The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

We're not self-serving enough to say all that is due to restricted media access. There are many complicated factors that have contributed to the system's decline.

We do maintain that some of that decline would have been arrested sooner had taxpayers - and lawmakers - been made aware of festering problems by reporters allowed to take a better inside look at prison facilities and operations.

Romero's bill would allow reporters to interview specific inmates on a prearranged basis; currently, they can talk only to prisoners encountered "randomly" as they tour a facility. It would allow reporters to use cameras and recording devices during interviews. It would require wardens to accept or deny with an explanation any request for a prearranged interview within 48 hours of submission. It would maintain wardens' rights to deny or restrict any interview for reasons of safety and security of the institution or the reporter.

Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar bill last year, citing worries about making inmates into celebrities - a "danger" that pales before the importance of improving the state's correctional system.

We think the public is well served by reporting such as that by Daily Bulletin reporter Mason Stockstill, whose recent four-day series of articles examined decades of problems at the California Institution for Men in Chino. And we commend CIM and its new warden, Mike Poulos, for allowing our sister newspaper maximum access under the current rules.

Reasonable decisions about prison reform cannot be made without public knowledge of existing conditions.

If the governor doesn't agree, either he's afraid of being embarrassed by those conditions or he's not serious about wanting to reform the system. We encourage him to sign SB 1521. http://www.whittierdailynews.com/opinions/ci_4286504

LOCAL COMMENT: Open prisons to media scrutiny
BY LEN NIEHOFF
September 5, 2006, Detroit Free Press

The novelist Richard Wright once observed that "men copied the realities of their hearts when they built prisons."

If that is so, then we should have serious concerns, especially here in Michigan. What we know about our penal system is troubling enough. But there also is much we don't know because of rules that restrict public access, in the form of media, to the world behind the fences, walls and bars.

In June, the Free Press reported on prisoner Lloyd Byron Martell, sent home to die at age 41 because a cancerous polyp had gone untreated. Last month, the newspaper told the story of Timothy Joe Souders, a 21-year-old mentally ill inmate who spent his last days in a small isolation cell, bound to a steel bed, languishing in extreme heat without medical or psychiatric care.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm has responded to these tragedies by ordering a review of health care in Michigan prisons. This may reveal critical failings and suggest appropriate remedies. But further official scrutiny is unlikely to provide a complete solution. History tells us as much.

After all, these deaths occurred in a correctional system that has been under a federal order to improve medical care for more than 20 years. They occurred in a system that, in a recent report, celebrated the network of physicians and medical services available to prisoners.

We need more than court orders and official reports. What we need is public scrutiny. We need the citizens of the State of Michigan to take a hard look at how we treat our prisoners. We need an informed and involved electorate. In our democracy, that's how meaningful and lasting change happens.

Of course, public scrutiny of prisons largely occurs through the press. The media serve as our independent eyes and ears. Unfortunately, current prison access rules pose significant obstacles to media coverage.

For years the State of Michigan gave journalists and their cameras fairly broad access to prisons. This did not produce any security breaches. But it did result in distressing and, for some officials, embarrassing stories about prison conditions.

So in 2000, the state Department of Corrections adopted a highly restrictive policy allowing cameras and tape recorders into its facilities "only in limited, unique circumstances." Some media have complained that this policy has been unevenly enforced. Some have suggested that cameras have generally been allowed only in connection with favorable stories. Regardless of whether such abuses occurred, the policy adopted by the department provides ample opportunity for them.

But here is what is most troubling: The current policy stands the correct approach on its head. Our democracy rests on a presumption of public access, subject only to necessary limitations. The Department of Corrections policy rests on the opposite presumption -- that less scrutiny is better than more. And its presumption against cameras is subject only to "limited" and "unique" exceptions the policy does not detail or define.

The access rule that applies in Michigan courtrooms offers some helpful guidance. That rule creates a strong presumption in favor of allowing cameras in courtrooms while specifying some circumstances in which the judge can impose limitations. The rule has worked well for many years and allows the public to see our criminal justice system at work. As part of her response to the recent incidents, Granholm should immediately direct the Department of Corrections to adopt a similar approach with respect to prisons.

A policy that allows real access will facilitate real scrutiny. And real scrutiny will drive real change.

Journalist Jessica Mitford once suggested that our prisons literally make us "our brother's keeper." We need to know if we're doing our keeping in a manner that is morally, legally and fiscally responsible. We need to know what kinds of prisons our hearts have made. But we cannot fulfill these obligations under a policy that deprives us of our eyes and ears.

LEN NIEHOFF is an attorney in Ann Arbor. Write to him in care of the Free Press Editorial Page, 600 W. Fort St., Detroit 48226 or oped@freepress.com. http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060905/OPINION02/609050306/1070/OPINION
Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.

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