuse by guards.

"Out of all of these incidents, maybe 10 have to do with abuse of prisoners," said Kerness, who reviewed the disciplinary actions at The Star-Ledger's request. "But we hear so often from prisoners about abuse that it feels like it's not being represented here."

In many cases, Corrections employees were disciplined in 2005 for harming colleagues. The internal documents recount instances in which employees physically and verbally assaulted colleagues or superiors, locked them in rooms alone with inmates and hazed recruits at the training academy after the trainees stole soda.

SEX AND RACIAL HARASSMENT

Internal affairs investigators also documented at least 18 cases of sexual or racial harassment against employees that resulted in suspensions. In a few cases, the harassment spanned more than two years.

One employee was suspended for 30 days after he showed a female sergeant a "penis-shaped lollipop made of white chocolate" and then grabbed her breast, Corrections officials noted in the records.

Another was suspended for 10 days after he apologized to a female colleague for "reassigning her to the furniture shop and offered to buy her lunch and take her to the hotel for a little sex," officials wrote. A third got a five-day suspension for sending two social workers a computerized presentation containing suggestive photos of two dozen males.

Brown, the former commissioner, said abuse of fellow employees also is a byproduct of the prison system.

"This is an environment where hostility can erupt at any time between inmates, and it requires a hypervigilance among correctional employees where it becomes very stressful," said Brown, who is now running the Washington, D.C., corrections department. "I don't think the public really appreciates the gravity of it all and the toll it takes on Corrections employees."

In addition, employees were suspended or fired for being drunk on duty, testing positive for cocaine and sleeping on the job. More than a dozen employees were disciplined for being arrested by outside authorities on criminal charges ranging from domestic violence and aggravated assault to theft and arson.

One Corrections officer, Kevin Benn, was suspended indefinitely after the FBI arrested him and four other self-proclaimed white supremacists in November for illegally trafficking assault weapons and explosives. His name was disclosed by the FBI at the time of his arrest.

MORE TRAINING URGED

Prison advocates and Corrections union officials agree that the state has been slow to provide enough training for Corrections officers, who earn $41,833 to $64,004, not counting overtime.

Officers undergo a 14-week, in-residence course at the Corrections Staff Training Academy in Sea Girt. Once in a correctional facility, however, they only receive firearms training to ensure they pass the department's weapon qualifications.

Moran and other union officials said Corrections can reduce infractions by providing additional training to teach employees better ways of dealing with inmates and the stresses of the job.

While commissioner, Brown enacted several stress management training programs for Corrections officers, using a federal grant that lasted for two years. However, while some programs are available to officers, they are no longer mandated, Corrections officials said.

Gov. Jon Corzine, who is conducting a nationwide search to replace Brown, told the state Police Benevolent Association last week that he has asked for a complete review of the department's procedures and policies. He said the state should better control gangs in prison and suggested that guards' shifts should overlap so they can inform incoming employees about dangers on the cellblock.

"We're going to get at some of these issues in Corrections," the governor said. "We will look at lots of particular policies."

Rick Hepp covers criminal justice. He may be reached at rhepp@starledger.com or (609) 989-0398.

© 2006 The Star Ledger
© 2006 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.

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

Bush's Mysterious New Programs

Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'
By Nat Parry, Consortium News
Posted on February 23, 2006, Printed on March 19, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/32647/
Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration's domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.

"The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements," Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.

"I stand by this president's ability, inherent to being commander in chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don't think you need a warrant to do that," Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.

"Senator," a smiling Gonzales responded, "the president already said we'd be happy to listen to your ideas."

In less paranoid times, Graham's comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways -- ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror.

But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy. Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush's actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by "news informers," in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Detention centers

Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with "an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs," KBR said.

Later, the New York Times reported that "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."

Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times focused on concerns about Halliburton's reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services. "It's hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars," remarked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Less attention centered on the phrase "rapid development of new programs" and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate on what these "new programs" might be.

Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott and Maureen Farrell, have pursued what the Bush administration might actually be thinking.

Scott speculated that the "detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law." He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized Rex-84 "readiness exercise," which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 "refugees," in the event of "uncontrolled population movements" over the Mexican border into the United States.

Farrell pointed out that because "another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge" of immigrants flooding across the border.

Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said, "Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo."

Labor camps

There also was another little-noticed item posted at the U.S. Army website, about the Pentagon's Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This program "provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations."

The Army document, first drafted in 1997, underwent a "rapid action revision" on Jan. 14, 2005. The revision provides a "template for developing agreements" between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.

On its face, the Army's labor program refers to inmates housed in federal, state and local jails. The Army also cites various federal laws that govern the use of civilian labor and provide for the establishment of prison camps in the United States, including a federal statute that authorizes the attorney general to "establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him" and "make available … the services of United States prisoners" to various government departments, including the Department of Defense.

Though the timing of the document's posting -- within the past few weeks -- may just be a coincidence, the reference to a "rapid action revision" and the KBR contract's contemplation of "rapid development of new programs" has raised eyebrows about why this sudden need for urgency.

These developments also are drawing more attention now because of earlier Bush administration policies to involve the Pentagon in "counter-terrorism" operations inside the United States.

Pentagon surveillance

Despite the Posse Comitatus Act's prohibitions against U.S. military personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries, such as its role in domestic surveillance activities.

The Washington Post has reported that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Defense Department has been creating new agencies that gather and analyze intelligence within the United States.

The White House also is moving to expand the power of the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created three years ago to consolidate counterintelligence operations. The White House proposal would transform CIFA into an office that has authority to investigate crimes such as treason, terrorist sabotage or economic espionage.

The Pentagon also has pushed legislation in Congress that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies. But some in the Pentagon don't seem to think that new laws are even necessary.

In a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2005, the U.S. Army's top intelligence officer wrote, "Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military] intelligence components collecting U.S. person information."

Drawing a distinction between "collecting" information and "receiving" information on U.S. citizens, the memo argued that "MI [military intelligence] may receive information from anyone, anytime."

This receipt of information presumably would include data from the National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. Bush approved the program of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11.

There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program. Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance program existed, but he said he couldn't discuss the details without breaking classification laws.

Tice added that the "special access" surveillance program may be violating the constitutional rights of millions of Americans. With this expanded surveillance, the government's list of terrorist suspects is rapidly swelling.

The Washington Post reported on Feb. 15 that the National Counterterrorism Center's central repository now holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a fourfold increase since the fall of 2003. Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA's domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, "Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA."

Homeland defense

As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress also have questioned the elasticity of Bush's definitions for words like terrorist "affiliates," used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on the wiretap program, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., complained that the House and Senate Intelligence committees "have not been briefed on the scope and nature of the program."

Feinstein added that, therefore, the committees "have not been able to explore what is a link or an affiliate to al-Qaida or what minimization procedures (for purging the names of innocent people) are in place."

The combination of the Bush administration's expansive reading of its own power and its insistence on extraordinary secrecy has raised the alarm of civil libertarians when contemplating how far the Pentagon might go in involving itself in domestic matters.

A Defense Department document, entitled the "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support," has set out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions an "active, layered defense" both inside and outside U.S. territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges to "transform U.S. military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the … U.S. homeland."

The Pentagon strategy paper calls for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to "defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States." The plan "maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us."

But there are concerns over how the Pentagon judges "threats" and who falls under the category "those who would harm us." A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity's TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.

In December 2005, NBC News revealed the existence of a secret 400-page Pentagon document listing 1,500 "suspicious incidents" over a 10-month period, including dozens of small antiwar demonstrations that were classified as a "threat."

The Defense Department also might be moving toward legitimizing the use of propaganda domestically, as part of its overall war strategy.

A secret Pentagon "Information Operations Roadmap," approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for "full spectrum" information operations and notes that "information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice versa."

"PSYOPS messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," the document states. The Pentagon argues, however, that "the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices."

It calls for "boundaries" between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but does not outline any corresponding limits on PSYOP campaigns.

Similar to the distinction the Pentagon draws between "collecting" and "receiving" intelligence on U.S. citizens, the Information Operations Roadmap argues that as long as the American public is not intentionally "targeted," any PSYOP propaganda consumed by the American public is acceptable.

The Pentagon plan also includes a strategy for taking over the internet and controlling the flow of information, viewing the web as a potential military adversary. The "roadmap" speaks of "fighting the net," and implies that the internet is the equivalent of "an enemy weapons system."

In a speech on Feb. 17 to the Council on Foreign Relations, Rumsfeld elaborated on the administration's perception that the battle over information would be a crucial front in the War on Terror, or as Rumsfeld calls it, the Long War.

"Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic communication framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place," Rumsfeld said.

The Department of Homeland Security also has demonstrated a tendency to deploy military operatives to deal with domestic crises.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the department dispatched "heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for its work in Iraq, (and had them) openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans," reported journalists Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo on Sept. 10, 2005.

Noting the reputation of the Blackwater mercenaries as "some of the most feared professional killers in the world," Scahill and Crespo said Blackwater's presence in New Orleans "raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here."

U.S. battlefield

In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law already exists in the United States and has been in place since shortly after the 9/11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order No. 1 which empowered him to detain any noncitizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant.

"The president decided that he was no longer running the country as a civilian president," wrote civil rights attorney Michael Ratner in the book "Guantanamo: What the World Should Know." "He issued a military order giving himself the power to run the country as a general."

For any American citizen suspected of collaborating with terrorists, Bush also revealed what's in store. In May 2002, the FBI arrested U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in Chicago on suspicion that he might be an al-Qaida operative planning an attack.

Rather than bring criminal charges, Bush designated Padilla an "enemy combatant" and had him imprisoned indefinitely without benefit of due process. After three years, the administration finally brought charges against Padilla, in order to avoid a Supreme Court showdown the White House might have lost.

But since the court was not able to rule on the Padilla case, the administration's arguments have not been formally repudiated. Indeed, despite filing charges against Padilla, the White House still asserts the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants.

This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield.

"In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the nation learned all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part of the battlefield," Bush's lawyers argued in briefs to the federal courts.

Given Bush's now open assertions that he is using his "plenary" -- or unlimited -- powers as commander in chief for the duration of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions.

As former Vice President Al Gore asked after recounting a litany of sweeping powers that Bush has asserted to fight the War on Terror, "Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is 'yes,' then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited?"

In such extraordinary circumstances, the American people might legitimately ask exactly what the Bush administration means by the "rapid development of new programs," which might require the construction of a new network of detention camps.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/32647/

By Joseph Richey, AlterNet. Part II
March 14, 2006.

The government's plans for an 'immigration emergency' include relocation and detention centers -- courtesy of Kellogg, Brown and Root.

by Nat Parry. http://www.alternet.org/rights/32647/

Some time between now and 2010, the U.S. government expects some uninvited guests -- a massive influx of undocumented immigrants. In preparation for their arrival, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) backed the National Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which mandates 40,000 new beds and barracks for foreign-born refugees at four undisclosed locations over the next five years.

On Jan. 3, 2006, the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) expanded an existing contract held by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) and renewed it to accommodate up to 20,000 refugees from environmental and political disasters. A future expansion in 2008 calls for another 20,000 beds.

Detention of immigrants and other undesirables without charge is nothing new. After the Civil War, many states supplied troops and police to assist private armed guards to arrest and detain striking workers. In 1918, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer and a youthful 24-year-old J. Edgar Hoover launched raids to round up and deport alleged subversives. In the fall of 1934, striking textile workers were interned in camps at Fort MacPherson outside Atlanta, Ga. Congress approved the Internal Security Act of 1950, including FBI Director Hoover's "Security Portfolio," a plan to arrest and detain up to 20,000 dissidents. 1984 Director of Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) under Ronald Reagan reconstituted a readiness exercise, Operation Night Train, code-named REX 84, a potential roundup of up tens of thousands of Central Americans residing in the United States for internment in ten military detention centers.

But the difference here is that the emergency detention and removal plans for 2006-2010 are built on a new contingency support contract. Originally awarded in 1999 by the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service, the contract sought logistical support for imagined immigration events. Contingency support contracts are good business for KBR, which provides insurance for calamities that don't happen.

When George Bush and Dick Cheney moved to Washington, many Texas-based companies teed up for contract extensions and new business opportunities. Among them, KBR was viewed by many in the defense contracting industry as a capable, fast and far-reaching company. KBR has been awarded the last three expanded improved detention center contracts administered by the Army Corps. The awards often come well in advance of the expiration date.

Take the latest detention center contract between DHS/ICE and KBR: The solicitation went to 26 vendors of detention and logistical support services, 11 of them based in Texas. As with most large service contracts entailing indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity and rapid response time, Halliburton's KBR submitted the only bid for the work. While this does not constitute another "cost-plus no-bid contract," which have been cited as particularly vulnerable to abuse and fraud, the contract award to a single bidder doesn't lend itself to much competitive pricing. Contracting officer Linda Eadie of the U.S. Army Corps' Fort Worth, Texas, district, who administrated the DHS/ICE deal with KBR disagreed: "This is a cost-plus contract, but it is not a no-bid. The procurement was competitively negotiated."

During the contract negotiations, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. USACE learned the hard way about the limitations of the 2001-2005 contract. The existing contract responded to an "immigration emergency," not a "migration emergency." Hurricane Katrina involved "evacuees" from within the United States, and not "refugees" or immigrants from abroad. Under the contract, no task orders could be issued, with the exception of a requirement to perform readiness exercises on a moment's notice. Under that provision, DHS ordered KBR to provide temporary shelter for DHS and ICE officials in New Orleans for $7 million.

In the "recompete" solicitation for the detention and relocation centers, USACE modified the terms. Under the new contract, the detention and relocation centers will be able to hold both immigrant refugees from U.S.-born natural disasters and foreign-born natural disasters. This new program expands the DHS Contingency Support Project and ICE's Detention and Removal Program. In the event of another Katrina-like flood, ICE, with KBR's logistical support, will perform a large-scale migrant catch and release program.

DHS and ICE determine what constitutes an immigration emergency. But no one from ICE or DHS has responded to queries about specific scenarios that would order KBR to act on the contract. A KBR press release from Jan. 24 quotes Bruce Stanski, executive vice president, KBR Government and Infrastructure, who "looks forward to supporting the development of new programs."

Could an immigration emergency be declared tomorrow in Arizona, Texas or California at the urging of conservative political leaders from those regions? Is this program the foundation of internment camps on U.S. soil again? Evacuee resettlement facilities can be converted into detention centers at-the-quick. An Army Corps procurement analyst told me, "Mobile watchtowers are easily wheeled onto the corners of barbed-wired tent camps."

The stated intentions of the contract and acquisition plan do not include those features. Linda Eadie explained that KBR's work could prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in the event of natural disasters such as floods, plagues, tidal waves, hurricanes, earthquakes or a political crisis abroad, like "the fall of a current or future government." USACE maintains it's money well spent on a de facto insurance plan against a humanitarian disaster, offering public shelter for evacuees from a variety of storms, natural disasters, human-induced events.

Immigration lawyers and migrant advocates warn that the government plans to detain and remove more people, including asylum seekers. Attorney Ahilan Arulanantham with the ACLU of Southern California told AlterNet, "Obviously, if the government's intentions are to care for refugees displaced by a natural disaster, we have no problem with that. But with the numbers of detentions, which have exploded since 1996 and more so after Sept. 11 -- and remember after 9/11, the government detained over 1,000 people in New York City, none of whom were linked to terrorist activity -- based on stories like these, we fear that their program could victimize people fleeing persecution or calamity, the very people that the program is designed to help."

The most recent award to KBR announced on Jan. 3, 2006, extends and expands the existing contract, as part of the DHS Contingency Support Project and ICE's Detention and Removal Program. Kellogg, Brown and Root will get $481,212 per year to maintain readiness.

"Rapid response capability is expensive," writes Debra Pulling, one of the U.S. Fort Worth district Army Corps contracting officers, in a memorandum. If called into duty, KBR would have access to a maximum amount of $385 million per deployment. Given the increased frequency and intensity of Gulf Coast hurricanes alone, five deployments would cost more than $1.9 billion over five years.

Each of the four detention centers would accommodate a single male population consisting of 40 percent of the total detainees, 10 percent single female, 40 percent families with children, and 10 percent criminal and sick. Each location will have three different checkpoints: a temporary staging facility where up to 5,000 can be housed and fed for up to 72 hours, and 1,800 can be processed a day; a transfer point holding up to 600 migrants for up to three months before relocation; and to accommodate longer stays for criminal and sick detainees, a temporary detention center where potential terrorist threats can be processed for "rendition" to a site outside the continental United States. Notable among the specifications for KBR is the Department of Defense security requirement for "secret" classification of assigned personnel.

Relating to potential task orders, a Corps memorandum states: "Although this contract will be executed inside the United States, it is likely to be used only during periods of significant political unrest affecting countries near to the United States. Such unrest, quite apart from its impact in creating a large number of refugees, may constitute a serious threat to the United States, which could result in the deployment of military forces. This contract requires an immediate stand up of facilities that will receive a large influx of refugees. It is anticipated that the refugees will not speak the language, and the circumstances may involve a hostile environment within the camp. Consequently, a potential for violence will exist in the camps. While there may or may not be a deployment of U.S. troops, there certainly will be a deployment of border patrol and other law enforcement agents, in a quasi-military manner."

The flexibility redrawn into the contract for these relocation and detention centers has alarmed human rights supporters both inside and outside the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. [AU: WHY?] One anonymous source within USACE warned, "Don't wait until they're putting people behind barbed wire. Don't wait until the cattle cars pull up. Nip this in the bud."

A representative from the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee remarked, "To offer help at gunpoint, where people are not free to accept or reject it, is not really help."

An ICE spokesman told the New York Times on Feb. 4, 2006 that if a migration emergency does not happen, the detention centers may never need to be built. In fact, KBR is not planning to build anything. Existing structures, be they a local stadium, warehouse or airplane hangar, will be leased for a given period of time.

The prospective demand and requirements for this expanded emergency response activity is in the hands of government agencies. They'll be the ones to decide what constitutes an emergency, be it Category 4 hurricanes in the Gulf Coast, coup d'etats in Haiti, African killer bee-induced evacuations of Northern Mexico or, less dramatically, the mass influx of immigrants that crosses the U.S. border after the Christmas holidays. Whatever the emergency is, and whatever poor folks will be rounded up, one thing is certain: They will not be free to leave, and their hosts for the next five years will be Kellogg, Brown and Root.

Joe Richey is a freelance journalist and translator. Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute.

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

Modern Love: I Need to Woman Up and Do This on My Own

March 19, 2006, NY Times
Modern Love
I Need to Woman Up and Do This on My Own
By ASHA BANDELE
FIVE months after we were married, my husband, Rashid, and I had a honeymoon of sorts, a 44-hour jaunt in a trailer at the New York State prison where he lived. At 21 he had been convicted of a gang-related murder, which occurred three years before, and on this day he was in the 13th year of a 20-year sentence.

We had met five years earlier, when I was 23, a college student teaching poetry to prisoners. I believed then, as I do now, that poems can expand a soul. They had done so for me, and I was watching the same thing happen to prisoners, especially Rashid, already a man seeking transformation.

Over the course of a year and many discussions about changing ourselves and our world, we fell in love. With Rashid there was this breadth of dialogue I hadn't experienced before. Our conversations — unspeakably honest — were for me life-saving.

When I met Rashid, a failed marriage already behind me, no college degree yet, no direction for my future, I saw my life as a series of mistakes. He set that lie aside, made me see myself through his eyes until I could love my reflection.

When I could no longer stand not being able to touch this man who had so touched me, we married in the prison visiting room. Five months later we qualified for conjugal visits, and in a small two-bedroom trailer in a yard on the prison grounds we made love, again and again. But more, we had a period of semi-normalcy. We cooked, danced slow, watched television, showered together. For five years this was our life, the life we chose.

I didn't tell Rashid during this time that I would never have a baby with him while he was locked up. I knew many women with incarcerated husbands did so, and while I didn't judge them, it wasn't for me. I didn't want to be a single parent or bring a baby into a prison. But I didn't say this because at the time I didn't think I could get pregnant. I had been married before and never conceived. I made love to my husband and didn't worry.

Three weeks later I found out I was pregnant.I never considered keeping the baby. Even as I wept, listened to Rashid's pleading, I knew I wouldn't keep it. It wasn't just the prison or my unwillingness to be a single parent. It was also financial. Whatever income I generated as a freelance writer and poet covered the rent, lights and food but precious little else. What did I have to offer a child, except instability?

Against the love I felt for the baby who'd barely begun to take shape inside of me, I had an abortion in a Manhattan clinic that seemed less like a medical center than a factory. Despite the doctors, the nurses, all those women waiting just outside for their turn on the table, it was the most alone I've ever felt.

Though having the abortion was the right thing to do, I carried guilt about it for years. Had I been married under "normal" circumstances, I surely would have had the baby. The weight of destroying something that was created from great love was nearly unbearable. There was no way I could ever do it again.

A few years later I was on a book tour, celebrating what I felt was the beginning of my career, when Rashid and I were issued a date for a trailer. I flew home, armed myself with birth control and never thought once about the possibility of pregnancy. I was thinking about what was next for me on the literary horizon.

We made love and talked about our dreams, and when my period was a couple of days overdue, it didn't occur to me that I might be pregnant. But after six or seven days, reluctantly, I bought a test. The stick turned into dark pink double lines that could not be denied. When Rashid called, I told him directly: "We're having a baby."

I never thought not to have this baby.

She created herself in spite of spermicides. Her presence was predetermined. And I was 32. I might not have another chance to be the one thing I always wanted to be: a mother. Still, there were fears.

I worried about finding a stable job and child care. I was terrified of going through labor alone. But mostly I worried whether I would be able to raise a black girl safely in a world that seems to expand in its ability to hate and destroy.

LIVING in a culture where violence is extolled and blacks and women are often stand-ins for the bulls-eye, I worried about whether the life of my girl could be honored by anyone other than me. The rates of drug and alcohol abuse among young people, the violence that's glorified in pop culture, the girls who at 8 are having oral sex in school stairwells and the groundswell of so-called good girls out on the stroll terrified me.

Not because I judged any of these kids, but because I had been my own version of them. Against a Manhattan backdrop, my sister and I were given music, dance, horseback riding, swimming lessons and art classes. I attended private schools, went to the ballet, saw Judith Jamison dance "Cry." But it was also a childhood punctured by violence. All the education and culture were no armor against the excesses and dangers of growing up in an urban environment too unwieldy to notice its children coming undone.

I began high school at 12, graduated at 15, and while I could put on heels and stumble behind the older girls, I couldn't negotiate the social settings — bars and clubs — where I found myself. On more than one occasion, what began for me as a fun night on the town ended as a date rape. There was always racism. When my child reached an age when she would have to negotiate survival, would she know how to speak to me, as I was unable to speak to my parents? Would I know how to listen?

And I had both my parents. My daughter had only me, and she would have to spend the first years of her life passing through metal detectors. Those concerns, more than any others kept me awake through the nights, wondering: Where could I go, where could I raise my child safely? I wanted to run, live off the grid, have my child, tell no one, keep her forever in my womb.

But I had to stay connected to Rashid, even as my trips to the prison became more hellish. The prison guards, normally disdainful of family members, became especially awful once I swelled with life. During one visit I had to request toilet paper four times so that I could please, please go to the bathroom.

The love between Rashid and I no longer disguised the blight, the stench and a terrible question took form in my head. As a mother, would I be able to navigate the prisons and maintain my relationship with Rashid?

But the rounder my tummy became, the more those fears either fell away or shrank to a manageable size. I gave myself over to reason, faith, Dr. Spock. I found work, and child care too. And I made it through labor, quite easily.

My water broke a minute after midnight, and less than 11 hours later my daughter, Nisa, was in my arms. Seven hours later we were home, and I was eating pizza. Fifteen days after that I was placing Nisa's body in her father's arms for the first time. He cried at the sight of her, and I wept too, but from the frustration of not having a place where we could be, at the most basic level, a family.

"You're such a good mother," my sister said once and then added, "How do you do it?" I heard this a lot during the first two years of Nisa's life, when I was writing a novel, working full time and meeting my deadlines. I told her not to believe the facade. It's impossibly hard to be a single mother.

I hate having to be the sole emotional and financial provider for my child. The pressure's too great. If you slip, there's no one to catch you. But worse, there's no one to catch your baby. So somewhere among potty training, play dates, bylines and balancing the household books, I lost pieces of myself I'm only now trying to reclaim.

I started smoking again. I spent too many nights drinking wine and crying. There were times when pain threatened to define the whole of me. And no, no, I couldn't hold my marriage together.

CARING for Rashid and Nisa at the same time was more than I could bear: the weekly treks through metal detectors, the parts of my spirit that always got snagged by the razor wire. I still take Nisa to see her father, but staying romantically entangled with Rashid, when I most feel his absence, was too painful.

Every time I see her change, fall down, stand up again, I'm reminded that the only other person who loves her as I do isn't there to bear witness to her beauty. No one would ever lose an hour, as I still do, just watching her sleep. How could I live with that?

"I can't play at house or marriage anymore" is what I finally said. "I love you. But I need to woman up and do this on my own."

Still, in that breakup I felt like I lost my husband, best friend, father and brother all at once. And I didn't just lose him — I banished him. For that I may never be able to forgive myself. But I had to choose my child. Again.

Most mornings I'm awakened by Nisa's messy kisses. Her eyes ablaze with mischief and wonder, Nisa's query to me each sunrise is, "What's our big adventure today, Mommy?"

I grin back at my beloved, my child, and my mind begins to work. But before I come up with a plan, this is what I think each time she asks: Yes, Beloved. Our big adventure, indeed. Ours.

Asha Bandele lives in New York City and is the author of the memoir "The Prisoner's Wife." This essay is adapted from the anthology "Maybe Baby," edited by Lori Leibovich, to be published by HarperCollins next month.

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

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

FL. New Head of DOC vows to beat "good 'ol boys"

"The prison system has been described as "inbred" because of the extended families that link many of the facilities. For years the heart of the prison system was a cluster of lock-ups in rural north-central Florida that became known as the Iron Triangle."

New corrections secretary vows to beat `good ol' boys'

By Christopher Sherman
Orlando Sentinel
Posted March 18 2006
TALLAHASSEE · For years the Florida prison system was a place where family name often mattered more than merit. A father, son and grandfather could be found all working the same prison shift, "goon squads" doled out vicious beatings with impunity and softball was a ladder to power.

But now, the firing or forced resignation of 15 corrections employees, many of them high-ranking officials, has given rise to a new optimism among the rank and file that a no-nonsense interim corrections secretary is unafraid to go toe-to-toe with the good old boys.

James McDonough, a retired Army colonel, has replaced former Corrections Secretary James Crosby, who was forced to resign last month. A subsequent report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement accused Crosby of trying to scuttle its investigation of the prison system by threatening one of his employees whose father heads FDLE.

"I will move as aggressively and rapidly as I can to unearth and uproot as much as needs to be exposed," McDonough told lawmakers recently. And McDonough has his work cut out for him.

Scandals during the past year have included the federal indictment of several corrections officers for a steroid-distribution ring, two drunken brawls that included arrests of seven employees and a grand theft charge for an employee paid only to play on a prison softball team.

There also have been federal charges against two employees for bilking the department's recycling program and investigations into misused prison labor and state equipment.

Perhaps McDonough's most perplexing discovery is the elevation of softball to fanatical levels within the department.

Prisons formed employee teams years ago to give guards an outlet for their stress and build camaraderie. Over time it grew more competitive. Some wardens wanted the trophies and the bragging rights. "I've been in the department for 20 years, and I still haven't figured out the obsession with softball," said Jim Baiardi, president of State Correctional Officers chapter of the Police Benevolent Association.

But the game has been a common factor in several investigations. Last spring, three employees were arrested after a brawl at a Tallahassee softball banquet. One of those was Regional Director Allen Clark. A Crosby protege who coached a softball team, Clark resigned in August and turned himself into police in November on a felony battery charge.

In October, a former minor league baseball player was arrested on a grand theft charge after he told investigators he was hired to help the prison team win the department tournament but never worked.

An internal department investigation released this week found that an assistant warden at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution was making false ID badges so non-employees could play on prison athletic teams. McDonough, who couldn't be reached for comment late this week, has a committee studying various trust funds worth about $1.5 million that prisons used to fund extracurricular activities. McDonough froze the accounts shortly after his appointment. There also is an ongoing review of the department's contracts.

With the wave of leadership changes, McDonough is fighting what he termed "a culture steeped in violence and brute strength and force."

In the high-stress prison environment where guards are susceptible to attack, insults and threats, an "us vs. them" attitude prevails. Rookies quickly realize that "the only thing standing between you and possible death is your colleagues," said Ron McAndrew, who spent 27 years in the department rising form a corrections officer to warden before retiring in 2002.

Those who try to fit in adopt the appearance and swagger of the officers they perceive to be in charge. They talk down to inmates and don't hesitate to mete out violence at random, McAndrew said. He emphasized that only a few corrections workers fall into this category.

A larger group does not participate but turns a blind eye fearing retaliation. Some wardens condone it, having advanced through the same ranks, McAndrew said.

Transfers are so common in the corrections system that it helps what McAndrew called a cancer of abusive "goon squads" spread and avoid punishment.

The prison system has been described as "inbred" because of the extended families that link many of the facilities. For years the heart of the prison system was a cluster of lock-ups in rural north-central Florida that became known as the Iron Triangle.

Generations of the same families found jobs with the only employers in town. Crosby was an Iron Triangle product, growing up in the shadow of Florida State Prison. McAndrew tells a story of meeting a father, son and grandfather all working the same shift during one of his first days as warden of that prison.

Christopher Sherman can be reached at csherman@orlandosentinel.com or 850-222-5564.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-fprison18mar18,0,6518299.
story?coll=sfla-news-florida>

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

AL: Overfilled Prisons Taint Rivers

Overfilled prisons taint rivers

By Samira Jafari
The Associated Press

March 19, 2006

Prison overcrowding has taken a toll on inmates, guards, infrastructure and budgets, but there's a victim that gets little attention: Alabama's rivers.

With the growth of the state inmate population, several prisons at times dump nearly twice the amount of allowable raw sewage byproducts into Alabama's tributaries -- putting aquatic life and humans at risk.

"Nobody wants raw sewage in the rivers. It's a big, stinky mess," said Nelson Brooke, head of the Black Warrior Riverkeeper, a pollution watchdog group that monitors sewage dumpers along the river, running from west Alabama to north of the Birmingham area.

Prison officials say the sewage levels have gotten out of hand because the prisons aren't designed to handle the brimming population -- now at more than double capacity with 28,000 inmates -- and they don't have the funding to update their self-operated wastewater management facilities.

The "wastewater treatment facilities are aging and were built to accommodate original design capacities," said Brian Corbett, spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections. "Inmate populations in excess of designed capacity place enormous stress and maintenance requirements on all areas of ADOC infrastructure, including wastewater treatment plants."

The prisons are dumping extremely high levels of toxic ammonia and fecal coliform, parts of raw sewage that produce dangerous levels of bacteria, suck up oxygen and result in heavy algae, according to Alabama River Alliance. Untreated sewage carries dangerous infectious bacteria, viruses, parasites and toxic chemicals.

Raw sewage is supposed to flow into wastewater treatment plants. But aging sewage collection systems, like those operated by the prison system, are riddled by broken, leaking or overloaded pipes that allow untreated sewage to be dumped into the environment, according to the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council.

"This poses a problem for people who swim in these waters and aquatic life," said April Hall, watershed protection specialist for the Alabama River Alliance.

"Raw sewage needs oxygen to break down," she added. "Dissolved oxygen is a very important way to look at the health of water. ... It affects all those critters that live in the bottom of the creek and plant life."

Concerns by water conservationists spurred two lawsuits by the attorney general's office against the prison system on the river pollution issue. However, environmentalists and the state's attorneys say they don't want to penalize the Department of Corrections, which has violated wastewater permits for years.

"We're mainly interested in solving the problem, not punishment," said Assistant Attorney General William Little, who filed the lawsuits on behalf of the state and the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.

The Black Warrior Riverkeeper led the fight against the prison system's poor waste management when it filed a November 2004 complaint with ADEM, alleging that since 1999, Donaldson prison in Jefferson County committed 1,060 violations of the Clean Water Act by discharging sewage into Big Branch and Valley Creek, a tributary of the Black Warrior River.

At its worst, Donaldson dumped 808,000 gallons of wastewater in one day, when its permit only allowed 350,000 gallons of treated wastewater and the plant only could handle 270,000 gallons, said Brooke.

Donaldson, built to hold 990 inmates, has held around 1,500 prisoners, since 2001.

The attorney general's office took over the complaint in January 2005, suing the Department of Corrections to avoid federal intervention, and found that several other prisons were committing similar violations, said Little.

A second lawsuit was filed last August, alleging similar violations by wastewater facilities at St. Clair, Draper, Elmore, Fountain/Holman and Limestone prisons and at DOC's Farquhar Cattle Ranch and Red Eagle Honor Farm.

Little said the most recent lawsuit was taken off the trial docket in Montgomery County so DOC can come up with a solution without facing stiff fines.

"We're in the process of working out some sort of settlement," Little said. "We're well aware of their problem. Everybody knows the Department of Corrections is under tremendous pressure."

St. Clair, Draper and Elmore prisons, named in the second lawsuit, already have been confronted by ADEM before, and consent orders were issued in each case that eased the permit standards. But the prisons violated the new standards, too.

The best option for Alabama's prison system may be to turn over their wastewater facilities to private operators, as Donaldson did last year. The prison contracted its treatment plant to Alabama Utility Services, which spent some $400,000 to upgrade the facility, said manager Chris Matthews.

Donaldson prison currently is in compliance with its ADEM wastewater permit, and Matthews said Alabama Utility was interested in taking over the prison system's other treatment facilities.

Corbett said prison officials are exploring options to deal with excess wasterwater, ranging from contracting with private companies to seeking funding to build new facilities.

"Obviously, (privatization) is working at Donaldson," he said. "I think you're going to have to examine each facility on a case-by-case basis. We're certainly eager to resolve these issues, no matter how it's done."

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

LA: Life on the Inside: A tale of two jails

"The lesson is that it's foolish to build or rebuild facilities if there is no money available to operate them. A bond measure would bring in a one-time infusion of cash to spend on capital improvements, but that would only add to the county's ongoing operating expenses while adding nothing to the general fund."
Los Angeles Times
March 19, 2006
LIFE ON THE INSIDE
A tale of two jails

March, 18 2006

MEN'S CENTRAL JAIL IN downtown L.A. is a dark, depressing box that is home to hundreds of violent inmates. The cells are sealed with old-fashioned, hand-crank-operated steel gates that look like they could have been used at Alcatraz. The escalators don't work. The cells are built in rows, so it's impossible for guards to see into all of them without continually walking up and down the aisles. If a misbehaving inmate gets pepper sprayed, the chemical often travels through the ventilation system and causes sore eyes and burning lungs throughout the building.

Nobody ever said a trip to jail was supposed to be fun. But in L.A. County, it's needlessly dangerous or even deadly. Just this winter, more than 150 inmates have been injured and two have died in violent altercations. In the last 2 1/2 years, 10 jail inmates have been killed by other inmates. The rest endure miserable, overcrowded conditions that have prompted numerous lawsuits, including a class-action suit now underway in U.S. District Court over floor sleeping. The lawsuit could cost the county as much as $100 million.

In an effort to end the violence and improve conditions, Sheriff Lee Baca has made numerous appeals for more money to boost staffing and open shuttered or underused facilities. In response, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky came up with a dramatic proposal this week: a bond measure worth as much as $500 million.

Is that kind of taxpayer spending really necessary? Over the coming months, supervisors, and possibly voters, will give serious thought to that question. When they do, they should consider a few things they aren't being told.

Baca often compares L.A. County's jails with New York's as a way of demonstrating how underfunded his department remains. In New York, the average inmate population is about 13,750, which is overseen by a uniformed and civilian staff of more than 11,000. In L.A. County, more than 21,000 inmates are overseen by a staff of roughly 5,000. That's a dramatic contrast, but the comparison is also disingenuous.

New York City runs the Rolls-Royce of big-city jail systems. In terms of spending per inmate, L.A. is actually above most big cities. L.A. County spends roughly $27,800 per inmate, compared with $20,000 in Chicago's Cook County, $15,800 in Houston's Harris County and $23,700 in Philadelphia. New York City spends about $61,000 per inmate.

This doesn't mean that L.A. County jails are adequately funded. The violence, lawsuits and decrepit facilities show that they're not; further, most big-city jail systems are underfunded and face problems similar to L.A.'s. The cost of living is also higher here, requiring higher guard salaries, and L.A.'s gang culture produces particularly violent, dangerous inmates. There is little question that the county needs to spend more on its jails than it does now. But it's unlikely it needs to spend as much as New York does.

Another issue is whether a bond measure is the proper response to this problem. Los Angeles has tried that before, with very poor results. Voters often assume that if they pass a bond measure and cough up a big chunk of money to solve a problem, it will go away. In reality, the money sometimes just creates new problems. That's what happened in L.A. County more than a decade ago.

In the 1980s, crime was a burning political issue in California. Legislators and voters passed a number of new laws, including the so-called three-strikes law that increased criminal penalties and caused the incarcerated population to skyrocket. Voters also passed state bond measures to pay for new prisons and jails to house them.

Two of those measures, passed in 1986 and 1988, brought nearly $248 million to L.A. County to build a new jail; the county took out another $125 million in bonds and built the $373-million Twin Towers jail near Men's Central. Comparing them is like comparing the Queen Mary to the Starship Enterprise. In Twin Towers, completed in 1995, there are no bars ‹ the cells are sealed with tempered glass. There are no dorms, and each cell has an intercom connected to a guard station so that if an inmate is being attacked, he can call for help. There is a medical building with state-of-the-art (for 1995) technology, and there are exercise and visitor rooms on each floor, eliminating the need for inmates to walk unsupervised through the jail, which has led to violence.

Yet Twin Towers has for a decade been an embarrassing albatross. By the time it was finished, the county was in serious budget trouble and couldn't come up with the $100 million a year needed to operate it. So it sat empty for a couple of years, then became a stopgap facility for housing female inmates and the mentally ill, not the maximum-security male inmates for whom it was designed. Baca is working on a plan to shift the women to another jail so that violent male inmates can be housed at Twin Towers, but even then the lack of staff and money will probably ensure that the jail remains underused.

The lesson is that it's foolish to build or rebuild facilities if there is no money available to operate them. A bond measure would bring in a one-time infusion of cash to spend on capital improvements, but that would only add to the county's ongoing operating expenses while adding nothing to the general fund.

So far, Yaroslavsky is alone in backing a bond measure. Supervisor Mike Antonovich opposes it, saying money can be shifted from other areas in the general fund to pay for the jail system. Given that he hasn't proposed where to take the money from, that isn't very helpful. Supervisor Gloria Molina is interested in a bond but isn't satisfied that all other possible solutions have been explored. Given that the county has been trying ways to solve its overcrowding issues since they led to a jailhouse riot in 1921, one wonders what new brainstorm she's waiting for.

There is no doubt that the county needs money, possibly in the hundreds of millions, to upgrade its jails. Unless supervisors demonstrate the willingness and ability to operate those upgraded jails once they're fixed, though, voters should think twice before approving a big jail bond.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-ed-jails18mar18,1,741
1648.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

Posted by lois at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2006

From FAMM: Federal Legislative Update 3-17-06

...a new threat to sentencing justice is emerging from the sponsor of H.R. 4472. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), is indicating he will call for mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling 14 months ago in Booker that made the nearly 20-year-old mandatory guideline system into an advisory guideline system, thereby giving judges more freedom to decide for themselves what a fair sentence is.

Although the U.S. Sentencing Commission published a report this week, indicating that not much has changed in the federal sentencing system since Booker, Rep. Sensenbrenner believes that the advisory guidelines give judges too much discretion to hand out sentences below the guidelines. At a press conference on Wednesday, March 15, he said: "Unrestrained judicial discretion has …jeopardized the basic precept of our federal court system that all defendants should be treated equally under the law." The Sentencing Commission's report actually found that federal defendants are getting slightly longer prison sentences since the Booker decision, and that judges are by and large following the sentencing guidelines, as they did before the Supreme Court's decision in January 2005. In fact, the Booker report found that in nearly nine of the cases cited, the judge sentenced defendants within the guideline range, or sentenced them below the range because the prosecutor asked the court to do so, or gave them a sentence harsher than the guideline sentence.

Facts from the report: Not much has changed

About 67,000 people were sentenced over the past year to an average 58 months in prison, compared with 57 months from the previous year. Sentences increased in length since Booker.
Before Booker, judges sentenced inside the guideline range a little over 90 percent of the time. Since Booker, judges have been sentencing within the guideline range 85.9 percent of the time. This represents a mere 5 percent increase in below guideline sentences since Booker.
Since Booker, the government sponsored downward departures in twice as many cases as defense sponsored departures. The government sponsored departures in 23.7 percent of all cases in the year following Booker, an increase over past years. This past year, judges sentenced below the guideline range in only 12.5 percent of cases.
If the government disagrees with the judge about a below guideline sentence, they can appeal and occasionally they do. The courts have reversed 15 below guideline sentences and affirmed only six.
There is still lots to learn, including how the courts of appeals will treat other government appeals of below guideline sentences, and gaining a better understanding of why judges are departing below the guidelines in some cases. We have a lot to do to educate ourselves and Congress about why judicial discretion is important.

Is there a need for more legislation?

Rep. Sensenbrenner said at a news conference Wednesday that House Republicans are contemplating several pieces of legislation to rein in what he said were lenient judges, but it will be months before a proposal is drafted and introduced. The Department of Justice told the Congress at hearings on Thursday, March 16 that they want mandatory minimum guidelines. (Click here to read testimony of witnesses.) We think such a fix is unnecessary, ill-advised, and probably unconstitutional. Moreover, we believe the courts of appeals should be given a chance to address government concerns about below guideline sentences. There just has not been enough time to permit appeals to make their ways through the courts and make their effects felt on the system.

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

CO: Sterling Correctional Facility Negatively Impacts Community

Sterling Journal-Advocate March 15, 2006
Prison bound?
Meisner: SCF negatively impacts social services, schools
By Jennifer Klein Journal-Advocate staff writerjklein@journal-advocate.com

Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - STERLING - The Sterling Correctional Facility has been in Sterling since 1999, but questions over its presence still exist.

"This has not helped Logan County whatsoever. It's cost taxpayers not only weekly but monthly and yearly," County Commissioner Gene Meisner said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Meisner said the prison brought a slew of problems to Sterling, including a negative impact on the department of social services and the schools. The commissioner said adding another prison would increase those problems and cause a domino affect.

Tuesday Logan County Economic Development Executive Director Brett Challenger said the GEO Group - the second-largest private prison company - is considering the Sterling area as the possible site for a medium-security adult male private prison with 2,250 beds. The company would offer 400 to 500 jobs and a $23 million payroll. There would be no out-of-pocket expense to the city where the prison is constructed. The city would provide water and sewer, Challenger said.

Tuesday the Sterling City Council voted to authorize the mayor to sign a letter and commissioners Greg Etl and Jack McLavey signed a letter that will allow the area to get more information about the prison and enter the next step. Challenger said it does not commit the county or city to anything. Meisner said he refused to sign the letter or attend Monday night's executive session when the GEO Group first broached the commission and council because he does not want to tie his name with another prison.

"We damn sure don't need another jail," Meisner said.

His concerns include the water the city would provide if the prison does indeed come. Meisner said that would lower the underground water supply known as the water table.

"We're stealing water from the farmers to give to the prison," Meisner said.

Meisner said a new prison would be difficult to staff because it's already hard to find guards for the Sterling Correctional Facility and the Logan County Justice Center. A labor force is tough to find in Sterling, Meisner said.

Sheriff Bob Bollish said the Justice Center is currently fully staffed, but has had a tough time in the past filling openings because of the lower wages the county offers.

Meisner also said the Sterling Correctional Facility increased the workload on social services, to the cost of taxpayers. He cited the difficult nature of working at the prison.

Logan County Department of Social Services Director Fred Crawford said the number of cases has increased for his department since the prison opened. But he said its difficult to tell how much of the caseload has been driven by the nature of the business or by the increase of the employees. Crawford said that people who work in the difficult prison profession deal with violence daily. Because it is a stressful job, it is more likely for employees working in the environment of a prison to have a high incidence of domestic violence and child abuse; but it is not dramatic enough to test statistically. Crawford said SCF does try to address that through programs at the prison.

According to Crawford, counties with the highest referral rate for child abuse tend to be counties with a prison. But he said their may be other unknown causes and a direct correlation can not be drawn.

"It makes you suspicious but it's not definite," Crawford said this morning.

Crawford said the department has had virtually no impact on communities where prisons are located because of families of prisoners being in their communities.

Crawford said an additional prison would increase the social service workload, but would not double it. An increase in population through any business would most likely do the same, he said. Construction jobs for something like a new prison and people who come looking for work would all be a part of that, he said. The social services department is doubling in size every 10 years.

Meisner said SCF has also had a negative impact on Sterling schools because it caused an increase in problems at school because of prisoner's and staff children.

RE-1 Valley Superintendent Betty Summers was not in the area before the prison came and following its opening and said she was unaware if there was a difference in the district. Summers said the district does not look at the occupation of its pupil's parents but addresses the educational needs of each pupil. The district's latest school accountability report showed a small number of fights, drugs and other incidences.

"We just take care of the kids that come to our buildings," Summers said this morning.

Meisner cited the positive recent area economic developments - Safe Auto, the Sterling Ethanol Plant, etc. - and said he hoped to see more of that kind of development, just not a prison.

"We've got to go down another direction," Meisner said.

Jennifer Klein can be reached at 522-1990, Ext. 237 or by e-mail at jklein@journal-advocate.com

http://www.journal-advocate.com/Stories/0,1413,120~7824~3268723,00.html#

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

March 16, 2006

$100 million to Incarcerate people convicted of sex offences

Wednesday, Mar 15, 2006
Governor offers new budget
BY PATRICK SWEENEY
Pioneer Press

Gov. Tim Pawlenty called Tuesday for the Legislature to spend about $100 million more over the next 15 months to imprison criminal defendants ‹ especially sex offenders ‹ and to hospitalize mentally ill and dangerous people who might commit sex offenses in the future.

"It is not an option for more sex offenders to be on the street," Pawlenty said in a news conference.

The new spending to staff a prison at Moose Lake and the state's secure mental hospital in St. Peter is part of about $202 million that Pawlenty urged legislators to appropriate through mid-2007 to boost spending the Legislature approved last summer.

Pawlenty also proposed increasing state budget reserves by $159 million and reducing state revenue by about $29 million by giving married couples a state tax break they have been able to claim on their federal income taxes since last year.

The supplemental budget, which covers the final 15 months of the current two-year budget, is Pawlenty's plan for divvying up a projected $88 million budget surplus and $317 million that is set aside by law in a "tax relief account" that has no designated purpose.

He recommended that lawmakers transfer most of the tax-relief money to the general fund, the budget category that funds most state services, and use only $49 million for actual tax relief. Most of the $317 million would help pay for $202 million in new spending he urged lawmakers to approve.

In response, legislative leaders ‹ both Democrats and Republicans ‹ said they wanted significantly more of the $317 million to go into tax relief, especially property tax relief.

"We're going to do real property tax reform and relief," said Sen. Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis, the Senate Tax Committee chairman. Pogemiller hinted Senate Democrats would propose "hundreds of millions" of dollars in tax relief, but he refused to be specific.

The big unknown for both Pawlenty and legislators this year is how, and when, the Minnesota Supreme Court will rule on the state's appeal of a lower court decision striking down a new cigarette fee that yields $200 million a year for the state. So far, the state is continuing to collect the disputed fee.

But, if the Supreme Court agrees the fee is barred by a 1998 court settlement between the state and several big cigarette manufacturers, Minnesota would have to stop collecting the fee and pay refunds. That would create a huge hole in the budget.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case April 10. It is not clear whether the court will rule by May 22, when the legislative session is scheduled to adjourn.

Pawlenty, whose insistence that the new 75-cents-a-pack charge on cigarettes be called a fee rather than a tax is a major issue in the court case, downplayed the notion that the $159 million increase he proposed in state reserves was a cushion against an adverse ruling by the Supreme Court.

But Republican House leaders and Senate Democrats stressed that preparing for the possible loss of that cigarette fee revenue was a major concern. "One of the things we're going to be talking about is preparing for a negative ruling," said House Speaker Steve Sviggum, R-Kenyon.

Rep. Matt Entenza of St. Paul, the leader of the House Democratic minority, said some House Democrats were preparing legislation that would eliminate some of the uncertainty by re-passing the 75-cent fee as an increase in the existing 48-cents-a-pack excise tax on cigarettes.

Pawlenty's major proposal for tax relief was the plan to allow married couples this year and in future years to take the same standard deduction for state income taxes as they do for federal income taxes. The marriage penalty costs most Minnesota couples about $91 in extra taxes.

"This proposal is a no-brainer," Pawlenty said. "Minnesota's married couples should not have to pay a higher tax."

Pogemiller accused Pawlenty of opposing the same federal tax conformity last spring, when it would have applied to both 2005 and 2006. Pogemiller predicted Senate Democrats would approve the tax break retroactive to last year.

Pawlenty also proposed that legislators pass a law that would limit property tax increases by cities and counties ‹ but not by school districts ‹ to a level justified by inflation and population increases. Property taxes have increased 25 percent in three years.

But both Pawlenty and Sviggum predicted that lawmakers would not approve the proposed levy limits.

Patrick Sweeney covers state government and its effect on Minnesotans. He can be reached at 651-228-5253 or psweeney@pioneerpress.com.
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/legislature/14099154.htm

Posted by lois at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2006

Time Served: Iowa's Residency Rules Drive People Convicted of Sex Offences Underground

March 15, 2006
Time Served
Iowa's Residency Rules Drive Sex Offenders Underground
By MONICA DAVEY
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — One cornfield beyond the trim white farmhouse where the Boland family lives and a road sign warns, "Watch for children and dogs," is a faded motel.

For years a layover for budget-conscious motorists and construction crews, the motel has lately become a disquieting symbol of what has gone wrong with Iowa's crackdown on sexual offenders of children. With just 24 rooms, the motel, the Ced-Rel, was home to 26 registered sex offenders by the start of March.

"Nobody wants to have something associated with sex offenders right beside them," said Steve Boland, a farmer and father of two who learns about his newest neighbors every few weeks when sheriff's deputies stop by with photographs of them.

"Us showing the kids some mug shots sure wasn't going to help," Mr. Boland said. "How were they going to remember that many faces?"

The men have flocked to the Ced-Rel and other rural motels and trailer parks because no one else will, or can, have them. A new state law barring those convicted of sex crimes involving children from living within 2,000 feet of a school or day care center has brought unintended and disturbing consequences. It has rendered some offenders homeless and left others sleeping in cars or in the cabs of their trucks.

And the authorities say that many have simply vanished from their sight, with nearly three times as many registered sex offenders considered missing since before the law took effect in September.

"The truth is that we're starting to lose people," said Don Vrotsos, chief deputy for the Dubuque County sheriff's office and the man whose job it is to keep track of that county's 101 sex offenders.

The statute has set off a law-making race in the cities and towns of Iowa, with each trying to be more restrictive than the next by adding parks, swimming pools, libraries and bus stops to the list of off-limits places. Fearful that Iowa's sex offenders might seek refuge across state lines, six neighboring states have joined the frenzy.

"We don't want to be the dumping ground for their sex offenders," said Tom Brusch, the mayor of Galena, Ill., which passed an ordinance in January.

But even as new bans ripple across the Midwest, the rocky start of the Iowa law — one of at least 18 state laws governing the living arrangements of those convicted of sex crimes — has led to a round of second-guessing about whether such laws really work.

"Nobody wants sex offenders in their area, and on its face, it makes sense that people wouldn't want them near day cares and schools," said Scott Matson, a research associate at the Center for Sex Offender Management, a nonprofit project financed by the federal Department of Justice. "But there are consequences of removing them."

While some of the Iowa's largest cities, like Des Moines, have become virtually off limits for those convicted of sex crimes involving children, the new rules have pushed many to live in groups away from their families, in places like the Ced-Rel, or the Red Carpet Inn in nearby Bouton, where nine offenders rent rooms.

Michele Costigan, whose driveway is right across Highway 30 from the Ced-Rel in this rural stretch just outside Cedar Rapids, said she had stopped leaving any of her four children at home alone, had told them to dial 911 if anyone they did not recognize pulled into the family driveway, and was considering moving.

"If the point of his law was to make us safer, we are not," Ms. Costigan said.

Even more worrisome to law enforcement officials in Iowa, the restrictions appear to be leading some offenders to slip out of sight.

Of the more than 6,000 people on Iowa's registry of sex offenders, 400 are now listed as "whereabouts unconfirmed" or living in "non-structure locations" (like tents, parking lots or rest areas). Last summer, the number was 140.

"When it comes down to it, we would rather know where these people are living than to have the restriction," said Deputy Vrotsos. He said that he devoted at least 20 hours extra a week, along with the work of two clerks, to administering the new state law.

Last fall, Deputy Vrotsos told about 30 of the offenders that they would have to move to meet the requirements of Iowa's law, which he said made about 90 percent of the city of Dubuque off limits.

Some complied, he said, moving to trailer parks, across the Mississippi River into Illinois, to motels or, in the case of one man who had been living with his parents, to a truck at the Ioco Truck Stop on the outskirts of town. But at least three of the offenders have disappeared, Deputy Vrotsos said, giving false addresses or not providing any address at all.

The effectiveness and fairness of the restrictions has become a matter of great debate.

Some law enforcement officials say they believe that restrictions keep the most serious sexual predators away from places where they would be most likely to hurt a child again. But others argue that while such laws are politically appealing, there is little empirical evidence to suggest a connection between recidivism and proximity to schools or day care centers, and that the policies are too broad, drawing in, for example, people who as teenagers had sex with an under-age girlfriend.

In Arkansas, a 2001 study found that sexual offenders of children often lived near schools, day care centers and parks. Those results suggested, said Jeffrey T. Walker, a professor from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock who was a co-author of the research, that residency restrictions could be a reasonable deterrent.

But studies for the Colorado Department of Public Safety in 2004 and the Minnesota Department of Corrections in 2003 have suggested that where an offender lives appears to have no bearing on whether he commits another sex crime on a child.

The problems have left some states turning to other means for controlling registered sex offenders, particularly with public outcry after cases like the rape and killing of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in Florida last year; a convicted sex offender is accused in the attack.

A flurry of new legislation is being considered all over the country. More legislatures are considering joining a dozen that already use satellite tracking devices on offenders. Others, including Iowa, are considering harsher prison sentences for those who attack children. Lawmakers reason that they would not have to worry about recidivism if offenders rarely emerged from prison.

Jerry Behn, a Republican state senator, proposed Iowa's residency law after a constituent called him to point out that a registered sex offender was living in a home that looked out over a schoolyard in Boone, Mr. Behn's hometown.

The legislation passed overwhelmingly in 2002, but was challenged in a lawsuit. A federal judge ruled that the law was unconstitutional, but a three judge panel from the appeals court overturned the ruling.

Almost immediately, other states felt the reverberations. Chief Steven M. O'Connell of the East Dubuque, Ill., police said he began getting "an appalling number" of calls from offenders from Dubuque who wanted to know if they could legally live in his town instead. Sheriff Timothy F. Dunning of Douglas County, Neb., not far from Council Bluffs, Iowa, said that new sex offenders rarely moved to town in the past, but that since last fall, 28 had arrived.

Despite the problems, legislators in Iowa are unlikely to ease the distance restriction anytime soon, said State Senator Larry McKibben, a Republican who is leading a legislative task force on sex offender policies.

"It may have created some hardships for sex offenders," Mr. McKibben said. "But over all, I feel like with the spate of sex offenders in the past few years, this has at least caused parents to be more aware of what is going on."

Corwin R. Ritchie, executive director of the Iowa Association of County Attorneys, which opposes the law, said it had created a "false sense of security" for Iowa residents.

"This is very close to banishment," Mr. Ritchie said. "They quit registering with the sex offender registry and they start sleeping under bridges and at rest stops"

Back at the Ced-Rel motel, Kenneth Selzer, the owner, angrily defended his renters to a reporter, saying they caused little trouble to anyone, not to his neighbors, not to his wife, who sometimes worked late at the motel by herself.

Don Zeller, the sheriff here in Linn County, said however that he had heard a lot of concerns from people over sex offenders in the county, 30 of whom face charges for not complying with the state law's residency restrictions.

Before September, Sheriff Zeller said, he knew where 90 percent of Linn County's sex offenders were living, and today he knows where slightly more than half live. Just before Christmas, the sheriff said, one man began spending his days inside the sheriff's office because he had no where else to go.

Gretchen Ruethling contributed reporting from Chicago for this article.

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

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

March 14, 2006

VA: Resource Information Help for the Disadvantage

SUPPORT RESOURCE INFORMATION HELP FOR THE DISADVANTAGE - RIHD, INC.

R. I. H. D., Inc. purpose: Assist all disadvantage people regardless of religion, color, creed and ethnic background; with a special inference on at-risk youth, incarcerated people, ex-offenders, their families, and loved ones on all levels. To improve the existence of their lives, to reduce the stress felt by all.

R.I.H.D., Inc. continues to grow steadily since its official formation in 2005. Our outreach to inmates, ex-offenders, and their families reaches beyond Virginia borders. We have partner with the monthly newsletter "Fed Up". We are constantly expanding our outreach to inform and educate the public about these vital issues. Unfortunately, RIHD, Inc. must rely exclusively on fundraiser and personal contributions. That is why we accept any donation, no matter how small, because even a little can help so much. We thank you in advance for your continued support. Keep in mind that all of your contributions and donations are tax-deductible.

MEMBERSHIP DRIVE
If you just don't have the time to volunteer, consider becoming a member of Resource Information Help for the Disadvantage. For $20 a year you will receive a one year subscription to "Fed Up" , and RIHD, Inc. BULLETINS. So think about joining our team to help build safer communities. Give us a call @ (804) 737-9624

DICTIONARIES FOR INMATES
This project will supply all inmates who write and request a college-level dictionary at no charge. An optional donation would be greatly appreciated, but not required. Dictionaries cost from $1.00 @ Dollar Stores to $$5.00 Each. We would like to be able to furnish 100 per year.

'SPONSOR AN INMATE REHABILITATION THROUGH EDUCATION"
(S. I. R .E.) College Scholarships
Provide partial funds and full for member prisoners who submit an application. Five (5) full scholarships for inmate who meet certain criteria such as a GPA of 3.00+, no write-ups, junior or higher status etc. Twenty partial funds for inmates RIHD, Inc. members. This program will provide a total of 25 scholarships to undergraduates to Community College.

Minimum funding for entire project annually: $7,000. $600 per year full scholarships for undergraduate students. $300 per three credit classes ($3,000) for Community College. $25 - $100 for partial scholarships for undergraduate students. ($1,000 to $4,000)

Purchase and provide Preparation for GED assistance books to 100 RIHD, Inc. inmate members @ a cost of $13.00 per Prep-GED book. Total funding $1,300 annually.
Update: VDOC will allow R. I. H. D., Inc. to make direct donations of books to Prisons.

POSTAGE FUNDING
This project will cover all postage expenses incurred over the year approximately $2,500. Covering monthly, quarterly mailings, resource books, and other correspondence materials to inmates, ex-offenders and their families.

LIBRARY ASSISTANCE
To assist in developing an extensive law library to provide inmates, ex-offenders, and their families with access to legal information and assistance. Purchase of used/new legal self-help books, and legal manuals, case laws, etc. Assistance shall be provided to ALL inmates, ex-offenders and their families. Estimated cost: $5,000 .

Resource Information Help for the Disadvantage
R. I. H. D., Inc. - PO Box 55 - Highland Springs, VA 23075
Telephone: (804) 737-9624 Fax: (804) 737-2593
Web Site: www.RIHD.org E-mail: InmateResource@aol.com

Posted by lois at 08:32 PM | Comments (0)

NY: Remarks by Jails Chaplain Create Problem for Mayor

March 14, 2006

Remarks by Jails Chaplain Create Problem for Mayor

By SEWELL CHAN

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that he would personally decide whether to discipline or dismiss the Correction Department's top chaplain, a Muslim imam who asserted that "the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House."

In a news conference at City Hall, the mayor said he would consider the case himself because matters of principle are involved.

The controversy began last week when The New York Post reported comments that the chaplain, Umar Abdul-Jalil, made last April in Tucson at a conference of Muslim students. The remarks were recorded by a participant, at the request of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a private research organization in Washington.

A transcript of Mr. Abdul-Jalil's remarks, obtained from the organization and city officials, contains phrases that would probably be offensive to many people - although they were only a small part of two meandering speeches.

In the shorter speech, Mr. Abdul-Jalil said, "We have to stop allowing, as the imam said to be reactionary, the Zionists of the media to dictate what Islam is to us." Which imam he alluded to was not clear.

In that speech, Mr. Abdul-Jalil also cited the value of compassion and mentioned having visited ground zero two days after the World Trade Center attack.

His longer speech criticized the United States for having one of the highest incarceration rates in the world and cited the plight of Muslims who had been detained indefinitely, without being charged.

"We know that the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House, without a doubt," he said.

That speech also cited "the draconian Rockefeller drug laws," which, the imam said in an interview yesterday, played a large role in his life.

Mr. Abdul-Jalil, 55, was originally named William Bostick. He said he was born in Danville, Va., was raised by his grandmother in Scranton, S.C., and moved to New York City when he was 11.

At age 23, he said, he was arrested for selling cocaine and heroin, and was sentenced to 15 years to life. According to the State Department of Correctional Services, he was convicted in Brooklyn on five counts of selling drugs and one count of possession and was imprisoned from November 1975 to February 1989, when he was paroled.

Mr. Abdul-Jalil said he embraced Islam soon after entering prison, inspired by the example of Malcolm X. He later earned two associate degrees from Ulster County Community College.

The City Correction Department hired Mr. Abdul-Jalil as a chaplain in June 1993 and promoted him in April 2002 to oversee 40 chaplains who provide weekly and holiday religious services for inmates, counseling for employees, and death notification.

Two years later he was given a new title, executive director of ministerial services, and expanded responsibilities, which included overseeing 500 volunteers and coordinating visits by children in the child welfare system to their incarcerated parents. His annual salary is $76,602. Until he was placed on paid administrative leave last Thursday, he worked at Rikers Island.

Other clerics, including Catholic, Protestant and Jewish chaplains at the department, have expressed support for Mr. Abdul-Jalil. Several took part in a rally for him on Sunday, as did Norman Seabrook, the president of the city's 11,000-member union of correction officers.

The legal issues are complex. In 1996, a federal judge struck down policies at two New York City agencies that prohibited employees from speaking with the press regarding the agency without first obtaining permission. The next year, another federal judge struck down a policy of the New York Police Department that required officers to provide advance notice and obtain approval before any speaking engagement. Both decisions were upheld on appeal.

Steven Emerson, the founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, said the remarks "are incendiary and foster a paranoid view of the world, that there is a war against Islam that is being waged by the United States or by infidels."
Mr. Abdul-Jalil referred questions about his remarks to Norman Siegel, his lawyer, who said the courts "have consistently held that a government employee, off the job, not discussing confidential information," has the right to express personal views.

Mr. Bloomberg could well rely on the judicial precedents and restore Mr. Abdul-Jalil to his position. But he could also conclude that the remarks were at odds with Mr. Abdul-Jalil's role in running an ecumenical program that serves inmates and employees of all faiths.
Mr. Bloomberg, who expects to make a decision on Mr. Abdul-Jalil this week, said he has spoken about the matter with top aides.

"But in the end, when it comes down to decisions that revolve around principles, I think that's the decision of the elected official," he said yesterday. "The public picks the mayor to make those kinds of decisions. They're not operational ones, they're principled ones."

Paul von Zielbauer contributed reporting for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/nyregion/14imam.html?_r=1

&oref=slogin
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 08:28 PM | Comments (0)

SD: Women who are incarcerated at all-time high

Female inmate population at all-time high
Former DCI dormitory being used as temporary housing unit
March 8, 2006
CONTACT: Michael Winder, SD DOC (605) 773-3478 http://www.state.sd.us/news/showDoc.aspx?i=7109
Pierre, S.D. - The Department of Corrections has begun utilizing
additional resources to house state prisoners with inmate populations at an all-time high.
Forty-three inmates from the South Dakota Women's Prison have been moved to temporary housing in the former Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI)

Law Enforcement Training Center dormitory in Pierre. All of the inmates are minimum-security status.

"We were running out of space for female inmates and needed to provide some relief for the Women's Prison," said Corrections Secretary Tim Reisch. "The use of these dorms will provide needed space at a low cost to the taxpayers."

As of March 8th, South Dakota had 389 female inmates in custody. The
female inmate population in South Dakota is currently growing at a rate of three times that of the male inmate population, and the number of female inmates in the state has more than doubled since the Women's Prison opened in Pierre in October 1997.

Growth Rate in Female Inmate Average Daily Count

Fiscal Years Female Inmates ADC % Growth

FY 95-96 109-135 24%
FY 96-97 135-149 10%
FY 97-98 149-171 15%
FY 98-99 171-200 17%
FY 99-00 200-194 -3%
FY 00-01 194-207 8%
FY 01-02 207-222 7%
FY 02-03 222-249 12%
FY 03-04 249-286 15%
FY 04-05 286-302 6%
FY 05-06* 302-362* 20%
* estimated

"We continue to experience a dramatic increase in the number of female inmates coming into the system with a dependency on drugs and alcohol," said Reisch. "Twenty-percent of the women entering prison in Fiscal Year 2002 were found to have a primary substance dependence on amphetamine. For Fiscal Year 2006, that number has risen to 40-percent."

In addition to the female inmates housed at the Women’s Prison in Pierre, female inmates on work release status are also housed at the Minnehaha County Corrections Center and The Glory House in Sioux Falls and at Community Alternatives of the Black Hills in Rapid City.

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

When It Comes to Drug Laws, the Jokes End

March 14, 2006 NYC
NY Times
When It Comes to Drug Laws, the Jokes End

By CLYDE HABERMAN

THE word is that the city wants to put retail shops at the Brooklyn House of Detention. Whatever the commercial merits of this plan, the potential for one-liners is obvious.
How about a bank at the jail? It could be called Pen and Teller. If a Blockbuster outlet moved in, should it be forbidden to carry "The Great Escape"? Would a bakery be allowed, given the hacksaw-hiding possibilities?

Kidding aside, one idea that should probably be ruled out from the get-go is a drugstore. Drugs, albeit the illicit variety, were what landed many of the prisoners behind bars in the first place. No need to rub it in.
For decades, New York State has socked drug offenders with some of the stiffest penalties in the land. The Rockefeller drug laws, they are commonly called. They bear the name of Nelson A. Rockefeller, who was governor in the early 1970's, an era of rising crime rates and a prevailing "lock 'em up and throw away the key" spirit.
For many New Yorkers, that remains the mood. But the Rockefeller laws were deemed so harsh, with life sentences possible even for some small fry, that they became politically unsustainable.
Albany being Albany, change was exceedingly slow in coming. It did arrive, though, at the end of 2004. Revisions of the laws reduced the steepest prison sentences. Additional recalibrations last summer softened the penalties some more.
But to critics of the laws, those actions amounted to tinkering at the edges, a boon to a few hundred people. State prison rolls may have shrunk from their 1990's peaks, but thousands of nonviolent drug offenders are still put away each year.
As some critics see it — and some in government as well — those offenders would be better served in treatment centers. It would also be better, they say, for taxpayers, who pay the freight. A detox ward costs a lot less to run than a cellblock at Attica.
So Rockefeller reform remains a work in progress. State Senate and Assembly leaders say through aides that they are committed to further change. Chauncey G. Parker, the state's criminal justice director, says that while progress has been made on drug policy, "we're always ready to be at the table to discuss ways" to do more.
In the Assembly, a bill sponsored by Jeffrion L. Aubry, a Queens Democrat, would strip district attorneys of some power. Judges would get the latitude they once had, and lost, to decide if a drug law violator — not to mention the rest of us — would be better served by treatment instead of prison.
How quickly might Albany act, if at all? Do you really need to ask? We're talking about Albany. "It's not easy," Mr. Aubry said the other day. "I'm looking for incremental change."

He said this after taking part in a symposium at the New School, sponsored by the school and the Correctional Association of New York. Most of the 100 or so people on hand, it seemed safe to say, would change the existing statutes in a heartbeat. They murmured approval when Robert Gangi, the executive director of the Correctional Association, described the Rockefeller laws as "wasteful," "ineffective," "unjust" and "marked by racial bias."
CLEARLY in the minority at this gathering was Bridget G. Brennan, the city's special narcotics prosecutor. "I'm not going to stand here and tell you that we can incarcerate our way out of the drug problem," Ms. Brennan said. But let's not fool ourselves, she added. Many who land in jail are not poor schmoes caught with a few grains of cocaine. "Narcotics goes hand in hand with violence," she said. "It goes hand in hand with other crimes."
That being the case, the "lock 'em up" mood is not about to fade away, said the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.
"The war on drugs has failed," Mr. Butts told the audience. If it were up to him, the present laws would be scrapped. But in Harlem, as elsewhere, many just want drug dealers off the streets, whatever it takes. "That's a tough mind-set to change," he said.
Like others, Mr. Butts said he preferred drug treatment to a house of detention. He cited the case of a substance abuser who, thanks to sound guidance, pulled himself together.
Approve of him or not, that fellow now sits in the White House.
E-mail: haberman@nytimes.com
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

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March 12, 2006

Voices from Inside Releases Poetry Anthology

VOICES FROM INSIDE ANNOUNCES THE RELEASE OF OUR FIRST ANTHOLOGY

(Northampton, MA- March 11, 2006) Voices from Inside has published its first anthology, Women Writing in Prison, edited by Jacqueline Sheehan. VFI is a group in Western Massachusetts which facilitates writing workshops with incarcerated women, encouraging them to write their stories in their own unique voices. The anthology offers a selection of raw poetry and prose written by ninety-five women prisoners. This new volume reaches out to the larger community, promoting a deeper understanding of the human costs of incarceration.

“I was profoundly struck by the variety of the women’s backgrounds, the courage and humanity of their stories, and the dignity and power of their voices. They need to be heard---and we on the outside need to hear them,” says Ellen Dore Watson, director of the Poetry Center at Smith College.

Billy Collins, New York State Poet Laureate, former U.S. Poet Laureate also applauds Voices From Inside’s first anthology. “If courage is grace under pressure, then these poems are graceful expressions under the real pressures of confinement. Poetry’s acclaimed power to liberate is vividly exemplified in Women Writing in Prison; each poem is at once a private act of escape and confrontation.”

All profits from the sale of Women Writing in Prison support Voices from Inside’s writing groups for incarcerated women.

Books can be purchased for $17.00 each, plus $3.00 for shipping and handling. For information and order forms, contact Carolyn Benson at carbenco@rcn.com.

Posted by lois at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

March 11, 2006

NY: Civil Commitment Opponents Mount Case

"If (New York) leaders are talking about the need for cost containment in the state budget, why replicate a bottomless pit that has failed elsewhere?" said Liske, whose group represents rape crisis programs."

The Post-Standard
Syracuse, NY
Civil commitment opponents mount case
Laws would cost more money and offer less results, opponent groups say.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
By Erik Kriss Albany bureau

Civil libertarians, sex offender treatment providers and rape crisis programs are banding together to try to stop the post-prison civil confinement of sex offenders.

The coalition fears state politicians are trying to ram through an ill-advised, election-year law to create such a program.

Gov. George Pataki has been leading efforts for such a law and has proposed spending at least $130 million to turn the minimum-security Camp Pharsalia state prison in Chenango County into a 500-bed civil confinement facility for sex offenders.

The opposition group, which also includes mental health advocates, criminal defense lawyers and families of prisoners, says such a law could cost taxpayers billions of dollars annually without offering New Yorkers the best protection.

The state Senate and Assembly have passed separate civil commitment bills this year and are trying to craft a compromise.

Opponents say civil commitment would drain money from treatment and supervision of offenders in the community.

Those programs are better solutions and could be paired with preventive education, lifetime probation or parole for sex offenders and longer prison sentences for truly dangerous offenders, they say.

The cost of civil confinement could reach $250,000 annually per offender, Richard Hamill, president of the New York State Alliance of Sex Offender Services, claimed during a news conference in Albany Monday with other opponents.

Hamill and Anne Liske, executive director of the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault, pointed to reports that Kansas is considering scrapping its civil commitment program and Florida is looking at overhauling its program.

"If (New York) leaders are talking about the need for cost containment in the state budget, why replicate a bottomless pit that has failed elsewhere?" said Liske, whose group represents rape crisis programs.

Civil commitment is in place in 16 states. Of the 34 states without such a law, Vermont, Connecticut, Maine and Kentucky have rejected the idea, said Jonathan Gradess, executive director of the New York State Defenders Association.

Opponents say the New York bills are too broadly written and could result in civil confinement for offenders who are neither violent nor predatory.

Robert Perry, legislative director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said civil commitment could become this generation's Rockefeller drug laws. Lawmakers have begun rolling back what they have called overly harsh and ineffective drug laws the late Gov. Nelson Rockefeller championed in the early 1970s.

"And now it's sex offenders, and here we go again," Perry said.

Opponents put some of the blame on the media for focusing on a handful of horrific cases.

"People have been made frightened" and politicians have seized on the fear, Gradess said. "That's pandering."

Erik Kriss can be reached at erikriss@aol.com or (518) 463-8038.

http://www.syracuse.com/news/state/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-1/11417
2539761520.xml&coll=1

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WA: Lawmakers set aside millions for prison space

Seattle Times Wednesday, March 8, 2006
By The Associated Press
OLYMPIA ‹ Lawmakers hammered out a $278 million construction budget Tuesday, sending nearly a quarter of that money to prison expansion and criminal enforcement.

To address concerns about capacity for additional prisoners who could be sentenced under tough new sex-offender laws, budget writers designated $50 million in bonds to add about 500 beds to the new state prison near Connell, Franklin County.

The budget also allocates $9 million to expand minimum-security facilities to accommodate drunken-driving suspects charged with a felony under a bill awaiting House approval, and nearly $3 million to complete the Vancouver Crime Lab, which has a backlog of DNA evidence to sort through.

"As long as there are elections, there are going to be politicians tough on crime," said Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, chairman of the House Capital Budget committee. "Whether we're making society safer or not, I don't know, but we're sure throwing a lot of people in jail. We have to fund it." Last year the Legislature financed nearly 1,300 beds at the Connell prison with $179 million in state bonds, a cornerstone of the $3.2 billion budget. Lawmakers are expected to pass the budget today.

Besides prisons, lawmakers took particular interest in education and environmental projects.

For higher education, budget writers set aside $35 million, including $10 million in bonds to begin construction on a Washington State University life-sciences building, expected to cost around $60 million. There is also $4.5 million for a nanotechnology program at the University of Washington and $4 million for expansion of UW Tacoma.

Propelled by an agreement between water users and conservationists, legislators sent $10 million in bonds to the Columbia River development program. There is also $90 million for environmental cleanup, preservation, land acquisition and improvements to state parks.

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002850996_capitalbud08m.htm
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Posted by lois at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2006

Brooklyn House of Detention Seen as a Jail with Retail

March 10, 2006, NY Times
Brooklyn House of Detention Seen as a Jail With Retail
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

By almost any measure, the Brooklyn House of Detention, 10 stories of razor wire and wire-mesh windows in Boerum Hill, is a repellent sight.

But, the city reasons, it need not be so. So, to attract people other than criminal suspects to the 760-bed jail, the Correction Department has decided to convert part of the complex into 24,000 square feet of retail shopping space.

"The site is going to be redeveloped," Martin F. Horn, the correction commissioner, said in an interview this week. "One way or another, retail is going to be there."

Under Mr. Horn's jail-with-retail plan, three sides of the block that the jail now occupies, along Atlantic Avenue between Smith Street and Boerum Place, would be converted to one-story retail space beginning this summer. The jail entrance, now on Atlantic, would be moved to the fourth side of the block, along State Street.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Mr. Horn said, "enthusiastically" supports the redevelopment plan, part of a $240 million reconception of the jail that will most likely also add more cell space. Mr. Horn declined to say exactly how many more inmates a bigger Brooklyn jail would hold.

A spokeswoman for the mayor referred questions about the plan last night to the Correction Department.

Which retailers would be asked, or be willing, to open a shop on jail property remains to be seen, several city and local elected officials said. But Mr. Horn and several elected officials in Brooklyn, including Marty Markowitz, the borough president, and David Yassky, a city councilman from Brooklyn Heights, floated a few ideas this week.

An upscale food market, Mr. Horn suggested; a children's clothing store, Mr. Yassky offered; law offices, Mr. Markowitz mentioned.

Mr. Markowitz, who is known to gush about how great Brooklyn is, said that even a boutique hotel on jail grounds would be nice — but only if the city razed the existing structure and rebuilt it from scratch.

"If it's designed in such a way that the guests feel totally comfortable," he said yesterday, "why not?"

Mr. Markowitz added that although he would prefer to see the jail closed permanently, if it is to be open it should also have retail and, preferably, residential space.

"Let's make it something that we never would have dreamed about," he said.

Retail experts said a deluxe supermarket would do well in the neighborhood, a nexus of Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill and Downtown Brooklyn.

"Food would be a very important component there," said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a retail consulting and investment banking firm based in New York. "Coffee would be critical. From there, you might go to something jeans-oriented, or footwear."

And, of course, Mr. Davidowitz added, "a home store."

"Even a mini Home Depot," he said. "It would be perfect."

The idea of making the House of Detention more than just a lockup was generated months ago by neighborhood groups. Meeting with Mr. Horn in Mr. Markowitz's Borough Hall offices, members of three groups that wanted the jail closed — and it will not be, Mr. Horn has said — said that if it must remain open, perhaps it could accommodate shopping or residential space.

Mr. Horn said he took the idea to the mayor and City Council leaders. By summer, he said, he plans to send out requests for redevelopment proposals; shops under the jail could be open in three years. Meanwhile, Mr. Markowitz's office asked students at the Pratt Institute to draw up a few ambitious designs.

But to some groups, one floor of retail space, comprising just 24,000 square feet, is not enough to veil the architectural grimace they say the jail casts over the neighborhood.

"This is kind of less than what we were expecting," said Judy Stanton, the president of the Brooklyn Heights Association. "We're definitely in favor of retail. It's just disappointing that we spent so many meetings and involved two classes of Pratt students to come up with mixed-use ideas, when the only thing that may come from it is ground-floor retail."

Other neighbors said they worried about shopping under a jail tower packed with criminal suspects. Correction officials, however, said the retail area would be securely separated from the inmate section of the jail. Inmates are not evident to the public; they arrive at the jail in buses that enter the bowels of the complex through a gate.

City officials noted that in New York, jail space is already mixed with retail shops. Along Centre Street, under the Bernard B. Kerik Center, the jail complex in Lower Manhattan, restaurants and other businesses do a brisk business.

The Brooklyn jail was closed in June 2003; most inmates are now housed on Rikers Island, which is connected to Queens via one two-lane bridge. But the Brooklyn House will reopen next year, if not sooner, Mr. Horn said, when the floating barge jail in the Bronx is closed for repairs.

Keeping the Brooklyn jail open makes sense for other reasons, too, Mr. Horn said. "For a lot of reasons, it's not good policy for the city to put all its inmates, including women and babies, on Rikers Island," he said. For instance, in the event of a major hurricane, he said, much of Rikers Island would flood.

"How would I evacuate 12,000 over that one bridge?" Mr. Horn asked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/10/nyregion/10jail.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search

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March 09, 2006

Meth Measure Included in Patriot Act

Meth Measure Included in Patriot Act
March 7, 2006, www.jointogether.org
A series of restrictions aimed at methamphetamine production were approved by the U.S. Senate as part of the renewal of the U.S. Patriot Act, the Associated Press reported March 7.

Under an amendment sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jim Talent (R-Mo.), pharmacies nationally would have to restrict purchases of medications that contain chemicals which can be used to make illicit methamphetamine. Beginning Sept. 30, buyers of drugs containing ephedrine or pseudoephedrine -- including popular cold medicines like Sudafed -- will have to get them from behind a pharmacy counter, sign a log book, and produce ID. Maximum purchase amounts also will be set: 120 20mg pills daily, and 300 maximum per month.

The rules are meant to thwart would-be meth cooks from buying the drugs to feed illicit meth labs. Some states have already passed similar laws, but as Fresno, Calif., police chief Jerry Dyer noted: "If we leave it up to local jurisdiction, we're simply going to move the problem from one jurisdiction to another without addressing the root cause." Eliminating local meth labs by cutting off their supply of chemicals also will have big environmental benefits for local communities.

However, many observers say that the law will have the unfortunate side-effect of increasing trafficking of more potent meth from Mexico to fill the market void left by local cooks. "We're going to see trafficking by Mexican cartel organizations, on a much larger scale," said Sgt. Jason Grellner of the Franklin County, Mo., Narcotics Enforcement Unit.
http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2006/meth-measure-included-in.html

Posted by lois at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

South Dakota's New Murderers

http://www.tompaine.com/print/south_dakotas_new_murderers.php
South Dakota's New Murderers

Lynn Paltrow and Charon Asetoyer
March 08, 2006

Lynn Paltrow is the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women in New York and Charon Asetoyer is the executive director of the Native American Women's Health and Education Resource Center in South Dakota.
This week South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signed a law that bans almost all abortions in the state. Neither the governor nor the law's supporters have been honest about what the effect of the law will be.

Those who authored the law want to create impression that only the people providing the abortions will be punished, not the women having them. They are not brave enough to admit what is clear: women will be punished and they and their families will suffer if this law goes into effect.
We know that before 1973—when abortion was illegal in most states—that even if the statute did not specifically provide for the prosecution of the woman who had the abortion, pregnant women could still be arrested under separate laws permitting the prosecution of those who aid and abet a crime. Moreover, as Leslie Reagan points out in her book, When Abortion was a Crime, many women, while not arrested, were publicly shamed and subjected to police investigations that were in and of themselves a form of punishment.
Undoubtedly, the bill's supporters will point to language that states that “nothing in this Act may be construed to subject the pregnant mother upon whom any abortion is performed or attempted to any criminal conviction and penalty.” The truth is, though, that this particular act need not authorize arrests of pregnant women for such arrests to start taking place.
South Dakota, like many other states has adopted numerous laws that seek to establish the unborn as full legal persons. For example, South Dakota has a feticide statute that makes the killing of an "unborn child" at any stage of prenatal development fetal homicide, manslaughter, or vehicular homicide as well as a law that requires doctors to tell women that an abortion ends the life of “a whole, separate, unique living human being.” The new law banning virtually all abortions states that it is based on the conclusion “that life begins at the time of conception,” and that “each human being is totally unique immediately at fertilization.”
If the unborn are legal persons, as numerous South Dakota laws assert, then a pregnant woman who has an abortion can be prosecuted as a murderer under already existing homicide laws.
Farfetched? Not at all. Prosecutors all over the country have been experimenting with this approach for years. In South Carolina, Regina McKnight is serving a 12-year sentence for homicide by child abuse. Why? Because she suffered an unintentional stillbirth. The prosecutors said she caused the stillbirth by using cocaine despite evidence that Ms. McKnight's stillbirth was caused by an infection.

Thus far, South Carolina is the only state whose courts have upheld the legitimacy of such prosecutions. But in fact, women in states across the country, including South Dakota, have already been arrested as child abusers or murderers—without any new legislation authorizing such arrests. In Oklahoma, Teresa Hernandez is sitting in jail on first-degree murder charges for having suffered an unintentional stillbirth. In Utah, a woman was charged with murder based on the claim that she caused a stillbirth by refusing to have a c-section earlier in her pregnancy. If women are now being arrested as murderers for having suffered unintentional stillbirths, one should assume that in South Dakota's post-Roe world intentional abortions would be punished just as seriously.

Rather than admit that this law will hurt pregnant women and mothers, South Dakota's legislators pretend it protects them. Indeed, the authors of this bill call it the “Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act.” In another age we might expect that legislation so named would address such urgent women's health problems as breast and cervical cancer, the fact that 88,350 South Dakotans—12 percent of the state's population—are without health insurance or the fact that South Dakota guarantees no paid maternity leave for the many mothers who must continue working in order to feed their families.

Far from protecting women's health, this bill will undermine women's health—because women will have abortions for health, family, and personal reasons whether they are legal or not. It will open the door to the arrest of women themselves, while claiming it protects unborn life. South Dakota's legislators, however, should be brave enough to admit that in passing this law they are attacking the women who give that life and ignoring the real criminal and public health consequences of such a law.

The Regina McKnight’s story is included in “Prisoners of a Hard Life---Women and Their Children” by Susan Willmarth. It can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/hardlife_regina_pages.pdf

Posted by lois at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)

March 08, 2006

Yale University Reduces Investments in CCA

Yale Daily News
Published Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Univ. investments in private prisons decline
Yale denies policy decision, GESO influence
BY ROSS GOLDBERG AND DANIEL KATZ
Staff Reporters
Farallon Capital Management, a hedge fund that invests a portion of Yale's endowment, has sold about two thirds of its stock in a private prison company that campus activists have criticized for alleged human rights abuses.

According to an analysis of public filings released Tuesday by the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, Yale's indirect holdings in Corrections Corporation of America decreased from $1.5 million to approximately $500,000 in the fiscal quarter ended Dec. 31. GESO activists said their on-campus campaign against CCA likely influenced the decision, but University officials denied any change to their divestment policy.

GESO chair Melissa Mason GRD '08 characterized Farallon's move as a partial divestment that should be followed up with a new formal policy.
"It's clear that there has been a step in a right direction, with Yale dropping two thirds of its share," Mason said. "Now Yale needs to make an official statement to finish off the divestment."

In February, the University announced that it will exclude companies doing business in Sudan from its portfolio. GESO has argued that a similar divestment policy should be taken against CCA, namely because CCA has lobbied to increase prison sentences. But administration officials have maintained that CCA does not meet the criteria for divestment, and said the University had nothing to do with Farallon's action.
Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said in an e-mail that divestment from CCA has not been recommended by the Yale Corporation, a decision which would have been announced publicly.

"Yale has not made a decision to divest," Conroy said. "If the Yale Corporation had made such a formal decision, we would have announced it, as the University did recently regarding the Sudan."

GESO spokesman Evan Cobb GRD '07 said Farallon also had economic reasons to sell the stock. The shares were worth about $30 each when the fund bought them, but were valued at $46 when they were sold, Cobb said.

Still, GESO representatives said the pressure they have placed on Yale and other universities probably had an impact on Farallon's sale of stock. GESO has held rallies on campus, and collected signatures from approximately 600 graduate students and 50 professors in favor or divestment.

Farallon invests about $500 million of Yale's $15.2 billion endowment, Mason said, so the attitude at Yale impacts its portfolio.

"This has become a national campaign involving about 10 schools that use Farallon as an investment fund," she said. "I think the pressure has been working."
University investment in CCA -- which benefits financially from increased numbers of prisoners with longer prison terms -- is undesirable, Mason said.

"I don't think that this university should be investing in a corporation that is in the business of incarceration, that sees an interest in seeing a greater number of people being incarcerated in this country," she said.
CCA representatives did not return calls for comment on Tuesday.
Yale's Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility decided in December -- following the release of a GESO report on abuse in prisons -- that Yale's investment in the government-regulated CCA did not constitute a "grave social injury," the University's standard for divestment. This standard was set forth in "The Ethical Investor," the book of investment guidelines adopted by the committee in 1972.

GESO will have the opportunity to present its case again at the committee's annual open meeting, currently slated for March 27.

CCA operates 63 prisons in 19 states and the District of Columbia. It manages 62,000 of the more than 1 million people incarcerated in the United States
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articlefunctions/Printerfriendly.asp?AID=32187.

Posted by lois at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)

March 07, 2006

Amnest Report on 14,000 Prisners Finds Abuse Escalates

“In its report, "Beyond Abu Ghraib: Detention and Torture in Iraq," Amnesty International also said the level of abuse by Iraqi forces since the transfer of power in June 2004 was increasing.”
March 7, 2006

Amnesty Report on 14,000 Finds Prisoner Abuse Continues in Iraq

By ALAN COWELL, NY Times

LONDON, March 6 — Amnesty International accused the United States and its allies on Monday of committing widespread abuses in Iraq, including torture and the continued detention of thousands of prisoners without charge or trial.

The accusations could fuel the debate over the treatment of detainees that flared after the publication of graphic photographs showing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad being mistreated by American guards. More recently, British forces in Iraq have been criticized after videotapes showed British soldiers beating Iraqi youths after demonstrations in southern Iraq.

In its report, "Beyond Abu Ghraib: Detention and Torture in Iraq," Amnesty International also said the level of abuse by Iraqi forces since the transfer of power in June 2004 was increasing.

The United States and its allies, the report said, have "established procedures which deprive detainees of human rights guaranteed in international law and standards."

"The record of these forces, including U.S. forces and their United Kingdom allies, is an unpalatable one," it said. In particular, coalition forces deny "detainees their right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention before a court."

Hassiba Hadj-Sahraoui, the deputy director of the group's Middle East and North Africa program, described the way prisoners are detained as "arbitrary and a recipe for possible abuse."

At the end of November 2005, the report said, quoting coalition figures, more than 14,000 prisoners were held in Iraq: about 4,850 in Baghdad, 7,365 at Camp Bucca (near Basra, in southern Iraq), and more than 1,100 in the north, at Sulaimaniya.

Responding to the report, the United States military said all its detainees were treated in accordance with international conventions and Iraqi law, The Associated Press reported.

A British Foreign Office spokesman, speaking in return for anonymity under departmental rules, also denied the allegations. He said British forces in Iraq were currently holding 43 Iraqi prisoners under United Nations resolutions permitting detention of people deemed threatening to the security of coalition or Iraqi personnel.

All 43 were visited by the Red Cross and by Iraqi government officials, had their cases reviewed every month and had access to their lawyers and families, the spokesman said. Britain has some 8,000 soldiers in Iraq, mainly in the south. The Amnesty International report took particular issue with conditions in detention facilities run by Iraqis.

"Many cases of torture and ill treatment of detainees held in facilities controlled by the Iraqi authorities have been reported since the handover of power in June 2004," the report said. "Among other methods, victims have been subjected to electric shocks or have been beaten with plastic cable. The picture that is emerging is one in which the Iraqi authorities are systematically violating the rights of detainees in breach of guarantees contained both in Iraqi legislation and in international law and standards."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/international/europe/07rights.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

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

March 05, 2006

NY Times Editorial: Giving Birth In Chains

March 5, 2006
Giving Birth in Chains
America regards itself as an eminently civilized country, but in many states female prisoners who give birth are required to be held in shackles during labor. Besides being grotesquely inhumane, this appalling practice is medically dangerous.

A report by Amnesty International U.S.A. finds that nearly half the state corrections departments — and the Federal Bureau of Prisons — have policies that expressly permit this practice. Prison officials justify the policy by saying that the women are a flight risk, even though many of them are nonviolent offenders who would present little risk, even if they were not doubled over with labor pains or strapped down on a delivery table.

It should not take a genius to see that chaining a woman's feet together or handcuffing her arm and leg to the side of a bed is not a smart thing to do during labor or childbirth. Yet doctors and nurses must sometimes fight with reluctant corrections officers if they want their pregnant patients unchained and effectively treated. Court papers in a lawsuit filed in Arkansas claim that because of resistance by the corrections guard, a mother-to-be remained shackled until she had suffered nerve damage and a permanent back injury.

The primitive practice of chaining women in childbirth should shame us all. As one father put it after his wife, who was serving time for vehicular homicide, gave birth in custody: "It sounds like something from slavery 200 years ago."

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

March 03, 2006

MA DOC by the numbers

By the Numbers: The Massachusetts Department of Correction Budget
www.cjpc.org criminal justice policy coalition

Total Budget of the DOC for state prisons in 2004: $428 million

Increase in the DOC’s operating expenditures since 1994, adjusted for inflation: 23%

Massachusetts’ rank in annual operating costs per inmate: 3rd (behind Maine & Rhode Island)1

Percent of the MA DOC’s total budget devoted to labor costs: 73%

Nationwide percent devoted to the same DOC labor costs: 65%

Massachusetts’ rank in correctional officers’ salaries in 2003: 2nd (behind New Jersey)2

Increase in correctional officers’ salaries since 1992: 70% to 77%

Average percent increase in all MA wage earners’ salaries since 1992: 42.3%3

Salaries of MA COs (Levels I, II, III) in 1992, excluding benefits and overtime: $35,386 – $40,531

Salaries of MA COs in 2003, excluding benefits and overtime: $59,919 – $71,946

Average number of paid days off per year per COs: 52

Average number of paid days off for 15 or more years of service nationally: 25.94

Average number of paid sick leave days for COs: 17.5 days (5 unsubstantiated)

Average sick leave for Federal Bureau of Prison COs: 5.25 days

Average sick leave in the largest state prison system (CA): 12.75 days

Total costs for sick leave time per year: $21 million

Total costs for overtime usage in FY04: $10.4 million

Total costs for overtime usage in FY05: $13.6 million5

Annual cost to DOC of salaries for five MA Correctional Officers Union (MCOFU) board members: $455,0006

Adapted from “The MA Department of Correction (DOC) by the Numbers,” prepared by Angela Antoniewicz, August 2004, at http://www.cjpc.org/doc_doc_stats.htm. All statistics taken from the Governor’s Commission on Correction Reform Report except as noted.

1 Bureau of Justice Statistics. (June 2004). www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/spe01.pdf
2 Bureau of Labor Statistics. (May 2003). http://www.bls.gov/oes/2003/may/oes333012.htm
3 Not adjusted for inflation percent for MA residents, extrapolated from the Report, 23.
4 Society for Human Resource Management. (2000). http://salary.com/benefits/layouthtmls/bnfl_display_nocat_ Ser27_Par65.html
5 DOC Advisory Council, Final Report, 16. This increase, attributed by the DOC to an increase in retirements, was disappointing to the AC.
6 DOC Advisory Council, Preliminary Report, 16.

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

DOJ Awards a pathetic $9.6 million for Drug Treatment in Jails and Prisons

DOJ Awards $9.6 Million for Drug Treatment In Jails, Prisons

WASHINGTON, D.C.--- The Office of Justice Programs (OJP) has announced awards of $9.6 million to provide substance abuse treatment to offenders at state and local correctional and detention facilities nationwide. The grants, administered by OJP's Bureau of Justice Assistance, were made through the Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT) Program, which funds the development and implementation of individual and group substance abuse treatment programs for offenders in residential facilities operated by state and local correctional agencies.

Breaking the drug-crime link is a critical step in the transition of offenders from prisons and jails to their communities,” said Regina B. Schofield, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs. "These awards can help make state and local communities safer while providing inmates the opportunity to lead drug-free lives.”

Originally Posted - March 2, 2006

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/030206DrugTreatment.html

According to the latest data from OJP's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 68% of jail inmates reported substance abuse dependence prior to incarceration, with 29% being under the influence of drugs at the time of the offense and 16% committing offenses in order to obtain money for drugs. Of the more than 665,000 jail inmates, over two-thirds were found to be dependent on or abusing alcohol or drugs.

RSAT helps to address the issue of substance abuse dependence and the direct link to public safety, crime and victimization by providing comprehensive treatment and services within the institution and in the community after a prisoner is released. The most recent recidivism data from BJS illustrates 67% of prisoners released from prison or jails are rearrested within three years of release.

The Department of Justice’s prisoner re-entry efforts, including the Prisoner Re-entry Initiative, support programs that help ex-offenders find and keep employment, obtain transitional housing, receive mentoring, develop risk and needs assessment, and assist with post-release supervision. The Initiative is a partnership between the Department of Justice, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Department of Labor, with $300 million over a four-year period which began in 2004.

This year's RSAT awards range from $900,000 for more populated states, such as California and Texas, to $40,000 for less populated states, such as Vermont and North Dakota. Funds are allocated to each state, the District of Columbia and territories based upon respective prison population in relationship to the total prison population of all states combined.

All states are eligible to participate in the RSAT program, but they must meet certain criteria to receive funding. RSAT programs must last between six and 12 months; provide residential treatment facilities set apart from the general population; focus on the substance abuse problems of the inmate; and develop the inmate’s cognitive, behavioral, social, vocational, and other life skills to solve substance abuse and related problems. Additionally, RSAT requires states contribute 25 percent in matching funds. A complete listing of the 2006 RSAT awards is attached and available at: www.ojp.usdoj.gov
The Office of Justice Programs (OJP) provides federal leadership in developing the nation's capacity to prevent and control crime, administer justice, and assist victims. OJP is headed by an Assistant Attorney General and comprises five component bureaus and an office: the Bureau of Justice Assistance; the Bureau of Justice Statistics; the National Institute of Justice; the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; and the Office for Victims of Crime, as well as the Community Capacity Development Office, which incorporates the Weed and Seed strategy and OJP's American Indian and Alaska Native Affairs Desk. More information can be found at . A list of the award per state follows:

Alabama 185,111; Alaska 54,116; Arizona 223,474; Arkansas 117,449; California 983,132; Colorado 154,208; Connecticut 114,236; Delaware 62,362; Florida 523,946; Georgia 328,825; Hawaii 62,856; Idaho 75,329; Illinois 288,870; Indiana 175,262; Iowa 87,514; Kansas 90,014; Kentucky 140,158; Louisiana 248,547; Maine 50,671; Maryland 171,164; Massachusetts 96,690; Michigan 316,237; Minnesota 88,835; Mississippi 158,118; Missouri 215,347; Montana 61,172; Nebraska 62,606; Nevada 103,610; New Hampshire 53,074; New Jersey 190,841; New Mexico 75,352; New York 400,500; North Carolina 240,017; North Dakota 46,721; Ohio 293,132; Oklahoma 171,357; Oregon 113,913; Pennsylvania 271,352; Rhode Island 49,934; South Carolina 171,975; South Dakota 56,740; Tennessee 185,894; Texas 991,911; Utah 73,142; Vermont 47,423; Virginia 240,754; Washington 133,357; West Virginia 67,917; Wisconsin 169,357; Wyoming 50,421; Territory,American Samoa 40,135; Guam 39,891; Northern Mariana Islands 39,755; Puerto Rico 103,661; Virgin Islands 41,614.

3-2-06
© 2005 North Country Gazette

Just as an aside to anyone who gets to the bottom of this page, the National Priorities Project estimates the cost of the Iraq War is set to reach $251 billion March 31, 2006.

Posted by lois at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)

Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy

New Book: Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy

Jeff Manza’s and Christopher Uggen’s major work on disenfranchisement, Locked Out has just been published by Oxford University Press. Robert Sampson describes the book as “masterful, a must-read,” and Lani Guinier states that it provides a “powerful blueprint for realigning state election laws to match our country’s deep democratic faith.”

Posted by lois at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)

March 02, 2006

Groups Want to Make Crack Sentencing Sensible

Groups Want To Make Crack Sentencing Sensible
News Report, James Wright,
Afro American Newspapers, Feb 23, 2006

A collective of civil, political and human rights groups want the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines dealing with crack cocaine reviewed by Congress. A letter signed by the leaders of the individual organizations requesting the review was sent to members of the Senate and House Judiciary Committee in mid February.

The letter was preceded by a policy briefing held at the Rayburn House Office Building. Among the participants at the briefing were Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, Jesslyn McCurdy, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Eric Sterling, former counsel to the House Judiciary Committee and Nkechi Taifa, senior policy adviser at the Open Policy Center. These organizations are under an umbrella group called the Justice Roundtable.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.) stopped by the gathering to give their thoughts and support.

"This is the real issue of civil rights," Rangel said. "This is the real issue of human rights."

"Taking a look at this issue is something we really need to do," Scott said. "This disparity cannot continue."

According to U.S. Sentencing Commission:
*80.8 percent of crack cocaine defendants in 2003 were Black, despite the fact that more than 66 percent of crack cocaine users in the U.S. were White or Latino.

*Black drug offenders have a 20 percent greater chance of being sentenced to prison than White offenders.

*Between 1994 and 2003, the average time served by Blacks for a drug offense increased by 77 percent, compared to an increase of 28 percent for White drug offenders.

The letter stated that:
"We recognize that two decades ago, little was known about crack, other than vague perceptions that this new derivative form of cocaine was more dangerous than its original powder form, would significantly threaten public health, and greatly increase drug-related violence. Since that time, copious documentation and analysis by the U.S. Sentencing Commission have revealed that many assertions were not supported by sound data and, in retrospect, were exaggerated or simply incorrect."
Taifa said there is a perception that if people would stop using crack cocaine, the problem would go away.

"That is not right," she said. "The drug laws punishments do not fit the crime. Let's say that you had Tyrone, a Black man and Mr. Charlie, a White man.

"Tyrone and Mr. Charlie could be doing the same things in terms of selling crack cocaine, but Tyrone would be punished severely because he is doing it, for the most part, out in the open in the inner city.
"But Mr. Charlie sells his crack cocaine in the suburbs, perhaps out of his office or condo. He is likely not to get caught and can get away with it for a long time.

"Even if both are caught, Tyrone will likely go to prison while Mr. Charlie may be able to get a better deal because he has more money and can skirt the guidelines."

Taifa said the problem of crack cocaine is really a medical issue, not one for the judicial system.
Taifa said she is taking the matter to another level. On March 3, a hearing on the racial disparity of the crack cocaine guidelines will be presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights during its 124th Period of Sessions.

"We allege that mandatory minimum sentences violate protected rights found in the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man -- specifically, the right to equal protection of the law, the right to a fair trial, and the right to judicial protection against violations of fundamental rights," Taifa said in a letter to the commission.

Former ACLU-Washington office leader Laura Murphy said "the time for talk is over and it's time to get to work on this issue."

The AFRO contacted the offices of Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who are the chairmen of the judiciary committees of their respective bodies. Both offices said hearings are not scheduled on the crack cocaine guidelines at this time.

Posted by lois at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Caught in the Net of a Drug Raid: Women Become Pawns of Feds Trying to Get at Dealers

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/260897_drugmoms25.html

Caught in the net of a drug raid
Wives and girlfriends become pawns of feds trying to get at dealers

Saturday, February 25, 2006

By CLAUDIA ROWE
P-I REPORTER

Just after dawn on a May morning in 2004, Jessica Carothers, awakened by shouting outside her front door, stumbled out of bed. Her boyfriend had left for work a few minutes before, and Carothers' 4-year-old son was sound asleep.

The noise grew louder. Carothers, still groggy, crept into the narrow front hall just as Drug Enforcement Administration agents kicked in her door. (Editor's Note: The original version of this story misidentified the agency.)

"Down on the ground!" they shouted, shining flashlights into her face and barking questions: Where was her boyfriend? Did she know what he was involved in?

Carothers was stunned. Alejandro Villafana-Vilchis had been living with her only two months. She said she didn't know what the agents were talking about or why they were after him. But in the couple's bedroom, police found more than 165 grams of methamphetamine stuffed beneath a night table and a scale stashed inside the closet. By that evening, Carothers, a 25-year-old single mother, was sitting in jail, charged with possession, conspiracy and maintaining a drug-involved premises. Her boyfriend of three years was long gone.

Carothers' case is one of hundreds annually in which federal agents, seeking to quash drug rings, have been permitted to cast a wide net, trapping anyone with a link, no matter how tenuous. The goal is to extract cooperation from friends, family -- any associate who may have information -- using the threat of harsh penalties. But analysts at the Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., who research criminal justice policy say the laws also have sent thousands of wives and girlfriends to jail -- many of them single mothers such as Carothers -- though they may have done little more than take a phone message.

Federal prosecutors say Carothers did much more than that. With her boyfriend, Villafana-Vilchis, a major player in a meth ring spanning three counties, the Everett woman acted as his willing assistant, they contend, aiding his transactions and providing an apartment where he could store the goods.

But to Carothers, who'd worked her way up from the mailroom of a Bothell biotech firm to become its assistant director, the charges were ludicrous. She drove a 7-year-old Pontiac, which she'd bought used and was still paying off. She worked full time, and though Villafana-Vilchis sometimes bought her roses, he couldn't afford to get his teeth fixed before she put him on her dental plan.

"We didn't even have cable," she said. "It didn't seem like he was this big drug dealer."

Nevertheless, over the next two years Carothers found herself doubted and scrutinized by a legal system determined to send her to prison -- and accustomed to winning.

Admittedly, she said, when it came to men, Carothers' choices had been poor. Her son's father took off while she was pregnant. But Villafana-Vilchis seemed better. He happily changed diapers and fixed bottles. He had a decent job laying carpet, she thought, and if there were things that bothered her -- the way he acted after a few drinks, the druggie-looking friends he'd sometimes meet -- Carothers closed her eyes. Her boy needed a father, she said.

Now it looked as if the 4-year-old might lose his mother. She had already spent five days in a federal holding pen, and no one believed her claims of innocence.

"We'll see you again," said a guard, escorting her from the jail after she was released on bond. "The feds don't make mistakes about this stuff."

The idea of a plea bargain requiring that Carothers admit to running a drug-involved premise was anathema. It would permanently brand her a felon, killing any chance of getting a government loan for school or housing assistance -- not to mention its effect on future job prospects.

But the thought of risking a 10-year prison sentence at trial and leaving her son to foster care seemed worse. So Carothers signed.

This Solomon-like choice, one faced by scores of low-level drug defendants, last year prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to release a report, "Caught in the Net," highlighting the effect of federal drug laws on women and children.

"Many of the drug-conspiracy and accomplice laws were created to go after kingpins," said Lenora Lapidus, the report's author. "But women who may simply be a girlfriend or wife are getting caught in the web as well and sent to prison for very long times when all they may have done is answer the telephone."

The net effect, she said, has been an explosion of women in federal prison -- the numbers have more than doubled since 1991 -- most of whom have children.

They are women like Dorothy Gaines, a mother of three in Alabama who was sentenced to 19 1/2 years for conspiracy to deliver crack cocaine after she drove her boyfriend to his dealer's house. Gaines had never used drugs herself and federal agents found none at her home. But other defendants in the case, who had won deals with prosecutors by promising to provide information, fingered Gaines. She was charged, convicted and served six years before President Clinton granted her executive clemency in 2000.

Despite the early release, Gaines' life has been paralyzed, said her friend Roger Goodman, director of the King County Bar Association's Drug Policy Project. "She calls me every week saying, 'They won't give me a job, I can't get housing, can't get a loan for school.' This is happening to hundreds of thousands of people across the country," he said.

Western Washington has been more generous than other jurisdictions in offering fair deals to defendants, defense lawyers acknowledge. But still, laws mandating tough minimum sentences have forced judges here to hand out harsh prison terms to dozens of first-time offenders with families, jobs and once-bright futures.

"They make one mistake and go away for years in prison, branded for life," said Jeffrey Steinborn, an attorney specializing in marijuana cases. "The system's become mindless in that sense."

One of his recent clients, a woman who just turned 21, is serving nine years for bringing a purse full of ecstasy across the U.S.-Canada border.

"She had no previous record, didn't rob, steal, lie or cheat," Steinborn said. "She was just young and dumb and taken advantage of by someone who manipulated her. In the old days before sentence guidelines, I would have walked that girl without a day in jail."

Carothers says her connection to the drug trade was even more peripheral. She hadn't been a target of the government's initial investigation -- indeed, agents had no warrant for her arrest that morning, although they testified that her door was unlocked and that they walked in -- even though they'd monitored conversations from her phone. (Editor's Note: The original version of this story incorrectly reported that agents forced their way in.)

What was most unusual, however, is that her case went to trial at all, because the vast majority of federal defendants plead guilty.

Carothers had done so, too, but only, she says, because a lawyer had led her to believe it would mean six months of house arrest, nothing more. When she learned otherwise -- the arrangement was closer to two years in prison -- Carothers went ballistic.

She had a new lawyer by then, Gil Levy, whom she urged to withdraw the plea and take her case to court. He tried to dissuade her -- almost no one gets away clean in a federal trial, he said -- and so did the government. The feds offered another deal. They told her they hadn't lost a wiretapping case in 10 years. They asked what she thought would happen to her son while his mother was doing a decade in prison.

"I was scared to death," Levy said. "The risks were just so high. With the wrong jury on the wrong day, Jessica could be looking at 10 years."

But Carothers was resolute.

"Maybe it was naïve, but I thought, 'How can I be found guilty when I don't even know any of these people, and I wasn't involved?' " she said.

Evidence in her case consisted of several dozen calls made from Carothers' apartment and cell phone to the meth ring's leader, Jose Roman-Santana, during which her boyfriend was "clearly buying drugs," said the prosecutor, Susan Roe.

A chart with the kingpin on top and a line connecting him straight to Villafana-Vilchis, with Carothers' name right beside in bold, red letters stood facing the jury.

Then there was the meth and scale in her bedroom (both a surprise to Carothers, she says) as well as testimony from Roman-Santana asserting that he'd called Carothers' phone, looking for her boyfriend.

Providing this and other information had wrangled Roman-Santana -- a confessed dealer whose operation netted investigators 5 pounds of meth, $64,000 in cash and 27 guns -- an eight-year sentence. Carothers, whose main involvement appeared to be allowing her boyfriend phone privileges, faced at least 10.

"All their evidence was about Alejandro. None of it was against me," she said. "It seemed like their plan was to make him look really guilty and say well, this is his girlfriend -- she's guilty by association."

Enough for a conspiracy charge. But not enough, apparently, to persuade a jury.

On Feb. 3, after eight hours of deliberation, they acquitted her on all counts. Justice, said the judge, had been done.

Carothers' son, now 6, still knows nothing about the case, the trial or the burden his mother carried for nearly two years. He no longer cries, wondering where his missing "Poppie" has gone. But sometimes, late at night, he'll ask, "Mommy, do you remember when the police came to our house that day?"

Villafana-Vilchis, still a fugitive, is believed to be in Mexico.

P-I reporter Claudia Rowe can be reached at 206-448-8320 or claudiarowe@seattlepi.com.

© 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Posted by lois at 04:24 PM | Comments (0)

Local sheriffs pick up tab for Christian groups' visits

By JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, The Virginian-Pilot
© March 2, 2006 | Last updated 12:13 AM Mar. 2 http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=100441&ran=166603

PORTSMOUTH — Local sheriffs have paid public money to Christian groups, a practice that has troubled some watchdogs who advocate astrong separation between church and state.

Over the past two years, Portsmouth’s sheriff paid the most.

Records show that former Sheriff Gary Waters paid $45,650 to Southeastern Correctional Ministry Inc. , a Hampton nonprofit that provides Christian Bible study and counseling.

The group reported to Waters that it brought 220 Portsmouth inmates to Jesus.

The sum paid by Portsmouth was the largest – but not the only – example of Christian groups being paid with proceeds from jail canteens, shops that sell snacks and other items to inmates.

Virginia Beach and Hampton also reported making donations to religious charities.

Canteen proceeds are public funds under state law. Donations to charities are not appropriate, according to a state manual for jail bookkeepers. The Virginia Sheriffs’ Association says the constitutional officers should follow that accounting manual.

“We don’t think that the city of Portsmouth jail can provide funds for a sectarian religious organization to bring its message into the prison system,” Kent Willis of the Virginia American Civil Liberties Union said on Wednesday .

While jails should allow inmates access to faith groups, Willis said,
there is a line between accommodating and promoting a specific faith.

“The Constitution doesn’t allow public funds to be used for religion or religious purposes,” said Joe Conn , a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State , a nonprofit group in Washington .

Portsmouth canteen records reviewed by The Virginian-Pilot show examples of spending under Waters that did not appear to benefit inmates. For example, checks totaling $460 were spent on tickets to a retirement dinner for a former Southeastern Correctional Ministry chaplain, for Waters to sponsor a hole at a ministry golf tournament and for deputies to play golf at that event.

“When you pay for that golf trip, you’ve misused public funds,” said
Walter Kucharski , Virginia’s auditor of public accounts .

The Hampton Sheriff’s Office has contributed $21,180 to the same ministry over the past two years.

“That’s based on the estimated cost to the ministry,” said Col. Karen
Bowden , the undersheriff. “It’s a donation.”

Payments from Portsmouth to Southeastern were based on a monetary rate per “contact.”

The Rev. Gary Tingwald , a chaplain who volunteers for Southeastern at the Portsmouth jail, said he was not aware of the donations. He said “contact” with an inmate could be a counseling session or handing a newspaper to him.

Virginia Beach paid another ministry, Good News Jail & Prison Ministry , $15,000 over the past two years as a donation, according to Sheriff Paul Lanteigne . It was not in exchange for any services, the sheriff said.

In Portsmouth, Waters hasn’t returned calls on this and other matters.

His successor, Portsmouth Sheriff Bill Watson, cannot locate a contract for the prison ministry. “Why should we pay for ministering?” he said.

Such spending has not been found at other local jails. Some buy religious literature from several faiths so inmates have access to it, but the costs reported were nominal.

Two officials at Portsmouth’s jail said the ministry provides a service inmates appreciate. The Rev. Jack Smith , formerly the senior chaplain for Southeastern, could not be reached for comment. However, in letters to Waters, Smith suggested “donations.”

Smith wrote in February 2004 that “the cost for ministry” in Portsmouth was $16,103 . A week later, Waters wrote, “Hopefully, the religious experiences they receive will carry forward when they are released and enable them to, once again, become productive citizens.” He paid.

In February 2005 , Waters received another request, for $13,347 , and he paid it that same month. After he lost the Democratic primary to Watson, Waters agreed in July to pay the ministry in advance. In the past, the payments were made in February.

”On your request,” Smith wrote, “I have estimated the cost of ministry for the Portsmouth City Jail using the last two years.” Averaging, then applying a 10 percent increase for “ministry upgrades,” led to a sum of $16,197.50.

“We must not look at a lost election,” Smith added, “but a well-deserved retirement for a job well done.”

A week later, the outgoing sheriff cut a $16,200 check to the ministry.

Reach John Doucette at (757) 446-2793 or john.doucette@pilotonline.com.

Posted by lois at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

NY Times: Prisons Often Shackle Women in Labor

March 2, 2006
Prisons Often Shackle Pregnant Inmates in Labor
By ADAM LIPTAK
Shawanna Nelson, a prisoner at the McPherson Unit in Newport, Ark., had been in labor for more than 12 hours when she arrived at Newport Hospital on Sept. 20, 2003. Ms. Nelson, whose legs were shackled together and who had been given nothing stronger than Tylenol all day, begged, according to court papers, to have the shackles removed.

Though her doctor and two nurses joined in the request, her lawsuit says, the guard in charge of her refused.

"She was shackled all through labor," said Ms. Nelson's lawyer, Cathleen V. Compton. "The doctor who was delivering the baby made them remove the shackles for the actual delivery at the very end."

Despite sporadic complaints and occasional lawsuits, the practice of shackling prisoners in labor continues to be relatively common, state legislators and a human rights group said. Only two states, California and Illinois, have laws forbidding the practice.

The New York Legislature is considering a similar bill. Ms. Nelson's suit, which seeks to ban the use of restraints on Arkansas prisoners during labor and delivery, is to be tried in Little Rock this spring.

The California law, which came into force in January, was prompted by widespread problems, said Sally J. Lieber, a Democratic assemblywoman from Mountain View.

"We found this was going on in some institutions in California and all over the United States," Ms. Lieber said. "It presents risks not only for the inmate giving birth, but also for the infant."

Corrections officials say they must strike a balance between security and the well-being of the pregnant woman and her child.

"Though these are pregnant women," said Dina Tyler, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, "they are still convicted felons, and sometimes violent in nature. There have been instances when we've had a female inmate try to hurt hospital staff during delivery."

Dee Ann Newell, who has taught classes in prenatal care and parenting for female prisoners in Arkansas for 15 years, said she found the practice of shackling women in labor appalling.

"If you have ever seen a woman have a baby," Ms. Newell said, "you know we squirm. We move around."

Twenty-three state corrections departments, along with the federal Bureau of Prisons, have policies that expressly allow restraints during labor, according to a report by Amnesty International U.S.A. on Wednesday.

The corrections departments of five states, including Connecticut, and the District of Columbia, the report found, prohibit the practice. The remaining states do not have laws or formal policies, although some corrections departments told the group that they did not use restraints as a matter of informal practice.

Many states justify restraints because the prisoners remain escape risks, though there have apparently been no instances of escape attempts by women in labor.

"You can't convince me that it's ever really happened," Ms. Newell said. "You certainly wouldn't get far."

About 5 percent of female prisoners arrive pregnant, according to a 1999 report by the Justice Department. The Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group, estimates that 40,000 women are admitted to the nation's prisons each year, suggesting that 2,000 babies are born to American prisoners annually.

Illinois enacted the first law forbidding some restraints during labor, in 2000. "Under no circumstances," it says, "may leg irons or shackles or waist shackles be used on any pregnant female prisoner who is in labor."

Before that, said Gail T. Smith, the executive director of Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers, the standard practice was to chain the prisoner to a hospital bed. "What was common," Ms. Smith said, "was one wrist and one ankle."

The California law prohibits shackling prisoners by the wrists or ankles during labor, delivery and recovery. Until recently, prisoners from the Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, Calif., were routinely shackled to their beds after giving birth at the nearby Madera Community Hospital.

"These women are mostly in for minor crimes and don't pose a flight risk," said Ms. Lieber, who met with 120 pregnant women at the prison in August. "Madera Community Hospital is in one of the most remote parts of California. It's hard to walk to a filling station, much less a bus stop."

Washington State has also forbidden the use of shackles during labor, though as a matter of corrections department policy rather than law. Pamela Simpson, a California nurse, described in an e-mail message to Ms. Lieber the practice in Washington before the policy was changed.

"Here this young woman was in active labor," Ms. Simpson wrote, "handcuffed to the armed guard, wearing shackles, in her orange outfit that was dripping wet with amniotic fluid. Her age: 15!"

Arkansas has resisted an outright ban on restraints, though Ms. Nelson's case may change that.

Ms. Nelson was serving time for identity fraud and writing bad checks when she gave birth at age 30. She weighed a little more than 100 pounds, and her baby, it turned out, weighed nine and a half pounds.

The experience of giving birth without anesthesia while largely immobilized has left her with lasting back pain and damage to her sciatic nerve, according to her lawsuit against prison officials and a private company, Correctional Medical Services.

Ms. Nelson, now known as Shawanna Lumsey, and lawyers for the defendants did not respond to requests for comment. In court papers, the defendants denied that they had caused any harm to Ms. Nelson.

Partly as a consequence of Ms. Nelson's suit, Arkansas has started using softer, more flexible nylon restraints for prisoners deemed to be security risks. They are removed, Ms. Tyler said, during the actual delivery.

Ms. Newell considers that slight progress for the approximately 50 women in Arkansas prisons and jails who give birth each year.

"Childbirth should be a sacred event," said Ms. Newell, a senior justice fellow at the Soros Foundation. "Just because they're prisoners doesn't mean they shouldn't get the usual care."

Dawn H., an Arkansas prisoner who delivered a baby in custody in 2002, said her guard wanted to shackle her to the bed.

"Fortunately," she said, "I had a very wonderful nurse who told the guard I was in her care. I was her patient. And no one was going to shackle me." (She asked that her full name not be used because her employer did not know about her imprisonment for passing bad checks.)

The Wisconsin Corrections Department has also recently changed its approach, after a state newspaper, The Post-Crescent of Appleton, reported on the issue in January. The department said it would end the use of restraints during labor, delivery and recovery.

Merica Erato, serving time for negligent homicide after a car accident, went through labor with chains around her ankles in Fond du Lac, Wis., in May, her husband, Steve, said in an interview.

"It is unbelievable that in this day and age a child is born to a woman in shackles," Mr. Erato said. "It sounds like something from slavery 200 years ago."

In most cases, people who have studied the issue said, women are shackled because prison rules are unthinkingly exported to a hospital setting.

"This is the perfect example of rule-following at the expense of common sense," said William F. Schulz, the executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A. "It's almost as stupid as shackling someone in a coma."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/national/02shackles.html?hp&ex=1141362000&en=6f6390e020cbb341&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

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

March 01, 2006

MT: Meth Prison Gets Legal Clearance to Begin

Meth prison gets legal clearance
Agency remains on schedule to open next year

By The Associated Press

HELENA -- The state does not need to undergo privatization review before awarding a contract for a proposed privately run methamphetamine treatment prison, Attorney General Mike McGrath ruled Tuesday.

The Department of Corrections argued that the treatment prison is a new program, wasn't replacing services already offered by the Department of Corrections, and thus was not subject to the 2005 privatization review. A privatization review would have set back department plans to award a contract for the private treatment prison in mid-March. The agency now remains on schedule to have it open next year, Corrections spokesman Bob Anez said.

"Obviously this ruling by the attorney general essentially mirrors our legal view we had all along," he said.

McGrath ruled the Corrections Department doesn't need to go through the review. He said the Legislature required the agency to contract with a private nonprofit to run the prison.

The attorney general's opinion carries the weight of law unless overturned by a court or legislative action.

MEA-MFT, a union whose membership includes state employees, had argued that the meth facility duplicates drug treatment programs already administered by the state and is subject to a review for privatizing those services. The union had a gentleman's agreement that it would abide by McGrath's opinion and won't purse the matter further in court, said Eric Feaver, president of MEA-MFT.

However, he said the union will remain engaged on the issue of privatization, especially when it comes to prisons, corrections and education.

"We put on notice every state agency that they just cannot privatize in the dark of night," he said.

A privatization review would have required review by the Legislature and the governor, and could have taken six months.

The Department of Corrections said it is evaluating three proposals for the meth treatment prison, which could be located in Lewistown, Billings or Boulder. Offenders would undergo nine months of treatment, followed by six months in a prerelease center and continued counseling after that.
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2006/03/01/news/state/60-meth-prison
.txt

Posted by lois at 07:22 PM | Comments (0)

US Seeks Funds to Build Prisons in Iraq

"For a country like the United States that is promoting the advancement of freedom, building jails is not necessarily your best image," said Rick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.”

US seeks funds to build prisons in Iraq

Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:07 PM ET
By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department is winding down its $20 billion reconstruction program in Iraq and the only new rebuilding money in its latest budget request is for prisons, officials said on Tuesday.

State Department Iraq coordinator James Jeffrey told reporters he was asking Congress for $100 million for prisons but no other big building projects were in the pipeline for the department's 2006 supplemental and 2007 budget requests for Iraq, which total just over $4 billion.

"This is the one bit of construction we will be doing -- $100 million for additional bed capacity for the Iraqi legal system," he said.
Eventually, the Iraqis would take more detainees now in U.S. custody and more space was needed, Jeffrey said, adding that money would also be set aside to increase the number of prosecutors and "corrections advisers."
"We have another program to continue support, protection and hardening of facilities and such for the judges who are exposing their lives," he said.
Experts on Iraq reconstruction said it was notable that the only new rebuilding money was for prisons after the public relations disaster caused by the eruption of the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison where U.S. forces abused Iraqi inmates.
"For a country like the United States that is promoting the advancement of freedom, building jails is not necessarily your best image," said Rick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The initial goal of the U.S. rebuilding program was to improve the lives of Iraqis by fixing the country's dilapidated infrastructure and polish America's image at the same time.
WRAPPING UP
Barton said the budget requests were in line with U.S. efforts to wrap up existing projects, many of which have not reached their targets, and to use remaining funds to help Iraqis sustain that work rather than launch new projects.

Congress has so far allocated just over $20 billion for Iraqi reconstruction in a program that put much of its early focus on giant electricity and water projects. Many of those were later scaled back and funds diverted to training Iraq's security forces to tackle the insurgency. Continued ...

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-03-01T000719Z_01_N28225005_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-REBUILDING.xml

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Posted by lois at 07:19 PM | Comments (0)

New Movie: "Up the Ridge: A U.S. Prison Story"

Appalshop’s
"Up the Ridge: A U.S. Prison Story"
A shocking new documentary of urban prisoners in remote rural prisons
Saturday, March 4, 2:00-4:00pm
Room 006, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
721 Broadway (between Waverly and Washington Place)
Free admission
Special Guests: George Stoney (NYU film professor), Amelia Kirby and Nick Szuberla (filmmakers)

Film Description:

Up the Ridge: A U.S. Prison Story

Up the Ridge: A U.S. Prison Story is a one-hour television documentary produced by Appalshop’s Nick Szuberla and Amelia Kirby. In 1999, Szuberla and Kirby were volunteer DJ’s for the Appalachian region’s only hip-hop radio program in Whitesburg, KY when they received hundreds of letters from inmates transferred into nearby Wallens Ridge State Prison, the newest prison built to prop up the region’s sagging coal economy. The letters described human rights violations and racial tension between staff and inmates. Filming began that year and, through the lens of Wallens Ridge, the film offers viewers an in-depth look at the United States prison industry and the social impact of moving hundreds of thousands of inner-city minority offenders to distant rural outposts. Up the Ridge explores competing political agendas that align government policy with human rights violations, and political expediencies that bring communities into racial and cultural conflict with tragic consequences. As the film makes plain, connections exist, in both practice and ideology, between human rights violations in Abu Ghraib and physical and sexual abuse recorded in American prisons.

Posted by lois at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)