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July 31, 2006

Tipping the Scales of Justice

Tipping the scales of justice
By NEAL PEIRCE
July 31, 2006
Syndicated columnist.
Daily Hamphire Gazette, Northampton, MA
With a recent uptick in crime, tough prosecutors who are ready to convict and imprison perpetrators are likely to be more popular than ever.

But a warning flag is being hoisted by American University law professor Angela J. Davis, past director of the District of Columbia Public Defender Service (and no relation to the more famed liberal activist Angela Y. Davis).

Prosecutors, notes Davis, are ''the most powerful officials in the criminal justice system'' - more so even than judges. Why? ''The charging and plea-bargaining power they exercise almost predetermines the outcome of most criminal cases. Over 95 percent of all criminal cases are resolved by a guilty plea.''

Consider a person arrested for having a quantity of drugs on him or her. Depending on the amount, the prosecutor can charge simple possession (a misdemeanor), or possession with intent to distribute (a felony that in most jurisdictions means a mandatory prison sentence). So it's the prosecutor, through his charge and plea-bargaining powers, who really decides prison time (and most likely a wrecked life) for the defendant, or not.

The most serious system-wide issue, argues Davis in her forthcoming book, ''Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor,'' isn't the isolated, fairly rare case of a prosecutor coercing witnesses, fabricating evidence or consciously targeting racial minorities.

Rather, it's the lack of controls on, or accountability for, the everyday decisions of prosecutors. Their legal responsibility isn't just to represent the state in seeking convictions; it's to pursue justice. But too often, Davis asserts, prosecutors exercise their discretion ''haphazardly at worst and arbitrarily at best, resulting in inequitable treatment of both victims and defendants.''

There's the ''win-win-win'' ethos in many prosecutors' offices - elected prosecutors and their staffs out to show how tough they are on crime, or how eager to impose death penalties in heinous cases (especially when there's strong media interest, or photogenic victims). Sometimes prosecutors overcharge grossly so they can wring heavier plea bargains out of defendants, or they adopt a ''don't ask, don't tell'' policy toward potential police abuses in the arresting phase.

Views on class and race, even unconsciously, lead prosecutors to make shoot-from-the-hip decisions easily at odds with true justice, Davis asserts: ''I saw it all the time in the D.C. system. A rich kid comes in (though few are arrested) with parents and family lawyer, explaining 'Little Johnny has a drug problem and let's put him in a program, not lock him up.' The prosecutor usually agrees. But a poor, black or Latino kid comes in on a parallel drug case, maybe with a public defender, and the prosecutor figures - 'I can't let you back into the neighborhood, I'll send you to jail.'''

Davis also pinpoints how appointed U.S. attorneys, pursuing the country's ''war on drugs,'' have focused relentlessly on convicting and incarcerating even small-time neighborhood drug dealers and their girlfriends and family members, especially from inner-city neighborhoods, even on the scantiest of evidence. Federal drug prosecutions tripled between 1981 and 1990.

Under our system, all officials wielding government power should be and are subject to checks - but we've ended up, Davis asserts, ''giving prosecutors a pass'' - no effective control by voters, legislatures or the judiciary itself. Voters have little idea of how prosecutors are actually handling cases. Legislatures (and Congress) pay scant attention beyond frequently bolstering prosecution powers.

The U.S. Supreme Court has severely circumscribed conditions under which prosecutors' judgment can be questioned at all, referring cases to states' attorney disciplinary authorities that are themselves known to be weak. From 1970 to the mid-1990s, one study found, there were only 44 cases nationwide in which prosecutors faced disciplinary hearings of misconduct; even then, a reprimand was generally the worst punishment.

So what's to be done? Prosecutors themselves have traditionally resisted oversight. The public has been inundated with television programming that justifies prosecutors going right up to the edge on ethics and the law to get the ''bad guys.'' The American Bar Association publishes standards of behavior for prosecutors, but the strictures have no teeth - they're just ''aspirational,'' Davis notes.

Davis would have national, state and local bar associations conduct in-depth investigations to determine the adequacy of current prosecutorial misconduct controls, and possible reforms. She'd have bar associations set up state and/or local prosecution review boards - not only to receive specific complaints brought by the public, but also to undertake random reviews of prosecutions and (with colleges and universities) launch surveys to reveal discriminatory practices by race or class.

The idea is that an outside eye could discourage arbitrary, hard-to-justify choices by prosecutors without chilling the essential, fair law enforcement we all depend on prosecutors to perform.

Against the formidable, entrenched power of today's federal-state-local prosecutorial systems, any prospect of significant culture reform seems remote. But if we're ever to dare a start, Davis offers a group of eminently reasonable first steps.

Neal Peirce's e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com.

Posted by lois at 09:14 PM | Comments (0)

VT: Feds Seek More Cells

Feds seek more Vermont prison beds

By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau
July 27, 2006
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060727/NEWS/607270371/1002/NEWS01

MONTPELIER — State officials are not the only ones facing the problem of what to do with the growing number of Vermont prisoners. Because of a shortage of prison beds, federal authorities are shipping many of those accused of federal crimes in Vermont out of state, and they expect the problem to get worse.

U.S. Marshal John Edwards asked state legislators Wednesday to consider building a new prison that could house both federal and state detainees who are awaiting trial.

Lawmakers said state budget pressures make the construction of such a facility, which could cost $65 million, unlikely.

Edwards said his agency and other federal authorities find it "almost impossible" to find space for detainees.

U.S. Marshals have custody of roughly 100 to 120 pretrial prisoners at any given time in Vermont. They have a contract for only 40 beds in the state's prisons, however, and as a result, prisoners are being driven to Vermont federal court appearances from 15 prisons in five states, Edwards said. Some come from as far away as Rhode Island. Moving those prisoners is expensive, time-consuming and dangerous, he said.

After trial, those prisoners are freed or taken to federal prisons elsewhere. Vermont also houses about 100 detainees from other federal agencies, many of them people being held on immigration-related charges.

Meanwhile, the state houses roughly 450 of its own prisoners in Kentucky and Oklahoma —roughly equal to the 400 or so pretrial state prisoners Vermont holds in state facilities.

If the state were to build a 650-bed prison — probably somewhere in Chittenden County — it could house federal and state detainees and also allow Vermont's own prisoners to be returned from out of state, officials said.

"This is an issue we have been talking about with the state for some time," Edwards said.

Commissioner of Corrections Rob Hofmann agreed that federal authorities face a real problem. He also said it would be good for the state to be able to separate detainees who have not yet been tried from those who have been convicted and are serving time.

"The people who are out of state would not have to be there if we could solve our detainee problem," Hofmann said. But, he added, "I don't see the capital money being there in the near term."

Building a massive prison — the state's newest prison in Springfield has only 350 beds — is unlikely to happen soon, if ever.

There is a possibility that $5 million in federal money could be set aside for building such a facility in Vermont, one of only a few states where the shortage of beds for federal prisoners is considered severe, Edwards said. The federal government would pay a per-prison, per-day rate to the state for operating the facility.

But even if that $5 million was approved, it wouldn't begin to touch the cost of the new facility, which at roughly $100,000 per bed could reach $65 million, lawmakers said. For comparison, the state spends a little over $40 million a year on all of its capital projects.

"The money just is not there," said Sen. Susan Bartlett, D-Lamoille, a member of the Corrections Oversight Committee.

Meanwhile, the state continues struggling with other costly projects, including replacement of the ailing Vermont State Hospital and the building of a new corrections work camp. Sen. Richard Sears, D-Bennington, vice chairman of the committee, said community opposition could throw up additional roadblocks.

"I think it is very, very unlikely that any community in Vermont is going to want a 650-bed facility," Sears said.

Vermonters who are convicted or accused under state law cost about $20,000 to house in private prisons out of state. Housing them in Vermont costs twice that amount. So, even while state officials would like to eliminate the practice of sending Vermonters to out-of-state prisons, doing so would be costly.

Strengthened enforcement of laws following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 has doubled the number of federal detainees, Edwards said. Federal authorities would like access to 150 beds in Vermont as they plan for the future.

Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, chairwoman of the committee, said increased enforcement of drug crimes, not detentions related to terrorism, is driving the increase in the number of federal detainees. She called it an example of the federal government putting fiscal pressure on the states.

"It is the states that are going to be paying the cost," Emmons said.

Contact Louis Porter at louis.porter@rutlandherald.com.

Posted by lois at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)

CO: Will more private prisons Solve the Crisis or Create Mess?

Will more private prisons solve crisis or create mess?

By R. SCOTT RAPPOLD THE GAZETTE
July 31, 2006
http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=1319756

Colorado prison officials, faced with unparalleled crowding, are poised to embark on the state’s largest private-prison expansion in years.

By the time three companies build medium-security prisons for 3,776 inmates by the middle of 2008, one in three Colorado inmates will be housed in forprofit facilities.

Despite the state’s growing reliance on private prisons, Department of Corrections officials still have deep concerns about the projects, and numerous issues remain that could derail them — including two companies’ insistence their cells be filled before those in state-run prisons.

If the strategy doesn’t work, Colorado faces severe problems: state prisons overflowing, inmates being left in already crowded county jails for long periods, and others released onto the streets for lack of beds.

If it does work, critics say Colorado will have adopted a justice system that doesn’t look at cutting sentences or reducing recidivism, but merely locking people up. Colorado is one of a few states increasing its investment in private prisons.

“I don’t believe they’re cheaper in general,” said state Rep. Buffie McFadyen, a Pueblo Democrat and opponent of private prisons. “As long as you have stockholders wanting more bodies and cells, there’s no incentive for that company to reduce the number of people in prison.”

Contracts have been awarded for one new prison and two prison expansions for men, and one new prison for women. Implementation agreements must still be worked out.

Neither company building or expanding the male prisons — the bulk of the planned new work — has an impressive track record in Colorado. But the DOC, with only one staterun prison in the construction pipeline, says it has no choice to meet the immediate crisis.

“They (private-prison firms) kind of know they’ve got us over the barrel,” said Dave Schouweiler, purchasing manager for the DOC. “If we don’t use them, we’ve got to ship people out of state.”

Colorado’s prison crisis — state budget analysts estimate a shortfall of 1,428 beds by the 2007-2008 fiscal year — is the result of longer sentences and growth in the state’s court caseload, with judges sentencing about 1,000 people a year to prison.

At the same time, legislators coping with a recession and a tight budget slashed DOC funding requests for 2,061 beds from 2000 to 2004. The only new state-run prison planned is the 948-bed expansion of the Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City, to open in 2009.

Colorado faced a similar situation in the late 1990s, and private prison companies rode to the rescue, opening four prisons in small towns in eastern Colorado from 1996 to 1998, built on speculation the DOC would need them.

Times have changed. The bottom has fallen out of the private-prison industry nationwide because of overbuilding that left profit-generating cells empty.

“In the ’90s, it was like the roaring ’90s and then everybody was investing in private prisons,” Schouweiler said. “Now they’re much more cautious about building.”

Five companies submitted proposals for the three planned new private prisons, but three of those firms were dismissed by an evaluation committee of DOC officials because they didn’t meet their basic requirements of a privately run medium-security prison with two-person cells and locking cell doors, Schouweiler said. One company proposed a dormitory-style, pre-release facility. Another offered to build a prison and turn it over to the state to run. Another design had 16-person cells lined with bunk beds.

“I think our evaluation committee sort of reluctantly conceded those were the only two real prison designs we got,” Schouweiler said of proposals from Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group. of Boca Raton, Fla.

Several key issues still must be worked out in both projects.

Corrections Corporation of America was awarded contracts for 720-bed expansions at its prisons in Las Animas and Burlington.

At the Kit Carson Correctional Facility, the company’s original proposal called for employing just 59 guards, later revised to 64, for an expanded inmate population of 1,562, a ratio of 1 to 24.

Similarly, at the Bent County Correctional Facility, the company proposed to have 61 guards — later increased to 66 — for an expanded population of 1,457, a ratio of 1 to 22.

The officer-to-inmate ratio in the state prison system is 1 to 4.6, according to the DOC.

Alison Morgan, head of the DOC’s private prison monitoring unit, said she is confident her office and CCA can reach a consensus on staffing before an implementation agreement is signed.

CCA spokesman Steve Owen on Friday declined to elaborate on the negotiations, but he said the company feels its original proposal provided for adequate staffing.

It isn’t the first time staffing at a CCA prison in Colorado has been a concern.

In 2004, a riot broke out at the company’s Crowley County Correctional Facility, and an audit put much of the blame on low staffing levels. CCA signed new contracts with the DOC, allowing officials to issue fines for staffing deficiencies.

CCA was recently fined $103,743 for leaving 701 mandatory shifts vacant from Nov. 1 to Jan. 10 at the Kit Carson prison, Morgan said. The company was fined $23,000 for 157 unfilled shifts at the Crowley County prison and $2,651 for 18 vacancies at the Bent County prison.

Private prisons pay less than state prisons, and critics say most have high turnover.

Despite the fines, Morgan said CCA is making an effort to correct the staffing deficiencies.

“They had a problem two years ago, and they owned up to the problem and they increased staffing in the prison,” Morgan said.

For the other proposed facility for men, a new 1,500-bed prison in Ault, officials aren’t concerned about staffing but whether it will be built by winning bidder GEO.

The company was awarded a contract in 2003 to build a 500-bed pre-release, parole-revocation facility in Pueblo, but the project was held up by a location change, then a design change, and has not been built.

The DOC has dropped the facility from its bed-space plan and, according to a report of the Colorado General Assembly Joint Budget Committee, “The Department has expressed concern that it may not ever be built.”

McFadyen has doubts about the company’s ability to finance a new prison.

“If the Department of Corrections was that concerned about space, they would have forced GEO to fulfill its 2003 contract,” McFadyen said.

Morgan, though, said the company has the ability to build the prison.

“They provided a very strong bid. We awarded based on that bid, and we expect them to live up to it,” Morgan said.

Said McFadyen: “We’re choosing between a company that has a history of failing on an RFP (request for proposals) and another company that has been fined $120,000 for lack of compliance with the state. Those aren’t good choices.”

The new women’s prison is less controversial. Only two companies submitted bids, and the DOC awarded a contract to Houston-based Cornell Companies Inc. to build an 832-bed prison in Hudson. The firm’s only Colorado facility is the Southern Peaks Regional Treatment Center, a 160-bed adolescent facility in Cañon City.

Another point of contention: CCA and GEO demand to have first claim to every person sentenced to state prison.

It’s a condition Schouweiler said DOC officials are not comfortable granting. But the fact the companies made it a condition of their proposals — at least so far — shows how the climate has changed since the 1990s.

“To a large extent, we can’t dictate to them like we did in the ’90s,” he said. “They would like to see us in crisis when they open their doors.”

Morgan, who is negotiating the implementation agreements, declined to comment on the first-rights issue.

Said CCA spokesman Owen, “It’s normal and I think perfectly understandable we would try to reach in some way some assurances that what we bring on-line will be utilized.”

McFadyen has asked the General Assembly’s Legislative Audit Committee to look into the selection of both bids. According to the state auditor’s office, it will be discussed at the committee’s Aug. 21 meeting.

Although the state appears to save money — paying private firms $51.91 per inmate per day compared with the DOC’s daily cost of $67.73 for medium-security inmates — she sees “hidden costs” for communities and law enforcement.

Plus, McFayden worries there will be little motivation to look at reducing recidivism and cutting sentences when corporations depend on bodies in cells to make a profit.

A study released in May by The Institute on Money in State Politics found the private prison industry, in states with those facilities, spent $3.3 million in 2002-2004 supporting longer sentences and tough-oncrime candidates.

In Colorado, one of 10 states the institute examined, private prison firms and lobbyists contributed $81,525 to candidates and campaigns, and they helped to kill legislation that would have prohibited them from taking out-of-state inmates.

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE PRISON COSTS
- Daily rate the state will pay private-prison operators: $51.91
- Annual rate: $18,947 per inmate
- Average daily cost to house an inmate in a medium-security state-run prison: $67.73
- Annual rate: $24,722 per inmate

COLORADO’S PRIVATE PRISON POPULATION
- June 30: 4,299 inmates, one in five Colorado Department of Corrections inmates
- DOC population: 22,012
- August 2008, projected privateprison population: 8,075, one in three DOC inmates
- Projected DOC population: 24,000

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

July 30, 2006

An Illinois town is held cative by a still-empty prison

POSTED ON APRIL 20, 2006:
IDOC’s white elephant
An Illinois town is held captive by a still-empty prison
By Jamie Murnane

THOMSON, Ill. — The new signs at the north and south ends of Thomson give the town’s population as 600, but nobody remembers 50 people moving in since the last census. In this small Mississippi River community in northwest Illinois, they surely would have noticed. Dubbed by locals the “Melon Capital of the World,” Thomson is the quintessential small town, where everybody seems to know everybody else’s business.

But there is one thing in Thomson no one knows or can explain: Why, after nearly five years, the state of Illinois hasn’t opened the nearby $143 million maximum-security prison.
A few residents say they’ve heard that the prison is sinking into the soft, sandy soil on which it was built, but those rumors have no foundation, state officials say. The reason this new prison sits empty is simpler: Thanks to the state’s budget woes, the Illinois Department of Corrections hasn’t had the money to operate the Thomson Correctional Center.
So the town of Thomson waits.
Merrie Jo Enloe’s family moved to Thomson when she was a child, in the early 1950s, and she’s been the village president since 1983. Enloe says she stayed in Thomson because it’s a “quiet, peaceful community,” but the town has seen better days, and good jobs are hard to find.
“Carroll County has had the third-largest unemployment rate of all the counties in the state of Illinois,” she says. “It’s been running that way now for the last five years.”
Unless you’re a farmer, teacher, or otherwise self-employed, the best opportunities involve second-shift factory work grinding metal or packaging dog food in neighboring towns. These are considered good-paying jobs in Thomson, where the average household income, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is $36,667.
The prison was supposed to change all that, with more than 750 jobs. As Jack Hartwig, former warden of the empty prison, says, “Anytime you can bring that kind of an industry to a town that needs jobs, open arms is what you get as a welcome sign.”
Former Gov. Jim Edgar put plans for the maximum-security prison in motion in the late 1990s. At the time he left office, a site hadn’t been selected, and several communities were in the hunt.
“When they offered to put it here, it was something that I personally felt would be good for the area,” Enloe says.
Not everyone was thrilled, despite the fact that the town would earn approximately a quarter-million dollars a year by hosting the prison — an amount that Enloe says is more than three times the town’s current operating budget. But when any major change is about to take place, there’s bound to be opposition.
A few residents even sold their homes and left, Enloe says. These people didn’t like the looks of a prison, she says, and a few were “concerned about the criminal element that might follow the inmates themselves — that there might be more crime.”

The prison sits on property donated to the state by Galena, Ill.-based Alliant Energy. Donna French, former owner of the popular Watermelon Café, says her family used to own that land when she was growing up. At the time Alliant donated it, one of her brothers was renting it to grow watermelons.
The power company purchased the land from her parents with the intention of putting a power plant there but found that the ground, which was riverbed before the Mississippi River shifted course, wasn’t stable enough, she says. If the ground could not hold a power company, many began to wonder, what made anyone think it would hold a prison?
Mark Gerardot, project manager for the Illinois Capital Development Board, says that the sand was actually “a blessing” during construction.
“The sand helped because there’s usually times when you get so much rain that it will stop work and everybody goes home for the day,” Gerardot says. “Up there, if it rained, they’d wait a half hour after it quit and they’d continue work. . . . The rain would just drain away.”
Gerardot’s agency completed construction and turned over the prison to the Department of Corrections in May 2001.
It remains the newest and most modern maximum-security facility in the state and one of the most expensive public works projects in state history, says Sergio Molina, IDOC spokesman.
It’s easy to see why.
The 146-acre complex comprises 15 buildings, including eight cell houses with 1,600 maximum-security cells. There’s also a 200-bed minimum-security unit that Gov. Rod Blagojevich wants to open this fall, contingent on funding from the General Assembly.
A visit shows that the facility’s ready for inmates. The concrete floors are shiny, as though they’ve just been poured; the only sound is trickling water, left running to protect the expensive plumbing system. The control room looks like something from the Sci-Fi Channel, ready to take off at any given moment. Touch screens control lights, cell doors, and cameras. Even toilets can be shut down — that’ll stop prisoners from trying to flush away contraband during a shakedown. Of course, with 350 cameras on the premises, it’d be hard for them to hide anything in the first place.
The kitchen is full of shining stainless-steel equipment, most still wrapped in the manufacturer’s packing; the offices are complete with new swivel chairs that reek of new plastic. Taxpayers pay nearly $2 million a year just to keep the lights and phones on at Thomson, according to a report released late last month by the state auditor general.
“What most people don’t realize is that we’re ready to go,” says assistant chief engineer Dan Sutzmore, head of operations and facilities. “People think it’s just sitting out here completely empty, but everything’s ready to go — office supplies, kitchen equipment, and mattresses. All we need is food and people.”
Because there’s little to look after, Sutzmore and assistant warden Vickie Wright are the only two state employees who work at the prison. A private company has a security guard stationed there to deal with trespassers. Every now and then, discarded beer cases are collected from the prison grounds.
Hartwig, warden of the empty prison for its first three years until he took early retirement, says that his stint there was like “getting a large city ready to run — getting everything you need to manage that city without the people, because tomorrow they may be there.”
Area residents who have waited for the prison to open have his sympathy, Hartwig says.
“Having it built is like waving the candy in front of a kid for four years and saying, ‘You can’t eat it yet,’ ” Hartwig says. “Pretty soon, they’re gonna lose interest or they’re gonna get mad or they’re just gonna take it.”

As soon as ground was broken for the prison, residents began preparing to cash in. New businesses were built and old ones remodeled; homes were renovated, built, and put on the market. Thomson no longer was just a place where people lived because they liked to stare at the stars, listen to the corn rustle, or catch fish.
Because of the prison, lawyer and longtime resident Lawrence Bruckner got into the hotel business. He opened the Thomson House Café and Lodge at a cost of $750,000, but business has been horrible, he says.
“If I didn’t have it paid for, I would have gone bankrupt three years ago,” Bruckner says. “I mean, we do well in the summer because of the fishermen and people going to Galena, but six months out of the year it’s an utter disaster.”
The Thomson House has been for sale since the day it opened — and that’s how Bruckner planned it. “Once they got the bond authorization, I said, ‘It’s a done deal’ — never thinking that they would build it and then not open it,” he says. Bruckner was so angry, he ran for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, making opening the prison the focus of his campaign. He came in fourth in a field of four in last month’s primary election.
Other residents share Bruckner’s frustrations and disappointment.
French, who sank nearly $70,000 into the relocation of her Watermelon Café to larger quarters, struggled for three years before recently selling her business.
“At first, business was absolutely excellent,” she says, “but it just died down — just like everything else in our town.”
Wayne James may have the saddest story. When James, longtime owner of a local auto-repair shop, heard that the prison was coming, he invested his entire life savings in a new gas station. After four years and a staggering $850,000 in debt, James had to seek bankruptcy protection. Today he works the second shift at a factory near Thomson.
“It’s such a shame,” French says of James’ loss. “He did everything he possibly could to keep it going.”

Since 2001, Thomson residents have made numerous trips to Springfield, hoping to get state government to open their prison. They’ve managed to secure grants to pay for their new water tower. This year, there’s a glimmer of hope: The Blagojevich administration wants to open the minimum-security portion of the prison, but that’s only a small part of the facility.
If lawmakers move quickly on the governor’s request, the minimum-security portion could be operating by September, says Derek Schnapp, an IDOC spokesman. The department needs about $1.2 million to begin hiring and training staff and another $6.5 million for operations in fiscal year 2007, he says.
What about the maximum-security part?
“That’s not even been discussed,” Schnapp says.
Hartwig, the former warden, says that the town shouldn’t give up hope.
“They certainly have no intention of building a $140 million capital asset and letting it sit empty forever. It will work. It will be safe. It will be a good neighbor.”

URL for this story: http://illinoistimes.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A5236

Posted by lois at 02:54 PM | Comments (0)

July 29, 2006

NY: "The State Should Target The Real Drug Kingpins"

The state should target the real drug kingpins
BY ANTHONY PAPA
Anthony Papa is a communications specialist for the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based organization working to reform drug policies, and author of "15 to Life."

July 26, 2006, Newsday, NY

Ashley O'Donoghue is a low-level, nonviolent offender currently serving a 7-to-21-year sentence for the sale of 2 1/2 ounces of cocaine. In September 2003, the Oneida County district attorney claimed that the 20-year-old was a major drug kingpin and needed to face a life sentence under the Rockefeller Drug Laws.

Reacting to a commonly used scare tactic, O'Donoghue agreed to a plea bargain. His A-1 felony, the highest possible felony, was reduced to a B felony. Like magic, O'Donoghue was no longer a kingpin - that is, a drug dealer distributing extraordinarily large quantities.
There are thousands of defendants just like O'Donoghue, whom prosecutors claim are kingpins one day and then, through plea negotiations, kingpins no more.

I went through the same experience in 1984 when I was arrested for the sale of 4 ounces of cocaine. A Westchester assistant district attorney claimed I was a major kingpin. But in the months that followed he offered me a plea bargain of three years to life. He told me if I refused the offer I would not see my 7-year-old daughter until she was 22 years old. This really frightened me, and I did not want to leave my family alone.

I decided to go to trial and was convicted and sentenced to 15 years to life. In 1997, after serving 12 years, I was freed by Gov. George Pataki through executive clemency.

Recently, a report released by Bridget Brennan, New York City's special narcotics prosecutor, proclaimed that kingpins and people convicted of high-level drug offenses are being released under the new Rockefeller Drug Law revisions. The report, titled "The Law of Unintended Consequences," is a lopsided review of the Drug Law Reform Act of 2004. The modest changes to the Rockefeller Drug Laws have allowed approximately 1,000 people convicted of A-1 and A-2 drug felonies to apply for resentencing. The controversial findings in the report bolster Brennan's final conclusions: a clarion call for a kingpin statute and opposition to any additional reforms to the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Critics quickly questioned the validity of the report, claiming that it contained skewed data and its creation was politically motivated.

The report is questionable in many aspects, but I agree with Brennan on one point: New York needs a kingpin statute. Allowing prosecutors to define this term has meant that people like O'Donoghue and me are kingpins one day but not the next. New York needs a clear and reasonable kingpin statute that can be applied to real kingpins - bona fide major traffickers - not people convicted of low-level offenses. The kingpin statute that Brennan calls for is both unreasonable and incompatible with justice, because it is so broad.

Brennan's report highlighted 84 drug cases handled by her office, with 65 applicants receiving judicial relief under the new law. Contrary to Brennan's tabloidlike insinuation that the prison gates just opened up, each prisoner seeking resentencing had to go through a lengthy application process in order to see a judge for resentencing.

Right now there are almost 4,000 B-level felons serving time in New York State for low-level, nonviolent drug offenses for small amounts of drugs. Many of the defendants have drug-addiction problems. These thousands of offenders are not classified as kingpins. So why would Brennan actively oppose reforms to release them? It costs taxpayers millions of dollars to incarcerate these people when community-based treatment costs less and has proved more effective than incarceration in treating addiction.

Brennan needs to be reminded that the governor, State Senate and Assembly leaders agreed reforms were necessary to equally balance the scales of justice in applying the law with the needs of protecting our communities.

To cause a panic by releasing a questionable report is nothing more than additional punishment for those incarcerated and an underhanded political tactic to stop further needed reform. If Brennan wants a kingpin statute, let's fashion one for real kingpins, not for the low-level offenders.

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-oppap264829295jul26,0,5218697.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines

Posted by lois at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

MA: "Two Years in Jail for a Joint?"

Two Years in Jail for a Joint?
By Anthony Papa, AlterNet. Posted April 14, 2006.

The drug war, and the hard-nosed zealots who wage it, have reached new lows in Massachusetts.
On June 30, 2004, detective Felix Aguirre, employed by the Drug Task Force, was assigned the duty of going undercover to buy drugs from kids who hung out in a parking lot in Berkshire County in Massachusetts. Merchants had complained to police about the kids. Mitchell Lawrence was there with his pipe and a few buds of marijuana. He had no idea the parking lot was less than 1,000 feet from a preschool located in the basement of a church, nor did he know this parking lot was the site of a police sting operation.

Aguirre approached Mitchell and asked him if he had any weed. Mitchell pulled out a small bag of marijuana. The cop offered him $20. Mitchell hesitated; Aguirre insisted. Mitchell, who had seen Aguirre hanging out with other kids, motioned the cop to follow him up the street where he intended to smoke with him. Aguirre waved the $20 in his face. Mitchell, who was broke at the time, took the money, the first time he had ever accepted money in exchange for marijuana.
In the months that followed, Aguirre approached Mitchell again for marijuana. This time, however, Mitchell refused. Weeks later, a crew of undercover cops stormed Mitchell's home and placed him under arrest. Mitchell was found guilty of distribution of marijuana, committing a drug violation within a drug-free school zone and possession.
On March 22, 2006, Mitchell Lawrence was sentenced to two years in prison.
While this outrageous case happened in a sleepy burg in Massachusetts, the case of Mitchell Lawrence is one of countless tales of drug war madness that takes place on America's streets daily.
Mitchell Lawrence's story was eerily familiar to me. In 1985, I was the subject of a police sting operation after passing an envelope containing four ounces of cocaine to undercover officers in Mount Vernon, New York. I was set up by someone who offered me $500 to transport the package. The individual who introduced me to the cop was an informant facing life in prison. He was offered a deal -- the more people he helped ensnare, the less time he would serve. I received a sentence of 15 years to life under New York's draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws.
Mitchell Lawrence's disproportionate sentence was handed down one day before the release of a national report by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) titled, "Disparity by Design: How Drug-free Zone Laws Impact Racial Disparity and Fail to Protect Youth," which includes research from Massachusetts.
The JPI study, commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance, found that drug-free zone laws do not serve their intended purpose of protecting youth from drug activity. The Massachusetts data on drug enforcement in three cities found that less than one percent of the drug-free zone cases actually involved sales to youth. Additionally, Massachusetts researchers found that nonwhites were more likely to be charged with an offense that carries drug-free zone enhancement than whites engaged in similar conduct. Blacks and Hispanics account for just 20 percent of Massachusetts residents, but 80 percent of drug-free zone cases.
"School zone laws have remained unchanged in Massachusetts because the legislature has been promised that prosecutors use discretion," said Whitney A. Taylor, executive director of the Drug Policy Forum of Massachusetts. "Unfortunately, the life of a young man has been sacrificed, proving that discretion is not being used, and that the law must be changed."
Mitchell Lawrence was not the only person arrested in an undercover drug operation in the summer of 2004. There were a total of 18 others, including five young people who are still awaiting trial for alleged sales that took place at the same Great Barrington parking lot.
District Attorney David F. Capeless is the man behind Berkshire County enforcement and entrapment. Capeless is a hard-nosed drug war zealot, who insists that these laws are effective in combating drug use -- even if it means ruining a young man's life in the process.
Mitchell Lawrence was set to graduate from high school this spring. Instead, he will watch his fellow classmates graduate from his prison cell.
The common thread between my case, Mitchell's case and drug-free school zones nationally is the abuse of power from the prosecutors through the application of mandatory minimums. These laws handcuff judges and force them to impose harsh sentences.
Mitchell Lawrence's conviction inspired a group of concerned Berkshire County residents to seek Capeless' ouster in the upcoming district attorney race. Defense attorney Judith Knight answered the call to fill this role. Knight, a former assistant district attorney for Middlesex County, said Mitchell Lawrence's conviction was "the tipping point" for her decision to run against Capeless in the upcoming Democratic primary election in September.
"A tough prosecutor is tough on crime and also has the ability to demonstrate compassion and insight when the case calls for it," Knight says. She hopes to follow in the footsteps of David Soares, who ran for district attorney and defeated Paul Clyne in Albany, New York, in 2004. Soares ran a race primarily on the platform of Rockefeller Drug Law reform. He easily defeated the sitting district attorney, who refused to change his views on the draconian drug law legislation of New York.
It is heartening that communities like Berkshire County are fighting back and attempting to hand reckless district attorneys and other politicians the pink slip. Choosing to destroy lives and indiscriminately apply laws does more harm than good, ultimately, and it doesn't make our streets any safer.
Anthony Papa is the author of "15 To Life: How I Painted My Way To Freedom" (Feral House).

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July 27, 2006

Q&A: Solitary Confinement & Human Rights

Life in Solitary Confinement
Q&A with Jamie Fellner of Human Rights Watch

by Maria Godoy

PR.org, July 27, 2006 · Prisoners confined to long-term segregation live in isolation, in small, often windowless cells, for years or even decades. They are passed food trays through slots in the doors. A few times a week, they are let out, in handcuffs and shackles, for a shower or to exercise in a small, enclosed space. As a general rule, they have almost no human interaction except with guards, no access to newspapers or television, and are allowed few personal items -- a few photographs, perhaps a book.

Estimates suggest at least 25,000 U.S. prisoners are held in such "Supermaximum security" conditions, which were designed to hold the most violent of inmates. The rising use of long-term segregation has drawn sharp criticism from human-rights experts.

NPR discussed these concerns with Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. program for Human Rights Watch. She has been researching and writing about prison conditions in the United States, with a focus on Supermax confinement, for more than a decade.

Q: Is there good reason to keep prisoners in long-term segregation in U.S. prisons?

The massive use of long-term segregation reflects a failure of correctional policies. Segregation has become routine because of exploding prison populations, which strain meager prison budgets. That has made it difficult for officials to provide humane prisons with educational, counseling and rehabilitative activities. And we know that prisoners who have access to education while incarcerated, for example, are more likely to remain law-abiding once they're released.

That said, there may always be a few inmates who simply prove too dangerous to be in the general population. For them, some form of segregation may be the only option. But even then, the nature of segregation should be rethought. No one should be confined in small, empty cells with nothing to do -- and no one to talk to -- day in and day out, year in and year out.

Q: What worries you most about long-term segregation?

Our research shows that segregation is used far more frequently, for far longer periods of time, and under far harsher conditions than is legitimately needed to manage inmate security.

Supermax facilities have been built in excess of the number of truly "worst of the worst" prisoners they were ostensibly intended to house. They're often used for any troublesome inmate -- including those who break minor rules, are in a single fight or are mentally ill and act out.

The conditions of isolation are harsh and degrading. For many, the absence of normal social interaction, of mental stimulation, of exposure to the natural world -- of almost everything that makes life human and bearable -- is emotionally, physically and psychologically destructive. The experience is hardly conducive to successful re-entry to the community. No other Western democracy imposes such conditions of confinement for prolonged periods on so many people.

And segregation can last for decades. Officials have complete discretion when to release an inmate; there's no guarantee good behavior will secure a release. Corrections officials must be able to exercise their professional judgment -- but such discretion must be tempered to minimize the risk that an inmate is unnecessarily sent to or kept in segregation. Principled leadership, careful staff training and effective internal-review processes can help. But external, independent scrutiny is also needed to prevent abuse and give inmates recourse against arbitrary and unfair treatment.

Q: What do human-rights experts believe to be most problematic about the day-to-day conditions of long-term segregation?

More than a decade ago, a federal judge noted that prolonged segregation pushes the bounds of what human beings can tolerate. Whether or not it produces clinical psychiatric symptoms, living in such conditions for years is likely to produce unfathomable misery and suffering.

Some inmates with no prior history of mental illness develop clinical symptoms of psychosis or severe affective disorders. For prisoners with a history of mental illness, the isolation, lack of social interaction and lack of structured activities can aggravate their symptoms. Even worse, mental health service for prisoners in segregation is usually far worse than for the general population. The result is mental agony, sometimes to the point of suicide. Inmates whose illness becomes acute may be transferred to mental hospitals -- but once their condition is stabilized, they are returned to segregation, where the cycle of illness begins again.

In several states, lawsuits have resulted in bans against placing mentally ill prisoners in segregation. But elsewhere, in state after state, a disproportionately large number of prisoners in long-term segregation are mentally ill.

Q: Prison officials say a burgeoning gang problem is one reason for long-term segregation. How can they deal with gangs without housing offenders in isolation?

The problem of violent gangs in prison is serious -- and growing. But there's no evidence that long-term segregation is the solution. California, for example, has a horrific problem with gangs -- despite the fact that it has been locking gang members in segregation for years, refusing to let them out unless they renounce the gang and identify members.

Gangs in prison serve many purposes: They provide status and respect, a sense of purpose, protection and an opportunity to acquire goods and services. Punishing gang members does little to change this function or to reduce the allure and power of gangs.

Many corrections experts believe a solely punitive response to gangs is doomed to fail in prisons, as it has in communities. What's needed is an approach that combines "law enforcement" with better prison conditions: reduced crowding, increased educational and productive activities, more mental health counseling, and more staff to increase safety.

Q: Some prison officials say some inmates are too violent to remain in the general population. If they aren't sent to isolation, what should be done with them?

There would be much less violence in prison -- and much higher prospects of successful reintegration into the community upon release -- if public policies and correctional practices yielded something other than today's barren, overcrowded warehouses for people.

But prison officials can't do it alone. The single biggest problem they face is the staggering and ever-growing size of the prison population. Too many people are sent to prison for crimes for which alternatives to incarceration would be appropriate, and their sentences are far too long. Public officials have been willing to give the United States the largest prison population in the world, but they haven't been willing to allocate the funds to ensure humane confinement.

Elected officials should put prison reform on their agenda. They should give prison officials a clear mandate to provide productive confinement, they should give them the necessary resources, and they should hold them accountable when they fail. If prison were dramatically improved, long-term segregation would be needed for very few.
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In U.S. Prisons, Thousands Spend Years in Isolation

Life in Solitary Confinement
by Laura Sullivan

NPR.org, July 26, 2006 · Over the past two decades, solitary confinement has moved out of the prison basement and into whole facilities built just for isolation. These places have many names -- Supermax, intensive-management units, secure housing -- but the meaning is the same: years alone, out of the public view and away from public oversight.

Isolation today means 23 hours a day in a concrete cell no bigger than a bathroom. One hour a day is spent alone in a concrete exercise pen, about the length and width of two cars.

Most inmates held in solitary have no contact with the outside world other than the U.S. mail. Depending on the state, inmates have limited access to visitors. Most can't watch television, call anyone on the phone or even touch another person while in the units.

Some inmates have been incarcerated in these conditions in U.S. prisons for more than 20 years. Most have been there for more than five years.

Conservative estimates say that there are more than 25,000 inmates serving their sentences this way in 40 states. The inmates aren't in these facilities because of what they did on the outside. No one is sentenced by a court or a judge to serve their time in isolation, except in the rare occurrence of terrorists who could pose a threat to national security.

Inmates are put in isolation because of something they did on the inside. Prison officials say inmates are placed in isolation because they are the most violent, dangerous prisoners. Officials say most inmates in the units are members of gangs that are making their prisons too risky for the officers and the other inmates. But over the years, the violence rates in U.S. prisons have not decreased, nor has the strength of the gangs.

In many states, inmates held in solitary confinement have almost no way out. Many stay in isolation until their sentences run out. And that's pretty common. Almost 95 percent of the inmates in isolation in this country will be released back to the public one day. Many of them will receive little, if any, help with the transition. Texas, for example, took 1,458 inmates out of isolation in 2005, walked them to the prison's gates and took the handcuffs off.

A few states are trying to implement programs to help inmates work their way out of isolation. Several states, including Oregon and Colorado, have started a system that allows inmates to earn back privileges with good behavior and eventually work their way out of isolation. Oregon also offers inmates therapy sessions with a visiting psychologist to work on anger management. And a dozen states now rely on a panel of prison officials outside the prison to decide who goes into isolation and who gets out, so it's no longer solely at the discretion of the warden.

Prisoner advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch are calling for an end to long-term isolation, arguing that it may make inmates more violent and render them unable to rejoin society. But many prison officials and correctional officers say isolation units are necessary, allowing them to control prison gangs and keep prisons safe for the rest of the inmates.

At Pelican Bay Prison, a Life in Solitary
NPR.org, July 26, 2006 · Associate Warden Larry Williams is standing inside a small, cement prison cell. Everything is gray concrete: the bed, the walls, the unmovable stool. Everything except the combination stainless-steel sink and toilet.

You can't move more than eight feet in one direction.

"Prison is a deterrent," Williams says. "We don't want them to like being in prison."

The cell is one of eight in a long hallway. From inside, you can't see anyone or any of the other cells. This is where the inmate eats, sleeps and exists for 22 1/2 hours a day. He spends the other 1 1/2 hours alone in a small concrete yard.

This is the Security Housing Unit -- or the SHU (pronounced "SHOE") -- at Pelican Bay State Prison in northern California. With more than 1,200 inmates, it's one of the largest and oldest isolation units in the country, and it's the model that dozens of other states have followed.

Although all the inmates are in isolation, there's lots of noise: Keys rattle. Toilets flush. Inmates shout to each other from one cell to the next. Twice a day, officers push plastic food trays through the small portals in the metal doors.

No Contact but the 'Pinky Shake'

Those doors are solid metal, with little nickel-sized holes punched throughout. One inmate known as Wino is standing on just behind the door of his cell. It's difficult to make eye contact, because you can only see one eye at a time.

"I've got my paperwork, my books to read, my little odds and ends," he says, pointing to the small items carefully organized throughout his cell.

Wino fears he'll get in trouble for talking; he asks that NPR not use his real name. Wino is a 40-something man from San Fernando, Calif. He was sent to prison for robbery. He was sent to the SHU for being involved in prison gangs. He's been in this cell for six years.

"The only contact that you have with individuals is what they call a pinky shake," he says, sticking his pinky through one of the little holes in the door.

That's the only personal contact Wino has had in six years.

'Pods' of Isolation Cells

There are five other hallways like this one, in what prison officials here call a "pod" of cells. The hallways shoot out like spokes on a wheel. In the center, high off the floor, an officer sits at a panel of blue and red buttons controlling the doors. The officer in the booth can go an entire shift without actually seeing an inmate face to face.

Far below, an inmate walks a few feet from his cell, through a metal door at the end of the hallway, and out into the yard.

The exercise yards at Pelican Bay are about the length of two small cars. The cement walls are 20 feet high. On top is a metal grate -- and through the grate is a patch of sky. Associate Warden Williams says they don't allow inmates to have any kind of exercise equipment.

"Most of the time, they do push-ups. Some of them just walk back and forth for exercise," he says. "We don't allow them to have any type of balls or -- I don't know what you call it -- any kind of activity out here. It's just basically to come out, stretch their legs and get some fresh air."

Monitor. Control. Isolate.

Inside the SHU, there's a skylight two stories up. But on an overcast day, it's dark, and so are the cells. There are no windows here. Inmates will not see the moon, stars, trees or grass. They will rarely, if ever, see the giant, gray building they live in. Their world -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year -- is this hallway. There are 132 hallways at Pelican Bay just like this one. They are all full.

More than 40 states operate facilities like Pelican Bay. Inmates aren't sent here by judges or juries. No prisoner is sentenced to isolation. It makes absolutely no difference what crime you committed on the outside. It's how you behave on the inside that counts, and every state has different rules for how you get here. In some parts of the country, the decision belongs to a small group of state officials; in other states, it's up to the warden.

Prison officials at Pelican Bay say the 1,200 inmates here are in segregation because, since arriving in prison, they have been the most violent, dangerous inmates in California.

"The intent is to monitor, to control, to isolate," says Lt. Steve Perez, who has worked at Pelican Bay for 17 years. "This is in response to their behavior. That's why you have facilities like this."

Each month, officers squeeze soap, shampoo and toothpaste into paper cups for the inmates. They are issued a jumpsuit, but in two days at the facility, there doesn’t seem to be a single prisoner wearing one. All of them are wearing their underwear, white boxer shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops.

'It Breaks You Psychologically'

"You find yourself being by yourself, and sometimes you don't like what you see," said one inmate named Jason, a young-looking 39-year-old from Sacramento.

Four years ago, Jason violated his parole on a robbery charge and was sent to prison. A few months after he arrived, prison officials suspected he was involved in a prison gang and sent him to isolation. He's been in the SHU ever since.

"A lot of guys go [crazy], really, and sometimes I ask myself, 'Am I losing it, right?'" Jason says behind his small cell-door holes. "It breaks you psychologically, right? People do develop phobias. You start thinking people are talking about you when they're not."

When inmates do go crazy, there is another part of the prison for them -- the psychiatric SHU.

Treating Mental Illness in Solitary

In the psychiatric SHU at Pelican Bay, one inmate stands in the middle of his cell, hollering at no one in particular. Another bangs his head against the cell door. Many of the inmates are naked, some exposing themselves.

The psychiatric SHU is full -- all 128 beds. One in 10 inmates in segregation is housed here. There's even a waiting list.

Lt. Steve Perez points to the board outside the unit, where little markers describe some of the psychiatric problems of inmates held there.

"Here we are with Vic -- indecent exposure. He's got to be in a jumpsuit," Perez says. "Nichols -- he's on a razor restriction. This guy Flores -- staff assault through the food port."

The board says one inmate had his shoes taken because he kept kicking the cell door over and over.

'Group Therapy' in a Cage

Lt. Troy Woods works in the psychiatric SHU. He says they treat mental illness by monitoring the inmates and sending them to what he and others call "group therapy." It consists of a small room with six phone-booth-sized cages.

"Depending on what the group is, they'll either listen to music, watch movies, play games, have art, current events -- a lot of different types of groups," Woods says.

There are no therapists in group therapy. Woods says the idea is to help inmates socialize with each other and behavior normally again.

"Normal" for these prisoners means they don't smear feces on themselves or throw urine at the officers. They shower when able, eat when told and keep their cells tidy. For the most part, when prisoners do achieve this, the reward is a return to the regular SHU.

Experts say it can cost $50,000 more a year to house these inmates in isolation -- regular or psychiatric. But if you ask prison officials in this state why they need facilities like this one, they have one answer: to control the prison gangs.

Controlling the Grip of Gangs

Outside in the yard, hundreds of prisoners from general population are playing basketball games, exercising and crowding around cement tables. On this day, without exception, every inmate is divided by race -- and gang membership.

"You've got your white group there on that one dip bar. You've got your southern (Mexicans) -- they're always on that one table. You have your blacks," Lt. Steve Perez says, looking out onto the yard.

Prison officials like Perez say a lot of crimes happen on the yard right in front of them.

"Right now, business is being conducted," Perez says, pointing to the group of prisoners gathered on the yard. "There's gambling that's going on, drugs that are being passed and sold."

Assaults, stabbings and attacks on staff are weekly occurrences here. Two former gang members sit at a table in the yard, long after most other prisons have been sent back inside. They're kept separate because they recently left the gang. Because they fear for their life, they asked that NPR not to use their names.

They say the gangs run the prisons.

"If they keep killing people, you are going to do what they tell you to do -- out of fear, out of self-preservation," one of the inmates says. "If you're 90 days at the house, and a gang member tells you, 'You go stab that dude right there,' or 'Go back in and stab your cellie,' out of self-preservation, you are going to do what you are told. Because if you don't, you are going to be killed."

Associate Warden Larry Williams acknowledges that prison gangs are an enormous problem that prison officials do not have control over.

"Every time we pluck one out, a new one pops up," he said.

'There Are Times When You Lose Control'

Officials say 70 percent of the inmates in California's prisons are in some way affiliated with prison gangs.

When asked whether the gangs control Pelican Bay, Williams says: "The biggest part of me wants to say no. But you know, prisons only run with the consent of the inmates -- and that's all the inmates. The administration and the officers do have control of the prisons. But there are times when you lose control."

Associate Warden Larry Williams says it has been this way since the 1980s, when the number of inmates exploded, and rehabilitative programs disappeared. The gangs filled the void left from increasingly tense conditions and utter boredom. California's answer to the gangs was, and is, the SHU.

Even locked in isolation, some inmates have managed to find ways to kill each other and assault staff. On a recent afternoon, a half-dozen officers spent an entire day tearing apart the cells in one hallway, searching desperately for a metal binder clip they believed one of the inmates was hiding. Officer Buchanan discovered the paper fastener hidden inside a crack in the concrete wall. It had been sharpened into a deadly razor.

In the cell next door, Sgt. France held up a couple of staples she found.

"They use the staples. They sharpen them to a point, wrap paper around them real tight, and make a spear out of it," France says. "It will go through the perforations on the cell. They can spear someone with it."

Isolation Breeds Deadly Ingenuity

Lt. Steve Perez explains that inmates pull out the elastic from their underwear and braid it into a kind of super-powered bow to fire their weapons.

"They can project a spear coming out of there at 800-square-pounds per foot," Perez said. "And 800 pounds per foot, into your neck, it'll drive that right in there. And now we've got to go in there, and what does he have on it? Does he have feces? HIV? Does he have herpes? TB? Hepatitis? And that's not unusual."

Prison officials say that removing the most dangerous gang members and putting them in segregation makes regular prisons safer for the rest of the inmates -- and it weakens the gangs.

But Jim, a 38-year-old SHU inmate from Long Beach, says that's wishful thinking. He says that to gang members, being sent to the secure-housing unit is an honor.

"Coming up here was the big thing," Jim says from inside his cell. "Put in work. Come up here, be with the big homeys. Because this is the only place you're going to be around the fellas, you know."

'You're a Target Because of the Color of Your Skin'

Jim says gang leaders still control the gangs from within the SHU, mostly by mailing each other letters. And he says if you show up to prison and don't join the gang of your race, you'll be a target for the other gangs within days.

"When there's a war, there's a war," Jim says. "You're a target just because of the color of your skin, so you might as well. You're going to have to defend yourself. The lines get divided. You've gotta take sides."

Jim was sent to prison 10 years ago for armed robbery. Several years later, he was put in segregation for assaulting other prisoners when he joined a prison gang called the Nazi Low Riders.

"It's definitely racist," Jim says. But he says he wasn't racist before he came to prison. "Prison made me that way. My mom and dad taught me to respect everybody, no matter who it was. It's funny because I still remember, to this day, my dad telling me, 'You respect every man until he proves differently.'"

'It's Designed to Break You'

There are really only two ways out of Pelican Bay's SHU. Either you have to prove to prison officials that you have not been involved in gang activity for six years -- which is rare -- or you have to tell everything you know about your gang. It's called debriefing. It can sometimes take two years. That's what Jim is trying to do now.

But it has a cost. Jim says he's already been warned through the grapevine that if he gets out of the SHU, he's a dead man. But after seven years in isolation, Jim says he doesn't care anymore.

"A place like this is designed to drive you crazy," he says. "It's not just designed to isolate you from the general population. It's designed to break you. It sucks. It's hard. It's made me different. It's made me spiteful."

Is Solitary Working?

Associate Warden Williams says that without the SHU, the gang problem would be even worse.

But after almost 20 years, California is now holding more inmates in solitary confinement than it ever has -- and its gang problem is worse than it has ever been. And over the years, the violence rates at Pelican Bay have actually gone up.

Williams says he worries a little that segregation could be making the inmates worse.

"I can't totally disagree that it may affect the inmates in some kind of way," Williams says. "It may make them mad for a while. But the benefit of these security housing units is that we take the people who go out there and cause the trouble, and we lock them up here, to get them off the mainline so that it can functions the way it's designed to -- and the way we would like it to, and the way the inmates would like it to."

Almost 95 percent of the inmates in Pelican Bay's SHU are scheduled to be released back into the public at some point. They'll spend a few weeks in a local prison before rejoining society, with little, if any, preparation for how to live around people on the outside. And for every inmate that leaves, there is another one waiting to take his place.
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As Populations Swell, Prisons Rethink Supermax

by Laura Sullivan
Laura Sullivan, NPR

Brian Belleque, the warden of the Oregon State Penitentiary, says that isolation alone doesn't work; inmates need an opportunity to change.

All Things Considered, July 27, 2006 · A growing number of prisoners are spending years in solitary confinement in prisons across the country. These prisoners eat, sleep and exist in their cells alone, with little, if any, physical contact with others.

Experts say there are more than 25,000 inmates serving their sentences this way. A handful of them have been in isolation for more than 20 years.

Almost every inmate in isolation will be released back into the public one day. But there are a few prison officials who are rethinking the idea of isolation -- and wondering if there might be a better way.

One of them is Don Cabana. He began his career in corrections the way most people did 30 years ago in the South: On the back of a horse, a shotgun in one hand and 100 prisoners below him, picking cotton.

The inmates were prisoners at a place called Parchman, a prison deep in the farmlands of Mississippi.

"Parchman was like any other prison: Nobody ever cared about it or cared what went on there," Cabana says. "And there's no question inmates were beaten and abused. I would go so far as to say some were probably even murdered."

Locking Down a Lawless Prison Environment

For almost a century, Parchman was notoriously violent. It was known as a place where inmates did hard time. By the time Don Cabana became warden in 1981, things had changed at Parchman. Much of the prisoner abuse had subsided, but there were new problems.

It was overcrowded, underfunded and full of bored, violent inmates -- the result of an explosion in gangs and drug crime. Assaults on staff were increasing. Instead of worrying about the guards killing the inmates, Cabana says he worried about the inmates killing his guards.

"I had three officers stabbed one morning by one inmate," he says, "and the only reason he stabbed them is because he was trying to elevate his status in the Aryan brotherhood. Damn near kills all three of them. You know, you take your staff being injured by these people very personally, because you feel like you have failed somehow. And a warden's worst nightmare is losing a staff person."

For Cabana, that was the last straw. He pulled the inmate into his office and shut the door.

"I sat there and I said, 'Well, Bubba. I tell you, you've made it to the big time,'" Cabana says, describing his conversation with the inmate. "'Are you prepared for all the benefits?' And he said, 'Well, like what?' And I said, 'I'm going to lock this place down so tight and so long that you'll never see the sunshine. And you see, I'm going to do it to a thousand inmates in here, not just you.'"

That's just what Cabana did.

He looked at states including California, Arizona and Illinois and saw they were creating a new place to put bad inmates: 1,000-bed, high-tech isolation units known as Supermax prisons. That meant 23 hours a day in a cell, one hour alone in an exercise pen. No television, no contact with the outside world, nothing but a concrete cell.

Making Meaner Inmates

Cabana says he didn't have any trouble getting money to build the Supermax prison, or getting state lawmakers to support the idea.

And for a while after it was completed, the facility seemed to work well. Cabana says the threat of going to long-term isolation was making the rest of the inmates in general population behave.

But then, Cabana says some things started to trouble him. Inmate behavior got worse, in ways that seemed almost unbelievable. Inmates were smearing themselves with urine and feces and throwing it at the officers.

"Some inmates were crazy, and wouldn't know they were throwing urine at somebody, others were just mean and doing it out of pure spite," Cabana said. "But many of them did it out of utter frustration."

And there was another problem: the staff.

"A lot of the staff would just be flat-out abusive to the inmates. They would taunt them, ignore them," Cabana says.

Cabana says he would lie awake at night under the pressure of having to decide whom to send to isolation and whom to release. Then one day, as he walked the tier of his Supermax facility, Cabana says something occurred to him.

"Inmate hauls off and spits at you -- yeah, you want to slap the total crap out of them into the next cell," Cabana says. "Problem is, that takes you down to his level, and we're supposed to be better than that. And as a society, one of the best measures of how far a society has come is what their prisons are like. I think what we're doing in Supermax is, we're taking some bad folks, and we're making them even worse. We're making them even meaner."

Second Thoughts About Supermax

Don Cabana is no longer the warden of Parchman. He retired last year. But his feelings about Supermax haven't changed.

"The biggest single regret I had in my career was having built that unit," he says.

Cabana is not the only one with second thoughts. Brian Belleque, the warden of the Oregon State Pennitentiary in Salem, has them, too.

"We realize that 95 to 98 percent of these inmates here are going to be your neighbor in the community," Belleque says. "They are going to get out."

In 1991, Oregon built something it calls the Intensive Management Unit, or the IMU. Inmates are locked in their cells all day long, for years. It's dark. There are no windows inside.

On a recent visit, many inmates were pacing back and forth in their cells, talking to themselves or hollering at inmates down the hall.

Rethinking Isolation

The IMU looks like a standard isolation unit. But these days, there are some big differences, including therapy for many of the prisoners.

One prisoner named Gregory says that therapy has really helped him.

"Some changes took," Gregory said recently while having a session with the psychiatrist. "I was just a mess. I was a straight mess. I was an animal, and I acted that way."

Oregon has also adopted a system that allows inmates like Gregory to earn their way out of isolation. The longest an inmate can stay in isolation is three years.

And the decision of who is and isn't sent to isolation is no longer in the warden's hands. A three-person panel outside the prison system decides.

Mitch Morrow, the deputy director of the Oregon Department of Corrections, instituted many of the changes.

"This department, for as long as I have been here, has always believed that inmates are people," Morrow says.

'You Need to Change the Inmate'

But changing the system wasn't an easy sell. It took years. Morrow says even now, there are state officials who cling to the idea of long-term isolation.

"It feels good today to lock them up, and for that given moment, you feel safer," Morrow says. "But if that's where you stop the conversation, then you are doing your state a serious injustice. Because you need to change the inmate. You need to provide the inmate the opportunity to change. And if you don't, if you just feel good about locking somebody up, it's a failed model."

Oregon no longer releases inmates directly from segregation to the streets. Now they send them first to classes, and then to prison jobs in the general population, so they can get used to being around people again.

That's not the case in other states. Last year in Texas, prison officials took 1,458 inmates out of their segregation cells, walked them to the prison gates and took the handcuffs off. There's almost no research about the effects of isolation on how well inmates cope on the outside.

That troubles Walter Dickey. Dickey used to run Wisconsin's prisons. Now he's been appointed by a court there to oversee the conditions at the state's Supermax facility.

Dickey says many officials in his state don't see a downside to having a Supermax. He says the state built it because legislators thought they needed it, and most prison officials went along.

"If you are running a corrections system, and you are offered a greater level of control than you otherwise could have, you are going to take it," Dickey says. "Because there's a part of them that says, 'We don't need this,' but there's a part of them that says, 'If you are going to build it, I'll take it, because I can find some use for it.'"

It's the numbers that bother Dickey. When he ran the state's prisons, he says there were, at most, a dozen inmates so dangerous that he took them out of general population. Today, the 500 beds at Wisconsin's Supermax are full -- and most inmates have been there since it opened seven years ago.

Keeping Inmates Out of Long-Term Segregation

At a small California prison on the Nevada border called High Desert, a group of prison officials gather around a metal desk each week. An inmate in a jumpsuit is also there, eagerly waiting for the results.

One prison official recommends that the inmate be released from a new, experimental program because his progress has been so good.

These weekly meetings are part of a new program meant to keep inmates out of long-term segregation. High Desert Warden Tom Felker started the program six months ago. He said he was tired of sending hundreds of inmates to years of isolation.

"I, like a lot of people, looked at it as, 'There's probably a better way,'" Felker says.

Felker took his 40 worst inmates and housed them together. He's taken all their possessions: radios, books, televisions. He banned them from the yard. He told them that if they want these privileges back, they would have to earn them by following a specific, itemized list: attend therapy, school and weekly anger-management classes with a local college professor. The staff keeps detailed notes about their progress.

A Model for a Balanced Approach?

"Just straight rehabilitation in its own right -- that's not realistic. But just warehousing inmates? That's not going to work, either," Felker says. "You have to have a balanced approach."

In the past six months, the results so far have stunned even Felker. Almost every inmate has graduated from the program, and they've stayed out of trouble back in general population. Recently, Felker has been visited by staff from several other prisons in California asking how they can start a program like his.

Before Don Cabana retired from Mississippi's Parchman prison, he tried to reform much about the segregation unit. He wanted to send most of the inmates back to general population. But there are still 1,000 inmates in the unit today.

"Prisons have always had prisons within prisons," Cabana says. "I mean, every prison has its jailhouse for the guys you have to lock up. But the numbers of people we're incarcerating under Supermax conditions in this country -- it's just run away from us. That's not how it's supposed to be."

Like prison officials in Oregon, Wisconsin and California, Cabana says he found that building an isolation unit is a lot easier than taking one apart.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5587644

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

Timeline: Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons

by Laura Sullivan
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5579901

PR.org, July 26, 2006 · An overview of key moments in the history of solitary confinement.

1829 - The first experiment in solitary confinement in the United States begins at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It is based on a Quaker belief that prisoners isolated in stone cells with only a Bible would use the time to repent, pray and find introspection. But many of the inmates go insane, commit suicide, or are no longer able to function in society, and the practice is slowly abandoned during the following decades.

1890 - In an opinion concerning the effects of solitary confinement on inmates housed in Philadelphia (Re: Medley, 134 U.S. 160), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Freeman Miller finds, "A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community."

1934 - The federal government opens Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay to house the nation's worst criminals. Most inmates spend many hours outside in the yard and on required work details. But a few dozen are kept in "D Block," the prison’s solitary-confinement hallway. One cell in particular is called "The Hole" -- a room of bare concrete except for a hole in the floor. There is no light, inmates are kept naked, and bread and water is shoved through a small hole in the door. Although most inmates only spend a few days in the hole, some spend years on D Block. Conditions are better than in The Hole -- inmates have clothes and food -- but they are not permitted contact with other inmates and are rarely let out of their cells. The most famous inmate on D Block is Robert Stroud, known as the "Birdman of Alcatraz,” who spends six years there. A 1962 movie about Stroud -- and subsequent media reports on the conditions on D Block -- made solitary confinement a fixture of the American imagination for the first time.

1983 - Two correctional officers at a Marion, Ill., prison are murdered by inmates in two separate incidents on the same day. The warden at the time puts the prison in what he calls "permanent lockdown." It is the first prison in the country to adopt 23-hour-a-day cell isolation and no communal yard time for all inmates. Inmates are no longer allowed to work, attend educational programs, or eat in a cafeteria. Within a few years, several other states also adopt permanent lockdown at existing facilities.

1989 - California builds Pelican Bay, a new prison built solely to house inmates in isolation. By most accounts, it is the first Supermax facility in the country. There is no need to build a yard, cafeteria, classrooms or shops. Inmates spend 22 1/2 hours a day inside an 8-by-10-foot cell. The other 1 1/2 hours are spent alone in a small concrete exercise pen.

1990s - The building boom of Supermax or control-unit prisons begins. Oregon, Mississippi, Indiana, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin and a dozen other states all build new, free-standing, isolation units.

1994 - The U.S. Bureau of Prisons builds ADX Florence, the federal government's first and only Supermax facility, in Florence, Colo. It's known popularly as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies." It currently houses 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, Unibomber Ted Kaczynski, former FBI agent and convicted spy Robert Hanssen, Olympic Park and abortion-clinic bomber Eric Rudolph, and many others.

1995 - A federal judge finds conditions at Pelican Bay in California "may well hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable" (Madrid v. Gomez). But he rules that there is no constitutional basis for the courts to shut down the unit or to alter it substantially. He says the court must defer to the states about how best to incarcerate offenders.

1999 - A report by the Department of Justice finds that more than 30 states are operating a Supermax-type facility with 23-hours-a-day lockdown and long-term isolation. The study finds that some states put 0.5 percent of their total inmates in this kind of facility, while other states lock up more than 20 percent of their inmates this way.

2005 - Daniel P. Mears, an associate professor at Florida State University, conducts a nationwide study and finds there are now 40 states operating Supermax or control-unit prisons, which collectively hold more than 25,000 U.S. prisoners.

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

Charles Colson's Faith Based Prison Program Shut Down

Charles Colson's faith-based prison program shut down

Bill Berkowitz - WorkingForChange

07.20.06 - After serving time in prison for Watergate-related crimes, Charles W. Colson embraced Christianity, founded Prison Fellowship Ministries (website) in 1976, and has since become a high profile, well-respected and oft-quoted Christian conservative leader. Over the past several years, Colson's InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) has partnered with prison authorities in several states, including Texas, Minnesota, Kansas, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri, to provide prisoners with a Christ-centered rehabilitation program.

In June, however, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pratt, chief judge of the US District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, handed Colson's operation a setback. Judge Pratt ruled in favor of a suit filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State (Americans United) which claimed that IFI's operation at Iowa's Newton Correctional Facility violated the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution.

Judge Pratt ordered an end to the program within 60 days, and also ordered InnerChange to reimburse more than $1.5 million to the state of Iowa.

"For all practical purposes, the state has literally established an Evangelical Christian congregation within the walls of one its penal institutions, giving the leaders of that congregation, i.e., InnerChange employees, authority to control the spiritual, emotional, and physical lives of hundreds of Iowa inmates," wrote Pratt. "There are no adequate safeguards present, nor could there be, to ensure that state funds are not being directly spent to indoctrinate Iowa inmates."

Pratt also pointed out that "The level of religious indoctrination supported by state funds and other state support in this case in comparison to other programs treated in the case law ... is extraordinary."

In late June, Prison Fellowship Ministries, the InnerChange Freedom Initiative and the State of Iowa notified the courts that they would appeal Judge Pratt's ruling. "It is our belief that the InnerChange Freedom Initiative is constitutional and well within the framework of the safeguards of the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution," Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley said in a released statement. The appeal was made to the U.S. District Court in Iowa and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a story posted June 14 at the American Enterprise Institute's The American Enterprise Online, Joseph Knippenberg, a professor of politics and associate provost for student achievement at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, pointed out that while he generally "support[s]" the faith-based initiative, as well as "religious efforts to put the penitence back in penitentiaries," he basically agreed with Judge Pratt's ruling: "In this particular case ... the state and Prison Fellowship self-consciously tested the outer bounds of current church-state jurisprudence, they went too far."

According to Knippenberg, Judge Pratt found that:

# While Iowa prison officials were primarily interested in a low-cost program that promised to reduce recidivism among inmates, they "gerrymandered" the Request for Proposals that led to the contract with InnerChange, which was the sole bidder.
# The nature of the InnerChange program is such that it is impossible to clearly distinguish and separate its religious and secular elements. There is one clearly secular class--"Computer Training." Other classes that have secular analogues in therapeutic rehabilitative programs, like "Anger Management," are taught from an essentially Christian point of view.
# While the InnerChange staff attempted to distinguish between their secular and religious work, and bill the state accordingly, their efforts fell short. Where so much of the program is devoted to inculcating a Christian worldview, it is difficult, if not impossible, to precisely delineate what portion of a staffer's time, or what fraction of a piece of equipment's value is devoted to secular, as opposed to religious, purposes.
# In addition to formal coursework, the program imposes numerous religious requirements, including attendance at regular Friday night revival meetings and at Sunday morning worship services.
# There is no comparable secular or religious program elsewhere in the Iowa prison system. Inmates who want a long-term comprehensive rehabilitation program have no other choices.
# The living conditions and privileges afforded InnerChange participants are sufficiently superior to those afforded the general prison population as to be incentives to join the program. In effect, inmates are rewarded for their participation in a religious program.

In a series of published commentaries defending the InnerChange program, Mark Earley called the suit by Americans United, and similar suits initiated by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, attacks that go beyond merely opposition to President Bush's faith-based initiative: "It's a religious battle being waged by groups whose religion really is no religion. Our nation's prisons are merely the newest theater of operations in the campaign to scrub every influence of religion from American public life."

Earley's op-ed pieces cited "Confronting Confinement," a recent report issued by the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, which found according to Earley, that "the key to reducing recidivism, enhancing security within the prisons, and protecting the public is comprehensive rehabilitative programming."

In a conversation a while back with Dr. Terry Kupers, a longtime prison reform advocate and the author of "Prison Madness: the Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About it," a comprehensive and highly readable study of the growing mental health crisis in America's prisons, he suggested that most studies show that a fair amount of resources directed toward comprehensive rehabilitation programs will generally prove to be worthwhile.

While "Confronting Confinement" encourages "invest[ment] in programs that are proven to reduce violence and to change behavior over the long term," it says nothing about the efficacy of faith-based prison programs.

For Earley, however, "comprehensive rehabilitative programs" clearly means a program saturated with Christianity. He appears to believe that only faith-based programs can be effective in reducing recidivism rates among prisoners. He is quoted by Christian Newswire as arguing that the effort to remove faith-based programs from prisons "fosters a 'lock 'em up and throw away the key' approach to fighting crime. It assumes that by warehousing criminals and providing no services to help them change, society will be safer when they get out. Nothing could be further from the truth."

In early July, Earley and Al Quie, the former governor of Minnesota and chairman of the IFI Board of Directors, responded to what they charged were "some erroneous statements in its June 15 editorial on the InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) program at Minnesota's Lino Lakes prison," published by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

While acknowledging that IFI's program is "faith-based," Earley and Quie maintained that the program is not coercive and has "help[ed] the state to reduce recidivism, enhance security (through improved inmate accountability), and lower correctional costs."

Earley and Quie capped their argument by citing "An independent study by the University of Pennsylvania [that] showed that graduates of the InnerChange Freedom Initiative in Texas were far less likely to return to prison within two years than inmates who did not participate in IFI (8 percent compared to 20 percent)."

But the study cited by Earley and Quie -- and frequently referred to in Earley's commentaries -- was thoroughly debunked in an August 2003 piece called "Faith-Based Fudging: How a Bush-promoted Christian prison program fakes success by massaging data," written by Mark A.R. Kleiman, a Professor of Policy Studies at the UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research, and published by Slate online magazine.

"You don't have to believe in faith-healing to think that an intensive 16-month program, with post-release follow-up, run by deeply caring people might be the occasion for some inmates to turn their lives around. The report seemed to present liberal secularists with an unpleasant choice: Would you rather have people "saved" by Colson, or would you rather have them commit more crimes and go back to prison?

"But when you look carefully at the Penn study, it's clear that the program didn't work. The InnerChange participants did somewhat worse than the controls: They were slightly more likely to be rearrested and noticeably more likely (24 percent versus 20 percent) to be reimprisoned. If faith is, as Paul told the Hebrews, the evidence of things not seen, then InnerChange is an opportunity to cultivate faith; we certainly haven't seen any results.

"So, how did the Penn study get perverted into evidence that InnerChange worked? Through one of the oldest tricks in the book, one almost guaranteed to make a success of any program: counting the winners and ignoring the losers. The technical term for this in statistics is 'selection bias'; program managers know it as 'creaming.' Harvard public policy professor Anne Piehl, who reviewed the study before it was published, calls this instance of it 'cooking the books.'" Joseph Knippenberg maintained that the Iowa ruling could have long term ramifications for other current and future faith-based prison programs: "I'm not convinced that the outcome in this particular case is likely to be different in any other courtroom. This is surely significant in the long run for many of the InnerChange prison units in other states ...for other religious pre-release programs in other states, and for the Bush administration's effort to bring such programs into the federal prison system.

"At the very least, and even before any further decisions are handed down, additional lawsuits will be filed. Indeed, perhaps anticipating this very outcome, the Freedom From religion Foundation has filed a suit challenging the Federal Bureau of Prisons' faith-based "Life Connection Program", currently piloted at five federal prisons and, until recently, scheduled for expansion."

Despite the Iowa ruling, it's not all gloom and doom for Colson's prison enterprises. In the June issue of Americans United's Church & State magazine, Jeremy Leaming reported that Colson's group was the main candidate for a new Justice Department initiative seeking to establish a "single-faith" prison rehabilitation program.

The initiative's stated purpose was to "facilitate personal transformation for the participating inmates through their own spirituality or faith...." and "match inmates with personal mentors and a faith-based community, community organization or support group at their release destination to promote successful reintegration."

Leaming reported that Americans United Senior Litigation Counsel Alex Luchenitser "argued that the program was troubling because it seemed designed to benefit a specific charity - Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries. The solicitation listed 10 requirements, all of which mirror the features of Colson's Inner-Change prison program."

(c) 2006 Working Assets Online. All rights reserved

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=21119

Posted by lois at 06:37 PM | Comments (0)

July 20, 2006

MA: Editorial: Vote on clean needles is based on the facts

Wednesday, July 19, 2006, Editorial: Springfield (MA) Republican

The Legislature voted for life.

Lawmakers had passed a bill that would allow for the sale of hypodermic syringes without a prescription, but Gov. W. Mitt Romney vetoed the measure. Thankfully, both the state House and Senate votedlast week to override the governor's veto, paving the way for the sale of hypodermic needles beginning on Sept. 18.

The new law also calls for the creation of collection centers for used, dirty needles at police and fire stations, pharmacies and public health offices.The facts behind the new law are clear: The sharing of contaminated needles contributes to the spread of blood-borne diseases such as hepatitis C and AIDS.
Making new needles available without a prescription - to those 18 and older - will reduce the spread of such diseases.

Lawmakers from both houses who voted to override the governor's veto did the right thing by seeing past the hyperbolic and illogical rhetoric that was repeated by the most vehement opponents of the clean needle law. Selling hypodermic syringes without a prescription in no way encourages illegal drug use. But it does save lives.

In the Senate, the veto was overridden by a 25-11 vote. The House trumped the governor by a vote of 113-42.

Lawmakers took the next practical step by establishing centers for the collection of used needles. Medical waste companies will pick up the containers.

Drug users will now be able to obtain clean needles and will have a way to safely dispose of used ones. This is the kind of law that can make a real difference. Lawmakers took a look at what is happening in the real world and found a way to make things better. Opponents saw something altogether different. They imagined a world in which people will be encouraged to use drugs because hypodermic syringes will be sold over the counter without a prescription. Do they believe also that people are encouraged to create methamphetamine labs
because the makings of the drug are readily available in local stores?

It's difficult to say exactly what Romney and other opponents were imagining. Thankfully, the great majority of lawmakers looked instead at the facts at hand
- and made a rational decision that will help save lives.

©2006 The Republican

Posted by lois at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)

CT: Govenor akes Heat on Juvenile Justice

http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-ctjuvjustice0720.artjul20,0,472838.story?coll=hc-headlines-local
Rell Takes Heat On Juvenile Justice
State Workers Critical Of Leadership, Vision
By COLIN POITRAS
Courant Staff Writer

July 20 2006

NEW BRITAIN -- State employees criticized Gov. M. Jodi Rell on Wednesday, saying she has consistently lacked leadership and vision in dealing with juvenile justice programs, particularly the troublesome Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown.

With the training school scheduled to close in 24 months, union leaders representing hundreds of training school employees used an afternoon press conference to urge Rell to develop more programs, hire more staff and expand community services to help juvenile delinquents.

The workers - members of Council 4 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Connecticut State Employees Association - awarded Rell a juvenile justice "report card" full of F's to highlight their concerns. Rell failed when it came to leadership, programs, communication and vision, the workers said.

"We don't have anybody right now who is actively doing something for our kids," said Paula Dillon, a training school teacher. "We believe a lot more could be done."

Rell's office issued a statement defending her record. In the statement, Rell supports the hard work juvenile justice workers have done during the difficult period of transition. Rell reiterated that the training school, which housed 106 boys on Wednesday, should close and be replaced by smaller, more local detention centers that can help ease the boys' return home.

Rell and state juvenile justice officials pointed out that a new counseling and support program, designed to help youths do better in local schools after leaving the training school, will begin in Hartford next month. Other community programs are also in the works, they said.

Union leaders have complained that they have not been involved in planning juvenile justice changes since the former Long Lane School closed five years ago and the new training school opened. Staff members have repeatedly expressed their frustration through protests, press conferences and several votes of no-confidence in top administrators, the latest targeting Donald DeVore, the head of juvenile justice at the Department of Children and Families.

Union leaders said many of the changes touted by DeVore, Rell and others are not living up to expectations. For instance, they said that a new Boys & Girls Club at the training school is providing more recreation and leisure time than the counseling and support that was promised. Training School Superintendent John Dixon defended the program, saying it is meeting its objectives.

Union leaders again expressed frustration over staffing. They said one-third of the training school's teachers have left for other jobs or personal reasons in recent months, yet 15 jobs remain unfilled, putting stress on the staff and making it more difficult to help children.

Joanna James, another teacher at the school, warned that the lack of proper staff and programs increases the chances that young offenders will get into more trouble after they return home and will return to the expensive, high-security training school - where it costs taxpayers more than $500,000 a year to house a single child.

"We need a better educational transition," said James, a union representative.

Union leaders worry that boys at the training school will be cast adrift when the facility closes, as happened to juvenile girls when Long Lane closed. DeVore said much better planning has been done this time around and those pitfalls should be avoided.

Contact Colin Poitras at cpoitras@courant.com.

Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant

Posted by lois at 05:29 PM | Comments (0)

WI: Practice of Shackling Women During Childbirth Ends

Posted on Thu, Jul. 20, 2006
Prisons set new policy on shackling inmates during childbirth
Associated Press

APPLETON, Wis. - A practice of shackling pregnant prison inmates during childbirth has been replaced by a policy that bans the restraints in Wisconsin prisons except when security reasons require their use.

The written policy comes six months after state Corrections Secretary Matt Frank ordered the practice of shackling prisoners during childbirth stopped.

Frank had learned of the practice from a series of stories in The Post-Crescent of Appleton about women in state prisons, including Taycheedah Correctional Institution near Fond du Lac.

With the new policy, "the intent is to achieve a balance between the humane treatment of inmates with legitimate safety concerns," said John Dipko, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections.

The department declined to release a copy of the written policy, which took effect July 13, citing security concerns.

But officials released a memo from Steve Casperson, administrator of the agency's Division of Adult Institutions, to Frank summarizing the changes.

According to the memo, inmates about to give birth and immediately after giving birth are not to be placed in restraints "unless there are security reasons that require restraint."

An inmate determined to be a risk to herself or others can be restrained if top administrators give prior approval.

"There is going to be a high level of oversight to ensure that inmates are not unnecessarily restrained," Dan Westfield, the division's security chief, said Wednesday.

In the memo, Casperson said that since Frank's verbal order, 15 inmates safely delivered babies in medical facilities, and there were no security problems.

He also said the prison system had increased the minimum number of officers who escort a pregnant inmate to a hospital.

State Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, a member of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Corrections and Privacy, said the new policy sounds more rational than the old one, which he previously called "cruel and degrading."

The new rules "should have been in place earlier, in my opinion," he said.
Information from: The Post-Crescent, http://www.wisinfo.com/postcrescent

Posted by lois at 05:26 PM | Comments (0)

CO: 300 attend meeting to discuss (and oppose) GEO prison

Even tho this story makes it sound like there were equal numbers of people both for and against this GEO prison, the facts are that only 12 to 14 people testified in favor of it.

Two of them were from the White family. The head of that family stands to make $2 M for selling his property to GEO. His wife would also make money off the sale, as she is a realtor in town.

Apparently, the GEO people and the Town Board were shell-shocked by the numbers of people against the prison. At the Board meeting following the public meeting, the Board refused to even bring up the subject of GEO. The Board spent most of the night trying to get rid of the Mayor. This action has nothing at all to do with the prison.

d

300 residents show up at Ault meeting to discuss prison

Emma Schmautz, reporters@greeleytribune.com
July 19, 2006
http://www.greeleytrib.com/article/20060719/NEWS/107190069

Debate over whether to allow a men's medium security prison to be built in Ault has divided the normally quiet community.

Almost 300 Ault residents overwhelmed Tuesday night's town board meeting to discuss the pros and cons of allowing the Florida-based company Geo Group Inc. to build a 1,500 bed private prison in Ault. So many people showed up that the meeting had to be delayed half an hour to move the meeting to the larger VFW building.

The issue pitted neighbor against neighbor with strong opinions and statements made by nearly 50 people on both sides of the issue.

"Geo is like Wal-Mart. They could care less about this town," said John Jablonski of Ault. "They want to use us to make money."

The majority of the crowd was strongly against the prison but faced opposition from a vocal minority of Ault's business owners. They believe the prison will be the economic boost Ault's dwindling economy needs to survive.

Sheila Kelsey, owner of the House of Bargains, has lived in Ault for 34 years and said that during all that time little economic growth has occurred.

"The prison would be in my front yard, but we desperately need the business," Kelsey said. "If we do not get this business, this town will die. It will be a ghost town."

Many of those against the prison did not like its close proximity to town and called it a safety hazard, a drain on resources such as water and an overall detriment to the well-being of Ault.

Amber Kauffman, who has lived in the town for five years, said she is all for growth but not at the expense of having to live near a prison.

"We came here to live in a small town and a small community," Kauffman said. "A prison would change the dynamics of this town."

Her husband, Ty Kauffman, said that if the prison does go in, the company wants to run water and sewer lines across his fields which would hurt his annual hay crop.

Ty Kauffman said that if the prison does come to Ault, he will be out of town in two weeks.

"You do so much to your home to loose it all," he said. "It's a nightmare."

Ken Fortier, a representative from Geo, said the prison would bring jobs and purchasing power to Ault.

He said that Geo is the largest private corrections facility company in the world and operates high and medium security prisons on many continents including the world's largest private prison in South Africa and a facility that is part of the Guantanamo Bay complex in Cuba.

"Step away from the emotions to the notion of what economically 300 jobs mean to the town of Ault," Fortier said.

There was still a lot of questions left in the air on Tuesday. Board members did not tell the crowd when, or if, they would sign a contract with the company.

Posted by lois at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2006

Study Documents "Ghetto Tax" Being Paid by the Urban Poor

July 19, 2006
Study Documents ‘Ghetto Tax’ Being Paid by the Urban Poor
By ERIK ECKHOLM, NY Times

WASHINGTON, July 18 — Drivers from low-income neighborhoods of New York, Hartford and Baltimore, insuring identical cars and with the same driving records as those from middle-class neighborhoods, paid $400 more on average for a year’s insurance.

The poor are also the main customers for appliances and furniture at “rent to own” stores, where payments are stretched out at very high interest rates; in Wisconsin, a $200 television can end up costing $700.

Those were just two examples among several cited in a report Tuesday showing that poor urban residents frequently pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year in extra costs for everyday necessities. The study said some of the disparities were due to real differences in the cost of doing business in poor areas, some to predatory financial practices and some to consumer ignorance.

The study, from the Brookings Institution, said finding ways to eliminate these added costs, often called a “ghetto tax,” could be an important new front in the fight against poverty.

At a meeting connected with the report’s release, officials from three states — New York, Pennsylvania and Washington — said they were already doing just that through a variety of programs to draw banks to poor neighborhoods, help finance the construction of supermarkets and encourage innovative insurance schemes.

“There’s a large and for the most part overlooked opportunity here to help low-income families get ahead,” Matt Fellowes, the Brookings researcher who wrote the report, said in an interview. “That is to reduce their costs.”

Measures that reduced the price of essential goods and services for low-income Americans by just 1 percent would put an additional $6.5 billion a year in their hands, said the report, titled “From Poverty, Opportunity.”

Sheldon H. Danziger, a poverty expert at the University of Michigan, noted that $6.5 billion was roughly one-third the benefit the same families have gained through the earned-income tax credit. “Certainly these measures could be an important source of income,” Professor Danziger said of the report’s findings. “But I don’t see them as competing with things like raising the minimum wage, raising child subsidies and providing health insurance.”

Citing other examples of the ghetto tax, the report found that nationally, 4.5 million low-income customers, defined as families making less than $30,000 a year, paid an average of two percentage points more for car loans than did middle-class buyers. And the common use of storefront check-cashing services by poor people, it said, comes at a steep price that varies with local regulations; in 12 cities studied, the fee for cashing a $500 check ranged from $5 to $50.

Part of the problem, the study found, is a discrepancy between the poor and the middle class in consumer skills and mobility: people who comparison-shop, especially on the Internet, tend to pay hundreds less for the identical car than those who walk onto a city lot and buy.

But the disparities can be reduced, the report said, not only by consumer education but also by some combination of incentives to lure banks and stores into poor neighborhoods and tighter regulation on things like the fees of storefront lenders.

The New York State Banking Department has drawn major banks into underserved neighborhoods by placing deposits of government money, sometimes at below-market interest, in the new branches. These may enable more residents to open accounts and reduce reliance on costly check-cashers and lenders, said the state’s superintendent of banks, Diana L. Taylor.

In Pennsylvania, a program led by a Democratic state legislator, Dwight Evans, used state and private financing for construction of supermarkets in areas where residents had previously had to rely on costly small stores or drive long distances for groceries.

Washington State’s insurance commissioner, Mike Kreidler, described efforts to restrict the use of personal credit scores by sellers of home and car insurance.

In a practice that has recently come into wide use in the industry, insurers study credit history to help judge the likelihood that a customer will file insurance claims; those with worse credit records are charged higher premiums, because, insurers say, the industry has found a correlation between poor ratings and the filing of claims.

But Mr. Kreidler and some consumer groups say that the insurers’ approach is not transparent and consistent and that their method is likely to increase prices unfairly for poor people and minorities.

The insurance industry, on the other hand, argues that the new approach benefits many low-income consumers. “We think the use of credit scoring has allowed us to better serve urban areas,” David F. Snyder, vice president of the American Insurance Association, said in an interview. Mr. Snyder said that with this more individualized tool, companies were less likely to raise rates for entire neighborhoods or categories.

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

CO: Allowing Parolees to Vote Would Rebuild Lives

7/16/2006 01:00 AM
perspective, Denver Post
Allowing parolees to vote would rebuild lives
By Neema Trivedi and Jenny Rose Flanagan
Colorado is moving into a lively and important election season, but more than 28,000 citizens of the state will be barred from participating because of felony convictions. Like every American, they have much at stake in the upcoming elections, but they will have no voice unless current law is changed.

Felony disenfranchisement laws vary significantly from state to state. Maine and Vermont allow people in prison to vote. But Florida, Kentucky and Virginia bar people from the polls even after serving their full criminal sentences. Twelve states and the District of Columbia restore the right to vote to individuals upon release from prison. In Colorado, people with felony convictions are denied the right to vote while in prison and on parole.

What this means is that many Colorado residents who have done their time in prison are still unable to register and vote when they re-enter society. Nearly 7,000 of those who are disenfranchised in Colorado because of felony convictions are living, working and raising families alongside the rest of us. Though they pay taxes and are concerned about the future of their communities, they have no say in the way their lives are governed.

In his 2004 State of the Union address, President Bush noted, “America is the land of second chances, and when the gates of the prisons open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.” A better life includes the right to vote and the ability to participate meaningfully in civic life.

Instead of opening the path to a better life, the state's felon disenfranchisement law sends a loud and clear message to people who are trying to rebuild their lives: “No matter how hard you try, and no matter how much you contribute, you are still a second-class citizen.” Removing the stigma of past mistakes and encouraging people to participate as full citizens is far more likely to promote their successful reintegration into their communities.

In fact, studies have shown that ex- offenders who vote are less likely to be re-arrested than those who do not vote. Restoring the vote thus not only helps those individuals who have lost their voting rights, but more broadly promotes public safety by allowing people coming out of prison to feel invested in their neighborhoods.

States are increasingly recognizing that it makes sense to lower the barriers to full civic participation. Since 1997, 12 states have made legislative or policy changes restoring the vote to at least some people with criminal convictions or easing clemency procedures. Yet, nationwide, more than 5 million Americans are still unable to vote because of a felony conviction.

In an election year, there will undoubtedly be speculation about how people with felony convictions in Colorado would vote if given the chance. There might be speculation about whether they would vote at all. But we do not deny people the right to vote because we disagree with their political views. And we do not deny people the right to vote because they might not exercise that right.

Interviews and studies show that people with felony convictions do want to vote. Restoring their rights promotes faith in the possibility of inclusion and fair representation in the political process. It is time for Colorado to give people with felony convictions the chance to participate as full citizens.

In 2007, the Colorado legislature should change the law and make it clear that people who have served their prison time are able to vote while on parole. In addition, there are steps Colorado agencies can take right now. The Colorado secretary of state, county clerks and law-enforcement offices should increase their efforts of outreach to released felons, explaining in clear terms their voting rights and encouraging them to register and vote.

Jenny Rose Flanagan is associate director of Colorado Common Cause, and Neema Trivedi is a research associate in the Democracy Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

Posted by lois at 08:50 PM | Comments (0)

WA: People with felony convictions Denied Basic Right to Vote

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/277513_sentencing14.html

Ex-felons denied basic right to vote

Friday, July 14, 2006

By MARC MAUER
GUEST COLUMNIST

A federal court rejection last week of a decade-long challenge to Washington state's felon disenfranchisement policy highlights the complex dynamics of race and the criminal justice system and raises fundamental questions about fairness and democracy. In the case of Farrakhan v. Gregoire, minority plaintiffs questioned whether discrimination in the justice system contributed to the state's high rates of disenfranchisement among people of color.

The Farrakhan case centers on the state's disenfranchisement policy, which denies voting rights to anyone convicted of a felony and serving a sentence in prison or on probation or parole. The right to vote is restored only after completing a sentence, including payment of fines and costs. This latter requirement is currently being challenged as a modern day "poll tax" on low-income people.

Because Washington's provisions are more restrictive than many other states, it's not surprising that the number of people affected by those policies is higher, as well. One of every 28 adults in the state is ineligible to vote, a rate 50 percent higher than the national average. Although African Americans make up only 3 percent of state population, an astounding one in six is disenfranchised.

For some people, those statistics are interpreted as unfortunate but merely a reflection of greater involvement in crime. That is, if African Americans or other groups are more likely to commit crimes, they will also be more likely to lose their right to vote. But that contention gets to the heart of the Farrakhan challenge. Looking at the long history of racial discrimination in the justice system, the plaintiffs argued that the high minority rate of disenfranchisement was not just a result of involvement in crime but rather reflected disproportionate processing by the criminal justice system. Substantial documentation was presented to the court of biased decision-making in policy and practice, particularly in regard to drug law enforcement whereby drug crimes committed by blacks and Latinos had been more likely to be subject to prosecution.

The federal court agreed with the plaintiffs that they had submitted reports with "compelling evidence of racial discrimination and bias in Washington's criminal justice system" but found that under a "totality of the circumstances" legal doctrine, they failed to constitute a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

It remains to be seen whether the decision will be appealed, but the case raises fundamental questions for policy-makers and the public. As we approach a national election this fall, an estimated 5.3 million Americans will be locked out of the ballot box, not because they are uninterested in voting, but because of the consequences of a felony conviction. Given the broad sweep of those laws, three-fourths of those people are not even in prison, but are living in the community under probation or parole supervision, or have completed their sentences but are disenfranchised under the "ex-felon" provisions of a dozen states.

Those men and women are working and paying taxes in the community, but are denied one of the country's most basic rights. In addition, the interests of public safety argue for having them engaged in the political process. Given high rates of recidivism for people leaving prison, the broader community needs to find ways to encourage them to take on the obligations and responsibilities of other citizens. People who feel a connection to the community will be less likely to victimize others.

When this nation was founded as an "experiment" in democracy, it was in fact a very limited experiment. White male property holders granted themselves the right to vote, thereby excluding women, African Americans, illiterates, poor people and felons.

Today, after 200 years of struggle for democracy, all of the previously excluded groups have been granted the right to vote except people with a felony conviction. We now look back on those former restrictions with a great deal of national embarrassment. Court decisions can determine whether particular laws are constitutional, but policy-makers must determine whether they are wise or necessary.

Marc Mauer is the executive director of The Sentencing Project and the author of "Race to Incarcerate."

Posted by lois at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)

Geo Group Stock Soars on Revised Forecast

Prison firm's stock soars on revised forecast

By Stephen Pounds, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 19, 2006 http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/content/business/epaper/2006/07/19/a1d_geogroup_0719.
html

Shares in The Geo Group Inc. soared almost 19 percent Tuesday after the
company revised its revenue and earnings forecast upward for the second
time since May.

The Boca Raton-based builder and manager of federal, state and local
prisons bumped its second-quarter earnings expectations to 67 to 70 cents
a share from its revised forecast of June 19, when it said it would make
55 to 58 cents a share.

Its new revenue projections rose to $205 million to $210 million, from
$185 million to $190 million, for the same quarter. For the year, the
earnings forecast increased to $2.04 to $2.14 a share, from $1.91 to $2.01
a share, with revenue rising to $790 million to $805 million, from $770
million to $785 million.

The increases are based on three factors: revised start-up expenses for a
198-bed immigration center in Kidlington, England; discontinued
immigration operations in Australia; and new construction spending at two
prisons in Florida, the company said.

A 1,500-bed prison is being built in Graceville in Florida's Panhandle,
and its prison at Moore Haven in Glades County is being expanded to
include high-security prisoners, Geo said. It had been built for
medium-security inmates.

The Moore Haven expansion will completed by the first quarter of 2007; the
Graceville prison will be completed in the third quarter of that year, Geo
spokesman Pablo Paez said Tuesday.

Shares in Geo (NYSE: GGI) jumped $6.19 a share, or 18.7 percent, on the
news, to close at $39.24. The stock traded at eight times its normal
volume.

"The stock is reacting to the updated guidance," Paez said. "We've had a
strong first half, and that's primarily attributable to higher occupancy
at a number of facilities."

Still, of the $20 million in additional revenue, $17 million will pass
through Geo to builders that actually complete prison construction. Only
$3 million is attributable to increased occupancy.

Investors, however, pushed the stock up because demand for new prison beds
has spiked, said Lehman Brothers analyst Jeff Kessler.

"With industry demand for prisons at a high, we remain confident of the
growth prospects of GGI," Kessler wrote in a report Tuesday to investors.

Private prison operators are keeping a close eye on the Bush
administration's attempts to secure the nation's borders and end "catch
and release" — ticketing and freeing people in the United States illegally
instead of detaining them — a practice the White House maintains results
from lack of detention space to hold illegal immigrants awaiting legal
action.

In late May, the Homeland Security Department's inspector general, Richard
Skinner, said the government needs nearly 35,000 more jail beds to
effectively end the criticized "catch and release" program. Analysts
expect a majority of the bed-space expansion to be contracted to private
prison operators such as Geo.

"What many investors may not have focused on is the dramatic increases in
funding being given to two federal agencies for increased border
enforcement," Kessler said.

Posted by lois at 08:40 PM | Comments (0)

Immigration Enforcement Benefits Prison Firms

Immigration Enforcement Benefits Prison Firms

By MEREDITH KOLODNER
Published: July 19, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/business/19detain.html?_r=1&ei=5094&en=8bd6807f56ef126e&hp=&ex=1153281600&oref=slogin&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all

As the Bush administration gets tougher on illegal immigration and increases its spending on enforcement, some of the biggest beneficiaries may be the companies that have been building and running private prisons around the country.

By the fall of 2007, the administration expects that about 27,500 immigrants will be in detention each night, an increase of 6,700 over the current number in custody. At the average cost these days of $95 a night, that adds up to an estimated total annual cost of nearly $1 billion.

The Corrections Corporation of America and the Geo Group (formerly the Wackenhut Corrections Corporation) — the two biggest prison operators — now house a total of fewer than 20 percent of the immigrants in detention. But along with several smaller companies, they are jockeying for a bigger piece of the growing business.

Corrections Corp. and Geo are already running 8 of the 16 federal detention centers.

With all the federal centers now filled and the federal government not planning to build more, most of the new money is expected to go to private companies or to county governments. Even some of the money paid to counties, which currently hold 57 percent of the immigrants in detention, will end up in the pockets of the private companies, since they manage a number of the county jails.

“Private companies are positioning themselves as suppliers, and are positioned to take the majority of new beds available,” said Anton High, an analyst with Jefferies & Company, the brokerage firm. He has recommended that his clients buy Corrections stock.

Louise Gilchrist, vice president for marketing and communication at Corrections Corp., said her company would have no trouble meeting the federal government’s needs. “We believe as their demand increases, they will need to rely on providers who have bed space available,” she said. “The company feels it is well positioned.”

Wall Street has taken notice of the potential growth in the industry. The stock of Corrections Corp. has climbed to $53.77 from $42.50, an increase of about 27 percent, since February when President Bush proposed adding to spending on immigrant detention.

Geo’s stock rose about 68 percent in the period, to $39.24 a share from $23.36.

The increasing privatization of immigrant detention has its critics. Immigrant advocates say health care at some centers has fallen short. They contend that some centers have treated immigrants as if they are criminals — restricting their movements unnecessarily, for instance — even though many are still awaiting a ruling on their legal status.

Because those who cross the border illegally are not considered criminals, they are not automatically assigned a lawyer. But, the advocates say, there have been repeated instances when immigrants have not had access to working phones to call for legal assistance.

“Private prisons have unleashed an entrepreneurial spirit in this country that is unhealthy,” said Judith Greene, director of the nonprofit research group Justice Strategies. “Standards are violated on a regular basis in order to cut costs.”

The companies counter that they are living up to their contractual obligations. “If you develop a reputation as a company that cuts corners, you will lose your contracts,” said Steve Owen, director of marketing at Corrections. The allegations, he added, “are completely false.”

Immigration experts say the need for more prison space is not a result of an increase in the number of people entering the United States illegally. According to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, the number of unauthorized immigrants arriving in this country is down by about 50,000 a year from the late 1990’s.

Instead, the increase in spending on detention is part of a crackdown on illegal residents living in the United States as well as an expected increase in the number of immigrants captured as they try to cross the border.

The government also plans to detain more immigrants, especially those from countries other than Mexico, while they await their hearings, instead of releasing them on their own recognizance. This effort to end what is known as “catch and release” means more capacity is needed immediately.

“The issue is not how many immigrants,’’ said Joe Onek, a senior policy analyst at the Open Society Institute. “There’s incredible pressure on the administration from members of its own party and from some sectors of the population to crack down.”

Revenues for the prison management companies will grow not only because of the rising number of detainees, but also because profit margins are higher at detention centers than prisons, analysts say.

Last year, the Correction Corp.’s revenue from holding immigrants jumped 21 percent, to $95 million from $70 million in 2004. Geo, the second largest prison operator, received $30.6 million last year, about the same as the year before.

While the companies would not comment on profit margins from their immigration business, Wall Street analysts said that detention centers produce profit margins of more than 20 percent.

That compares with margins in the mid-teens for traditional prison management, they said, because prisoners are provided with more costly services like high school degree programs and recreational activities.

Even with the expected growth in the number of immigrant detainees, the main source of income for the private prison companies will continue to be revenue from state and federal governments for housing regular inmates.

The state and local prison population totaled more than 1.5 million last year, with about 100,000 of those held in privately managed prisons. But the number of state and federal inmates rose by just 1.4 percent from June 2004 to June 2005, slower growth than the average 4.3 percent annual increases from 1995 to 2000.

By contrast, the number of immigrants in detention is expected to increase by about 20 percent over the next three months alone.

Federal immigration contracts generated about $95.2 million, or 8 percent, of Correction Corp.’s $1.19 billion in revenue last year, and about $30.6 million, or 5 percent, of Geo’s $612 million total income.

In the first quarter of 2006, Corrections Corp.’s detention revenue rose to $25.5 million. The federal immigration agency is now the company’s third-largest customer, after the federal Bureau of Prisons and the United States Marshals Service.

The detention market is projected to increase by $200 million to $250 million over the next 12 to 18 months, according to Patrick Swindle, a managing director at Avondale L.L.C., an investment banking firm that has done business with both Geo and Corrections Corp. He said that a company’s capacity would play an important role in how much of the market it would be able to capture.

The company “currently has 4,000 empty beds in their system,” Mr. Swindle said. “They are bringing on an additional 1,500 beds within the border region.’’

“Reasonably, about 3,000 to 4,000 beds could be made available” for immigrant detention, he said.

Having empty cell space that can be made available quickly is considered an advantage in the industry since the government’s need for prison space is often immediate and unpredictable. Decisions about where to detain an immigrant are based on what is nearby and available. Immigration officials consider the logistics and cost of transportation to the detention center and out of the country.

“We can use the beds whenever and wherever we like,” said Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We are funded for a certain number of beds but there are many beds around the country that are available and it depends where and when we need them if we use them.’’

While companies do not release how much space they currently have available, analysts estimate that Geo has about 1,500 empty places. To increase capacity, the company announced in June that it was building a 576-inmate expansion of the 875-inmate Val Verde Correctional Facility it owns in Del Rio, Tex.

George C. Oley, Geo’s chief executive, said in a statement at the time of the Val Verde announcement: “We are moving forward with the expansion of this important facility in anticipation of the expected increased demand for detention bed space by the Federal Government.”

Despite the two companies’ dominance, they face competition from smaller players in the corrections business. A new federal detention center set to open in Texas at the end of July will be run by the Management and Training Corporation, a privately owned company based in Utah.

The Cornell Companies, based in Texas, currently operates two centers that hold detainees. It is the third-biggest private corrections company, though significantly smaller than Corrections Corp. and Geo, controlling just 7 or 8 percent of the market, according to Mr. Swindle.

“What’s great about the detention business,” Mr. High of Jefferies said, “is not that it’s a brand-new channel of demand, but that it is growing and significant.”

Theresa Scarbrough for The New York Times

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

July 18, 2006

Punishment for Pregnant Women

Punishment For Pregnant Women
By Lynn M. Paltrow, TomPaine.com
Posted on July 18, 2006, Printed on July 18, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/39075/

In a society that values children, it's striking how frequently our public policy falls short of our rhetoric. Too often, the notion of collective responsibility for the nation's children translates into collective demonization of pregnant women. Collective responsibility for our children should mean support for policies that help pregnant women get the care they need to have healthy babies. Instead, states and localities are increasingly blaming individual women, exaggerating the harms from individual behaviors.

In Arkansas' recent special spring session, Hot Springs Rep. Bob Mathis followed up his successful proposal to make it illegal for someone to smoke in a car with children with a proposal to ban pregnant women from smoking. For those who subscribe to the view that pregnant women are vessels, treating them like cars makes perfect sense.

No one disputes that smoking, drinking and using drugs raise serious health issues for everyone, including pregnant women and their future children. Addressing these health matters, however, through punitive prohibition measures does not work to protect the health of women or the babies they're carrying. Rather, focusing on pregnant women as dangerous people who require special control or punishment inevitably undermines maternal and fetal health. Such measures divert attention from pregnant women's lack of access to health services, and deters them from seeking what little help is available. That is why medical groups including the American Medical Association, the March of Dimes and the American Academy of Pediatrics overwhelmingly oppose punitive measures targeting pregnant women.

Nevertheless, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee supported Mathis' proposal, saying, "A lawmaker's suggestion to prohibit women from smoking during pregnancy makes sense from a health standpoint."

It only makes sense if you haven't bothered to think for a moment about the nature of addiction. Ask Rush Limbaugh, who has by word and deed made clear that addiction -- even for the most popular and economically privileged people -- can be very very difficult to overcome. According to press accounts, Huckabee added that "such a prohibition, if enacted, would probably have to cover other unhealthy activities such as drinking." Perhaps the governor forgot about America's experiment with alcohol prohibition in the 1920s. It failed miserably and there is nothing to suggest that resurrecting it for women only will work any better.

Meanwhile, a county in Alabama is also pursuing public policies that punish pregnant women for their otherwise legal behaviors. Late last month in Franklin County, a woman was arrested and charged with child torture for giving birth to a baby that tested positive for methamphetamine. Never mind that Alabama's legislature has not made it a crime to continue a pregnancy to term in spite of a drug problem or that more than 90 medical researchers warn not to rush to judgment about the potential harms of prenatal exposure to methamphetamine. And just ignore the fact that access to appropriate family drug treatment for pregnant and parenting women is virtually non-existent in this country.

Again, drug use and pregnancy are serious public health issues. But reinterpreting pregnancy as a form of torture and pregnant women as torturers won't help. Drug treatment, access to health care and family support will. It is highly unlikely, however that these services will be provided if the pregnant women and new mothers who need those services are stigmatized as child torturers.

Recent days have also seen a California jury deadlock 6-6 in the case of a woman accused of murdering her infant son by feeding him breast milk containing methamphetamine. What was originally identified as an infant death due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome became a murder case when prosecutors found traces of methamphetamine in the baby's system. Prosecutors could not even prove the mother breastfed, but they pursued this theory anyway. The mother was convicted at her first trial. The conviction was overturned and the latest trial resulted in the deadlock.

Now let's bring all this full circle. A June 13 story in The New York Times entitled "Breast-Feed or Else" reports that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has recently come up with a new, strident pro-breast-feeding campaign. The campaign warns that not breast-feeding may be hazardous to a baby's health and it equates failure to breast feed with risky behaviors like smoking and drinking during pregnancy.

So while Washington launches a government-sponsored breastfeeding campaign built on the premise that mothers who don't breast feed are bad, prosecutors in California have been working hard to portray mothers who do breast-feed as worse, in this case as potential murderers.

These seemingly unrelated events share a common feature -- they all focus attention on pregnant women and mothers as the primary threats to the health and well being of our children. Such a preoccupation with pregnant women stands in stark contrast with a government that allows coal-burning power plants to pour poisonous mercury into the environment with impunity and the 45 million people without health insurance -- including many pregnant women and new mothers who lack coverage for smoking cessation programs, addiction treatment and mental health services.

These disparate interventions and proposals have something else in common. They ensure that pregnant women and new mothers will be at risk of judgment and punishment no matter what they do. It is hard to imagine a worse scenario for anyone serious about improving maternal, fetal and child health.

Lynn Paltrow is the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/39075/

Posted by lois at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)

CA: "Crime rate is falling, but importance as political issue remains

Crime rate is falling, but importance as political issue remains

By Dan Walters -- Bee Columnist, Sacramento Bee
Published 12:01 am PDT Monday, July 17, 2006
Fear of crime -- once an obsession -- appears to have faded as a major concern for Californians, and for good reason. The state Department of Justice reported recently that the number of violent crimes committed in California dropped from nearly 350,000 in 1992 to well under 200,000 last year, and when population growth is included, the actual violent crime rate is just half of what it was then.

There's been a similar, if slightly less dramatic, drop in property crimes. The causes of the crime decline are much in dispute among those who deign to offer opinions, ranging from demography to a much-improved economy, better policing and the effects of "three strikes and you're out" and other get-tough sentencing laws. Whatever its causes, the trend is reflected in polls of Californians indicating that while they are worried about many aspects of their lives these days, crime isn't one of them. When the Public Policy Institute of California polled Californians recently on what issues they want the candidates for governor to address, crime didn't even make the list. Immigration was No. 1, followed by education, state finances, the economy and infrastructure deficiencies. The same poll also found that when Californians were asked to rank priorities for spending more public money, education was on top, with just 24 percent listing prisons. That said, crime can still be a potent political campaign issue, especially if it's framed in terms that have visceral appeal, such as crimes against children, and that's why as he seeks a second term this year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be playing the crime card even as the federal courts move closer to seizing control of the state's much-troubled prison system. When John Hagar, the special prison overseer appointed by a federal judge, stepped up his accusations last week that Schwarzenegger's administration was abandoning prison reform and cozying up to the powerful union that represents prison guards, one might have expected challenger Phil Angelides to hit it as a campaign issue. But Angelides would like nothing better than for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) to devote its multimillion-dollar political war chest to his election, so he's not about to say anything negative about the union's influence. Prison reform is a fine concept in the abstract and a passionate cause for some liberal groups, who contend that California's severely overcrowded prisons could be made more habitable by reducing the ranks of low-threat inmates and diverting drug offenders into treatment, but as a political issue it's pretty much a loser. Inmates and their families are not a political bloc. Crime victims groups -- many of which are underwritten by CCPOA -- are a potent force, and they want more people locked up, not fewer. On the very day that Hagar issued his blistering attack on Schwarzenegger, the governor signed a bill that makes it easier to put drug addicts behind bars if they don't comply with treatment diversion programs. A day later, he conducted an online question-and-answer session in which he reiterated his opposition to softening up "three strikes" or any other sentencing laws and touted his own prison reform plan, consisting largely of building more prisons (which would require more CCPOA guards). And a day after that, he signed the official argument for Proposition 83, an initiative that would keep those who prey on children for sexual gratification in prison for longer terms. This is a governor who wants Californians to know that he's as tough on crime as his action movie characters. While crime may not loom as large as a popular concern as it was in years past, he -- much like predecessor Gray Davis -- is not going to give CCPOA or anyone else the opportunity to portray him as soft. And if the courts were to take over the prisons because Schwarzenegger is treating inmates too harshly, it would, to paraphrase another celluloid crimefighter, make his day. Angelides, meanwhile, seems paralyzed by crime as a political issue, unwilling to offend either the liberal blocs who want prison reform or CCPOA, which wants even more felons locked up with union members watching them night and day.

Dan Walters at sacbee.com.

Posted by lois at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2006

MA: Syringes Finally to be Sold Without a Prescription

Syringe sales to begin
Sunday, July 16, 2006
By DAN RING
dring@repub.com

BOSTON - People in Massachusetts can start buying hypodermic syringes without a prescription on Sept. 18, under a new law that also authorizes state "collection centers" for used, dirty needles at police and fire stations, pharmacies and public health offices.

The Massachusetts Senate and the House of Representatives on Thursday overrode Gov. W. Mitt Romney's June 30 veto of a bill that allows people 18 and older to buy a syringe from a pharmacist or wholesale druggist without a prescription.

Proof of identification is required to buy a hypodermic needle.

Supporters said the law will provide for the use of more clean needles and prevent the spread of diseases such as hepatitis C and AIDS.

Opponents said it will encourage illegal drug activities and litter city parks and streets with more used needles.

Late Thursday night, Senate Minority Leader Brian P. Lees, R-East Longmeadow, stopped attempting to block the bill with procedural maneuvers.

The Senate voted 25-11 to override the veto after the House voted 113-42 earlier in the day.

Lees said the legislation is "flawed public policy," but he didn't have the votes to prevent it from becoming law. He said he wanted to clear the way for lawmakers to work on other issues during the final two weeks of formal sessions.

Lees said he is very concerned about the law's effects on Springfield.

"It's going to create more dirty needles on the street," he said.

Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, the Republican nominee for governor in this year's election, also opposed the bill.

"Imagine your children not only coming upon dirty needles in the park, but standing next to a drug addict in the checkout line at CVS, who is there to buy more needles to feed his or her addiction," Healey said at a press conference last month.

The law orders state officials to design and put into effect a program for "safe, secure and accessible" collection and disposal of spent non-commercial syringes and lancets.

Collection centers, including containers, can be established in medical facilities, pharmacies and municipal buildings such as fire and police stations.

Medical waste companies would pick up the containers.

Under the law, the state Department of Public Health must file a report with legislators on the proposed locations of the collection centers.

The department must put a list of centers on line and notify communities of the locations of proposed centers within their borders, but communities receive no veto powers.

A key sponsor of the law, Sen. Robert O'Leary, D-Barnstable, said Friday that Massachusetts will become the 48th state to allow the sale of hypodermic syringes without a prescription.

O'Leary said there is no doubt the law will reduce blood-borne infections such as HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

"Public health will be improved," O'Leary said.

The law orders the state Department of Public Health to develop an "educational insert" to accompany the sale of syringes and needles. Information in the insert would include the proper use of needles, methods for preventing diseases and proper disposal practices.

The public health department also must study the state's four existing needle-exchange programs, including one in Northampton, to determine if they should be phased out or expanded to other communities.
http://www.masslive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-1/1153036094198350.xml&coll=1
©2006 The Republican

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

July 15, 2006

On Prison Reform: Offer Opportuntiies for Self-Rehabiliation

On Prison Reform
Keep fewer behind bars
Offer opportunities for self-rehabilitation
- Spoon Jackson
Friday, July 14, 2006

When I came to San Quentin in 1980, rehabilitation had not yet become a dirty word. During my years at the prison, I was trained in data processing; took Arts-in-Corrections classes; attended church programs; participated in the Course in Miracles, Toastmasters and Transcendental Meditation; read books on tape for the blind; and played Pozzo in the 1988 prison production of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot." But my "rehabilitation" started before getting on the bus to Quentin. In the months when I was still in the county jail, I sat stunned by all the words the district attorney used during my trial. I had no idea what these words meant, and I told myself then that I would not let unknown words trap me. I started studying the dictionary in jail and reading all I could. I began to awaken the sleeping student inside me, and thus took my first steps on my journey. At San Quentin State Prison, I checked out all the books I could get from the prison library and education department. In one notebook, I wrote definitions. In another notebook, I used my favorite words in sentences. I became enraptured with words. I said certain words aloud numerous times, and pondered a word in the way I pondered the garden in front of the prison chapel or a sparrow singing in a tree. I took all the adult high-school education classes offered in the day time. At night, I took all the college classes and self-help/personal-expansion programs offered. All of these programs stressed taking responsibility for your actions, forgiveness, growth, love and peace. Words would be what self-rehabilitated me and my thinking. I learned a few new words each day, and each new word brought forth a geyser erupting inside my mind and soul. The more words I read, studied and pondered, the clearer life became. I became richer and deeper inside. I could see, taste, feel and touch the growth taking shape inside me, and understood things I had never understood before. It was like I walked down an endless hallway full of dark rooms and, with each room I passed, a light came on and I learned something new. Now, it is 2006 and a different world. There are no trades or higher education classes offered in the prison where I am housed. Last year, the California Department of Corrections was renamed the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, but I know from my studies that words can be used to clarify and words can be used to confuse. If the word "rehabilitation" is to be more than a meaningless string of 14 letters, the state must muster the resources and will to offer again a wide range of programs such as those offered in California prisons 20 years ago. These are the programs that allowed many of us to change ourselves. For ultimately, rehabilitation is always self-rehabilitation. Prison had to offer the programs, and I had to make myself active in these programs and in my own self-directed studies. Self-rehabilitation works. I had to choose to change, which meant to get to know myself and find my niche, bliss and myth in life. I had to till the endless gardens in my mind, heart and soul. I had to become anew, despite being in prison. Looking back, I see how words -- unknown words particularly -- intimidated me all of my pre-prison life. Words like "grammar," "language," "composition" and "algebra." Words used by the D.A., such as "propensity," "purport" and "depict." Not knowing what these words meant cut me off from getting to know parts of myself. My self-rehabilitation started with words. At first, I only knew this subconsciously. After years of constant growth, writing, and studying myself, words became my life, my light, my shining soul in the darkness. Words were my dreams, my wood to stoke the fires of my spirit. Words coming out of realness are redeeming. Spoon Jackson has served 29 years of a life-without-possibility-of-parole
sentence and is currently imprisoned at California State Prison, Sacramento. To read more of his writing, go to: www.spoonjackson.com Page B - 11
URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/07/14/EDG
SEJUNEO1.DTL

©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

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

On Prison Reform: Keep Fewer People Behind Bars

On Prison Reform
Keep fewer behind bars
Close prison's revolving door

Kamala D. Harris
Friday, July 14, 2006
One staggering fact risks being overlooked in California's debate over prison reform: 90 percent of state prisoners will return to our
neighborhoods sooner or later. And after they come back, more thanhalf of them will go straight back to prison within two years, most for committing more crimes. The surge of repeat offenders returning from jails and prisons is emerging as the most urgent threat to public safety in
California.

One staggering fact risks being overlooked in California's debate over prison reform: 90 percent of state prisoners will return to our
neighborhoods sooner or later. And after they come back, more thanhalf of them will go straight back to prison within two years, most for committing more crimes. The surge of repeat offenders returning from jails and prisons is emerging as the most urgent threat to public safety in
California.

As state lawmakers engage in a special session dedicated to prison reform and prepare to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to effect that reform, we must demand that they get it right. What happens when former offenders return to our cities and towns must not be an afterthought, but our top priority.

The stakes couldn't be higher for crime victims and their families.
California suffers from the dangerous combination of having the nation's largest prison population and one of the nation's worst recidivism rates. An estimated 120,000 former offenders will be released into California neighborhoods this year, and without an effective strategy to keep them from ending back in prison, the safety of our communities is at enormous risk. We must enact a statewide plan for closely supervising former
offenders by making an historic investment in programs to prevent
re-offending. These programs must target the crucial process of what's called "re-entry," the release of former offenders from state prison or county jails back into society.

Making re-entry a central tool of ensuring public safety means that we need to fundamentally re-think our approach to keeping people safe. We have to start doing what works, rather than just doing what we're used to doing. My fellow prosecutors and I convict offenders, send them to prison,and last year, taxpayers spent $7 billion to house and feed them. But after serving their sentence, more than half of these offenders come back
to their neighborhoods to pick up right where they left off -- committing
more crimes and claiming more victims. To truly protect residents in our
communities, we need to be more than tough; we need to be smart. Public
protection demands that we stop the revolving door between prison and the
streets and reduce the likelihood of re-offense.

Re-entry programs do work, both in preventing crime and saving taxpayer
dollars. Last year, we convened a broad partnership of San Francisco
public and private industry leaders to launch a re-entry program called
"Back On Track." Back On Track changes the lives of young adult first-time
drug sellers in an effort to prevent them from re-offending. Defendants
are required to plead guilty and then are released from county jail
directly into an intensive, full-time, 12-month program at Goodwill
Industries that requires them to get their GED, attend community college,
hold down a job, pay child support and engage as responsible parents and
good neighbors. The results have been remarkable.

Out of nearly 150 participants in Back On Track over the last two years,
only two have been re-arrested -- an enormous improvement over the 47
percent recidivism rate among drug offenders statewide. All current Back
On Track participants are employed full time, in school full time, or both.
The program is a bargain for taxpayers; for every $1 spent on Back On
Track, San Francisco saves $5 in jail costs alone. Re-entry programs in
Brooklyn, N.Y., the state of Michigan and other parts of the country, have
shown similarly positive results. For offenders who genuinely want to
re-enter society, the most effective re-entry programs impose swift
sanctions for bad choices and offer strong incentives for good ones. This
combination of accountability and opportunity is turning lives around.

For example, one young woman entered Back On Track after being arrested
for selling crack on a San Francisco street corner in San Francisco's
Hunter's Point neighborhood. After pleading guilty and entering Back on
Track, she was closely supervised while she enrolled in school, performed
community service and held down a full-time job. By the time she graduated
from Back On Track, she had received a full scholarship to attend Academy
of Art University, where she recently finished her first semester with a 3. 8 grade point average.

Re-entry programs work. They must be at the center of any prison-reform
effort, however, not at the margins. We are at a critical moment in
California's dialogue on public safety and, as elected leaders, we have
before us a tremendous opportunity to find new ways to keep people safe.
It is time to make serious investments in reconstituting former offenders
back into society, so they can be good parents and good citizens. With so
much at stake and so many of them returning to our streets every day, we
must embrace bold, cost-effective ways of doing the business of public
safety. Ultimately, it is the right and smart approach, not only for
victims of crime, but for all of us.

Kamala D. Harris is the district attorney of the City and County of San
Francisco.
http://sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/07/14/EDGOBIPV0Q1.DTL
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Posted by lois at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2006

Selling Drugs to Prisons Is Hot Busines Model

From the Baltimore Sun
Selling drugs to prisons is hot business model
Correct Rx Pharmacy finds profitable niche in corrections
By M. William Salganik

July 14, 2006

Ellen Yankellow lived through a dizzying decade in the world of institutional pharmacy, the business of filling prescriptions for nursing homes and prisons.

After a few years running supermarket pharmacies, she was recruited in 1992 by Rombro Health Services, of Baltimore. Over the next few years, the company was sold, the new company merged and changed names, then merged and changed names again.

The reconstituted company then sold off its correction division, which Yankellow was running. Yankellow left the successor company and joined a partnership, which broke up in acrimony a few years later.

"All I knew was that I was out of work, and I was too young to retire," she said. "And all I knew how to do was this."

Working at her kitchen table, she and two partners, all pharmacists, put together a business plan for Correct Rx Pharmacy Services, a name chosen to represent both accuracy in filling orders and a target market of correctional facilities. Within a couple of months in 2003, Correct Rx had secured a bank loan and line of credit, and opened for business in Linthicum.

So far, it's working out.

In three years, Correct Rx has gone from 14 employees to 85. The privately held company doesn't publish detailed financial figures, but Yankellow reported that sales grew 86 percent a year for the first two years, and gross profit increased 140 percent a year.

From serving 28 facilities (mostly correctional, but some nursing homes) with 35,000 residents, it now reaches 110 facilities with 120,000 residents.

The company was able to begin with experienced staff, many of whom had worked with and for Yankellow through the various corporate permutations, and with a few customers who were familiar with Yankellow and her colleagues. Yankellow owns a majority stake. Her partners are Jill Molofsky, the company's vice president of operations, and Jim Tristani, vice president of administration.

Given that most of Yankellow's work was in supplying prescriptions to correctional institutions, that market accounted for about 85 percent of Correct Rx's business initially, and the proportion remains similar today.

In the beginning, "We focused most of our marketing on the correctional market," she said. Correct Rx's largest customer, and one of its first, is the GEO Group Inc., a private company that manages and provides medical services to prisons. GEO manages prisons in 16 states with some 43,000 beds.

The company got a big boost last July, when it landed a contract to supply Maryland state prisons, with 27,000 inmates. That deal, valued at $32 million over two years, increased revenue 40 percent overnight.

Yankellow said Correct Rx hopes to distinguish itself in the marketplace through service and clinical programs. The clinical efforts include regular reports tracking drug spending to help clients control costs.

And as part of the Maryland contract, she has clinical pharmacists working with inmates at "chronic-care clinics," helping them understand how medications can help them manage their health conditions. She said she wasn't aware of other companies with similar pharmacist-in-the-prison efforts.

"The model makes sense," said C. Daniel Mullins, a professor of pharmacoeconomics at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. Studies have shown, he explained, that clinical pharmacists, working with physicians to manage care, can help reduce costs and produce better outcomes among geriatric patients and among patients with HIV - a significant proportion of some prison populations.

"The role of the physician is to diagnose disease," Mullins said. "They don't specialize in drug therapy."

So far, Yankellow said, the Maryland prison model is too new to see if it's working, but eventually she expects to demonstrate savings. "Once we put a dollar amount on it," she said, "we can market it."

The clinical guidelines used by Correct Rx's pharmacists in the prisons, Yankellow said, would have to be adjusted somewhat for the nursing home population. In prisons, she said, the greatest spending is usually on HIV and psychiatric drugs.

In nursing homes and assisted living facilities, she continued, the clinical challenge is to manage interactions among medications, because the average resident has eight to 10 prescriptions.

While inmates aren't as sick as nursing home residents, they are, on average, sicker than the general population, said Dr. John E. Barnett, associate chief medical officer for Prison Health Services Inc., a Tennessee company that contracts to provide health care to 200,000 inmates nationally.

"People who enter jails and prisons enter with a high disease burden," said Barnett. "They're sicker, and they haven't gotten proper care." In addition to HIV and psychiatric problems, he continued, there are high rates of drug abuse, long-neglected dental problems, obesity and injuries such as gunshot wounds.

In some prisons, he said, as many as a third of the inmates have hepatitis C, a viral liver disease associated with the use of unclean needles. However, he said, it's hard to get comprehensive data on inmate health, because state and local governments running prisons and jails don't have a uniform reporting system.

Corrections is certainly a growing market. There were 2.1 million inmates in federal, state and local prisons in jails as of 2004, the most recent figures available from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. That's an increase of about 35 percent from 1.5 million a decade earlier.

Competing for the correctional pharmacy business are general institutional pharmacies, such as industry giant Omnicare Inc., and pharmacy units within prison health contracting companies such as Prison Health Services.

As a smallish startup, Correct Rx is bucking a trend toward consolidation in institutional pharmacies, as when Kentucky-based Omnicare gobbled up Baltimore's NeighborCare Inc., creating a behemoth serving 1.4 million nursing-homes beds - about half of the national market.

Beyond that, the industry is seeing midsize regional players rolling up mom-and-pop local companies, said Jerry L. Doctrow, managing director and health analyst in the Baltimore office of Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.

"Economy of scale matters" in institutional pharmacy, Doctrow said. "The bigger you are, the more efficiently you can buy." Buying medications at the lowest price gives large companies an edge in bidding for prison business, or in building profit margins in serving nursing homes, where the price the pharmacy gets is largely determined by Medicare prescription drug plans.

Yankellow, however, said that while she's always looking for more customers and steady growth, her goal is not to grow exponentially through expansion or acquisition. Instead, she has asked her managers to read a business book called Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big.

Correct Rx can purchase medicines economically through a buying group, she said, and avoids much of the corporate overhead costs of its large competitors. For example, the plastic chairs in the lunchroom at the Correct Rx facility in a Linthicum office park are from the deck of Yankellow's home.

Over the next year or two, Yankellow looks to expand more in the seniors market. Necessarily, that growth will have to come from Maryland nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Most prison prescriptions can be filled by overnight delivery - Correct Rx serves jails in 22 states from Linthicum - but nursing homes require a pharmacy close enough for quick deliveries.

Correct Rx, the CEO said, "has been profitable from the day we started," and, three years after getting a loan to launch, is "now practically debt free."

So, for the future, she sees more of the same incremental growth. Mentioning the two largest companies in the field, she said, "I don't want to be another PharMerica or Omnicare."

Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery
http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-bz.correctrx14jul14,0,2827400.story?coll=bal-business-headlines

Posted by lois at 07:21 PM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2006

Geo Hands Out Thousands of Dollars to Richardson and others

Prison firm hands out thousands to Richardson
By Steve Terrell | The New Mexican
July 11, 2006
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/46237.html

A Florida-based private prison company that does tens of millions of dollars worth of business with the state has become a big player in the world of New Mexico's campaign contributions.

The GEO Group, formerly known as Wackenhut, has dropped since 2002 more than $79,000 on politicians running for state office here. The biggest beneficiary is Gov. Bill Richardson, who has collected $42,750 from the company since 2005.

According to The Institute of Money in State Politics, Richardson, as of May, had received more money from GEO than any other politician nationwide running for state office in this election cycle.

In addition, GEO in March donated $30,000 to the Democratic Governors Association, which Richardson heads -- although the company contributed $95,000 to the Republican Governors Association last year.

The prison company also has given $8,000 to Richardson's running mate, Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, in the current election cycle. Denish got $500 from the company in the 2002 election cycle.

Others who got contributions from GEO this election cycle are former Richardson chief counsel Geno Zamora, who lost the Democratic primary for attorney general, and congressional candidate Patricia Madrid, the current attorney general, whose contribution represents a switch for GEO.

In the past three elections, the company gave to Madrid's incumbent Republican opponent, Heather Wilson. And in the 2002 state attorney general's race, GEO donated to Madrid's GOP challenger, Rob Perry, a former corrections secretary.

While mainly Democrats in this state currently are benefiting from GEO contributions, nationally the firm gives more to Republicans -- $114,157 for GOP state candidates in this election cycle, compared to $74,725 for Democrats, according to the most recent figures from The Institute of Money in State Politics.

Asked whether the GEO contributions affected Richardson's policy pertaining to private prisons, spokesman Pahl Shipley said: "It's outrageous even to imply or infer a connection and absolutely not true. State contracts are fully transparent and must follow strict procurement procedures. Governor Richardson insists that state agencies act in the best interests of New Mexicans and get the best deal for the state."

GEO spokesmen and lobbyists couldn't be reached for comment Monday.

GEO receives about $38 million from the state, approximately $25 million to run the Lea County prison in Hobbs and $13 million for the prison in Santa Rosa. The company has contracted with the city of Clayton to operate the planned prison in that northeastern New Mexico city. That prison will house state inmates.

The Clayton prison will have about 600 beds, close to the number in Santa Rosa.

Also, the state awarded a GEO subsidiary a contract last year to manage the troubled 230-bed Fort Bayard Medical Center east of Silver City and to build a $30 million replacement hospital with the help of tax-exempt bonds.

A key Richardson ally is a registered lobbyist in this state for GEO Care Inc., which manages the Fort Bayard hospital. Lobbyist Joe Velasquez of Washington, D.C., was the director of the national Richardson political-action committee Moving America Forward. Velasquez was President Clinton's deputy political director and a former AFL/CIO executive.

Richardson's campaign manager, Amanda Cooper, said last week that Velasquez was not the reason for GEO's generosity toward Richardson. Velasquez couldn't be reached for comment.

Shipley noted that the actual contracts with private prisons are done through local governments. The state pays to house inmates in the private prisons. The cost varies for each prison. In the Hobbs facility, the state is charged an average of $18,889 per inmate annually.

GEO first began doing business in New Mexico as Wackenhut as part of Gov. Gary Johnson's plan to let private companies manage some of the state's prisons.

During the Johnson years, Wackenhut made headlines when it was revealed it had hired then state Senate President Pro Tem Manny Aragon as a "consultant." Aragon resigned from his post at Wackenhut after receiving severe criticism from both parties.

In contrast to Richardson, Johnson only received $9,330 from GEO for his 1998 re-election campaign.

Richardson, during his 2002 gubernatorial campaign, wouldn't say whether he would maintain Johnson's prison-privatization program. However, since he took office, the private prisons have remained, and there has been no serious talk about getting rid of them.

According to numbers provided by The Institute of Money in State Politics, GEO in the past two years has made more contributions to New Mexico politicians than any other state, save Florida, where the company's headquarters are located.

GEO dropped $58,500 for candidates running for state offices in Florida, just $500 more than New Mexico, according to the institute's latest figures, which don't include federal offices.

However, New Mexico has only two GEO-run prisons (with a third being built) and a hospital. In comparison, Texas has 17 GEO-operated facilities. The company only gave $2,200 to state candidates there.

According to a study by the institute, New Mexico ranks ninth for all states in terms of contributions from the corrections industry, based on numbers from the 2002 and 2004 elections.

"The fact that we don't have limits on campaign contributions makes this state attractive to those companies that want to get a big bang for their bucks," Matt Brix, executive director of Common Cause, a group that advocates campaign-finance reform, said Monday.

GEO, which operates about 50 prison and jail operations in this country, also has contracts in South Africa, the United Kingdom and Australia. The company manages the "migrant operations program" -- for those detained at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard -- at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base as a joint effort with the U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security.

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com .

GEO/ WACKENHUT CONTRIBUTIONS

CURRENT ELECTION CYCLE

Gov. Bill Richardson, $42,750
Geno Zamora (unsuccessful candidate for attorney general), $20,000
Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, $8,000
Patricia Madrid (for Congress), $5,000
Democratic Governors Association, $30,000
Republican Governors Association, $95,000

PAST ELECTION CYCLES

Gov. Gary Johnson $9,330 (1998)
Rob Perry (GOP candidate for attorney general), $4,000 (2002)
U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, $250 (1998); $500 (2000); $2,000 (2002)

WHERE GEO IS CONTRIBUTING TO CANDIDATES (2005 and 2006)

Florida, $58,500
New Mexico, $58,000
Virginia, $34,107
Mississippi, $12,900
Indiana, $11,000
Louisiana, $10,300
California, $10,000
Texas, $2,200

SOURCES: The Institute of Money in State Politics, Federal Election Commission, New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office

Posted by lois at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)

CA: Governor's Plan Called Out of Touch

Prison plan attacked by expert
Governor's proposals called out of touch

James Sterngold and Mark Martin, Chronicle Staff Writers
Tuesday, July 11, 2006

A leading corrections and parole expert cited in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest prison reform plan has largely disavowed the proposals, describing the plan in an interview as a fantasy that would represent a giant step backward for the state's ailing prison system.

Joan Petersilia, a nationally recognized authority on prison reform and a consultant to the state corrections department, described the plan for a wave of prison expansion that the governor released on Friday -- just as his reelection campaign gears up -- as unworkable, poorly thought out and out of touch with research that she and others have done in recent years on cost-efficient rehabilitation methods.

"I think anybody who understands the situation we're in has got to be mystified by this report," said Petersilia, who runs a state-funded institute on prison reform at UC Irvine. "It's looking backward, not forward."

Schwarzenegger released his plan just days after his Democratic challenger, Phil Angelides, issued his own general program for prison reform and expansion.

Angelides, whose program lacks many specifics, condemned Schwarzenegger for allowing the prison population to shoot up to record levels and for permitting services in the prisons, such as health care, to deteriorate dangerously.

The governor's plan focuses largely on the massive overcrowding, proposing spending at least $3.6 billion on rapid construction of new prisons and expansion of old ones as well as contracting with other states to incarcerate inmates who are also illegal immigrants.

Petersilia ridiculed the idea, in large part because, she said, it would probably not be possible to build the prisons fast enough to keep up with what is expected to be continuous growth in the inmate population. Prisons are at nearly double their capacity.

"The plan, to me, is a fantasy," she said.

Another penal expert, Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, in Oakland, said that over the previous several decades the state has expanded prison capacity 300 percent -- but at the same time the inmate population increased 800 percent.

The focus should be on treating and rehabilitating inmates so they stay out of prison, he said, rather than incarcerating them over and over. Other experts agreed.

"Pick any study done by any criminal justice expert in the last 20 years, and they will talk about sentencing reform, or parole reform," said Dan MacAllair, executive director of the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice. "This doesn't address any of that."

Schwarzenegger's acting corrections secretary, however, argued that the proposal did include efforts to make fundamental changes to the system.

"I can understand where some people are coming from -- when you look at the numbers, it looks like we're just building beds," said Jim Tilton. "But there are parts of this that represent real change."

Tilton said proposals to shift female inmates into community-based facilities and open other programs designed to provide job-training and other services to inmates about to be paroled were based on successful reforms other states had implemented.

Schwarzenegger's report approvingly notes Petersilia's work on planning programs for the reentry of inmates back into their communities after serving their sentences, and it says she was consulted by the governor's staff in preparing the report. Petersilia said she was asked for her comments but that any suggestion she had a hand in preparing the plan or supported it "would be a complete misread."

Schwarzenegger came into office promising major reforms in areas like parole. But many of those programs were gutted, and the inmate population has rocketed to nearly 172,000. According to Petersilia's research, more than 20,000 inmates are in prison because of minor parole violations, and they could be dealt with more efficiently through treatment or diversion programs.

The plan released Friday calls for building a wave of huge reentry centers where newly released inmates could receive extensive training and treatment near their homes.

Petersilia is a strong advocate of such reentry centers, and she said that California is way behind other states, such as Illinois, which have sharply reduced their recidivism rates through such programs.

But she said that the governor's proposal offers no clear way of choosing the best inmates for the program, and probably is unrealistic. Getting approval for what could be as many as 20 reentry centers in urban areas throughout the state -- with as many as 500 beds each -- could prove all but impossible because of community opposition.

Krisberg and Petersilia endorsed one of the governor's proposals, diverting many female inmates to smaller prisons closer to their homes.

But Petersilia said the governor's plan did not offer enough smart options for dealing with the needs of inmates. Well-tailored programs, she said, are the best guarantee that the inmates will not commit new crimes and jam up the state prisons.

She added, "This whole thing just looks like they pulled it out of the wind. I just thought we were beyond this."

Page B - 1
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/11/PRISONS.TMP

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

NY Times Editorial: "Ex-Prisoners and Port Security"

July 11, 2006
Editorial, NY Times
Ex-Prisoners and Port Security

With corrections costs spiraling out of sight and more than half of inmates returning to prison soon after being released, state governments have realized that there is more to crime prevention than just locking people up — and that pushing ex-offenders into the streets without jobs contributes to recidivism. An advisory group created by the Council of State Governments drove home this point recently when it recommended that states and the federal government strike down laws barring ex-offenders from occupations that have nothing to do with their crimes or even with public safety.

That is important to remember in the context of battling terrorism. Rules for screening port workers, for instance, rightly would include barring people who are judged to be “terrorism security risks.” But the Transportation Security Administration has included prior convictions for acts of “dishonesty’’ or “misrepresentation.” That could easily be interpreted to cover the overwhelming majority of people released from prison each year, even those who wrote bad checks.

Bad-check writers might reasonably be excluded from working in banks. But this offense should not be disqualifying for, say, port laborers who have gone on to live crime-free lives. Supporters of the pending rules say that anyone screened out could appeal. But an appeals process that could ensnare hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens would hardly be expeditious — or even fair.

The rules have been criticized as overly broad by legislators from both parties. The T.S.A. should take the hint and revise this — and other screening schemes — so that they conform more closely to what Congress intended when it ordered up the new standards.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2006

KY: Jails & Counties Addicted to State Prisoner Profits

Sunday, July 9, 2006
More state felons held in jails
Lockups crowded, lack prisons' rehab programs, report says
By Andrew Wolfson

The Louisville Courier-Journal

SOMERSET, Ky. ­ For 23 1Ž2 hours each day, James Lumpkin is crammed with 19 other men in a windowless, 14-bed jail cell the size of a garage.

Six of the men sleep on the floor. The air is thick with cigarette smoke. Lumpkin has no job in jail, gets no vocational training and has no prison-type yard for exercise. And this could be his home for five years.

"I lie down and watch TV," said the 31-year-old from Middlesboro, who has spent 20 months of a five-year sentence for possession of a controlled substance in the Pulaski County Detention Center. "It is the only thing I can do."

Lumpkin is one of more than 6,000 Kentucky state prisoners housed in county jails -- local lockups originally designed to hold inmates for a few weeks or months as they await trial or serve misdemeanor sentences of less than a year.

Now, 30 percent of Kentucky's 20,585 state felons -- those sentenced to a year or more -- are being held in county jails. That is four times the rate in Indiana, five times the national average and a higher percentage than any other state except Louisiana.

And the consequences are grave, both for the inmates and the communities to which they will eventually be returned, according to a blistering new report by University of Kentucky law professor Robert Lawson, the author of Kentucky's penal code.

Jails generally are not designed, equipped, staffed or funded to provide the kind of rehabilitation programs that offer "anything more than a faint hope of helping inmates after incarceration," Lawson writes.

Offering little more space than an animal shelter gives a large dog, he says, jails "are more of a storage bin or human warehouse than a penal institution in pursuit of corrections."

The report also asserts that many counties intentionally overcrowd their jails to get additional money from the state -- enabling some of them to make a profit.

Prison and jail officials dispute Lawson's conclusions, saying he underestimates the value of keeping felons in jails closer to home -- and the millions of hours of community service they perform for local governments, schools and parks.

But Lawson's 71-page report, "Turning Jails into Prison -- Collateral Damage from Kentucky's War on Crime," describes the incarceration of long-term prisoners in county jails as the worst consequence of a prison boom in Kentucky, where the prison population has multiplied sevenfold since 1970.

Lawson and other experts who have read the report, including Public Advocate Ernie Lewis, who heads the state public defender system, say the situation should prompt public concern because without rehabilitation and education, inmates held in jails are more likely to commit new crimes when released.

Lawson based his findings on visits to jails in nine counties, which he compared with three prisons.

His conclusions mirror, in part, two other recent reports on county jails:

The state auditor's office in February reported that housing felons in jails "exacerbates or causes overcrowding in 53 of the state's 73 full-service and regional jails" and may lead to lawsuits and liability issues.

A consultant's report in December for the state Corrections Department found that 25 percent of inmates in a sample of 25 jails had to sleep on the floor because of overcrowding and that there are "troubling variations" in programs for them.
Jails defended

Kentucky Jailers Association president Joey Stanton and state Corrections Commissioner John Rees concede that some jails are too small to house inmates long term.

But "the advantage is that you are keeping them closer to their community and that they are not going deeper into the system," Rees said in an interview.

Stanton, who is the Grayson County jailer, angrily disputed Lawson's assertion that jails can't provide programs offered in prison. Stanton said his jail offers classes in nutrition, parenting, smoking cessation, anger management and English as a second language, as well as a working law library.

"We are second to none on programming," he said.

Rees also noted that about 60 percent of felons doing time in county jails are eligible to work outside them, picking up litter and sprucing up public areas. Last year, they performed about 6.4 million hours of community service for local governments, schools and other organizations, work that would have cost about $33 million if paid for at minimum wage. (Inmates get 63 cents a day and one day off their sentences for every week they work.)

But Stanton's own program director, Gail Basham, acknowledged that the number of programs at the Grayson County Detention Center is unusual. And even that jail doesn't have space for vocational training or a prison yard.

"It is pretty much of a lockdown facility," she said.
Economic incentive

Jails have always housed a few felons waiting to be transported to state prisons. But in 1992, the General Assembly enacted a law requiring that offenders convicted of Class D felonies punishable by one to five years serve their time in jails. The law was amended in 2000 to allow some Class C felons to be housed in jails.

In his report -- which has been circulated to state lawmakers and prison officials, and will be published in UK's law review -- Lawson says counties have became "addicted" to the money the state provides for housing state inmates.

The state pays counties $31.50 per inmate per day -- more than it generally costs to house them. At the Pulaski County Detention Center, for example, it costs about $24 a day -- a difference that allowed that jail, which once ran in the red, to run up a $422,000 surplus last year, according to Jailer Mike Harris.

The potential for profit is an incentive to squeeze in as many state prisoners as possible, Harris conceded. "It does pay to overcrowd your jail."

The average number of inmates housed in Pulaski County has jumped from 126 when Harris took over in 2002 to more than 270 now, he said. During a reporter's recent visit, 67 inmates were sleeping on the floor.

Although some counties, including Jefferson, refuse to take state prisoners because their jails already are crowded, Lawson found that "many local governments spare no political effort to maintain the right to overcrowd state prisoners in local facilities that are callously and chronically overcrowded without them."

Despite the overcrowding, some inmates from the Somerset area said they would rather be jailed there than in a prison hundreds of miles from home.

James Townsend, 37, of Pulaski County, has served 27 months of a seven-year sentence for wanton endangerment at the Pulaski jail and said his elderly parents would be unable to visit if they had to travel to a prison farther away. Townsend is allowed outside the cell eight hours a day to do maintenance work.

But Lumpkin, the inmate from Middlesboro, gets no visits and is barred from working outside the cell because he had an emergency protective order against him outside the jail and was cited for fighting inside it. He said he would rather be doing his time in a state prison.

So would Daphne Corder, 26, from adjoining McCreary County, who is serving five years for trafficking in a controlled substance

"This is very stressful," she said of life in the Pulaski jail, where she is one of 11 inmates in a 10-woman pod. "You look at the same walls all day. There is nothing new. This is hard time."

The same view was expressed by a half-dozen state inmates serving time at other jails in Breckinridge, Pike and Grayson counties.

Beyond the bottom line

Lawson acknowledged in an interview that Kentucky is unlikely to abandon jails as a place for housing felons, for the simple reason that jail space is cheaper than prison space.

In 2004-05 in Kentucky, the annual cost per inmate was $9,958 in jails vs. $17,198 a year in prisons.

Reversing the policy also would require building more prisons.

Rees said he is pushing instead for changes that would pay more money to jails that offer extra programs rather than just the required "three hots and cot."

He also announced recently that a review could be completed by the end of next year that will look at the feasibility of the state taking over county jails.

State Rep. Rob Wilkey, D-Scottsville, who sponsored the 2000 law expanding the incarceration of felons in jails, said they may need more educational and vocational services. But he said the public likes seeing state inmates at work in the community and "not sitting on their butt."

Lawson concedes that it may be difficult to convince people of the intangible costs of locking people in jails for years. But he says in his report that conditions there may only enhance the "deficiencies" that made them criminals in the first place.

"Against the only yardstick that ought to matter -- whether a corrections expenditure has the desired effect of reducing crime -- it is not at all clear that jail space is as cheap as it appears to be," he says.

Reporter Andrew Wolfson can be reached at (502) 582-7189.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060709/NEWS01/60
7090375/1008/NEWS01

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

Sentencing Project Submits Recommendations to the UN Human Right Committee

The Sentencing Project Submits Recommendations
to U.N. Human Rights Committee

The Sentencing Project, in conjunction with a broad coalition of human rights organizations, has submitted two issue reports to the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee in preparation for hearings regarding the United States’ compliance with dictates specified in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). These documents are part of a larger “shadow” report that examines U.S. violations of human rights protected under the international treaty.

For the report, The Sentencing Project prepared a statement, Violations of Article 25:Voting Rights, describing widespread problems in the implementation of felony disenfranchisement laws by state governments, resulting in confusion among the electorate and preventing a substantial number of eligible voters from registering.

The Sentencing Project also coordinated the development of a domestic criminal justice section for the Shadow Report. The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, Open Society Policy Center, Penal Reform International, and The Sentencing Project contributed statements for the section, and other national organizations endorsed its recommendations. Key findings in this section include:

The United States fails to adequately fund a viable public defense system, which jeopardizes the fairness of criminal court proceedings and increases the likelihood of erroneous convictions;
Mandatory minimum sentences exacerbate racial inequality in the criminal justice system and have devastating consequences for the African American community;
The American correctional system fails to protect basic human rights in prison, primarily through overcrowding, violence, inadequate programming, and confinement in “supermax” prison facilities;
The practice of routinely prosecuting juveniles in adult criminal court, in some cases subjecting children to sentences of life without parole, continues in the U.S. despite guarantees in the ICCPR for its occurrence to be limited to “exceptional circumstances.”

Ryan King, Policy Analyst with The Sentencing Project will participate in briefings before the Committee at its meeting in Geneva, Switzerland on July 17 and 18. The Committee is expected to release an official list of recommendations regarding the United States' compliance with the treaty at the end of July.

These reports can be found at:
http://www.sentencingproject.org

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

July 09, 2006

Less Jail, Less Crime for Youths

Less jail, less crime for youths
Sacramento Bee
By Mareva Brown -- Bee Staff Writer

Thursday, June 29, 2006

In a departure from expected crime trends, a new study says California's juvenile incarceration rate and juvenile crime rate have both dropped dramatically, prompting some experts to urge a restructuring of the way juvenile criminals are handled.

"It's astonishing," said Dan Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and one of the study's authors. "Because the general assumptions driving criminal justice policy for the last 30 years have been, 'If you have more people in prison, you have less crime on the streets.' And clearly, that's not the case."

Commitments to the state's juvenile correctional facilities have dropped this year to 65 per 100,000 youths -- the lowest rate in 47 years, according to a study released Wednesday.

The drop comes despite a more than double population increase in the same time period, and it coincides with the lowest 2004 juvenile arrest rate in more than three decades.

Macallair and his colleagues say the data should force Californians to rethink the state's approach to juvenile justice, although he stopped short Wednesday of prescribing specific changes to the system.

"We have seen a failed experiment in public safety," Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said in a news conference to reveal the study's results. "And it's out of control."

The study coincides with a political push to overhaul the state's overstressed prison system, which has swollen to accommodate about 171,000 prisoners -- twice its capacity -- and is under the oversight of a court-appointed special master.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week called for a special session of the Legislature in August to address needed changes, including building two new prisons and moving some inmates who are nearing the end of their sentences into "re-entry" facilities that would prepare them for release.

Sacramento Sheriff-elect John McGinness said the study should prompt a rethinking of how some juvenile crimes are addressed.

"There is a risk associated with putting youth in confined quarters with others who misbehave," he said.

"And when it relates to juvenile offenders, we have to ask the question if we can get them on a different path. We have a greater obligation to try."

The policy implications reach far beyond youths, according to Macallair and others at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a long-time criminal justice policy research group.

Adult incarceration and arrest rates also showed no correlation: Both rose significantly over the past several decades, according to the study, which used data compiled from the state departments of Justice, and Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Between 1980 and 2004, despite a 500 percent increase in the rate of adult imprisonment in California, the felony arrest rate jumped by 11 percent statewide.

The leap was significant among men 40 to 59, who typically have low offense and arrest rates but recently have seen dramatic increases in both.

The study's authors believe it reflects drug-addicted men who have been in and out of the system for years and finally receive lengthy prison terms.

"We have to start taking a look at what this may mean," Macallair said.

"And frankly I'm not sure of what it means or why it happened."

He said the juvenile rates cannot be explained by diversions of cases to adult court, or diversions of incarcerations to county camps and other facilities.

"This is possibly the best-behaved generation of kids we've had," Macallair said.

"It's an interesting look at the whole incapacitation theory."

http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/ca/story/14273044p-15083217c.html

Posted by lois at 06:13 PM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2006

CA: Governor Wants to Send Some People who are Incarcerated Out of State

Governor wants some inmates sent out of state

Mark Martin, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Saturday, July 8, 2006

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as part of a plan costing at least $3.6 billion to alleviate overcrowding in California prisons, is proposing to free up space by contracting with other states to house 5,000 incarcerated illegal immigrants.

A detailed outline of the governor's prison agenda, released Friday, also says the corrections department needs to add more than 51,000 beds -- the equivalent of at least 10 large prisons -- during the next 15 years and offers new insights into the stresses put on a 33-prison system that is operating at nearly 200 percent capacity.

One new proposal is a stark indicator of how dire the state's overcrowding problem has become: The administration wants to limit the number of times inmates can flush toilets as a way to ease environmental problems caused by overtaxed wastewater systems. Officials are even considering reducing the amount of drinking water in prisons because of shortages of fresh water.

The report provides new details of ideas Schwarzenegger mentioned last week when he called for a special legislative session to deal with overcrowding, puts a price tag on some of the proposals and includes several short-term fixes administration officials believe can be made in the next year.

The state's dysfunctional prison system is increasingly becoming a political problem for the governor, who is running for re-election this year. Schwarzenegger's Democratic opponent, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, held his second news conference in two days on Friday focusing on the prison system. Angelides compared the corrections department to Enron Corp., saying that if he were elected, fixing the system would be akin to a chief executive taking over a bankrupt company.

One part of the governor's plan would deal with the fact that California houses in its prisons as many as 20,000 illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes.

Schwarzenegger officials said Friday that states like Louisiana, Texas, Michigan and Indiana have available prison beds and that they will seek contracts with those states to send inmates there. The administration would have to change a state law requiring an inmate's permission to be sent out of state, something officials said they would seek during the special legislative session that reconvenes next month.

The new legislation would allow the state to ship illegal immigrants out of state without their approval.

Schwarzenegger has been demanding since he took office that the federal government pay the state to house the immigrants, but so far he has been unable to persuade President Bush to provide the money.

Among the proposals are other ways to alleviate overcrowding, such as building two new prisons, adding on to existing prisons and opening scores of what the administration calls mini-prisons to house inmates who are about to be released.

Prisoners about to be paroled would be sent to so-called re-entry facilities, located mostly in urban areas where most inmates come from, for job-training, mental health therapy and other services aimed at helping them return to society and stay out of trouble.

The governor wants "to keep people who leave prison from returning -- because they've created new victims -- by changing some of the fundamental problems in the prison system,'' said Margita Thompson, the governor's press secretary.

Thompson stressed that the governor's plan calls for more than just building prisons, noting that the re-entry facilities and new programs for female prisoners would be major changes for the department.

The report does not state the total cost of Schwarzenegger's proposals. But it does note that repairs to water systems, building two new prisons and adding on to other prisons would cost $3.6 billion.

Schwarzenegger also wants to send as many as 1,000 inmates to a new facility in Coalinga (Fresno County) built to house mentally ill inmates. The facility is virtually empty due to a dispute between the state's Department of Mental Health and the Department of Corrections over security issues.

While an administration official said they would try to send inmates with mental health problems there, some inmates could be sent there simply for housing purposes.

That proposal met with resistance from one inmate advocate who has been involved in a long-running lawsuit with the prison system over mental health care for inmates.

"We've spent years litigating to get mentally ill inmates into those beds, and now they want to fill them up with other inmates? I don't think that plan gets off first base,'' said Don Specter, executive director of the Prison Law Office.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Proposals for state's prisons

Among the governor's proposals to deal with overcrowding in the state's prison system:

-- Immigrants

Send 5,000 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes to prisons in other states.

-- Housing

Add prison space over 15 years capable of housing 51,000 inmates.

-- Water

To reduce the amount of polluting wastewater discharged from prisons, limit the number of times inmates can flush toilets.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/08/MNGP8JS3U61.D
TL

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

July 07, 2006

FL: Former Prisons Boss Charged in Taking Kickbacks from sales of snacks to families visiting relatives in prisons

Originally published July 6, 2006
Former prisons boss charged
Jim Crosby faces charges of taking kickbacks
By Bill Cotterell
Tallahassee Democrat
DEMOCRAT POLITICAL EDITOR

JACKSONVILLE - Federal investigators filed corruption charges Wednesday against ousted Corrections Secretary Jim Crosby and former Panhandle regional boss Allen Clark, who admitted they took kickbacks of about $135,000 from sales of snacks to families visiting inmates at Florida prisons.

The state separately charged eight current or former Department of Corrections employees with misusing inmate labor, state property and recycling funds in a "culture of corruption" within the prison system. Department of Corrections Secretary Jim McDonough immediately fired the three officers still working in the prisons.
Clark, a Crosby protégé who resigned last August as regional director, is scheduled to enter a plea in U.S. District Court today. Crosby, a former Starke mayor who rose from correctional officer to head of the 27,000-employee department over three decades, is set for arraignment and a plea on Tuesday.

U.S. Attorney Paul Perez said both men are cooperating with continuing investigations. He said federal sentencing guidelines call for seven to eight years in prison and fines up to $250,000, but how long they serve will be decided by a judge - and will be influenced by the value of their cooperation.

Nestor Duarte, assistant special agent in charge of the Jacksonville FBI office, and Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Gerald Bailey went out of their way to commend DOC employees who cooperated in the investigation of higher-ups.

"These were law-enforcement officers who were entrusted to uphold the law, yet they violated their oath and betrayed the public's trust and confidence," Duarte said. "It fosters a culture of corruption which permeates the department."

Bailey said employees spoke out "under difficult and stressful circumstances." The prison system has for years been known for cronyism, reprisals and sometimes violence in the ranks.

The investigation started when Postal Service inspectors discovered a shipment of steroids, Perez said. Over more than 18 months, state and federal agencies have interviewed more than 100 prison employees, inmates and family members in 15 counties.

Besides some officers pleading guilty in steroid cases, recent scandals have involved the severe beating of an employee's husband in a fight during an awards banquet at the Tallahassee armory, a barroom brawl at a hangout popular with guards near Florida State Prison, hiring of a no-show employee who played on an Apalachee Correctional Institution softball team, use of prison equipment and inmate labor for personal enjoyment and theft of recyclables that were allegedly cashed in by some employees. With the new arrests, 21 employees have been prosecuted in the investigation - which state and federal officials emphasized are continuing.

Gov. Jeb Bush, who had staunchly backed Crosby last year, issued a statement saying "I am disappointed by this violation of the public's trust and by the abuses committed by those in leadership positions." He commended McDonough, a retired Army colonel, for installing a code of conduct and taking other measures to improve DOC operations.

"Here's how the kickback scheme worked," Perez said at a news conference. "In 2003, Crosby negotiated a contract to privatize the Florida Department of Corrections institutional canteens with Keefe Commissary Network. In 2004, Crosby and Clark were instrumental in arranging for an acquaintance of theirs to become a subcontractor of Keefe to handle cash derived from visitor-park canteens, which were a cash-only business."

Perez would not identify the acquaintance - referred to in Crosby's plea agreement as "the conspirator" - because of the continuing investigation. However, the FBI last month raided the Gainesville offices of American Institutional Services Inc., a vending business owned by Eddie Dugger.

Neither Dugger, Keefe Commissary Network nor American Institutional Services was accused of any wrongdoing in the announcement or court documents released by Perez, Duarte and Bailey.

"The initial kickbacks grew from approximate $1,000 a month to approximately $12,000 a month and were made from about November of 2004 through early 2006," said Perez. "These charges are disturbing. They're disturbing because they go all the way to the top of the Department of Corrections."

He said the unidentified Gainesville associate was to make $1.5 million a year by handling Keefe's "canteen" business in visiting areas of several prisons. The government said the man told Clark he would kick back 40 percent to Clark and Crosby.

McDonough, who took over when Gov. Jeb Bush asked Crosby to resign last February, has fired, demoted or reassigned several high-level employees and canceled or reopened some contracts. He said the vending deal will be re-bid in October and that Keefe would get "close scrutiny" in the process.

Rick Lober, head of executive investigations for FDLE, said the state charges against eight other men fell into "two general areas" of misusing inmate labor or DOC equipment and cashing in recyclable materials from the prisons.

Lamar Edward Griffis, 49, a former assistant warden at the regional medical center, was charged with "accepting unlawful compensation," which Lober said involved DOC property and inmate labor.

The others, all charged with grand theft, were Richard Allen Frye, 37, a former colonel at Apalachee Correctional Institution; Paul Lamar Miller Jr., 33, a former officer at New River Correctional Institution; former Sgt. Theodore Foray Jr., 46, of New River; Bryan Kim Griffis, 36, a former sergeant at New River; Christopher Paul Taylor, 34, a sergeant at Florida State Prison; Lt. Bobbie Dewane Ruise, 41, of Levy Forestry Camp; and Correctional Officer Stephen Randall Parker, 32, of New River.
Ruise, Taylor and Parker were still working for the department Wednesday morning but McDonough said they were fired later in the day.

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

Private Prisons Have a Lock on Growth

Private Prisons Have a Lock on Growth
With state-run prisons overflowing, outfits such as Corrections Corp. of America stand to benefit

By Palash R. Ghosh
July 6, 2006
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/jul2006/pi20060706_849785.htm

Prisons in the U.S. are bursting at the seams and the nation's jail population is likely to keep growing at an estimated 3% to 5% a year. Private correctional facility operators such as Corrections Corp. of America ("CXW") and Geo Group ("GGI") are viewed by some experts as well-positioned to handle the overflow of convicts, thereby alleviating the congestion in state-run institutions, and at a lower cost.

According to the Justice Dept., U.S. prisons held about 2.19 million inmates as of midyear 2005, a 2.6% increase over the prior year. From 1995 to 2005, the country's imprisoned population ballooned by more than 600,000. Even more alarming, at midyear 2005, jail facilities were operating at 95% of capacity.

INCREASED DEMAND. Florida, one of the nation's largest prison systems, presents an interesting microcosm of the current crisis. According to the Florida Corrections Dept., the state's inmate population totaled 84,901 as of midyear 2005, a 3.6% gain from the prior year, a 19.2% rise over the five-year period, and a 37.0% jump over the past decade.

Florida estimates that care of each prisoner costs $18,101 annually—nearly $50 per day.

The situation in California, which boasts the country's largest prison population with about 171,000 inmates, is particularly dire, with many jails already at double capacity. According to the California Corrections and Rehabilitation Dept., the price to the taxpayer for running these prisons totals about $7 billion annually.

Wayne Willems, CEO of Brazos Capital Management, is bullish on the private prison industry because of the favorable supply-demand scenario. "States and the federal government are not willing to spend money to build more prisons, and the private sector is," he says. "They can take more inmates from state and federal institutions." Plus, private prison facilities are poised to increase business given the federal government's plan to catch and retain illegal immigrants, he says.

REDUCE RECIDIVISM. According the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than 12% of all federally sentenced offenders and about 6% of state prisoners are currently managed by private corrections companies, and these figures are growing. As such, the private prison subsector has significant upside, Willems says.

Texas, which has the nation's second largest prison complex, is committed to the privatization program. The state has more than 40 private jails and prisons capable of handling nearly 30,000 inmates, says Marc A. Levin, director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. In total, Texas prisons house about 152,600 inmates, and the state's Legislative Budget Board projects this figure will rise to 165,300 by 2010. Levin estimates that 16,000 Texas prisoners are currently housed in private facilities.

Levin believes private prisons are more economical than state institutions. "Savings in Texas from private prisons have been estimated at 10% to 14%," he says. "Moreover, private facilities, such as those run by Corrections Corp. of America, often provide far better access to programs such as drug treatment and job training. Such programs have also been demonstrated to reduce recidivism."

SAFE HAVEN. The Texas Criminal Justice Dept. estimates that it costs $40 per day to incarcerate someone, not including construction costs and state administration. Based on that figure, Levin estimates that the current system costs $2.2 billion. "We estimate that building another 14,000 units would cost approximately $1.24 billion," Levin says.

"However, we think that innovative policy changes can reduce or eliminate the need for new units and that any new capacity can more efficiently be created by leasing beds from private operators rather than by building new state-run prisons."

Corrections Corp. of America is a core holding in three of the Brazos mutual funds—Brazos Small Cap fund ("BJSCX"), Brazos Mid Cap fund ("BJMCX"), and Brazos Growth fund ("BJGRX"). Willems says he likes Corrections Corp. of America given its recurring revenue stream and the fact that the company has delivered upside earnings surprises over the past three quarters. "CXW can predictably provide 20% annual earnings growth,"" he says. "And considering the poor market climate we are now in, with the specter of rising interest rates and inflation, stocks like CXW offer a safe haven as they are not economically sensitive.

Corrections Corp. of America's stock price has risen 26% since the beginning of the year (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/2/06, "Corrections Corp. Breaks Out"). The company has approximately 71,000 beds in 63 facilities under contract for management in 19 states and Washington, D.C. The majority of these prisons are located in the South and Southwest, including 15 in Texas alone. About 62,000 inmates are currently under the company's supervision.

Its main rival, Geo, was spun off from Wackenhut several years ago and currently operates 62 correctional and residential treatment facilities—with capacity of about 51,000 beds—in the U.S., Australia, South Africa, Canada, and Britain. A third major player in this field, Cornell ("CRN"), has contracts to operate 82 facilities in 18 states and D.C. with a service capacity of 19,500.

Ghosh is a reporter for Standard & Poor's Fund Advisor

Posted by lois at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)

MA: CORI Reform does not pass but progress is made

This is a message on what happened to CORI and mandatory minimum sentencing reform in the MA legislature. Even though 688 (CORI reform
passed in the Senate the Amendments were not make it through the Budget Conference Committee. Still, it is definitely progress.

The bill will be refilled in advance of the 2007 legislative session. It is important to keep talking with our elected reps in the House and Senate about the damage CORI causes and how we expect them to take leadership on this in the next session.

This was a beginning…next we need to keep the momentum in the Senate and focus attention on the House. Lois

A message from Brandyn Keating of CJPC

Friends:

Many of you have been following the progress of CORI reform and mandatory minimum sentencing reform

-- in the State Budget

(Amendments 688 and 705 to the Senate Budget http://www.mass.gov/legis/07budget/senate/amendments/jud.htm)

-- and in the Joint Judiciary Committee

(Public Safety Act of 2006 http://www.cjpc.org/PublicSafety.htm).

Many of us have written letters, called, emailed and met with our legislators in-district, and journeyed to the State House.

Unfortunately, Amendments 688 & 705 did not make it through the Budget Conference Committee; nonetheless our voices have been heard.

Our efforts received overwhelming support in the Senate, spearheaded by Amendment 688 lead sponsors Senator Creedon and Senator Wilkerson, who were joined by seven additional co-sponsors and Amendment 705 lead sponsor, Senator Creem, who was joined by Senators O'Leary and Tisei. This latter amendment received bipartisan support.

While the House was more cautious, it agreed to form a commission to study the issue with the goal of releasing new legislation by this December for the next session.

In unprecedented fashion, mandatory minimum sentencing and CORI reform advocates spoke with one voice, building a movement that could not be ignored.

In response:

legislators funded a CORI training and audit unit and created a commission to study the issue of CORI and make reform recommendations to the legislature http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/house/ht05pdf/ht05000.pdf ; and
29 senators went on record in favor of Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Reform in the roll call vote that added Amendment 705 to the senate budget.
Though this legislative session is coming to a close, and there will not be substantive law changes on these issues through the budget or bill process this year, we created much momentum on which to build in the coming year.
Thank you for your time, energy and dedication. There is now a great deal more work to be done as we gear up for the bill filing deadline this December for the new legislative session. It is critical that all of us prepare in advance of December so that we can build on all of the progress that was made this year.
Remember: together we can make a difference.
With gratitude,
Brandyn Keating
www.cjpc.org

Posted by lois at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)

July 06, 2006

WA: Sex Offender Gets $1.7 Million Facility All to Himself for Now

Sex Offender Gets $1.7 Million Facility All To Himself - For Now

July 3, 2006

By Associated Press

SEATTLE - The scent of barbecue seems out of place in a South Seattle neighborhood of foundaries, cement silos and rail cars. But every so often it arises from a courtyard in a windowless warehouse where Joseph Aqui is the only resident: King County's $1.7 million transition facility for sex offenders.

Aqui, 53, a serial rapist, arrived in February after spending nearly 20 years in prison and a decade in the state's controversial sex-offender civil commitment program, under which predators can be held indefinitely if they are deemed dangerous. He could get a roommate later this year, depending on how another offender progresses in treatment.

But for now, the residence is all his.

The state opened the Secure Community Transition Facility in response to court rulings that said authorities had to find a way for offenders to graduate to programs less restrictive than the Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island. It's one of a very few halfway houses in the state for sex offenders.

Aqui, who has admitted to 15 rapes, is kept behind 12-foot-high walls and a 1,700-pound magnetic door. Twenty-six cameras monitor the six-bed facility, which has a dozen staff members plus a police cruiser parked outside. It also has a backup generator, radio system and a tempered-glass surveillance booth overlooking the home's central living room.

He barbecues in the building's courtyard, where he hopes to plant a 4-foot-by-4-foot garden. He jogs every morning on a treadmill and uses a stationary bicycle in the living room, according to a recent article about the facility in The Spokesman-Review of Spokane. There's a large TV with satellite channels, some of them blocked to avoid arousing him.

A few potted plants dot the living room. Consumer Reports magazines, the Wall Street Journal, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seventh-day Adventist magazines, Forbes and a book titled "How to Clean Practically Anything" are piled on a table.

Aqui won't speak to reporters, but facility manager Tabitha Yockey said he enjoys researching the stock market and tying fishing flies, which are sold by his wife, whom he married while he was in prison. Aqui attends a weekly counseling session with a sex offender treatment provider, as well as a weekly group meeting.

A radio-toting escort accompanies him whenever he leaves. He is allowed to go shopping, to restaurants, to the library and to look for work. He wears an electronic monitoring anklet at all times, and whenever he does leave, staffers photograph him, so they can immediately describe his clothing to police if he flees.

He's been trained as a baker, landscaper, sheet metal worker and data entry clerk, but no one wants to hire him.

The cost of the facility baffles some, including Jim Hines, a Gig Harbor man who has lobbied for years for tougher penalties for sex offenders.

"When you see this beautiful building - one guy, the cost, law enforcement, the TV cameras - it's just crazy," Hines said. "Nobody's comfortable with these guys getting out, but even to me, this doesn't make a lot of sense."

Hines would like to see all Level 3 sex offenders - thousands of men - on electronic GPS monitoring and released into communities after they serve their sentences.

"We owe it to our kids and communities to keep those most dangerous people on a short leash," Hines said. "But to put them in a halfway house like this, I think, is silly. Does society feel safe that we're spending $2 million on one guy?"

There are 238 sex predators in the civil confinement program. So far, 11, including Aqui, have been placed in halfway houses or other community homes. Four live in a halfway house on McNeil Island. Three others share a home in Snohomish County. One, suffering from severe medical problems, is in an adult family home in King County. The other two are in Mason and Kitsap counties.
http://www.komotv.com/stories/44231.htm

Posted by lois at 07:06 PM | Comments (0)

July 05, 2006

WA: Alcoholics Who Are Homeless Receive a Permanent Place to LIve and Drink

July 5, 2006
Homeless Alcoholics Receive a Permanent Place to Live, and Drink
By JESSICA KOWAL, NY Times

SEATTLE, June 30 — Rodney Littlebear was a homeless drunk who for 15 years ran up the public tab with trips to jail, homeless shelters and emergency rooms.

He now has a brand-new, government-financed apartment where he can drink as much as he wants. It is part of a first-in-the-nation experiment to ease the torment of drug and alcohol addiction while saving taxpayers' money.

Last year, King County created a list of 200 "chronic public inebriates" in the Seattle region who had cost the most to round up and care for. Seventy-five were offered permanent homes in a new apartment building known by its address, 1811 Eastlake.

Each had been a street drunk for several years and had failed at least six efforts at sobriety. In a controversial acknowledgment of their addiction, the residents — 70 men and 5 women — can drink in their rooms. They do not have to promise to drink less, attend Alcoholics Anonymous or go to church.

"They woke me up in detox and told me they were going to move me in," said Mr. Littlebear, 37, who has had a series of strokes and uses a walker. "When I got here, I said, 'Oh boy, this don't look like no treatment center.' "

These are the "unsympathetic homeless" who beg, drink, urinate and vomit in public — and they are probably the most difficult to get off the streets, said Bill Hobson, executive director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center, the nonprofit group that owns 1811 Eastlake.

In 2003, the public spent $50,000, on average, for each of 40 homeless alcoholics found most often at the jail, the sobering center and the public Harborview Medical Center, said Amnon Shoenfeld, director of King County's division of mental health and chemical abuse.

Mr. Hobson's group expected the annual cost for each new resident of 1811 Eastlake to be $13,000, or a total of $950,000. It cost $11.2 million to build and is paid for entirely by the City of Seattle and county, state and federal governments.

The actual price tag will probably rise because residents have more serious health problems than expected, said Margaret King, a social worker who manages the building. Many have heart ailments, cirrhosis, diabetes, head injuries from falling on sidewalks and severe circulation problems. Four residents have already died, including one who moved in with late-stage liver cancer.

The building's critics are particularly incensed that residents do not have to stay sober. The Seattle Times, in 2004, editorialized that government should insist that the residents quit drinking in order to live there.

"Bunks for drunks — it's a living monument to failed social policy," said John Carlson, a conservative radio talk show host here. This approach, he said, is "aiding and abetting someone's self-destruction."

Drink they do. When residents are shuttled to supermarkets for groceries, Ms. King said, they often buy wine or beer, which is sold in this state alongside the milk, eggs and orange juice.

Like Mr. Littlebear, Howard Hunt, 41, moved in the first day. Homeless since 1999, Mr. Hunt said he drank a daily bottle of whiskey before he came to 1811 Eastlake. He has epilepsy and walks with crutches because he fractured his hip.

He shrugged when asked about the policy allowing him to drink in his new home. "We're going to drink somewhere," Mr. Hunt said.

Influential Bush administration officials have come to support this project, including the on-site drinking. John Meyers, director of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's regional office here, said he blanched when he learned that his agency had pledged $2 million for it. He now calls 1811 Eastlake "a glorious experiment."

"It's a lot cheaper having them spend the night at 1811 than at the E.R. or at the drunk tank," Mr. Meyers said.

Philip F. Mangano, executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, said there should be a similar building in every city in the country.

These apartments fit into the "housing first" philosophy, newly adopted by many cities, intended to give permanent housing and intensive services to long-term homeless people. Local officials have already approved other buildings for the mentally ill and people with chronic medical conditions, said Adrienne Quinn, director of Seattle's Housing Office.

Though it would be unthinkable for a market-rate apartment building in this booming city, 1811 Eastlake's front door is across the street from busy Interstate 5, on the edge of downtown. The Starbucks around the corner donates pastries, but Robb Anderson, 43, an owner of the trophy shop next door to the apartments, complained bitterly about paramedics' 120 visits in just six months.

The building's atmosphere during a recent daytime visit was more convalescent home than rowdy dorm. A few men in the television room stared silently at a World Cup match, while others wearing backpacks trudged through the front door and into the communal kitchen for apple fritters and coffee.

A third of the residents, including Mr. Littlebear, are American Indian; an estimated 20 percent are military veterans. The average age is 45. Most receive state or federal disability payments, and all residents pay 30 percent of their income as rent under HUD's guideline for low-income housing.

By choice or if they need frequent medical attention, 26 residents live on the first floor in office-sized cubicles with a bed, desk, dresser and small refrigerator. These communal living areas have a strong scent of body odor.

Upstairs, 49 people have private studio apartments with a single bed, bath and kitchen. For many, this normal existence is a huge adjustment. One man continues to sleep on the floor next to his bed, and another refused sheets in favor of his sleeping bag, Ms. King said.

Their quality of life, drinking and use of public services are being studied by researchers at the University of Washington. Ms. King said the alcohol intake of the residents was shockingly high at first, but many residents say they now drink less, at least by their standards.

"I cut down," Mr. Littlebear said. "I've got to save my liver."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)

NY: Lessons In New Ways to See- a Project for Girls of the (Rikers) Island Academy

Lessons in New Ways to See
By RANDY KENNEDY, NY Times

In a room full of teenage girls, Lastarr Freeman hardly speaks, and when she does, her voice rarely rises above a whisper. Yet when it was time to pose for a portrait last month, she decided to dress up as a boxer, with trunks draped around her legs and surgical gauze crisscrossing her slender hands. All that was needed to complete the picture, and the transformation, were the gloves.

"I've always been a fighter," she explained.

Anyone who has passed much time in the Louis H. Pink project in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, where Ms. Freeman has spent most of her life, knows that she probably has her reasons for fighting. But by last year it had led her, at 16, to the back of a police car and the inside of a booking cell, exchanging one tough place for another even tougher. "Everything about where I live is bad," she said, an expression more of plain fact than of complaint.

Until recently she had little desire to express herself, much less the power to step outside her circumstances and see in herself the fighter that she both needs and fears.

But over the last 15 weeks, mostly in the basement editing rooms of the International Center of Photography in Midtown Manhattan, she and more than a dozen other girls — who all have also been in trouble with the law — have been trying to gain a measure of control over their difficult lives by looking at them through the relative calm of a camera lens. Or more accurately, as seen on a camera video screen, lighted up along the back of an eight-megapixel digital camera.

The program providing the cameras was created last year in collaboration with the Friends of Island Academy, an organization that supports the high school on Rikers Island and tries to help lower the recidivism rate for its alumni.

Art therapy has been used for years to try to give troubled youth a different perspective on their lives, and photography has long aided that process by lowering the barriers to entry: no need to know how to draw or paint, just a willingness to pick up a camera and try. But digital photography is now offering the added power of immediacy, instantaneous images that are proving especially effective for groups of girls like those in the program, mostly black and Hispanic, who struggle as much as or perhaps more than teenage boys with how they are viewed by society.

The cameras, which the girls learned to use both on the streets and in a studio, allow them not only the rare chance to channel their energy into a creative project but also to control images of themselves, a kind of twist on Susan Sontag's views about the medium and control in her book "On Photography." ("To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed," Ms. Sontag wrote. "It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge — and, therefore, like power.")

Beth Navon, the executive director of the Friends group, said the idea for the photography program grew out of an overall philosophy that art should be an essential part of helping teenagers from poor urban neighborhoods find a way out of trouble.

"It's not sort of an extra — like, 'If you do the other stuff, you get to take the art classes,' " she said. "It's integral to what they're learning. Seeing it as integral is key."

Lacy Austin, the director of community programs at the International Center of Photography, said that when the program began last year, she was unsure how many girls would embrace the idea as more than a novelty, a kind of recess period with high-tech electronics.

When the classes began, though, a large core group of girls became deeply involved and came faithfully, even when their chaotic lives made it hard for them to keep appointments, other than those with parole or probation officers.

"Once the door is opened, they don't want to leave," Ms. Austin said, adding, "I think because photography is so fluid and so immediate — it's reflecting back to them a sense of possibility in their lives they haven't seen before."

To sit in on the most recent class over the course of several weeks was to watch a gathering that was part high-school photo club, part self-help group, part fashion show, part summer camp and running confessional.

Several of the girls had lost one or both parents at an early age. Some had bounced through foster homes or overtaxed relatives' homes, dropping out of school as they shuttled from New York to the deep South or Puerto Rico. Two of the girls already had children of their own, and a third who began the program nine months pregnant brought her infant daughter to the last class.

As much as the cameras, computers and photos were therapeutic tools for the girls, simply seeing the doors of a sleek Midtown art palace regularly opened to them and their problems often seemed to do as much for their spirits.

"A lot of these girls never get out of their neighborhoods," said Denole Taylor, director of the young-adult department for the Friends organization. "They come here and point and say, 'Wow, is that the Empire State Building?' And they've lived here all their lives."

The hundreds of photographs the girls took of themselves and of one another became a weekly window on their lives. One girl, assigned to focus on her body, took a blurry, postmodern-looking picture of her unshaved armpit. "It's my street revolution," she explained. "I don't shave."

Jessica Bennett, 18, whose mother died of cancer when she was 7, and whose father died of cancer when she was 14 — she has no stable home at present, she said — took a picture of herself balancing a huge basket of apples on her head, striving to look like what she called a "strong African princess" but also realizing that she was symbolizing something else.

"The way my life is," Ms. Bennett said, "I guess I'm just carrying a load on my head."

Liza Jessie Peterson, an actor and writer who works as an outreach coordinator for the Friends of Island Academy, looked over Ms. Bennett's shoulder one day in April as she reviewed her pictures in a digital-editing studio. "I like these," Ms. Peterson told her, "because you look larger than life."

Ms. Bennett laughed, in a way she usually does not about her size. "That's because I am larger than life," she said.

But Ms. Peterson shook her head. "I don't mean like that, girl — I mean like the Statue of Liberty," she said, pointing at one of the pictures and wagging a finger. "That's a woman that's coming to save the 'hood."

During the classes and photo sessions it was easy to forget how the girls came to be at Friends of Island Academy and made their way into the photo program. Some had actually spent time in Rikers; others ended up at the organization after run-ins with the law that landed them on probation or in juvenile centers.

Most were remarkably open about their mistakes and the consequences. "I'm tired of probation," one girl, Mary-Lynne Louisa, 18, who came back to participate in the class for a second year, wrote in an end-of-project personal essay last week. "I'm tired of belonging to the state. I'm tired of being just a number."

Ms. Freeman, who first came to the school after being arrested on assault charges, was still wearing her boxing trunks and knuckle tape after the project's final portraits were taken last month. She said she has stayed out of trouble for almost a year now and has no intentions of becoming just a number again. But at 17, she's too old to harbor any illusions — even those fostered by the power of art — that she will not have to continue fighting for survival.

"I'm not trying to live in a bad life anymore, but it's hard," she said. "I'm trying to make my family and myself happy. I think I can do it. I hope I can."

To see the slide show go to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/arts/design/05rike.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)

LA: With Jobs to Do, Louisiana Parish Turns to Inmates

"You just call up the sheriff, and presto, inmates are headed your way. "They bring me warm bodies, 10 warm bodies in the morning," said Grady Brown, owner of the Panola Pepper Corporation. "They do anything you ask them to do."

"As a result, it is here that the nation's culture of incarceration achieves a kind of ultimate synthesis with the local economy. The prison system converts a substantial segment of the population into a commodity that is in desperately short supply ‹ cheap labor ‹ and local-jail inmates are integrated into every aspect of economic and social life."
With Jobs to Do, Louisiana Parish Turns to Inmates
New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: July 5, 2006
LAKE PROVIDENCE, La. ‹ At barbecues, ballgames and funerals, cotton gins, service stations, the First Baptist Church, the pepper-sauce factory and the local private school ‹ the men in orange are everywhere.

Many people here in East Carroll Parish, as Louisiana counties are known, say they could not get by without their inmates, who make up more than 10 percent of its population and most of its labor force. They are dirt-cheap, sometimes free, always compliant, ever-ready anddisposable.
You just call up the sheriff, and presto, inmates are headed your way. "They bring me warm bodies, 10 warm bodies in the morning," said that, inmates say.

The rules are loose and give the sheriffs broad discretion. State law dictates only which inmates may go out into the world (mostly those nearing the end of their sentences) and how much the authorities get to keep of an inmate's wages, rather than the type of work he can perform. There is little in the state rules to limit the potential for a sheriff to use his inmate flock to curry favor or to reap personal benefit.

"If you talk to people around here, it is jokingly referred to as rent-a-convict," said Michael Brewer, a lawyer and former public defender in Alexandria, in central Louisiana. "There's something offensive about that. It's almost like a form of slavery."
That is not a view often expressed in East Carroll Parish.

"I've been at cocktail parties where people laugh about it," said Jacques Roy, another Alexandria lawyer. "People in Alexandria clamor for it. It's cheaper. I've always envisioned it as a who-you-know kind of thing."

The prisoners are not compelled to work, but several interviewed here said they welcomed the chance to get out of the crowded jail, at least during the day. Still, Mr. Brewer said, "if one of them were to refuse, you can imagine the repercussions."

Nearly half of Louisiana's prisoners are housed in small parish jails, a policy that saves the state from building new prisons and is lucrative for sheriffs, handsomely compensated for the privilege.

"They're making a ton of money," said Burk Foster, former criminal-justice professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and author of the recent textbook "Corrections." The sheriffs are paid $22.39 per prisoner per day for accommodating their charges in facilities of often rudimentary construction.

The accommodations here appear to be made of no more than corrugated metal. "Hey man, we're sleeping on the floor," an inmate called out from behind the fence at the parish jail last week, before a visitor was shooed away by an angry guard.

Exactly how much the sheriffs pocket, however, is unclear.

"Sheriffs deliberately obscure from the public how much money they're making," said Mr. Foster, a leading expert on Louisiana prisons.
A spokeswoman for the state corrections department said she could not respond to the idea that sheriffs profited from housing state inmates.
The sheriff here, Mark Shumate, did not reply to phone calls and messages, but one of his investigators, Brandon Wiltcher, had an explanation for the popularity and pervasiveness of inmate labor here.
"It's just such a shortage of people who will work, or that can work," Mr. Wiltcher said.
This parish, the poorest in Louisiana, lost 20 percent of its free population from 1980 to 2000. The inmate population, however, grew.
Mr. Shumate is a very big man in these precincts of lush green corn, cotton and soybean fields that stretch into a horizon shimmering in the heat. Residents say his inmates cook hamburgers for community get-togethers; they are in the concession stand at children's baseball games; they dig graves, mow roadsides and roof churches.

"They are a constant fixture and presence, at each of these community events," said Danny Terral, who works in his family's farm-supply business. "I daresay I haven't been at a community event where it's not been, those orange shirts."

They build dugouts and tend the athletic fields ‹ free ‹ at Briarfield Academy, a private school here. "They did an excellent job," said the school's principal, Morris Richardson, adding, "We try to provide their lunch for them."

Mr. Wiltcher, of the sheriff's office, said there was nothing wrong with helping out the private school without charge.

"It's not only used at this private school, it's used parishwide," he said of inmate labor. "Since it's used for everyone who needs it, I don't see where there would be a problem with it."

The churches, too, are grateful beneficiaries. "They sent me prisoners for a month" for menial chores at the First Baptist Church, said Reynold Minsky, also chairman of the local levee board. "All completely free," Mr. Minsky added. "It's a real good deal. Everybody is tickled."

Many here view the inmates essentially as commodities, who can be returned behind bars after the agricultural season is over, and the need for labor is reduced.

"Good thing about it, wintertime, you can lock them up ‹ put them in cold storage," said Billy Travis, a farmer and police juror, as county commissioners here are known. "I call it deep freeze."

Right on the main road into town, at the base of the levee, up from the Economy Inn and the Scott Tractor Company, the quasi-employment agency behind concertina wire is neither out of sight nor out of mind. At midday, passing motorists can spot its residents, out for a brief exercise spell. "They got D.O.C. mixed in with parish prisoners," another inmate complained, referring to the State Department of Corrections inmates who mingle freely with those who have committed lesser local crimes.

At Lake Providence Country Club one afternoon last week, during a Rotary Club meeting, the talk was of organizing a midsummer fish fry. "I imagine the sheriff can do that," one man called out. "I hear the sheriff does a really good job," another said.

Outside the worn little town, a succession of empty storefronts and others headed that way, inmates can be spotted clearing up the remains of a ruined church off a hot country road, while a deputy lounges in the shade; picking up trash; and clearing undergrowth from roadsides with heavy equipment.
Up the road, toward the Arkansas line, a half-dozen or so are at work in the stifling production-line room of the small pepper-sauce plant, sweating alongside the free laborers. Another is fixing up a house next door that Mr. Brown bought to rent out.

The factory owner sings his praises, calling him reliable, trustworthy, honest. The inmate, Roy Hebert ‹ he says he is in for forgery ‹ beams. "Mr. Brown, he takes care of me," Mr. Hebert said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/us/05prisoners.html

Posted by lois at 05:09 PM | Comments (0)

NY: Town That Rejected Supermax Prison Opens a Museum

Note: Tupper Lake was Gov Pataki's first choice site in 1997 for a supermax prison. The local chapter of the Sierra Club was instrumental in the defeat of that notion. One might speculate that it was the defeat of the prison that paved the way for Tupper Lake to create a museum. There are 18 state prisons in the 'upstate' region of the Adirondacks, a place referred to here by one writer as 'little Siberia'. ________________________________________________

Pataki, Clinton celebrate new Adirondacks museum
July 4, 2006

TUPPER LAKE, N.Y. -- It's the largest park in the lower 48 states. Now the Adirondacks have a new museum that explains what made them worth preserving. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Gov. George Pataki helped celebrate Tuesday's opening of the $30 million, 35,000-square-foot Natural History Center of the Adirondacks in Tupper Lake.

Friends of the new museum called it something else _ the Wild Center. "What better way to pay homage to the majestic Adirondack Park than through the spectacular Wild Center," Clinton said in a written statement. "This is truly a world-class museum that will help educate and inspire people for generations to come."

The center was designed to teach the public about the park's ecosystems, and offers lessons on every aspect of the region's natural history. Betsy Lowe, a former public-affairs officer for the Department of Environmental Conservation, first thought of the idea for the center in 1998. The concept broke ground in 2004 with the support of various nature enthusiasts.

"It takes a whole community, a region, to make a museum like this happen," said Lowe, now the center's managing director. "I think the museum will give back in really nice ways."

Pataki said the park would be a welcome addition in the state and would attract visitors of all ages.

"I am proud that New York state has been such a strong supporter of this project," he said in a statement. "And I commend the hard work of all who helped transform the idea for the museum into this magnificent community venue."

Lowe was named project manager of the museum, but she had plenty of help. Obie Clifford, the eventual board president; nature-lover Nellie Staves; Chamber of Commerce President Jon Kopp; Sandra Strader, who became mayor of Tupper Lake and others, helped raise money raised money and support the museum concept until its completion.

"Hopefully, people will continue to make appropriate management decisions for the Adirondacks," Lowe said. "It starts with that love for the Adirondacks, which we all have already, but this will build on that." Visitors to the nature center will find tanks full of fish, turtles and otters. TVs offer loops of educational information and children can be participate in hands-on play with animal artifacts.

The museum also includes an outdoor amphitheater, a movie theater, various exhibits, aquariums, a hiking trail, a cafe, an observation tower and 31 acres of preserve.

The 6 million acre Adirondacks are a mix of public and private lands. Tupper Lake is 115 miles north of Albany.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--wildcenter0704jul04
,0,505019.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork

Posted by lois at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)

The disparity on crack-cocaine sentencing

By Marc Mauer | July 5, 2006, The Boston Globe

THE RECENT conclusion of the NBA Finals coincided with a tragic anniversary of particular relevance for basketball fans. Twenty years ago University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias died of a drug overdose just hours after being selected second in the NBA draft by the Boston Celtics. His death sparked a national whirlwind of media attention and public scrutiny largely focused on the drug, crack cocaine, that was suspected of killing him.

We can only speculate what type of professional career Bias might have had, but all bets were that it was going to be a stellar one. Unfortunately, the legacy that remains with us is not a result of his professional sports career, but as a key stimulus for the notorious federal crack-cocaine mandatory sentencing laws. Shortly after Bias's death, the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held a hearing on crack cocaine. During the hearing's debate, senators cited Bias's death 11 times.

By the fall, Congress had adopted the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which included harsh new mandatory sentences for low-level crack offenses. Defendants convicted with just 5 grams of crack cocaine, the weight of 5 sugar packets, were subject to a five-year mandatory minimum sentence. The same penalty was triggered for powder cocaine only when an offense involved at least 500 grams.

Twenty years later, the aftermath of these laws is sobering. More than 80 percent of the defendants prosecuted for a crack offense are African-American, despite the fact that more than two-thirds of crack users are white or Hispanic. By and large, these defendants are not the kingpins of the drug trade. Data from the US Sentencing Commission document that 73 percent of crack defendants had only low-level involvement in drug activity, such as street-level dealers, couriers, or lookouts. The commission also has found that crack cocaine sentences are the single most significant factor contributing to racial disparity in federal sentencing.

The legacy of Len Bias goes beyond just crack-sentencing policies, though, incorporating two decades of declining social and economic prospects for African-American males in particular. As a result of the drug war and a host of harsh sentencing policies such as mandatory minimums and ``three strikes" laws, imprisonment has increasingly become almost the norm in many low-income communities. If current trends continue, 1 in 3 black males born today will spend time in a state or federal prison in his lifetime.

These trends are exacerbated by the cruel intersection of socioeconomic policy and criminal justice policy. For young black men in the most disadvantaged schools, high dropout rates become a pathway to prison, with more than half of black male dropouts having been incarcerated by their mid-30s.

These outcomes contribute to a vicious cycle whereby incarceration reduces future job prospects and earnings power. In addition, there is an increasing spillover effect on families and communities. In the nation's capital, neighborhoods most heavily affected by imprisonment have only 62 adult men for every 100 women. Some of these missing men are in the military or have suffered an early death, but many are behind bars. Needless to say, women's prospects for finding marriage and parenting partners are affected by these dynamics. In cities around the country, we find the same disturbing story.

While efforts to reform the crack-cocaine sentencing disparity have previously been rebuffed by the administrations of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, there may now be an opening for reconsideration on Capitol Hill. Increasingly, there is a bipartisan recognition that not only have the crack laws exacerbated racial disparity, they also represent an inappropriate federal usurpation of state law-enforcement priorities. To the extent that crack offenses are prosecuted in court, it makes little sense to utilize federal resources for a primarily low-level offender group. In addition, there is increasing skepticism about whether these mandatory sentencing policies have been effective in controlling the supply of drugs. Certainly, given trends in the price or availability of crack cocaine, there is little evidence of this. Given these dynamics, not only are liberal Democrats such as Representative Charles Rangel introducing reform legislation, but Republican Senator Jeff Sessions has now indicated his interest in addressing the disparity as well.

Perhaps the ultimate irony in the Bias case is that he did not in fact die of a crack overdose, but rather from snorting powder cocaine. Both drugs are dangerous, of course, but the tragic loss of a talented young man on the brink of a limitless future has been callously used to severely curtail opportunity for thousands of other promising young people. This year is an appropriate time to change public policy to better serve the next generation of black men.

Marc Mauer is executive director of The Sentencing Project and author of ``Race to Incarcerate."
© Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/07/05/the_disparity_on_crack_cocaine_sentencing/

Posted by lois at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)

July 03, 2006

CO: For Ault, Prison Could Be a Break

7/03/2006 01:00 AM

For Ault, prison could be a break
Many residents believe that building such a facility could help reverse the town's slow economic decline.
By Monte Whaley
Denver Post Staff Writer

Ault - Talk among the graying crowd huddled in a dusty corner of Burman's Clothing Variety crossed a variety of topics.

There was the drought: "Worst I've seen since the Dust Bowl." Colorado's smoking ban: "Just wait. They'll be coming for the caffeine next." The futility of fireworks bans: "All those kids go straight to Wyoming for their fireworks anyway."

And then, the conversation turned to a prison that's coming Ault's way. Yup, Burman's clientele agreed, the medium-security prison will keep this Weld County farming town of 1,200 from withering away.

"We're out here now watching Ault just slowly die," said Charles Burman, whose family-owned store has anchored the main street for a century.

He produced a list of 20 or so businesses that were advertising in an Ault-area newspaper circa 1945.

"Most of them are all gone now," said Burman, his finger sweeping over the names. They left about the same time the family farms that once encircled and enriched Ault shut down.

Most of the new growth in Weld County is happening south and west of Ault, leaving the town with empty barns and stalls and a feeling that the county's growth boom will never reach its borders.

But now, the thinking goes, Ault will regain some economic life, now that a 1,500-bed, $100 million prison is in the works just south of town. GEO Group Inc. - a Florida-based prison and detention- center operator - was awarded a bid from the state prison system to build a prison near Ault in two years.

Few, if any, of the men who gathered at Burman's for their morning confab saw any problems with Ault becoming known as a prison town.

"At least they'll talk about us," Frank Backstrum said between sips of black coffee.

Police Chief Tracey McCoy pressed GEO to bring the prison to Ault, seeing plenty of potential in a facility that will hire 350 employees and pay the town up to $300,000 in impact fees.

Prison employees also could spend about $1 million a year in local restaurants and stores, providing a boost for a town with a $400,000 operating budget, McCoy said.

"This will help build our infrastructure, bring our water and sewer systems up to par," he said. "It will sustain some revenue growth here."

But not everyone is convinced a prison will help Ault. Rural areas, as a whole, haven't realized the economic benefits pitched by prison supporters, said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project.

The Washington, D.C., group studied towns that brought in prisons in upstate New York over a 25-year period and found the prisons made little difference in local employment or per-capita income.

"Someone working at a gas station today will not necessarily get the prison job tomorrow," Mauer said. "And those that work there will maybe stop for a little gasoline on their way home so there is little trickle-down effect for the local economy."

McCoy, among others, remains optimistic. He served as a police officer in Cañon City and saw how that city benefited from having the state prison inside the city limits. Safety will not be an issue, he added.

"These are all well-behaved inmates who are getting near their parole dates," McCoy said. "If they cause any problems, they will go to the maximum-security facility."

The town board will likely hold hearings on the prison proposal this summer, and residents could get a chance to vote on the idea, officials say.

Many already seem solidly behind having a prison for a neighbor.

"Everybody is saying, 'But look who's going to be inside there - child molesters and murderers,"' said Backstrum, whose wife sits on the town board. "That's the point: They are inside."

"We're losing teachers and other professionals because this town can't afford to pay them," said Tammy Osborne, owner of T-n-T Clips & Curls & Tanning Salon, and wife to mayor pro tem Troy Osborne. "If what everybody says is correct, a prison would be great for this town."

But James Blatter, who sits on Ault's planning board, wonders if the town would truly benefit from the prison.

"I'm just not convinced it's the growth opportunity everyone is making it out to be," Blatter said. "There are lots of other options out there we can look (at) to bring this town a little stimulation. We just have to do a little leg work."

Perhaps another point for discussion back at Burman's Clothing.

Posted by lois at 09:44 PM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2006

CA: Governor Signs Law Changing Prop 36-prison plan on hold

Los Angeles Times
Schwarzenegger Signs California Budget After Cutting $175 Million The spending plan is the first completed on time in six years. Criticism of his trimming was muted as Democrats got most of what they had sought.

By Evan Halper, Times Staff Writer
July 1, 2006

SACRAMENTO ‹ Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the state's first on-time budget in six years Friday, after using his veto power to scale back the expansion of environmental enforcement and healthcare programs approved by the Legislature earlier this week.

The $131-billion spending plan signed by the governor will use a surge of unanticipated revenue that filled California's coffers this year to pay back billions the state borrowed from schools in recent years as well as to accelerate repayment of other state debt.

The governor used his veto pencil to eliminate more than $175 million in spending that the Legislature had approved. He vetoed tens of millions of dollars from the budget that would have been used to reduce air pollution, expand hospital trauma care, provide interpreters to non-English speakers in civil court cases and make dental care available to more low-income children, among other services.

The vetoes drew a muted response, however. Most of the program expansions that Democrats had secured in the budget approved by the Legislature Tuesday night remained intact.

"This is a great budget," Schwarzenegger said just before signing the document at a ceremony under the Capitol dome. Schwarzenegger said he and legislative leaders were able to meet the deadline for passing a budget for the first time since 2000 because "we put politics aside." "We were driven by one overwhelming desire: to do what is best for the people of California," he said.

The budget does not solve the state's financial problems. It relies on this year's $7.5-billion windfall ‹ unanticipated tax revenue resulting from higher than expected capital gains, corporate profits and the hot housing market ‹ to expand programs and close a shortfall that had been projected for the fiscal year that begins today.

But the state is still projected to spend more than it brings in over the coming years. Lawmakers expect a deficit of at least $3.3 billion for the fiscal year that begins in July of 2007.

On Friday, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Phil Angelides warned that Schwarzenegger would deal with that deficit as he has dealt with past deficits, "by cutting school funding, raising tuition and fees and cutting healthcare."

But Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) had a different take. He said the budget agreement shows "you can be fiscally conservative but at the same time be compassionate."

By the time the budget was signed, the Legislature had adjourned for a monthlong break. Some lawmakers will stick around to draft legislation in line with the four-part plan the governor presented this week to address prison overcrowding. Schwarzenegger called a special session of the Legislature to deal with that issue, which will resume when lawmakers return Aug. 7.

The Assembly has already approved at least two prison reform proposals: a bill that would authorize the state to borrow for the construction of new prisons and another that would move nonviolent women offenders into local detention centers where they could get drug treatment, education and help finding jobs. Both are pending in the Senate.

Harsher penalties for repeat drug offenders, championed by the governor, became law when he signed the budget Friday. The new law changes voter-approved Proposition 36 by taking away the option of avoiding jail from thousands of drug offenders who seek addiction treatment more than once.

Now judges will be able to incarcerate offenders up to five days if they relapse. Treatment advocates call the new penalties illegal and say they will sue to block them.

The governor scaled back the expansion of efforts to fight air pollution by $35 million. The money would have been used to update heavily polluting construction, farming and transportation equipment and to bolster enforcement of the state's clean air laws.

Regardless, environmentalists saw victory overall in the budget. They noted that it includes $50 million to replace decades-old school buses with clean-burning models, develop alternative fuels and promote zero-emissions cars and trucks.

"This budget certainly isn't bad," said Pete Price, an environmental lobbyist in Sacramento. "A lot of the environmental budget items were retained. I think generally you will find environmentalists not unhappy."

There was also little criticism from healthcare advocates. The governor eliminated $10 million that would have gone to fund trauma centers in hospitals, scaled back a proposal to fight West Nile virus by $6 million ‹ or two-thirds of the proposed funding ‹ and eliminated $2 million that would have been used to provide preventive dental care to low-income children. The governor also vetoed $10 million that civil courts could have used to hire interpreters for non-English speakers.

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

Thinking Outside the Cellblock: Inmates with Ambition

July 1, 2006, NY Times
Thinking Outside the Cellblock: Inmates With Ambition
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

BRYAN, Tex., June 27 — Bill Sterling was big in import-export, the C.E.O. of his own multimillion-dollar business with a loyal customer base and high product demand that earned him 90 percent profit margins and 19 years in the Texas prison system.

But with his drug-trafficking career long behind him and his release approaching, Mr. Sterling, 58, ended Tuesday night on the basketball court behind the barbed-wire fences of the minimum-security Hamilton Unit here buttonholing visiting business titans and investors about his latest venture.

"I'd like to standardize the making of 'No Child Left Behind' tests," he said.

Mr. Sterling and several hundred fellow inmates in white short-sleeve uniforms were competing for a cherished slot in the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, a two-year-old, nonprofit effort that capitalizes on their penchant for creative self-employment (and meager job prospects on the outside).

The Texas program, which is expected to expand soon to California, was started by Catherine Rohr, a young venture capitalist inspired by the prison ministry of the former Watergate conspirator Charles W. Colson. It offers an intense four-month business curriculum, matching participants with volunteers from the corporate world, some of whom have had their own scrapes with the law.

"Many of you were dope dealers, we give you credit for that — you're already entrepreneurs," Ms. Rohr, 29, said in welcoming candidates for the fourth and latest class of up to 100 students.

The class is scheduled to begin Sunday night with an English test based on The Associated Press stylebook. To be chosen for it, inmates cannot be sex offenders and must fill out a 23-page questionnaire. They must also offer credible business aspirations and show evidence of "heart."

Among the graduates with testimonials was Kenneth Broderick, 47, who said he got out in November after 16½ years and is now the proud owner of a shipping brokerage, Resource Freight Logistics.

"Today's a gift," Mr. Broderick said, beaming. "That's why they call it the present."

Since the program began in 2004 at another Texas prison before settling in at this prerelease facility of 1,200 men near Texas A&M University and about 100 miles northwest of Houston, 165 inmates have graduated. Only four have been sent back to prison — a far better percentage than the usual 69 percent recidivist rate, Ms. Rohr said. They get help buying business attire, finding loans, housing and medical care, and consulting with business professionals.

"I think of it as God's work," said Ms. Rohr, who gave up a lucrative career as a private equity investor in California and New York before moving to Houston with her husband, a lawyer. (The night they arrived, their van was broken into and many of their belongings stolen, an event Ms. Rohr shrugs
off.)

The Prison Entrepreneurship Program (pepweb.org), which is based in Houston, raised $342,000 in donations last year and hopes for $1.5 million this year. It got a boost here Tuesday night when one executive pledged a $50,000 contribution. About 600 executives have signed up to volunteer their services.

It is a good return on investment, said Ms. Rohr. It costs $3,700 a year to put an inmate through the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, and $22,000 to keep him in prison.

Cheering on former cellmates was Patric Weaver, 33, who got out last month after 38 months behind bars. "I was a National Merit Scholar," Mr. Weaver said. "I was also an interstate drug trafficker."

"The penitentiary saved me," he said, crediting the entrepreneurship program with helping him start his Houston business, StrongArm Canine, which keeps guard dogs on their toes by testing them with simulated break-ins and assaults. "We're essentially live bait," he said. "I wear a bite suit."

A graduate of the first class, Brent Taylor, 23, had done 18 months for robbery, and said he was now earning $120,000 a year selling used vehicles. "Everybody here has an 'X' on their back — but you can do it," Mr. Taylor said.

After serving six years in prison for distribution and possession of cocaine, Lafayette Moore, 52, said he was building home gyms in customers' spare rooms with the motto: "Why drive to the gym if you can work out in your own personal fitness room?"

Among the two dozen executives and M.B.A.'s who signed up to meet with the inmates was Dan Rouse, owner of a large heavy-equipment leasing company in Dallas, who confessed a personal interest. "I have a 23-year-old at home who's a recovering crack addict," Mr. Rouse said. "We have to stop the vicious cycle of drugs eating our children."

Chuck May, owner of a Dallas consulting firm, said his daughter had repeatedly spent time in prison for drugs. "I know what it means," Mr. May told the inmates. But he said he had recently shared the stage with the billionaire investor Boone Pickens, who readily admitted to many failures.

"If you haven't failed," Mr. May said, "you don't qualify."

Two of the executives who showed up on Tuesday night had spent time behind bars, Ms. Rohr said.

Some prisoners seemed close to tears, saying it was their first happy experience with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. "Man, I get emotional; this is something I've never seen," said an inmate with 25 years behind bars who gave his name as Mr. Amarillo.

Mr. Sterling, the ex-drug dealer turned test maker, said the program sounded almost too good to be true.

"I'm thinking there's some kind of ulterior motive," he said. "Maybe I've been here too long."

Among the inmates who ended the evening crowding around the businessmen for advice, hoping the program would take them on, was Byron Maddox, 55, who said he was getting out of prison after 30 years and 5 months for murder and robbery.

Mr. Maddox said he was hoping to start a leather and furniture business with a highly placed partner. "God's a miracle worker," he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/01/us/01prison.html
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

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

GA: Judge Voids Provision Requiring People Convicted of Sex Offences to Move

Georgia appeals striking of 'bus stop' rule
By JILL YOUNG MILLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/30/06

Georgia today appealed a federal judge's decision to revoke a portion of new Georgia law designed to prevent sex offenders from living near school bus stops.

Attorney General Thurbert Baker filed the appeal with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

The voided legislation, scheduled to go into effect Saturday, would have made it illegal for any person on Georgia's sex offender registry to live within 1,000 feet of a school bus stop. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper entered a temporary restraining order preventing enforcement of that provision of the new law, meaning registered sex offenders who live near school bus stops can stay in their homes.

The voided provision would have forced many felons to leave their homes or face possible arrest and 10 years or more in prison.
Cooper said in his order that he expects law enforcement officers to comply with his ruling.

Cooper also provisionally certified the sex offenders as a legal class for a lawsuit filed last week seeking to permanently stop enforcement of the new law's bus stop provision. The next hearing on the matter is scheduled for July 11.
Georgia's sex offender registry includes more than 10,000 people. It's not known exactly how many live within 1,000 feet of a school bus stop.

House Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R-St. Simons Island) sponsored the law, which the General Assembly approved this spring.

"We passed tough restrictions that will protect our children from convicted sexual criminals," Keen said in a prepared statement Thursday. "I am confident that the court's final decision will vindicate the Legislature's efforts to protect our children as they go and come from school each day."

On Monday, Cooper granted a temporary restraining order to prevent enforcement of the bus stop provision, but his order only applied to eight registered sex offender who filed a federal lawsuit against the governor and others last week. Thursday's ruling extended the restraining order to protect all registered sex offenders who live near school bus stops.

Cooper's ruling earlier this week raised questions about the constitutionality of the sex offender law. "While the Court recognizes and appreciates the importance of protecting the public, the Court cannot approve of doing so in a manner that offends the Constitution," he wrote.

The lawsuit, filed by the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, contends that enforcement of the bus stop rule would drive thousands of sex offenders from their homes.

In recent months, some sheriffs have spoken out against the bus stop provision, saying it would be unenforceable and cause them to lose track of some sex offenders who would be forced to uproot.

Last week, DeKalb County Sheriff Thomas Brown said all 490 sex offenders in his county would have to move. On Thursday, Brown said Cooper's order "gives us an opportunity to better research the implications of that particular piece, and I think the judge was wise. And he was wise with a great deal of courage."

Forsyth County Sheriff Ted Paxton said the ruling will have little effect on his deputies this weekend. Last week, he stopped delivering notices to sex offenders until the school district finishes adjusting its list of more than 1,000 bus stops. Currently, of 68 registered sex offenders, 64 would have had to move, most because of bus stops. The delay will allow the school district to refine its list and the courts to sort out the law, he said. "We'll be waiting until we get clarification," Paxton said. "For now, things stay as they were."

Heather Hedrick, spokeswoman for Gov. Sonny Perdue, said in response to Cooper's order Thursday: "Enforcement of new Georgia laws can be complex, but Gov. Perdue believes that we should always err on the side of protecting children."

The state's sex offender registry requirements, even with the judge's order, "remain the toughest in the nation," Hedrick said.

On Thursday, Lisa Kung, director of the Southern Center, said, "We're confident the court's going to find the law unconstitutional." She called Cooper's order Thursday "a solid, well-reasoned step by the court. And we are grateful that this court has recognized it's in the interest of public safety not to kick people out of their homes while he makes his decision."

Under current Georgia law, registered sex offenders can't live within 1,000 feet of child care centers, schools and places where children congregate. The new law goes much further, with employment and loitering restrictions and a broader definition of areas where children congregate, including school bus stops.

"Remember that under the old law people on the registry have already moved away from schools and playgrounds," Kung said. "The court has made it clear that what we need right now is to maintain stability."

— Staff writers Nancy Badertscher, Doug Nurse, Yolanda Rodriguez and David Simpson contributed to this article.

Shortcut to: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/0630metsexjudge.html

Posted by lois at 09:02 PM | Comments (0)