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September 30, 2006

Rushing Off A Cliff--Congress votes to end habeas corpus and other protections

September 28, 2006
EDITORIAL, NY Times
Rushing Off a Cliff

Here's what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans' fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws - while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists - because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That's pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.
It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush's shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

These are some of the bill's biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of "illegal enemy combatant" in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret - there's no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable - already a contradiction in terms - and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

*There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don't blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they'll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won't remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They'll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation's version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2006

CO: Ault prison progress slow

Ault prison progress slow

Sharon Dunn, (Bio) sdunn@greeleytribune.com
September 9, 2006
Plans for the proposed Ault prison are apparently in a holding cell.

Two months ago, the state awarded the Geo Group the right to build a
1,500-bed medium security men's prison in Ault, but so far, progress has been slight.

A town meeting in July lured about 300 in protest of a prison in their backyard. Opponents worry about prison breaks, the caliber of employees, and the potential for a prison to attract criminals. Proponents of the prison say their dying town needs some development, and a prison is a clean industry that would bring commerce and jobs.
The prison would be located on roughly 40 acres in the southwest part of town, east of the railroad tracks parallel to U.S. 85.

Since the initial discussions, however, there are still no decisions. The Geo Group has not presented the town with a potential contract, and the town board has yet to decide if a contract with the private prison would have to be approved by the board or the residents.

Those involved, however, insist there is progress but won't elaborate.
The company is working with developers, contractors, financiers and the state Department of Corrections to come up with a plan, but theinitial hiccup comes with the state, which will not guarantee to Geo's satisfaction the number of beds that could be filled. Geo officials updated the town board in a work session last week.

"Basically, in a public meeting, it was stated that they'd want at least a 90 percent guarantee," said Sharon Sullivan, Ault's town clerk. "And that' s truly a matter of finances."

Apparently, the prison's financing interest rates are dependent upon the number of beds the prison can fill, said Tracey McCoy, Ault's police chief, who initiated discussions on getting the prison to come to town. He said the concern would be that if the Geo Group doesn't get the guarantee it wants, they may not be able to afford the project.

The state does not make a habit of giving private prisons guarantees on filling beds, said Brent Parker, director of communications for the Colorado Department of Corrections. He said the state is now researching the pros and cons of giving such guarantees, but as of yet, the state has no answers.

Geo officials would not comment on the progress of discussions with the state or the town of Ault.

But the company is talking about a number of issues, said Pablo Paez,
spokesman for Geo Group, a publicly traded company based in Florida that operates private prisons worldwide. "No decision has been made."

When the company first approached the town board, the Geo group had
suggested the prison would bring upward of 350 jobs to the area. Geo would manage the prison under a potential $28 million contract from the state (if the 1,500 beds were consistently full), while the town would own it. It would cost from $70 million to $100 million to build.

Geo officials suggested forwarding to the town an annual impact fee of up to $250,000, plus $30,000 a year in local scholarships. Geo also would pay for upgrading the town's water and sewer systems to accommodate the increased capacity.

http://www.greeleytrib.com/article/20060909/NEWS/109090119

Posted by lois at 07:14 PM | Comments (0)

OK: Geo creates Oklahoma's largest prison

Geo creates Oklahoma's largest prison

South Florida Business Journal - 4:26 PM EDT Monday http://southflorida.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2006/09/25/daily2.
html
Geo Group said it has expanded a correctional facility in Oklahoma to
become the largest such facility in the state.
The Boca Raton-based correctional and detention management firm said its 600-bed expansion to the Lawton Correctional Facility brings capacity to 2, 518 beds.

Geo (NYSE: GEO) said it manages the facility, in Lawton, Okla., under a five-year contract with the Oklahoma Department of Corrections that
started July 1, 2003.

The company predicted the 600-bed expansion, which has already begun
taking medium security Oklahoma inmates, will reach full occupancy by the end of November.

At full occupancy, Geo predicted the expansion to generate about $9
million in additional revenue annually.

Shares closed down 75 cents to $42.99. The 52-week high was $46.43 on Aug. 31. The 52-week low was $20.10 on Nov. 2.

Posted by lois at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2006

MA: Report on Youth Unlawfully Heald Without Bail

Do you know where the children are?
A Report of Massachusetts Youth Unlawfully Held Without Bail
cover of the report
Executive Summary

by Barbara Fedders and Barbara Kaban

In 2004, over four thousand Massachusetts children and youth between the ages of seven and seventeen spent time behind bars -- in some cases up to four days -- after their arrest and prior to their first court appearance. While the law requires that young people must be at least fourteen years old to be detained, more than five hundred children under fourteen were so held that year.

Massachusetts law also provides that a party empowered by the judicial branch -- a judge, magistrate, or bail commissioner -- should review detention decisions about arrested youths, but many children and adolescents are unlawfully deprived of this opportunity. Routinely, decisions to detain young people are based solely on juvenile probation officers' recommendations, which are made pursuant to a cursory consideration of facts, and without benefit of written procedures or guidelines - all in violation of due process principles. Probation officers frequently recommend detention for youths accused of minor offenses, rather than reserving it for the most serious and dangerous offenders.

The impact of these practices is detrimental to the welfare of individuals in the juvenile justice system and communities at large. National studies have shown that arrested youths who are detained are more likely to re-offend than similarly situated youths who are not detained. Detention prior to the first court appearance is disproportionately ordered for youth of color, and the detained young people are held in facilities with poor conditions, often deprived of exercise and denied necessary medications. These practices undermine the mission of the Massachusetts juvenile court, which is to treat those who come before it not as criminals, but as children in need of aid and guidance.

Fortunately, this problem can be addressed relatively quickly and easily, without litigation. The Office of the Commissioner of Probation must establish explicit guidelines for the probation officers assigned responsibility for detention determinations. Police, sheriffs' departments and detention facility staff must ensure that youths have access to bail commissioners. These individuals must also cease the practice of detaining children under fourteen. Making these changes is essential to the integrity of the juvenile justice system. Nothing less than the well-being of our children is at stake.
Links to the complete report: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/kidsbail/

Posted by lois at 07:34 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Prop 36 violated if new bill passes

Posted on Wed, Jun. 28, 2006, San Jose Mercury News
Lawmakers back jail terms for drug offenders despite Prop. 36

DON THOMPSON
Associated Press

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will trigger a court battle if he signs a bill allowing judges to send nonviolent drug offenders to jail for brief periods if they violate conditions of their treatment programs, opponents pledged Wednesday.

Voters passed Proposition 36 in 2000, requiring treatment instead of jail for first- and second-time nonviolent drug offenders. But a measure sent to Schwarzenegger late Tuesday as part of the state budget package would permit jailing offenders up to five days to force their participation in treatment programs.

"If you can improve the number of people who complete the programs, you can reduce the number of people committing new crimes. That's the goal," Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Margita Thompson said Wednesday, indicating the governor will sign the bill.

She noted the measure had bipartisan support, passing the Senate, 27-2, and the Assembly, 64-8.

Assembly and Senate budget negotiators said they were told Schwarzenegger would veto $151 million for treatment programs unless lawmakers also sent him the bill permitting jailing of offenders.

Daniel Abrahamson, legal affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance, said his group will immediately sue once Schwarzenegger signs the bill.

A provision in the legislation will automatically put the issue before voters in an upcoming election if a judge upholds the legal challenge.

"Prop. 36 clearly stated that courts could not jail people for relapsing during their treatment," Abrahamson said. "That is a direct contradiction of voters' will."

The $151 million included in the budget sent to Schwarzenegger is an increase from the $120 million that has been spent on Proposition 36 programs each of the five years since 61 percent of voters approved the measure.

Most of the increase would be distributed as incentives to counties with the best drug program completion rates.

But the accompanying measure would let judges order "flash incarcerations" of offenders who test positive for drugs or fail to attend treatment programs. A first offense could result in two days in jail, with up to five days for repeat offenders.

Bill supporters point to a study by the University of California, Los Angeles, that found about 30 percent of offenders sent to treatment under Proposition 36 never show up, and just 24 percent complete their treatment.

"The threat of a short period of time in jail may be enough to save someone's life by scaring them into taking treatment seriously," said John Ferrera, chief of staff to state Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, who carried the legislation.

Jail could be ordered "only for the purpose of compelling someone to take treatment seriously. It's a treatment tool. It's not meant to be punishment," he said.

A judge would first have to consider other ways to encourage the offender to get treatment, and would have to consider the impact of jail on the offender's treatment, job and family.

In addition, the bill would let a judge send a drug offender to a drug court or through the regular judicial process if he or she had five or more non-drug offenses in the previous two years, or if the judge found the offender was a threat to public safety or that treatment wouldn't work.

"I have never heard anybody say with a straight face that going to jail is not punishment," said Abrahamson. "To claim otherwise is disingenuous."

ON THE NET

Read SB1137 at http://www.sen.ca.gov

Posted by lois at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)

CO: Crowded Jails, Growing Crisis

September 27, 2006
Crowded jails, growing crisis

“The train wreck is here, and El Paso County is right in the middle of it,” Sheriff Terry Maketa said Tuesday at a forum discussing the crowding problems facing jails and prisons.

Forum warns of state fiscal disaster

By R. SCOTT RAPPOLD THE GAZETTE
Colorado Springs

The prisons and jails are full, and the financial crisis it will cause in Colorado will be a “train wreck.”

Criminal-justice activists from around the state and nation, along with some local officials, met in Colorado Springs on Tuesday night to discuss the crowding problems facing the jails and prisons, and ways to avoid what even the conservatives on the panel predicted is a looming disaster.

“The train wreck is here, and El Paso County is right in the middle of it,” said El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa, one of the participants, who runs a jail so crowded it no longer accepts nonviolent misdemeanor offenders.

It’s a problem that has united fiscal conservatives, shocked by the growing percentage of the state’s budget going to prisons, and liberals, shocked by the high percentage of Colorado residents imprisoned.

And everyone in the panel discussion agreed it’s not a problem Colorado can get out of by building more prisons.

“Simply put, I think the whole system needs an enema,” said Promise Lee, pastor of Relevant Word Ministries.

The state prison system has dealt with the problem by increasing its reliance on private prisons. When three companies build authorized medium-security prisons for 3,776 inmates by the middle of 2008, one in three Colorado inmates will be housed in for-profit facilities. Another 1,000 will be moved to private prisons out of state.

Locally, the answers aren’t much better. Although El Paso County’s jail completed an 864-bed expansion in recent years, the new wing was open less than four months when county officials were drawing up plans for another jail expansion.

As of Tuesday, 1,434 inmates were in the 1,599-bed jail.

“I don’t have a lot of control over that,” Maketa said.

The panelists recommended a variety of measures, from cutting down on prison sentences for nonviolent offenders, to more reliance on mediation known as “restorative justice,” to a ban on private-prison construction to force the state to deal with the causes of a high incarceration rate. About 22,000 inmates are incarcerated in state prisons.

Jack Ruszczyk, chief probation officer in the 4th Judicial District, said the focus of activists needs to be on lawmakers, who are eager to prove how tough they can be on crime. In recent years, though, they have been less willing to fund new prisons.

“It has to do with political pandering to our fears. People getting elected have to be tough on crime and our jails and prisons fill up,” he said.

Maketa said it is not just lawmakers, though, but the public, which has an out-ofsight, out-of-mind approach to criminal justice. He noted that, though a couple of hundred people attended Tuesday’s forum, plenty of empty seats were in the Victory Outreach Center.

“There exists among a large portion of society an attitude that they don’t want to deal with the problem. They want to lock the door and throw away the key,” he said.

“I don’t think they’re really aware of it,” said Colorado Springs resident Berta Stanfield, who attended the forum out of curiosity about the issue. “I don’t think people really know how much of our tax dollars are going into it.”

The symposium, the first of its kind here, was organized by local nonprofits who work in alternatives to incarceration.
http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=1322000&secid=1

Posted by lois at 07:22 PM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2006

Rap's Captive Audience

Rap's Captive Audience
Ex-con musicians with a white power message are using a sales method pioneered by some black artists: promoting their album in prison.
By Chris Lee
Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

September 27, 2006

The three burly, skin-headed members of the hip-hop group Woodpile want a bigger audience, but they know the odds are long.

They have no hope of cracking mainstream radio or MTV with songs like "They Hate Us" or "I'm a Wood," in which they rap menacingly about blasting enemies with shotguns. Further limiting their commercial prospects, their August album, "The Streets Will Never Be the Same," boasts of the group's affiliation with the Woods, a white power prison gang.

So the Arizona-based group's label is using a viral marketing technique to create word of mouth. Its goal is to connect with an influential constituency of taste makers.

Namely, people behind bars.

Since June, executives at the marketing firm RBC Records have been sending out bundles of Woodpile promotional material twice a month to several dozen of the group's incarcerated friends, supporters and family members.

As the thinking goes, Woodpile gets buzz in the prison yard that translates into positive word of mouth, spreading beyond penitentiary walls as prison visitors and released prisoners carry the gospel of Woodpile to the streets.

For Brian Shafton, an RBC partner, jailhouse marketing makes obvious sense. "Prisons are great because you have an incredibly captive audience that has a lot of entertainment time on its hands," Shafton said.

"These people are definitely influential, and not just in the prisons," he said. "A lot of these guys are still calling shots in the outside world. You look in some of these urban communities and you see some of these pimps and gangsters as the governors of the ghetto."

Major labels have tried unusual brand-building techniques, but prison marketing isn't on their radar yet.

"Back in the day, what we considered grass-roots marketing was running in the club, buying every bottle of champagne and leaving them on tables," said entertainment mogul Damon Dash, who launched Roc-a-Fella Records with rap superstar Jay-Z in 1996. "That was us branding ourselves and our artists as guys that had money."

But he was appreciative of RBC's innovations. "It's a saturated market now, and how many times can you sell people the same stuff?" he said. "I think it's creative to go the jail route."

In the past, targeted hip-hop salesmanship has resulted in gangbusters business.

In the late 1980s, marketers for the incendiary rap quintet NWA began peddling the group's albums from the trunk of a car at Torrance's Roadium Swap Meet and giving away promotional "merch" to Huntington Beach skateboarders and surfers. Within five years, NWA's label, Ruthless Records, was one of the most successful in the world.

"Rebels are always opinion makers," said Ruthless co-founder Jerry Heller.

A respectable album run inside prison means selling as few as 1,000 cassettes. (Although rules vary from state to state, CDs are banned in most maximum-security facilities because of their potential as weapons.) In recent years, RBC's prison marketing has resulted in underground hits for Compton rapper-producer DJ Quik — now serving a five-month sentence for assault — and Memphis rapper 8 Ball. To hear it from the company's executives, a cellblock hit can lead to outside sales of up to 300,000 copies: major success for an independent record label like Woodpile's imprint, West Coast Mafia Records.

With 2.2 million people incarcerated in America — an estimated 548,000 of them African American and between the ages of 20 and 39 — the penitentiary has come to take on an almost mystical importance within hip-hop, with its African American roots.

Nelson George, author of "Hip Hop America," says prison is an indivisible part of the black experience. "In this country, black people have been getting incarcerated justly and unjustly since we got here," he said. "The prison system has impacted black culture. And its influence on hip-hop is a subset of that."

Of course, hip-hop artists who have never seen the inside of a cell, including Kanye West and the Black Eyed Peas, regularly top the pop charts. But in recent years, the number of rap stars being incarcerated has skyrocketed, and the notion of the clink as a kind of "finishing school of hard knocks" persists in gangsta rap.

Prison officials have so far not taken issue with efforts to popularize hip-hop in prisons — there is nothing illegal about what RBC is doing. But according to Lt. Brian Parriott, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, officials will be keeping their ears open for Woodpile's music.

"We don't support gangsta rap that would encourage a criminal mind-set," he said. "The department is definitely not going to be supportive of anything that is influencing individuals to break any law. If the type of music they're producing would influence gang activities, the Department of Corrections will take actions to block the music from coming in to the prison system."

It's ironic, perhaps, that a white-power group like Woodpile would turn to rap as the musical genre best suited to their expressions of their prison experiences. But the members of Woodpile — all ex-cons — say their music celebrates "white pride," not white supremacy. As the most forward face of the Woods gang (the name is a play on a slur for a white person: "peckerwood"), they characterize themselves as in opposition to such racist gangs as the Aryan Brotherhood and the Nazi Low Riders.

In the song "I'm a Wood," the group makes its unflinching attitude toward violence explicit. "Bloody bodies exploding, bullets reloading…. I'll never stop until your body stops convulsing," Woodpile member Critical raps. "I'm a Wood — the type right outta the pen. I'm a Wood — so let the beatings begin."

The song is also intended as a rallying cry for Woodpile's target audience. "They call 'I'm a Wood' the white-boy anthem," said Ben Grossi, RBC's vice president of marketing. "You don't think every white prisoner isn't going to want to own the white-boy anthem?"

The only way for prisoners to buy music is through direct-mail services, including Pack Central, whose most recent catalog offers cassettes from artists such as Kris Kristofferson and Queensryche alongside hip-hop titles from the Game and 50 Cent. But although RBC advertises its artists in the magazine Murder Dog — a publication with editorial content and tone specifically tailored to inmates' interests — a major part of the company's promotional push involves the use of "street teams" inside the slammer.

It's a prison version of viral marketing.

"It's real similar to the street teams that you use on the street," said Woodpile member Diesoul Ether Bunny, referring to urban guerrilla marketers many major record labels enlist to put up posters and stickers in exchange for music and merchandise.

"Here's a guy who loves your music," Ether Bunny said. "He hits you up to find out where he can buy it and you talk to him about doing promotion. He gets his friends involved, next thing you know, you send him a bigger box of fliers. We're doing the same thing in the penitentiary."

Consider the efforts of Richard "Cripper" Charles. Woodpile bandmates Ether Bunny, Crisis and Critical have been sending Charles copies of the group's magazine ads, lyric sheets, show fliers and CD inserts. Charles has been distributing them to fellow inmates at the maximum-security prison at Yuma, Ariz., where he is serving a 15-year sentence for aggravated assault.

Another incarcerated fan of the group, known to them only as "Junior," has taken a more direct promotional approach. He had the word "Woodpile" tattooed across his upper torso.

Sacramento rapper Shawn "C-Bo" Thomas, West Coast Mafia's founder and chief executive, knows how gangsta rap is trafficked inside. He's not in prison but has served time on numerous charges, including weapons and drug possession, promoting gang violence and making threats to law enforcement personnel. "The music is what everyone wants to hear behind the wall," Thomas said. "When a new tape comes out, it goes dorm to dorm. They listen to it and then another person says, 'I got next.' You gotta make a list to listen to this music. Then everybody's trying to order it."

In an era when pop culture consumers are faced with an overwhelming array of entertainment choices, RBC discovered that prison is also a place for fans to intimately connect with music without the distraction of television, the Internet or video games. And that can mean big business for RBC artists' back catalogs.

Like C-Bo's discography. The notoriously gang-affiliated West Coast Mafia CEO, 34, has 17 albums to his credit and promoted many of them while housed in the "super Crip" module at Tracy, Soledad and Folsom state prisons in California, selling more than 2 million copies over the last 12 years without the support of radio or music video channels.

"We rely on his loyal, rabid fan base to go out and buy all 17 albums," said Shafton, the RBC partner. "Serving these prisons, we sell 'em one record that's a current release, but we'll also sell 'em the back catalog and the future releases. So it's not one release, it's 16 or 17 records."

*

Posted by lois at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

September 25, 2006

In New York, a Report Details Abuse and Neglect at 2 State-Run Centers for Girls

September 25, 2006, NY Times
In New York, a Report Details Abuse and Neglect at 2 State-Run Centers for Girls
By LISA W. FODERARO

Lansing and Tryon. They are among the most secure facilities in New York State for girls who have crossed the law — remote state-run institutions located far from New York City, where most of their inmates are from. And to the girls who are sent there, the facilities are notorious.

“They restrain you for no reason,” Antoinette, a 17-year-old, said in an interview last week. She was confined at Tryon Girls Center, near Albany, after she was found to have committed a robbery. “They throw you down and mush your face into the floor,” she said. “It’s just like having rug burns on your face. They make girls cry and are always doing strip searches.”

Antoinette, whose last name was withheld to protect her privacy, was among 30 girls whose bleak accounts of life at Tryon and at Lansing Residential Center, near Ithaca, inform a harshly critical report about the centers released today by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Human Rights Watch has investigated conditions at juvenile centers for boys elsewhere in the United States and other countries. But this was its first look at incarceration of girls, and the report’s author, Mie Lewis, said she chose New York because of the size of its juvenile population and indications of problems at its institutions.

In New York State, girls represented 14 percent of the children taken into custody in 1994; 10 years later, the number had grown to more than 18 percent. A majority of the girls at Lansing and Tryon are 15 and 16, but some are as young as 12.

The 134-page report concludes that girls in the two centers, which together house about 150 girls, are being abused and neglected — violently restrained for minor infractions, subjected to sexual harassment and assault, cut off from families, and provided little rehabilitation.

Ms. Lewis, a lawyer and Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the A.C.L.U., said she was refused access to the facilities, which are operated by the State Office of Children and Family Services. But she combed through grievance reports and other documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Law and interviewed formerly and currently incarcerated girls.

“In other countries, we are always given access and we’ve been able to visit the facilities and talk to kids,” she said. “With O.C.F.S., it’s an incredibly closed and secretive agency. And then when kids are sent to these facilities, it’s like they are dropped into a black hole.”

The report calls on the state to curtail the use of a face-down restraint technique, in which girls are thrust to the floor and handcuffed. The report makes numerous other recommendations, from providing better education and assuring access to mental health services to limiting male staff members in girls’ living quarters.

A spokesman for the Office of Children and Family Services, Brian Marchetti, criticized Human Rights Watch and the A.C.L.U. for not providing a copy of the report to the agency before its release, as the two groups did for the news media. “We have to question their motives,” Mr. Marchetti said. “Is it to improve programs for children or is it to see their name in headlines and promote their agenda?”

Mr. Marchetti said the agency provided Ms. Lewis with 5,500 pages of material and granted her an interview in April with the agency’s commissioner, John A. Johnson, and senior staff members. He said that access to the facilities themselves is granted to researchers only after receipt of a research proposal and that Ms. Lewis never presented one.

As for criticisms of Lansing and Tryon, Mr. Marchetti said the agency had “zero tolerance” for any kind of “sexual misconduct” between employees and residents.

The report quotes girls who had worked as prostitutes who felt they were singled out by male staff members. A number of those girls complained of harassment, unwanted touching and sexual contact.

One girl, identified as Ebony V., who was 16 at the time of her confinement, recalled in the report an episode in which she was having sex in the office of a male staff member at Lansing when another male employee walked in on them. “He said: ‘Oh, oh, oh, oh I’m sorry’ and closed the door. It’s crazy, isn’t it?” the report quotes her as saying.

Mr. Marchetti also defended the educational offerings at the centers. Across the agency’s facilities in general, two-thirds of the young people score below grade level in reading and math upon entering. While at the institutions, he said, they improve on average by two grade levels.

One of the most stinging criticisms leveled by the report centers on the use of a face-down restraint. The report describes how girls are seized from behind and pushed to the floor, their arms held in place or put in handcuffs. The restraint is used for such infractions as not making a bed properly or not raising one’s hand before speaking, the report said.

The agency’s regulations say that such restraints are to be used to prevent children from harming themselves and others, but, Ms. Lewis said, the agency’s internal policy is decidedly more lax.

Mr. Marchetti said restraints were used to prevent harm and also to “de-escalate situations.” Asked whether they were used excessively, he said that “all staff in Office of Children and Family Services facilities are mandated reporters,” meaning they must report abuse to the authorities.

Juanita Crawford, 19, who spent a year and a half at Lansing after she was found guilty of reckless endangerment and conspiracy and is now an intern at the A.C.L.U., said in an interview that she was restrained after not moving quickly enough to dispose of her food tray and talking back to a staff member.

“He takes you and hooks your arms backwards with a lot of force, and it hurts, and you’re dropped face down,” she said. “It’s almost like getting tripped.”

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/nyregion/25juvenile.html

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

NJ:The Last Holdout Reconsiders a Program to Curb H.I.V.

September 25, 2006, NY Times
The Last Holdout Reconsiders a Program to Curb H.I.V.
By RICHARD G. JONES

CAMDEN, N.J., Sept. 21 — On most days, the fringe workers in this city’s stunningly vibrant drug trade shout and gesticulate from street corners like hot dog vendors at a ballpark, hawking hypodermic needles they claim are clean.

“Works for sale! Works for sale!”

But the shouting stopped at one corner recently after one of those dealers died of a drug overdose. For his loyal customers, it was a disaster, however briefly.

“It was a drought of works,” said Maria Lugo, 26, who said that she injects heroin eight times a day. “People were picking up old needles off the street. They didn’t care. They just wanted to get off.”

That mix of apathy and addiction has led to what health officials say is a public health crisis in New Jersey, where state figures show that more than 4 in 10 cases of H.I.V. infection result from injecting illegal drugs with contaminated needles. Even so, New Jersey remains the one state that prohibits the distribution of hypodermic needles in government-sanctioned programs.

That may soon change. In a reversal that even supporters acknowledge would have been unexpected as recently as six months ago, lawmakers may well pass a bill soon to allow needle exchanges in New Jersey.

The legislation, to be considered this week, appears finally to have enough support to win passage, 14 years after it was first introduced, and Gov. Jon S. Corzine has said he would sign it.

To supporters, the bill is long overdue, and the Legislature’s refusal to approve it has contributed to the deaths of an untold number of drug users.

To opponents, including State Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr., the Republican nominee for the United States Senate, the measure would mean nothing less than a government endorsement of illegal drug use.

One of the bill’s most vocal critics, State Senator Ronald L. Rice, a former Newark police officer who represents a district in Essex County, has compared legal needle exchanges to the notorious Tuskegee Syphilis Study, an experiment in Alabama from 1932 until 1972 in which proper treatment was withheld from African-Americans infected with venereal disease.

Mr. Rice has argued that exchange programs contribute to a cycle of social and economic inertia for minorities and the poor.

A better use of state money, he says, would be to create more programs providing drug education and treatment.

“Those who want a syringe access program are saying that it’s O.K. for drug users to continue using drugs and kill themselves because it’s cheaper for the government,” he said.

It was Mr. Rice, a Democrat, who negotiated an alliance with the Republican minority in the Senate to prevent the needle exchange bill from getting out of committee as recently as last spring.

But last Monday, committee members reached a compromise that would allow pilot needle exchange programs in six cities. The program would be re-evaluated in five years under the bill, which would also provide $10 million for drug treatment programs.

State Senator Nia H. Gill, a Democrat from Essex County who sponsored the original legislation, cited statistics that show New Jersey is the state with the third-highest rate of H.I.V. infection among children, and the highest rate among women.

Nearly 33,000 residents of New Jersey have AIDS, according to state health officials, and, in a statement, Ms. Gill noted that almost as many — about 30,000 — have died of the disease.

“If there were any other cause of hundreds of deaths of children, thousands of deaths of women and the orphaning of tens of thousands of children — our Legislature would act on an emergency basis to reduce that cause,” she said.

To those who see the consequences of the drug trade in neighborhoods like South Camden, an exchange program cannot come too soon.

Several times a week, Jose Quann and Johnny Brown, workers with the Camden Area Health Education Center, drive a modified recreational vehicle through some of the bleakest parts of the city to do street-level prevention and education concerning H.I.V. and AIDS.

They hand out free condoms to prostitutes. They give intravenous-drug users bleach kits to sterilize syringes. And they offer health services like free blood pressure screenings and new oral H.I.V. tests that yield results in 20 minutes.

Bouncing over the uneven asphalt along Broadway in South Camden the other day, Mr. Brown, a burly 51-year-old, said that he did not believe free needles would encourage drug abuse.

“When they take part in needle exchange, it means they’re starting to take an interest in their health,” Mr. Brown said. “That’s the first step.”

Mr. Quann, 46, agreed. “It’s a win-win for everybody,” he said. “Right now, they’re disposing of these things in our back alleys, in our playground where our kids are getting pricked.”

Although the six cities in the proposed pilot program have not been chosen, both men hope that Camden, whose 75,000 residents, according to city figures, include an estimated 800 people with H.I.V. or AIDS, will be one of them.

So did a half-dozen visitors to their bus.

One of them, a 30-year-old prostitute who said her first name was Summer, sneered at the idea that providing free needles would promote drug use.

“Users are going to use anyway,” she said. “But you’d have less people infected with H.I.V., hepatitis.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/nyregion/25needles.html

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)

MA: Gubenatorial Election:They're tough on crime but not smart on it

They're tough on crime but not smart on it
By James Alan Fox
Monday, September 25, 2006, Boston Herald

Within hours of her uncontested victory in the Republican primary, Kerry Healey stepped up her campaign for the corner office by launching a technologically glitzy e-book, "Smart, Tough Solutions to Change Massachusetts."
In the public safety arena, the plan is tough-minded indeed. Proposals to expand online postings of sex offenders, to increase sentences for meth dealers and to track domestic abusers with GPS devices all characterize Healey, a former criminologist, and running mate Reed Hillman, a former state trooper, as tough as nails on crime.

As for smart, the online e-book is definitely smart-looking, right down to the animated page-turns. But at a time when street-gun violence is on the rise, is yet another proposal for reinstating capital punishment a smart approach?
Recognizing the failures of previous administrations to secure support for capital punishment, Healey has proposed a narrower scope - death for those felons convicted of killing a police officer, prosecutor, judge or correctional officer. How smart is it to spend time and energy in pushing for a penalty so narrow that it would hardly matter at all?
If you're like most people - or at least like my class of over 100 students that I polled - you might think that the murder of law officers is a critical and pervasive problem. Well, think again.
Over the past decade, only three Massachusetts cops and not a single state correctional officer have been slain by an assailant. As for prosecutors, we recall with sadness the fatal shooting of Assistant Attorney General Paul McLaughlin in 1995. But don't struggle too hard to remember another; apparently this was the first and only such case in Bay State history. You will have a similarly difficult time identifying a significant number of homicides of judges.
Reportedly, Healey would prefer to have the death penalty for other heinous offenses as well, but chose to start with the narrowest set of crimes on which "we can all agree." It may be a bit of exaggeration to suggest consensus, as not all citizens support such an approach, especially when given a reasonable alternative like long-term incarceration.
Even the people this proposal is designed to protect don't necessarily see capital punishment as a capital idea. In a 1995 survey of police chiefs, taken at a time when crime levels were much higher than they are today, the nation's top cops prioritized capital punishment far behind smarter strategies for reducing crime, such as curtailing gun availability and expanding the ranks of law enforcement.
Still, Healey claims her proposal would deter those who might contemplate such a crime. But as a criminologist, she must know that evidence strongly suggests otherwise. She may also know that 84 percent of the past presidents of the three major criminological professional societies concur that the deterrent effect is mostly wishful thinking. It is not that criminals disregard sanctions, only that the prospect of execution is no more dissuasive than life in prison.
Ironically, cop killing is one area that exposes the flaw in the deterrence argument. What deters people is not the severity of punishment, but the perceived likelihood that the penalty will ever be applied. Typically, cop killers shoot in order to avoid arrest. Whether the potential penalty is life imprisonment or death makes little difference when expecting to escape the law.
Come November, Healey's campaign for capital punishment may prove to have been smart after all - smart politics to win votes by exploiting an emotional non-issue. But smart politics does not always translate into smart policy.


James Alan Fox is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University http://news.bostonherald.com/editorial/view.bg?articleid=159162&format=&page
=1

Posted by lois at 05:09 PM | Comments (0)

"Custody and Control: Conditions of Confinement in New York's Juvenile Prisons for Girls,"

"Custody and Control: Conditions of Confinement in New York's Juvenile Prisons for Girls,"

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union take the first in-depth look at New York's highest security juvenile prisons for girls. What the report uncovers is disturbing: Upon being found "delinquent," young girls from backgrounds of intergenerational poverty, many of whom have survived abuse and trauma, are locked up and again abused and neglected, this time at the hands of the state. This report documents the excessive use of a face-down "restraint" procedure in which girls are thrown to the floor, often causing injury, as well as incidents of sexual abuse, and inadequate educational and mental health services.

http://hrw.org/reports/2006/us0906/

This and other new research relating to girls and women and mass incarceration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org under New Research

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

September 24, 2006

MA:Scrutiny of Healy and Patrick's opinions focus on CORI reform in the gubernatorial race

The Boston Globe
Scrutiny of criminals heats up race
Healey presses Patrick on background checks

By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff | September 24, 2006

When criminals try to re enter society and remake their lives, they're often haunted by criminal background information that can prevent them from getting a job. For years, state lawmakers and social activists, many of them from minority neighborhoods, have tried to limit distribution of that information, saying they want to help people get another chance.

The fight to water down the Criminal Offender Records Information law, or CORI, has emerged as an issue in the governor's race. Democrat Deval L. Patrick, who supports restricting the release of some information, is drawing fire -- first from his defeated Democratic rival, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, and now from his Republican opponent, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey.

Healey last week launched a television ad quoting Reilly calling Patrick ``soft on crime."

``There is no benefit to hiding someone's criminal history," Healey said in an interview. ``It should be made more widely available, not restricted, as Deval Patrick has suggested. I think it's meaningful that the state's top law enforcement official called Patrick soft on crime."

A review of his public comments by the Globe found that Patrick has carefully avoided taking a stand on specific CORI legislation, including the most controversial proposals pending on Beacon Hill. The Public Safety Act of 2006, an omnibus bill that lawmakers did not act on this session, contained measures that would make it easier for offenders to have their records sealed or expunged and allow drug dealers to lop time off their sentences.

For five months, Patrick was listed as a supporter of that bill on the website of one of the groups pressing the legislation, the Massachusetts Alliance to Reform CORI. After Reilly criticized Patrick, a leader of that group removed Patrick's name from the website, saying it was a mistake to list him as a proponent.

Currently, more than 11,000 employers have access to criminal records under CORI, and nearly all of them serve vulnerable populations such as nursing home residents and schoolchildren.

In debates and in speeches, Patrick has said he supports the idea of giving people with criminal records ``a second chance."

``Moving from jail back into responsible society is a great idea," he said in a June speech, ``but only if CORI doesn't defeat your second chance." In an interview Friday, Patrick said he believes in ``tightening up" the current criminal background system, which he said is ``overbroad" and ``inaccurate," and may prevent convicted criminals from making a clean start.

``All I'm talking about is creating a way for those who need information that is relevant . . . to have that information," Patrick said in an interview Friday. ``But also make sure that CORI doesn't defeat their every second chance."

But he said in the interview he isn't sure which specific bills he would support. ``I don't pretend to know all the different legislation. I can't say there's any one proposal that is right," he said.

Patrick's statements on the hot button issue reignite questions that surfaced privately among strategists for his Democratic rivals during the primary campaign: that he is often vague and elusive on key public policy matters. He won the primary with 50 percent of the vote, but last week the general election campaign quickly turned heated over crime and immigration, and Healey renewed a familiar criticism in an interview last week.

``It's typical of Deval Patrick to speak in generalities and be unable to supply specific plans for making Massachusetts a better place to live," she said. ``I have very specific plans about what we need to do to make Massachusetts safer. Criminal justice is the most basic service that government provides. You can't have economic development without safe streets. Your kids can't learn in school if they're scared."

In the Democratic candidates' final debate Sept. 14, Reilly attacked Patrick for seeming to endorse the Public Safety Act of 2006, a compilation of a half dozen bills filed by different legislators during the year. Patrick denied supporting the act, and afterward , Patrick's name was removed from the website where he was listed as a backer. Horace Small, a leader of the Massachusetts Alliance to Reform CORI, said Patrick's name should not have been included.

``It was an honest mistake," Small said.

On Friday, Patrick said again that he does not support that legislation. He said he believes in protecting people by limiting access by employers to incorrect or irrelevant information.

``I don't think every employer ought to know about every trivial infraction," he said. ``For example, if you were a bank, you'd want to know that an applicant for teller had a history of financial fraud, but not necessarily about every speeding ticket."

He stressed that law enforcement authorities should have unfettered access to criminal records.

He said he cannot decide which measures to support without further study. ``The way to get CORI reform is to get people around the table who have to live with this, who need or don't need information, and try to forge a course that serves the best interests of everyone," he said.

Groups pressing for changes say they don't care if Patrick embraces their favorite CORI reform proposal, as long as he agrees with them in concept.

``Deval supports the idea of a second chance," said Small. ``He recognizes that the way the system was set up hurts people. What I loved about the guy is he took the time to meet with people with CORI's. He heard their stories. He studied the laws. He said the system was falling apart. Whether he embraced our piece, he's committed to making the system fair and efficient; giving access to public safety but making sure people don't pay for the rest of their lives."

They say that supporting Patrick is easy; his main opponent, Healey, opposes any form of CORI reform.

``As an advocate who has investigated the positions of the various candidates, I think [Patrick] believes the system needs to be worked on to allow appropriate employment," said Brandyn Keating, executive director of the non-profit Criminal Justice Policy Coalition. ``Ideologically the candidates [Patrick and Healey] are on opposite sides of the issue. It's not like they each support some form of CORI reform. They're on opposite poles," said Keating, whose group does not get involved in electoral politics because of its nonprofit status.

But some prosecutors say there is no middle ground in the CORI debate -- a politician is either for providing access to criminal record information or is siding with criminals and making it tougher for law enforcement officials to do their job. The Massachusetts District Attorneys Association has gone on record opposing any efforts to weaken the existing law.

``There are different versions that people have proposed," said Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz, a Republican. ``My opinion is they raise public safety issues. I believe an employer should be able to make an informed decision whether to hire or not hire someone. People have the right to be safe."

To Cruz, the best CORI law would be no CORI law. He believes the Legislature should eliminate the law altogether and give the public complete access to criminal records over the Internet.

``That would be the reform safest for everyone," he said. ``We don't start life at 35 with a clean slate. People make choices and actions have consequences. I don't think that because people allegedly can't get a job that we should try to change history."

As the campaign progresses, Patrick said, he may take a more specific stand on CORI reform, but for now isn't afraid to take the ``reasoned" middle ground -- even if he risks being labeled ``soft on crime.

``Kerry Healey will be using every label, every shorthand, doing everything short of engaging thoughtfully on the issue," he said. ``We owe the people of Massachusetts thoughtful, engaged discussion of the issues, not just government by sound bite."
© Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company http://www.boston.com/news/local/politics/candidates/articles/2006/09/24/scrutiny_of_criminals_heats_up_race/?page=1

Posted by lois at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2006

Is adult prison best for juveniles?

Is adult prison best for juveniles?
Posted 9/20/2006 8:33 PM ET
By Marilyn Elias, USA TODAY
Get-tough laws that have put more teenagers in adult prisons since the early '90s conflict with a wave of new research suggesting how children can be set straight and society protected at the same time.
At a two-day summit starting Thursday in Washington, leading researchers will meet with juvenile justice decision-makers — directors of state juvenile justice systems, judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys — to discuss how the new evidence should affect treatment of teen offenders.

"We know so much more about the adolescent brain and behavior than we used to, and we want to get these facts into the hands of people who can make a difference," psychologist Laurence Steinberg says. He heads a network of researchers and juvenile-justice workers financed by the MacArthur Foundation, which sponsored the meeting.
Since 1992, every state but Nebraska has made it easier to try juveniles as adults, and most states have legalized harsher sentences. Many states limit judges' discretion, sending all teens who commit serious offenses to adult courts, or allowing prosecutors to opt for adult prosecution.
That sounds reasonable, but it can be unfair, says Kimberly O'Donnell, chief judge of the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court in Richmond, Va. She points to 14-year-olds tried as adults for "assault by a mob" — in effect, ganging up on and hurting a child at school.
"And once you're tried as an adult, you're always an adult, which can have awful consequences," she says.
For example, if these teens are arrested again, prosecutors can use the threat of lengthy prison sentences as leverage to gain a plea bargain agreement that might not be in a child's interest, O'Donnell says.
There's firm evidence that teens prosecuted as adults are much more likely to commit crimes when they get out than comparable young people tried as juveniles, says Shay Bilchik, president and CEO of the Child Welfare League of America.
Juvenile facilities tend to offer better education, job training, and drug abuse and mental health treatment, Steinberg says. Plus, teens aren't learning from adults how to be career criminals, he adds.
That's not to say kids don't commit serious crimes before landing in adult jails. Some even score in the psychopathic range on written tests that predict which adults are likely to commit future crimes. These tests are sometimes used in deciding whether young people should get severe punishments or be tried as adults, says psychologist Elizabeth Cauffman of the University of California-Irvine.
She says it's a dubious practice. Her studies show that adolescents tend to move away from this psychopath profile when they're tracked for a couple of years, while adult scores are usually stable.
Some hallmarks of psychopathy — thrill-seeking, impulsivity, failure to accept responsibility — are all too familiar to parents of teenagers, Cauffman says. In effect, youths grow out of this behavior.
Many younger children aren't even competent to stand trial because they don't understand the trial process or can't make decisions about pleas, says Thomas Grisso, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester. He has developed guidelines to determine juvenile competence and is training U.S. juvenile court workers in using them.
New findings of other MacArthur network scientists challenge common assumptions about teenage criminals. For example, a study that has tracked 1,355 serious offenders for three years finds that less than 10% of those involved in a lot of criminal activities at the outset continued to be heavily involved over the years. "A lot of policy is driven by the view that if a kid does a felony assault, he must be a bad actor from here on forward," says study leader Edward Mulvey of the University of Pittsburgh Medical School.
Still, 57% had at least one more arrest within two years. "Plus, we know arrests represent only the tip of the iceberg. Who really knows how much else they did that they weren't caught for?" asks Adrian Raine, a psychologist at the University of Southern California who studies criminal behavior.
Long-term studies of highly aggressive children suggest that some are headed for a life of violent crime and should be locked up early because they're dangerous, he says. Brain damage or family qualities may cause their behavior, Raine says.
"But it's naive to think many of these very violent kids are going to stop, and we don't need to be protected from them."
In Mulvey's study, better parenting and long-term treatment for drug or alcohol abuse correlated with less criminal behavior.
Bilchik, a former prosecutor of juvenile cases in Miami for 16 years and former head of the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, can understand why research has been slow to translate into action.
"When you've got a kid in front of you who's done a vicious armed robbery with a beating, it's different than an intellectual argument about what works," Bilchik says. "Prosecutors think, 'Can I really make myself try him as a juvenile? Can I even get permission from my boss?' "
Sometimes prosecutors know a juvenile system has scant mental health treatment or rehabilitation, and they'd rather lock up a dangerous teen with adults than risk a slap on the wrist, Bilchik says. And often there's little follow-up monitoring by youth workers when troubled young people are let out. Still, he says adult prisons, despite their short-term appeal, aren't usually the long-term answer. "We have the research that tells us what to do. The tragedy is, we're not capitalizing on it."


Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-09-20-teen-crime_x.htm

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

September 22, 2006

TN: Meetings to Explain New Voting Rights Law for People With Felony Convictions

Meetings explain new felon voting rights law
The Jackson Sun, Sept 5, 2006
NASHVILLE - Two civil rights organizations are canvassing the state with town hall meetings - including one Thursday in Jackson - to explain a new election law intended to make it easier for felons to restore their voting rights.

But even advocates of the bill passed in May say Tennessee still has one of the most restrictive and confusing procedures for allowing former felons to regain the right to vote.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee and the state conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have meetings scheduled this week in Jackson, Clarksville and Murfreesboro. The Jackson meeting will be from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday in the Madison County Agricultural Complex Auditorium, at 309 North Parkway.
The meetings consist of representatives from local bar associations and county election officials, along with former felons and members of the National Right to Vote campaign.

The League of Women Voters in Tennessee also will be at the meetings to help former felons begin the process to restore their voting rights.

"For many of these people, if they start before Oct. 7, they'll be ready to vote in the Nov. 7 election," said Terry McMoore, spokesman for the Tennessee NAACP.

Denver Schimming, 48, of Goodlettsville, is a former felon convicted of bank robbery who campaigned at the Capitol to get the new bill passed. He is one of the planned speakers at the meeting in Jackson.

Schimming said voting allows ex-felons to take control of and responsibility for their lives after they've completed their sentences.

"You don't have to let your felony conviction define your life," said Schimming, who had his rights restored after completing his sentence in 1996. "You don't have to be a failure the rest of your life. You can get back into the mainstream and make your voice heard."

The bill was a compromise that permanently denied voting rights for more types of felons and placed financial obstacles in the process to register, said Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU in Tennessee.

"What I continue to emphasize is that this is a first step," Weinberg said. "We had to be practical. There was lots of debate and dialogue about what we were willing give up in order to get a streamlined process."

In the past, some former felons had to go to court and often had to pay attorney fees to restore their voting rights. Under the new rules, all former felons can bypass the court and complete a certificate of restoration at county election commission offices.

But the bill also expanded the felonies that permanently prohibit a person from ever voting. Starting July 1, anyone convicted of a sexual offense will not be eligible to restore voting rights. Previously only felons convicted of rape were excluded.

Also added late in the legislative process were two provisions of the bill that require former felons to be current on child support payments and to pay any financial restitution that is part of their sentences.

"When the bill was first introduced, it only required completion of sentences, probation and parole," Weinberg said. "The child support provision is unfair and penalizes poor mothers and fathers, who may never have the money to buy back their franchise."

Under the new requirements, the county circuit court where the felon was convicted verifies the restitution has been paid and the Department of Human Services verifies the child support payments.

"We are in the process of identifying individuals who were adversely affected by the child support provision," Weinberg said. "We are committed to righting this wrong, either by seeing it repealed, or going into court and challenging it."

The NAACP and the ACLU estimate there are 98,000 convicted felons in the state of Tennessee. The state Division of Elections does not have a count of how many felons have had their voting rights restored.

The changes to the felony voting law only apply to convictions after May 18, 1981. Felons who were convicted between Jan. 15, 1973, and May 17, 1981, are allowed to register to vote, regardless of the type of conviction. Felons convicted prior to Jan. 15, 1973, have a different set of rules regarding felony voting rights.

On the Net:

www.aclu-tn.org

tennessee.gov/sos/election/

http://www.jacksonsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060905/NEWS01/609050306/1002

Posted by lois at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)

September 21, 2006

The Hidden Costs of a Cruel and Unusual Prison Health Care System

Bioethics Forumis a service of the Hastings Center Report
Bioethics and the Law

Monday, September 18, 2006
The Hidden Costs of a Cruel and Unusual Prison Health Care System
BY BRIETTA CLARK

Last year, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons (the “Commission”) was formed to investigate and report on prisoners’ conditions of confinement and the abuse and violence suffered by inmates in U.S. jails and prisons. In June of this year, the Commission produced a report, Confronting Confinement, describing its findings and making recommendations for reform of correctional facilities in several areas. Tragically, one of the critical problem areas causing the preventable death and injury of prisoners is the health care delivery system that is supposed to care for them.

Nationwide, inmates are routinely denied access to physicians and nurses, even when the need becomes undeniable and critical. When prisoners do get to see a doctor or nurse, it’s often tantamount to receiving no care because the person provides grossly negligent care, or in some cases, is deliberately cruel to the prisoner. California’s prison system provides some of the worst examples of this kind of treatment. In one case, a prisoner suffered a neck injury in a fight and could not move his legs. Although the standard of care required immobilization of the neck, the treating physician insisted that the prisoner was faking and deliberately moved his head from side to side. The prisoner became paralyzed.

Such occurrences are not isolated or even unusual. According to recent statistics, deficiencies in the California prison health care system are so severe that one inmate dies needlessly every six or seven days as a result. California’s system is so dysfunctional that last year, in Plata v. Schwarzenegger, a federal court stripped the state of control of the prison health care system, temporarily establishing a Receivership to take control of medical service delivery for all California state prisoners. The plaintiffsalleged, and the court agreed, that the deficiencies in the prison health care system were so severe they violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Specifically, the court described the system as “broken beyond repair” and causing an “unconscionable degree of suffering and death.”

The problems of poor quality care and barriers to health care access in prison are not new, nor are they simply the result of random acts of cruelty or negligence by incompetent health care workers. Rather, the prison health care crisis is the product of numerous longstanding and widespread systemic defects in the prison health care system, including inadequate numbers of health care workers to screen prisoners for infectious disease and provide treatment; cost sharing that discourages prisoners from seeking preventive care; lack of fair and adequate compensation necessary to attract qualified personnel; a hierarchical structure that subordinates health care workers’ medical judgment to that of non-health correctional workers; institutional barriers to removing incompetent providers; inefficiency and waste in equipment management and service delivery; lack of adequate oversight and involvement by local public health agencies; and overcrowding.

Legislators have either been indifferent to the problem or unwilling to advocate for resources to improve the prison health care system. In California, for example, the Plata court and Receiver attributed California’s crisis to decades of medical neglect as well as legal and institutional barriers to reform created by the executive and legislative branches of government. The Commission also found that some states have actively encouraged poor quality care by allowing doctors whose licenses have been restricted by the state medical board for reasons of competence to continue practicing under a special license that restricts their work to prisons and jails. In fact, much correctional health care is provided by health care workers who could not find other employment because of problems with their licenses.

Society has enabled this systemic neglect through a culture of dehumanizing prisoners, which allows us to ignore or even tout the constant threats of violence and abuse that prisoners face. How often do we hear people joke about the prospect of a newly convicted criminal becoming someone’s “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” in prison or take pleasure in the fact that certain criminals, like child molesters and rapists, may be special targets for prison violence and rape? If this dehumanization of prisoners makes such extreme sexual violence and abuse of prisoners morally acceptable to us, then it makes it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to feel empathy for prisoners who are deprived of quality health care.

Despite this bleak picture, we appear to be on the verge of creating a more honest and thoughtful discussion about prisoner health and safety. The problem has become much more visible, in part because of the Commission’s information gathering, exposing the inhumane conditions under which health care is delivered and its tragic consequences. Courts seem increasingly willing to hold government officials accountable for such deficiencies, as evidenced by Plata and other successful class action prisoner suits. Even politicians have begun addressing these issues publicly. In California, it’s become a campaign issue in the governor’s race. At the federal level, President Bush signed into law the Prisoner Rape Elimination Act of 2003, the first federal law to address the issue of sexual assault in prison and to acknowledge its devastating mental and physical health consequences.

While these developments represent some progress, they are meaningless without the public and political will to expend the resources necessary to ensure adequate health care in prisons. Indeed, some problems can be fixed through simple organizational changes and by eliminating waste in the current prison administration. Nonetheless, many of the problems listed above cannot be remedied without additional state and federal funding. Increasing the number of health care personnel requires a significant commitment of financial resources. Qualified personnel can be recruited only if competitive compensation is offered. Proposals to reduce prisoners’ cost-sharing to encourage early preventive care suggest extending Medicaid coverage to prisoners. Even the Receiver in his latest report about the California prison health care system admits that his power to fix the system is limited without the political will and requisite commitment of state resources.

So why have we failed to commit the financial resources necessary to ensure prisoners’ health and safety in light of the profound moral and legal obligation to prevent such cruelty to prisoners? The most likely reason: fear of the perceived sacrifice that allocating resources to prison health care would require of the rest of society. With growing numbers of uninsured and underinsured among different economic classes, cutbacks in federal and state funding for the poor, and hospital closures and decreasing access to other health care providers, health care access is a problem for the rest of society too. Any proposal to pour more resources into prison health care while the rest of society faces problems in health care quality and access degenerates into an “us versus them” debate about who is more deserving of scarce health care resources. Such debates inevitably end in policy-makers deciding to sacrifice the needs of those without a voice (prisoners) in favor of more vocal and powerful or sympathetic constituencies. Under a paradigm where prisoners’ interests are viewed in competition with, and as requiring sacrifice by, the rest of society, prisoners’ health care needs will always be sacrificed for the “greater good” of increasing health care access for “law-abiding” and “deserving” members of society.

One of the biggest problems with this paradigm, however, is that it fails to account for the significant societal cost of not adequately funding prisoner health care. One of the most important findings coming out of the Commission’s work is that “[h]igh rates of disease and illness among prisoners, coupled with inadequate funding for correctional health care, endanger [the] public.” Indeed, one of the most serious failures identified in prison systems nationwide is the lack of proper screening, prevention, and treatment of infectious diseases. This means that prisoners are constantly being released with infectious diseases that they take back to their communities. According to Confronting Confinement, more than 1.5 million people are released every year from jail and prison carrying a life-threatening infectious disease, such as HIV/AIDS. As most prisoners eventually return to their communities, this creates a public health risk, especially for underserved communities to where prisoners disproportionately return.

The failure to adequately treat prisoners also means that when they do return to their communities, they will be sicker, less able to work and get insurance, and thus further strain the already scarce resources in areas with high health care demand. For example, the Commission noted that approximately 350,000 prisoners are released with serious mental illness that have gone untreated, and that “prisoners on average require significantly more health care than most Americans because of poverty, substance abuse, and because they most often come from underserved communities.” As long as this link between prisoners’ health and the public’s is ignored, our concerns about dwindling health care resources, health disparities, and the spread of diseases like HIV, especially in minority and economically disadvantaged communities, are not being honestly addressed.

Although decisions about how to allocate scarce health care resources are difficult ones and hard choices must be made, it is critical that we really understand what’s at stake before we make them. Imagine the following scenario: States are forced either to find the resources necessary to ensure prisoners’ access to quality health care or to release all of the prisoners. How would the public and legislators respond? Is there any doubt that the public’s fear for its physical safety and the threat of increased property crimes would make fixing the prison health care system everyone’s priority? Then why would we ignore the imminent and serious threat to public health and dwindling health care resources that exists now because of inadequate health care access in prison?

As the Commission notes at the beginning of Confronting Confinement: “What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons…. We must create safe and productive conditions of confinement not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it influences the safety, health, and prosperity of us all.” Fixing the prison health care system is a critical first step toward this goal.

This commentary appears by arrangement with the American Society for Law, Medicine, and Ethics.
http://www.bioethicsforum.org/prison-health-care.asp

Posted by lois at 09:02 PM | Comments (0)

MI & CA: Michigan Govenor Signs Bill Allowing Geo to take CA prisoners

Ludington Daily News
Ludington, Michigan
9-20-2006
A new tune? Prison for lease or rent
GEO seeks inmates for facility in Lake County
By JOE BOOMGAARD

Just less than one year ago, Gov. Jennifer Granholm used her line-item veto power to cut funding for a contract with The GEO Group, the owner of the private prison facility in Lake County.

Granholm cut the funding to save the state money. She said the prisoners could be housed in state prisons at a savings to the state of roughly $18 million dollars. The prison, the county¹s largest employer, closed in October. The prisoners and nearly all of the corrections officers went to other state-run prisons.

Meanwhile, the county has been left wondering what would happen. Refusing to believe GEO would walk away from the multi-million-dollar facility, officials think of the closure as a temporary situation. Granholm¹s office and GEO officials want the facility to reopen to house inmates from entities other than the state of Michigan. Doing that required a change in state law, which had mandated the facility be filled with only violent youthful offenders.

On Friday, Granholm signed into law a bill, sponsored by Rep. Goeff Hansen, R-Hart, allowing GEO to fill the beds with inmates from out-of-state or from federal agencies. The move was a way to create jobs for the area and make it easier for the company to reopen the prison.

³We appreciate the governor¹s support of the bill, and we appreciate the legislation becoming law,² said Pablo Paez, director of corporate communications for GEO. ³It is an important step in this process, and we are continuing to market the facility.²

Paez gave no specific timeline as to when the prison could reopen, but said the company continues to ³work with the community and the state to find an alternative use for the facility.²

³That¹s our ultimate goal.²

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation visited the facility as it looked to house inmates in out-of-state prisons to ease prison overcrowding in the state. The Lake County facility had been mentioned as a possible recipient of the California inmates, a possibility which hinged on Michigan passing HB 5800 and California determining what was required to send inmates out of state.

To transport an inmate out of state, California would have to secure the inmate¹s permission. Currently, the CDCR is surveying inmates to determine how many inmates would be interested in serving their time out of state ‹ possibly in Lake County.

³We believe the state of California remains interested in available beds throughout the country,² Paez said, noting GEO has heard nothing specific from the CDCR about the Baldwin facility. ³We¹ve continued to market the facility and we remain hopeful the facility will be reactivated.²

Webber Township Supervisor Tony Gagliardo is optimistic the prison will reopen as well. The township is stuck with a water and sewer system that has too few users to support itself now that the prison, the largest user of the infrastructure, has closed. To keep water cycling through the township¹s water tower, officials have to open fire hydrants. To date, they¹ve drained millions of gallons of water.

³I¹m glad, obviously,² Gagliardo said. ³(Granholm signing the bill) is what we¹re waiting for. Now we¹ll see what GEO does. The ball¹s in their court. We¹ve got a tank full of water. We¹ve been waiting to get this behind us and get back to normal.

³It¹s been about a year now, and we¹d like to get the water moving and get some jobs back in town.²

Lake County Clerk and CFO Shelly Myers said the year without the prison and without the jobs has been difficult.

³It¹s been tough, but it would get a lot tougher if this bill wasn¹t signed and we didn¹t have hope in the future,² Myers said. ³Our budget is not doom and gloom, but it¹s not pretty.²

Myers said she trusted Granholm¹s assurances the bill would pass. Now, she hopes GEO will do everything it can to get the prison reopened.

³From here on out, I hope it runs smoothly and we get inmates back in the prison,² Myers said. ³We want to get bodies in there, hopefully by spring.

³Then we¹ll see people moving back and get the jobs back in full force and businesses looking back up. We¹ll keep on moving forward.²

She would like to see the prison open as soon as possible so Webber Township doesn¹t have to worry about its water tower freezing this winter.

³I think the weather is going to be colder than people expect,² Myers said. ³We need to get the water flowing. Webber Township is really going to be strapped if they don¹t get the water flowing. I¹m really concerned.²

Still, Myers remains optimistic good things are in store for the county. She said the best case scenario would be for GEO to sign a contract for the bed space by the end of the month and for prisoners to be moved into the facility before November.

³Hopefully we¹ll have a Christmas party up there,² Myers said.

http://www.ludingtondailynews.com/news.php?story_id=33011

Posted by lois at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)

Geo to acquire CentraCore

Geo to acquire CentraCore

By Stephen Pounds
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Thursday, September 21, 2006

The Geo Group Inc. will buy CentraCore Properties Trust, a correctional real estate investment trust, for $356 million and assume CentraCore's $40 million in debt, the companies said Wednesday.

The Boca Raton-based private prison and mental-health center operator will get 13 prisons from CentraCore totaling 8,071 beds, of which 11 facilities with 6,945 beds are now leased to Geo under sale-lease back agreements. The deal is expected to close in late 2006 or early 2007 and is subject to the approval of CentraCore's shareholders and federal regulatory agencies.

CentraCore shareholders will receive $32 a share, a 13 percent premium over CentraCore's (NYSE: CPV) opening price Wednesday. Shares in Palm Beach Gardens-based CentraCore rose during the day at 10 times normal trading volume, closing up $3.32 at $31.70 a share.

Geo (NYSE: GEO) fell initially on the announcement but closed at $45.05, up 8 cents a share.

CentraCore Chief Executive Chuck Jones said he expects shareholders to approve the deal.

"Our responsibility was to maximize shareholder value ... and the preliminary feedback from shareholders is positive," Jones said.

While the offer is at a premium to Geo's stock price, it falls short of what it would cost to replace those prison and hospital beds if Geo had to do that for all of CentraCore's properties, said analyst Stephanie Krewson of Richmond, Va.-based BB&T Equity Research. Even so, she recommends shareholder approval.

"We would not expect one of Geo's competitors to launch a competing bid," Krewson said in a report.

As it announced the CentraCore deal, Geo issued its forecast for 2007, projecting post-acquisition earnings in a range from $2.40 to $2.60 - well short of Wall Street's expectation of $2.82 a share.

"The initial reaction of shareholders was to the lower guidance compared to the Street's expectations," said analyst Patrick Swindle of Nashville-based Avondale Partners. "But the positive is the strategic benefit from owning CPV."

In today's market, it is cheaper for Geo, which has 62 facilities worldwide under management or development, to build and own the prisons it operates than to sell them to CentraCore and lease them back. But under its arrangement with Geo, CentraCore has an option to buy Geo-financed property and negotiate a higher lease-back, or rental, rate.

Geo CEOGeorge Zoley said the merger is about dumping a deal made in the 1990s when Geo and CentraCore were spinoffs of security giant Wackenhut Corp.

"This is about regaining ownership of our facilities. They were sold at a time when we were a subsidiary of Wackenhut and we needed capital, and this was the only way to get it," Zoley said. "Now we can obtain capital from the equity markets or bank financing."

The buyout will be financed with $57 million in cash and $360 million in debt, Geo said.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/content/business/epaper/2006/09/21/a1d
_geo_0921.html

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

CA: Laws Tighten Rules for People Convicted of Sex Offenses & Editorial Against Prop 83

"Analysts say the legislation will cost the state more than $200 million annually, largely by expanding the prison population and requiring more parole agents to monitor ex-offenders for longer periods of time."
Los Angeles Times
Laws Tighten Rules for Sex Offenders
The governor signs bills that extend prison time and bar loitering near parks and schools. A ballot initiative offers additional provisions.
By Jenifer Warren, Times Staff Writer
September 21, 2006

SACRAMENTO ‹ Calling public safety government's most important job, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday signed a package of bills increasing prison terms for many sex offenders and barring them from loitering near schools and parks once they are released.

The measures, signed seven weeks before voters will decide on a ballot initiative offering similar provisions, also require that sex offenders deemed high-risk by authorities wear electronic tracking devices while on parole.

Backers said the new laws give California the nation's toughest restrictions on sex offenders, a category of felons facing an expanding national crackdown spawned by several high-profile crimes.

of their own molestations and the need for tougher punishment.

The Alquist bill, which cleared the Legislature without a single "no" vote, was put forth by Democrats after Republicans failed to win passage of their version. Frustrated, two GOP legislators launched a bid to qualify their version for the November ballot, resulting in Proposition 83, dubbed "Jessica's Law" by proponents.

The initiative differs from the bills in two major respects, involving electronic tracking of ex-offenders and limits on where they may live. Under Proposition 83, all registered sex offenders would be required to undergo electronic monitoring for life, regardless of their offense or the likelihood that they will offend again. Under SB 1178 by state Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough), signed by the governor, high-risk felons would be tracked with electronic devices while on parole.

The ballot measure also imposes a residency restriction, prohibiting ex-offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools, parks, or additional locations identified by local governments. The legislation bans loitering around schools, parks or other locations where vulnerable populations congregate, but does not limit where ex-offenders may live.

Some experts say the new laws make Proposition 83 unnecessary, because it mirrors many of the tougher sentencing aspects of the legislation. Critics also contend that the loitering ban contained in legislation would be more effective than simply limiting where ex-offenders may live.

"The bills the governor is signing give California virtually every positive thing that could come out of Jessica's Law," said Robert Coombs of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, a statewide network of rape crisis centers. "These bills do not take sex crime lightly, but they do the job in a more thoughtful way than Jessica's Law."

Schwarzenegger, however, said the state still needs Proposition 83, and state Sen. Chuck Poochigian (R-Fresno), a coauthor of one bill signed by the governor, agreed. Poochigian said the ballot measure is tougher in one respect, allowing designation of an offender as a sexually violent predator after one victim, instead of two.

Among those on hand for the ceremony outside the Capitol were the parents of Courtney Sconce, a 12-year-old Rancho Cordova girl abducted, raped and killed in 2000. Mark and Cindy Sconce wore buttons showing their daughter's face and held hands throughout the event.

Afterward, Mark Sconce called the bill-signing "one brick in the wall needed to keep our children safe." Cindy Sconce said it was unclear whether the new laws might have saved her daughter's life had they been on the books six years ago. But she hoped they would save other children.

"You can't go back and say, 'What if,' " Cindy Sconce said. "But the person who took Courtney was involved in child pornography, so this law [the Alquist bill] might have taken care of him before he got to the point of harming someone."

Cracking down on sex offenders has become a national trend. A federal study showed a 79% decline in sexual assaults against children ages 12 to 17 between 1993 and 2003.

The number of arrests for sex crimes against children in California also has declined somewhat during this decade, despite population growth of 6%, state statistics show.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-offender21sep21,1,1294703.story?coll
=la-headlines-california

=========================================================
Sacramento Bee

"Moreover, the proposition requires not just the monitoring of child molesters, but of all felony sex offenders released from prison. Opponents note correctly that this would mean monitoring at a high cost tens of thousands of ex-prisoners who don't pose any serious risk, leaving fewer resources available for high risk offenders who need to be watched. The Legislative Analyst's Office pegs the cost of such monitoring at "about $100 million annually after 10 years" and growing substantially after that. The initiative is not clear about who would pay the extra hundreds of millions of dollars -- the state, which has a deficit, or the financially strapped local governments."

Editorial: No on Proposition 83

It provides a false sense of security
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Sex offenders who prey on children are every parent's nightmare, and understandably so. Unfortunately, the fear they evoke makes them the bogeyman of choice for pandering politicians. What better targets for candidates in search of an easy issue to demagogue?

Proposition 83 is a case in point. Despite Proposition 83's title -- the Sex Offenders, Sexually Violent Predators, Punishment, Residence Restrictions and Monitoring Initiative Statute -- it would do nothing to protect children.

Among other things, the proposition would increase sentences, require lifelong monitoring for some offenders and further restrict where registered sex offenders could live.

If approved, it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars -- money that would be better spent on child care programs, expanding health care for poor families or improving educational opportunities.

Extremely dangerous sexual predators, including repeat rapists and criminals who sexually assault children 14 years and younger, already face sentences of 15 or 25 years to life in prison. Longer sentences for less dangerous offenders -- possessors of child pornography, for example -- will only further crowd already overcrowded prisons and drive up out-of-control prison costs.

The initiative imposes lifelong monitoring for registered felony sex offenders by requiring the use of global positioning systems, or GPS. In the Proposition 83 campaign, supporters invoke the name of Jessica Lunsford, the 9-year-old Florida girl who was kidnapped, assaulted and buried alive by a registered sex offender. But nothing in this initiative would prevent those intent upon harming children from removing their GPS devices and committing crimes.

Moreover, the proposition requires not just the monitoring of child molesters, but of all felony sex offenders released from prison. Opponents note correctly that this would mean monitoring at a high cost tens of thousands of ex-prisoners who don't pose any serious risk, leaving fewer resources available for high risk offenders who need to be watched. The Legislative Analyst's Office pegs the cost of such monitoring at "about $100 million annually after 10 years" and growing substantially after that. The initiative is not clear about who would pay the extra hundreds of millions of dollars -- the state, which has a deficit, or the financially strapped local governments.

Finally, the measure mandates tougher restrictions on where all registered sex offenders may live. Currently, a small percentage, mostly those who have committed crimes against children, cannot reside within 1,320 feet of a school. This initiative would expand it to all registered sex offenders, add parks to the restriction and expand the radius to 2,000 feet.

In other states, such laws have backfired, pushing sex offenders into sparsely populated rural and suburban neighborhoods where law enforcement is thin and where counseling, psychiatric and other social services that many mentally disordered offenders need are in short supply or nonexistent. The same is likely to happen in California.

Proposition 83 is, in short, costly and counterproductive. Sadly, politicians who know better are afraid to tell voters the truth. Voters should see through this deception and vote No on Proposition 83.
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/25347.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by lois at 08:43 PM | Comments (0)

Study Cites Slow Progress in Maryland's Move from Prisons to Treatment

September 19, 2006
Maryland has made slow progress is shifting resources away from prisons and into addiction treatment as it alters its philosophy on how to deal with low-level drug offenders, the Washington Post reported Sept. 19.

A new study from the Justice Policy Institute found that for each dollar Maryland spends on jails and prisons, it still only spends 26 cents on treating adults referred from the criminal-justice system.

Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has vowed to shift more resources into treatment, and the number of people referred by the courts into treatment rose 28 percent between 2000 and 2004. At the same time, the state's incarceration rate fell 7 percent.

Study author Kevin Pranis said that progress on changing the state's "War on Drugs" mentality varies by jurisdiction. "We need to look at what some counties are doing well and what others need help on," he said. "We are looking at what they do with state money."

Some advocates say that a poor local economy has slowed progress on the initiative by cutting state spending. The budget of the state's alcohol and drug agency rose $7 million, to $137.5 million, this year, but experts say at least another $4 million in annual treatment funding is needed. The new report recommends that Maryland lawmakers add $30 million to the 2008 budget to catch up with rising costs and fill service gaps.

Ehrlich's treatment-oriented Project RESTART was launched in 2003, but only received $5.2 million for two pilot prison-based treatment programs in 2006. Most treatment funding has gone to in-prison programs rather than community-based programs to help offenders once they are released.

"RESTART is a great idea, but compared to the scale of the problem, it's a small piece. It's something that needs to happen behind the walls, but when people get out, I think the Department of Public Safety would agree they need to continue to get support on the outside," said Pranis. "Treatment in the community is critical."
http://www.jointogether.org/news/research/summaries/2006/study-cites-slow-progress-in.html?log-event=sp2f-view-item&nid=30376044&print=t

Posted by lois at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2006

Conference: NY: Punishment: The U.S. Record Nov. 30 & Dec. 1, 2006

SOCIAL RESEARCH CONFERENCE AT THE NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH

PUNISHMENT: THE U.S. RECORD

NOVEMBER 30 and DECEMBER 1, 2006

A conference on who, what, why and how we punish.

Our nation's prison population has soared by more than 600% since the 1970s, despite a drop in crime rates. As of 2005, over two million people were imprisoned in this country: almost one in every 136 U.S. residents. Black men, who make up 6% of the U.S. population, comprise over 40% of our prison population. A black male born today has a 32% chance of spending time in prison. Eleven states do not allow formerly incarcerated people to vote. Nearly 2,800,000 American children have at least one parent in prison or jail.

What does this mean for our democracy? Where do our concepts of punishment come from? What is the effect on our families, communities and the economy of our staggeringly high incarceration rate?

Join us as we examine the foundations of our ideas of punishment, explore the social effects of current practices and search for viable alternatives to our carceral state.

For more information and to register, please visit www.socres.org/punishment

This conference is supported by The Open Society Institute's U.S. Justice Fund, Russell Sage Foundation, the Ford Foundation and The J.M. Kaplan Fund and is also Cosponsored by the ACLU.

Posted by lois at 04:48 PM | Comments (0)

Study: Prisons Breed Islamic Extremists

Study: Prisons Breed Islamic Extremists
- By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, September 19, 2006

(09-19) 08:22 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Jailed Islamic extremists with violent interpretations of the Quran are taking advantage of scarce religious monitoring programs to breed terrorists in U.S. prisons, a study released Tuesday shows.

State and local prison officials struggle to track radicalized behavior by inmates or religious counselors, the joint study by George Washington University and the University of Virginia found.

Many prisons can't afford preventive programs; in California, for example, officials reported "that every investigation into radical groups in their prisons uncovers new leads, but they simply do not have enough investigators to follow every case of radicalization."

"Radicalized prisoners are a potential pool of recruits by terrorist groups," concluded the study, released at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on "homegrown" terrorists. "The U.S., with its large prison population, is at risk of facing the sort of homegrown terrorism currently plaguing other countries."

An estimated 2 million people are imprisoned in the United States; 6 percent of them are Muslim, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism consultant, told senators that "chilling" interpretations of the Quran were given to prison inmates when he worked for the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, an international charity that served as a major al-Qaida financier.

The readings urged Muslims "to wage war against non-Muslims who have not submitted to Islamic rule," Gartenstein-Ross said in prepared testimony to the Senate panel.

"I know of only a few instances in which prisons rejected the literature we attempted to distribute ‹ and it was never because of the literature's radicalism," said Gartenstein-Ross, who has since left the charity and converted to Christianity.

Prisons have long been considered recruiting stations for gangs and, more recently, terrorists, but little has been done throughout government to combat them. The Senate hearing came as law enforcement and intelligence officials focus on finding out how and why extremist homegrown sympathizers cross a line to become operational terrorists.

The panel's chair, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, called the matter "an emerging threat to our national security." Added Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., "While homegrown Islamic terrorism might not be as much of a threat as in say, Europe or some other places, we ignore the threat that does exist at our peril."

The report cited several high-profile cases of terrorists who became radicalized while incarcerated, including British shoe bomber Richard Reid. It also noted what authorities call a foiled plot of a potential shooting rampage against California military facilities, synagogues and the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles by followers of Kevin James, who founded the radical group Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh, or JIS, as an inmate at California State Prison in Sacramento.

Researchers interviewed federal, state and local prison officials, religious counselors and counterterror authorities in four states ‹ California, New York, South Carolina and Ohio ‹ and the District of Columbia. They concluded that federal prison authorities have made significant strides in collecting and sharing information to help monitor whether inmates are becoming radicalized.

But state and local prison officials have largely relied on contractors and volunteers to lead Islamic services because of a lack of well-trained Muslim chaplains, the report found. In New York, that led to several cases of "imams espousing violent views," it said.

The report noted a 2004 study that found that about half of 193 prisons surveyed supervised religious services or monitored them with video or audio recorders. "In the absence of monitoring by authoritative Islamic chaplains, materials that advocate violence have infiltrated the prison system undetected," it found.

___

On the Net:

The George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute:

University of Virginia's Critical Incident Analysis Group:

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee:

homelandsecurity.gwu.edu/

www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/ciag/

hsgac.senate.gov/

URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/09/19/national/w080327D
52.DTL

©2006 Associated Press

Posted by lois at 04:44 PM | Comments (0)

The First Annual Central New York Locks Conference

FIRST ANNUAL
CENTRAL NEW YORK
LOCKS CONFERENCE

Saturday, October 21, 2006
Tompkins County Public Library
101 East Green Street
Ithaca, New York
11 AM - 4 PM
FREE

The First Annual Central New York Locks Conference will
embrace the beauty of natural hair throughout the African diaspora,
while also focusing on the history and contemporary
impact of "dreadlocks" or locked hair.

The theme of the this year's conference is the
effect of mass incarceration on communities given that
certain appearances within communities of color
are often negatively stereotyped and criminalized.

The First Annual Central New York Locks Conference will feature...

Harold Wilson
122nd innocent person released from death row

Pam & Ramona Africa
MOVE Organization/Int'l Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal

New York Campaign for Telephone Justice
Coalition working across NYS to STOP THE CONTRACT between DOCS and
Verizon/MCI

Euware Osayande
activist, poet, author

Vanessa Johnson
presenting HAIR TALES...

films, exhibits, vendors, and much more....
(vendor inquiries welcome)

plus....
THE AFTER PARTY....
roots | culture | spoken word | rebel music

Saturday, October 21, 2006
Lost Dog Lounge
106-112 South Cayuga Street
Ithaca, New York
8 PM
$5

featuring...
Taina Asili
Vanessa Johnson
Euware Osayande
cypher:dissdent
BROADCAST LIVE

please help spread the word!

for more info...
607-277-2121 or info@stamp-cny.org

Southern Tier Advocacy & Mitigation Project, Incorporated
focusing on the "under-developed strengths" of at-risk communities
__________________
S.T.A.M.P.’s Administrative Office
119 East Buffalo Street
Ithaca, New York 14850
P. 607.277.2121
F. 607.277.2120
info@stamp-cny.org

S.T.A.M.P.’s Guerrilla Griots Human Rights Media Arts Center
Henry Saint John Building - Suite 106
301 South Geneva Street
Ithaca, New York 14850
P/F 607.277.2122
info@guerrilla-griots.org

S.T.A.M.P. was established in 2005 in response to the frequency with
which young people are referred to juvenile and adult court systems.
S.T.A.M.P. seeks to empower community control over delinquency
and crime, reduce over-reliance on incarceration, and assist those
incarcerated and leaving state prison with transitional services.

Posted by lois at 04:27 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2006

GA: Fighting fires a 2nd chance for men who are incarcerated

"In the rural parts of the state, these local volunteer fire departments depend heavily on the inmate fire department coming out and helping in the community," said Lyn Pardue, executive director of the Georgia Firefighting Standards and Training Council. "They are very well-trained. They are professional-acting individuals, and they do exactly what they're instructed to do." In some areas, inmate fire teams supplement local fire departments; in others, they are the sole responders."

Atlanta Journal Constitution

Fighting fires a 2nd chance for inmates

By CARLOS CAMPOS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/17/06

Meet the women of the Lee Arrendale State Prison Fire Station No. 1, a band of sisters who make up the only all-female inmate firefighting crew in Georgia. They are a supplemental firefighting team for Banks and Habersham counties and the city of Baldwin.

Big-city dwellers accustomed to professional, full-time firefighters might be surprised to learn that prison inmate crews often respond to fires, car crashes and medical emergencies in many parts of rural Georgia.

The Georgia Department of Corrections operates 18 firefighting stations staffed by inmates, from Walker County near the Tennessee border to Wayne County near the Georgia coast. Four more stations operate out of county prisons.

The work gives inmates the feeling they are making up for their wrongs. "When I go in at the end of the day, it gives me a sense that I was useful ‹ that I was purposeful," said Arrendale firefighter Whitney Beauford, 21, serving a seven-year sentence for robbery by intimidation. "I'm helping the community. I'm doing something to better myself."

As of Thursday, about 220 inmates in Georgia ‹ from murderers to car thieves ‹ had responded to 2,715 calls for assistance this year. Since 2000, they have handled more than 21,000 calls, according to a prison system report issued in August.

Inmates convicted of arson or sex offenses are the only ones prohibited from fire teams, though murderers are carefully screened, said Department of Corrections Fire Services Director Rick Huggins.

"In the rural parts of the state, these local volunteer fire departments depend heavily on the inmate fire department coming out and helping in the community," said Lyn Pardue, executive director of the Georgia Firefighting Standards and Training Council. "They are very well-trained. They are professional-acting individuals, and they do exactly what they're instructed to do."

In some areas, inmate fire teams supplement local fire departments; in others, they are the sole responders.

The fire station just outside Arrendale's ominous razor wire is making history for a second time. Georgia's first inmate fire team, formed in 1962, operated out of Arrendale. Forty-four years later, it is the first to feature all women. Arrendale used to be a men's prison, but converted to a women's prison ‹ one of three in the state ‹ in 2004. For a short time, the supplemental firefighters weren't available while the team made the transition to women and the women were trained and certified.

For prison inmates, firefighting offers major opportunities: It allows them to do most of their daytime hours outside of prison walls, in the far more relaxed atmosphere of a fire station. It also allows them to learn a profession they can take with them once they leave prison. Huggins said 26 former inmates have landed after-prison jobs as firefighters during his 12 years as director.

The nine prison firefighters at Arrendale spend their days at the fire station Monday through Friday. At night and on weekends, they go back to the prison, where they stay together in a dorm separate from the rest of the inmate population. In case of fire on nights and weekends, they can be shuttled to the station within a few minutes, said Arrendale Fire Chief Jessica Maher, who works for the prison system and leads the inmate team.

Firefighter Juanita Vega, serving a 10-year sentence for trafficking methamphetamine, first worked in the prison's pig farming operation to prove she could be trusted in an outside detail.

"I'm a vegetarian, so it was hard," Vega said. "It was a humbling experience, and I learned a lot."

Now, Vega, 35, says, "I have a passion in my heart for firefighting." Many of the women hope to pursue a career in firefighting. Georgia law requires felons to wait 10 years after conviction before working as a firefighter. But the law exempts inmate firefighters certified through the Department of Corrections, who must wait only five years after a conviction to work in the field.

Inmate Mary Long, 41, serving a 20-year sentence for armed robbery, said she is determined to work as a firefighter upon release. She's up for parole in two years.

"It's become a reality that, 'Hey, I can do this,' " she said. "It is my way of giving back to society."

Cobb County Fire Chief Rebecca Denlinger, one of a handful of women in the nation leading a large fire department, said she believes firefighting will be a "life-changing experience" for the women of Arrendale.

"It's like finding ‹ especially for people who have sort of a daredevil tendency or like to take risks ‹ some really useful, downright noble purpose for that kind of scary exhilaration," she said.

The Arrendale firefighters are trained to respond only to structure fires, not medical emergencies. So far, they've responded to about four fires, including a blaze at a steakhouse in Baldwin.

Chief Maher is confident her team is trained well enough to handle any situation. "If I was in a fire and I needed to get out, I have no doubt they would be able to get me out," she said.

While Beauford demonstrated to visitors how to dress quickly for a fire, she stuck her hand into a boot. "I broke a nail."

As the other inmates chuckled, a horrified chief barked, "Don't put that in there!" to a reporter standing nearby with a notebook.
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2006/09/16/0917metfire.html

Posted by lois at 05:16 PM | Comments (0)

Opposition to prisons' factories growing

"Douglas Hasty, president and CEO of Unique Performance, the car company seeking PIE approval, contributed $1,000 in April to Texans for Rick Perry, the governor's re-election campaign, state records reveal. Hasty didn't immediately return calls for comment Wednesday. The Texas AFL-CIO is warning "a new era of disregard for free-world workers may be about to unfold."

Opposition to prisons' factories growing
09/13/2006, San Antonio Express

Lisa Sandberg
Express-News Austin Bureau

LOCKHART ‹ Penny Rayfield's 35 assembly workers get neither vacation nor sick pay. Their salaries barely are above minimum wage. But they show up on time and don't hunt for work elsewhere.

They seem happy to have a job, even one that pays about $4 less per hour than what assembly workers make, on average, elsewhere in Texas.

Rayfield's company, Onshore Resources, has a sweetheart deal. It pays Texas exactly a dollar a year for the sprawling building where it makes electronic circuit boards. It has no need to foot health insurance for the employees because the state provides their medical care.

The for-profit business is tucked inside a private prison in this rural community 30 miles south of Austin. It's one of a handful of operations in which an estimated 500 state inmates in three prisons make everything from windows to air conditioning parts for the private sector.

The program, in both public and private detention facilities, is part of the federal Prison Industry Enhancement initiative. It long has rankled labor leaders, who've complained quietly it could slowly but surely displace better-paid workers outside prison.

That opposition is getting noisier as the state appears ready to add two new Prison Industry Enhancement operations to the four it now has.

One would use prison inmates at the Boyd Unit in Central Texas to assemble muscle cars from kits.

The second would have inmates at the Telford Unit in East Texas manufacture uniforms for U.S. postal workers, most of whom are unionized.

Today, a committee that oversees PIE is expected to consider both expansions.

Jeff LaBroski, a labor representative with the PIE program, said he expects both to sail through. Federal officials must approve it, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice governing board then gets the final say.

Douglas Hasty, president and CEO of Unique Performance, the car company seeking PIE approval, contributed $1,000 in April to Texans for Rick Perry, the governor's re-election campaign, state records reveal.

Hasty didn't immediately return calls for comment Wednesday.

The Texas AFL-CIO is warning "a new era of disregard for free-world workers may be about to unfold."

Ron Spurlock, community action representative with the United Auto Workers, which represents some 5,000 members in Texas, likewise was unequivocal.

"We're exporting jobs from all over the country, and now we're going to take the jobs that are left here and turn them over to prison labor at half ‹ or less ‹ the wages you'd expect to pay someone on the open market," Spurlock charged.

"It's wrong to take good paying auto jobs in this state and turn them over to someone who's in jail. It's like saying, 'We'll penalize you and we'll send you to jail and then we'll give you a job.' It's a damn shame as far as I'm concerned."

The issue pits those anguished by the erosion of middle class jobs, many of which have gone overseas, against those trying to rehabilitate inmates and enhance prison security.

"This is not meant to displace workers in the free world, it is meant to reduce recidivism," said Randa Taylor, spokeswoman for the Geo Group, which operates the minimum-security Lockhart Unit, site of the largest PIE operations in the state.

The PIE certification program, enacted by Congress in 1979, allows states to give prisoners private sector work experience ‹ and a few employers some nice breaks. Today, some 5,800 inmates participate in more than 40 jurisdictions around the country.

While the program touches a tiny fraction of the overall prison population, the numbers have grown over the years, said Sahra Nadiir, project coordinator for the National Correctional Industries Association.

Offenders like it because they make money, although they only keep about 20 percent of it.

The states pocket as much as 80 percent, for room and board. Texas collects between 30 percent and 60 percent, depending on how much gets divvied up among the courts, crime victims and offenders' dependents, spouses or disabled parents.

Businesses applying to operate inside prison must have an outside-prison operation. They can't reduce the number of their free-world jobs while expanding their prison jobs and the wages they pay must be commensurate with those paid for "similar work in the same locality's private sector."

Labor leaders say it's nonsense to consider wages only in a localized area.

"We think the consequences are national," said Ed Sills, spokesman for the Texas AFL-CIO.

Pete Arciniega has supervised workers at big-name manufacturing plants but prefers the obscure operation at the Lockhart Unit, where he oversees 250 prisoners.

His employees had to apply and give a clear reason for wanting to join Chatleff Controls, a Buda-based company that manufactures air conditioning and heating parts. If they're hired, they will earn between $6 and $8 an hour before deductions.

"They do a hell of a job. They're the best work force I've ever had," Arciniega said as workers around him labored under fluorescent lights amid the hum of heavy machinery.

A visitor easily can forget the bustling plant is behind bars.

Across the state, similar work fetches an average of $12.85 an hour, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Arciniega said such comparisons are unfair because free-world employees tend to work for years, giving them the seniority to earn more money.

Rayfield said her 35 assembly workers just down the hall from Arciniega's shop make about $6 an hour, which is, according to state data, about $4.11 less than assembly workers statewide make.

"They don't have vacations, they don't call in sick," she acknowledged, but said the program's rehabilitation goals are the underlying reason for hiring inmates and putting up with the red tape.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA091406.01A.prison.30ed6e8
.html>

Posted by lois at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

September 17, 2006

NATIONAL ACADEMIES REPORT CALLS FOR CENSUS BUREAU TO COLLECT ALTERNATIVE ADDRESSES FOR PEOPLE IN PRISON

[URL: http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/fact-14-9-2006.shtml ]

September 14 -- The National Research Council of the National Academies today released a report calling for the Census Bureau to begin collecting the home addresses of people in prison and to study whether this alternative address should be used in the Census. The report, authored by leading demographers, statisticians and sociologists, was commissioned by the Census Bureau to reexamine where people should be counted in the Census.

With the exception of counting people in prison, the panel generally agreed with the Census Bureau's method of counting people as residents of the place where they sleep most of the time, although it suggested that the residence "rules" should be structured as "principles" as a more flexible and easily understood method of identifying residence. To this end, the report recommended that the Bureau start collecting a secondary "any residence elsewhere", for the entire population, including people in prison.

The panel expressed deep concern about where people in prison were counted, stating that "the evidence of political inequities in redistricting that can arise due to the counting of prisoners at the prison location is compelling". The panel cited an article by Eric Lotke and Peter Wagner that "nearly 9% of all African-American men in their twenties and thirties live in prison" and that most prisons are located in largely White rural areas.

The report's recommendations address both short and long-term reforms that could improve redistricting and democracy. The report discusses a compromise proposal that would identify prison populations in the Census Bureau's PL91-171 Redistricting Data File and give state and county data users the option of removing the prison populations prior to redistricting.

The National Research Council report called for the Census Bureau to initiate a major "research and testing program, including experimentation as a part of the 2010 Census" to evaluate assigning incarcerated people to other addresses outside the facility. The panel also recommended that that the Census Bureau rely less on administrative records and more on specialized forms and interviews to count people in prison.

"This report, from the Census Bureau's own experts, refutes the Census Bureau's claim that changing how it counts people in prison would be too difficult, too expensive and not necessary," said Prison Policy Initiative Executive Director Peter Wagner.

Wagner continued: "The National Research Council has defined what a good faith examination of the feasibility of counting incarcerated people at their pre-incarceration addresses would look like. The Census Bureau should get to work today."

The National Research Council is part of the National Academies, which also comprise the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine. They are private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology and health policy advice under a congressional charter. The National Academies perform an unparalleled public service by bringing together committees of experts in all areas of scientific and technological endeavor. These experts serve pro bono to address critical national issues and give advice to the federal government and the public.

The Prison Policy Initiative documents the impact of mass incarceration on individuals, communities, and the national welfare. The Easthampton, MA based organization produces accessible and innovative research to empower the public to participate in creating better criminal justice policy.

Posted by lois at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)

Maryland: Executive Director, Activist Cannot Vote in Primary Election

Kimberly Haven: Who’s not voting in Maryland?

Kimberly Haven, The Examiner
Sep 13, 2006 5:00 AM

BALTIMORE - Tuesday was primary day in Maryland, and I could not vote. Maryland law bars me from voting until 2009 because I have been previously convicted of a felony. I cannot vote even though I work every day, live in and support my community, lead an honest life and value the power of voting. I, and more than 100,000 others like me, are barred from the polls because of a felony conviction.

Maryland is one of only 11 states that permanently disenfranchise some or all persons convicted of a felony who have completed their sentence, making it one of the most restrictive states in the nation.

The result is that thousands of Maryland citizens who have done their time in prison are still unable to vote when they re-enter society.

Disenfranchised citizens are living, working and raising families all across Maryland.

Though we pay taxes and care about the future of our communities, we have no voice in our government.

In his 2004 State of the Union address, President Bush noted, “America is the land of second chance, and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.”

Instead of opening a path to a better life, Maryland’s disenfranchisement law sends a loud and clear message to people with a felony conviction who are trying to rebuild their lives that no matter how hard you try, and no matter how much you contribute, you will remain 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.

Indeed, the ability to vote fosters a sense of responsibility and belonging, two critical elements of reintegration.

Studies have shown that people with felony convictions who vote are less likely to be re-arrested than those who do not vote. Thus, restoring the vote not only helps individuals with criminal records, but more broadly promotes public safety.

States are increasingly recognizing that it makes sense to lower the barriers to full civic participation.

Since 1997, 14 states, including Maryland, have either made legislative or policy changes restoring the vote to at least some people with criminal convictions or eased restoration procedures.

Yet, nationwide, more than 5 million Americans remain ineligible to vote based solely on a felony conviction.

To continue to deny a basic right of citizenship undermines the future of people like me who have come home from prison.

For those of us who are struggling to leave our pasts behind and be good parents, employees and taxpayers, laws that prevent us from voting serve as a constant reminder that we are unwelcome in our communities.

Chief Justice Earl Warren once said, “Citizenship is not a license that expires upon misbehavior ... and deprivation of citizenship is not a weapon that the Government may use to express displeasure at a citizen’s conduct ... .”

I believe in his sentiment. A truly democratic government of the people incorporates all of our voices and values the positive contributions of all its citizens.

It is important that if you truly believe in democracy, that you let your elected officials know that you support the restoration of voting rights and want to see legislation passed in 2007.

In the meantime, on behalf of myself and the 100,000 others currently disenfranchised, please vote in the upcoming election — for those of us who can’t.
Kimberly Haven is executive director of Justice Maryland and its voter re-enfranchisment initiative, Maryland Got Democracy? Justice Maryland is waging campaigns to restore voting rights to Maryland’s more than 140,000 disenfranchised former felons (www.gotdemocracy.org). She will be eligible to vote in 2009 and can be reached at kimberly@gotdemocracy.org.
Examiner

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

September 14, 2006

People Released From Incarceration Need Job, Family, Good Attitude to Succeed

Released inmates need job, family, good attitude to succeed, study says
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Michael Sangiacomo
Cleveland Plain Dealer

Ohio men released from prison are less likely to return to prison if they have a realistic - but positive - attitude, seek help from families, support groups and the city and find a job.

The findings released Friday were based on interviews with 424 Ohio men after their release from prison. Many of the Ohio men were from Cleveland and Cuyahoga County.

It was part of a yearlong study by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit social and economic policy research organization in Washington, D.C. The larger study also included released prisoners from Texas, Maryland and Illinois.

Primary researcher Christy Visher said there are certain things that men can do to reduce the chances of returning to jail.

"It sounds simple, but he needs a good attitude about his chances of staying out of trouble, but one that is realistic so he knows that it won't be easy," she said. "If he is too optimistic from the start, he'll be hit with reality, and things will go downhill very fast."

The biggest challenge is to find work, which is difficult for many people in society even without the baggage of a prison sentence.

"It's hard, but people in our study did find jobs," she said. "The jobs may not pay a lot of money, but there are companies that will hire these men as movers, laborers or in the food service industry. Jobs are vital for these men and knowing how to work is also important."

Many of the men had settled disagreements with violence, something that will not be tolerated in the outside world. The study showed that half of the men used drugs or alcohol in the six months before arrest. There is a tendency to slip back into drug and alcohol use, which could cripple their newfound employment.

"You can't be out drinking all night and go to work the next day," she said. "You're more likely to be late, or get into fights with co-workers. We recommend that the men get involved in drug and alcohol support groups, get a mentor they can turn to when things get rough and they are tempted to do drugs or alcohol."

Lastly, she said the cities and the religious communities need to offer programs to help ex-prisoners turn their lives around. Otherwise, they will quickly return to old friends and old habits, the kind of thing that landed them in prison in the first place.

The Ohio study group was representative of the more than 28,000 inmates released from Ohio prisons in 2004. They were imprisoned for crimes ranging from burglary and drug offenses to crimes of violence. Twenty-two percent planned to return to Cuyahoga County. Nearly 80 percent of those returning to Cuyahoga County planned to live in Cleveland.

The Urban Institute report can be found online at: www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/311359_cleveland_prisoners.pdf.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1157877880115830.xml&coll=2

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

Beyond Prisons: New Book Offers Comprehensive Analysis of Failed Prison System

Beyond Prisons: New Book Offers Comprehensive Analysis of Failed Prison System

9/14/2006 8:00:00 AM

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 14 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker social justice organization and co-recipient of the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize, announces "Beyond Prisons: A New Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System," a comprehensive analysis and a strong indictment of our penal system undertaken by two respected experts.

Bound to stir debate and reflection, Beyond Prisons traces the history and offers strong ethical and moral assessments of our penal system. The book lays out a new paradigm based on restorative justice - a system of remediation and reconciliation rather than retributive incarceration - and puts forward a 12- point plan for immediate changes. It also examines the ways that race and poverty drive public policy and law enforcement.

"The current system isn't working to provide justice or public safety. We need to start saying so, loudly and clearly," says co- author, Laura Magnani, assistant director for justice of AFSC Oakland, Calif. and a respected expert in the field of criminal justice. Magnani is also author of "America's First Penitentiary: A 200-Year-Old Failure."

"Too often we see the term restorative justice applied to extra punishment added onto existing sentences - such as restitution added to a prisoner's sentence so that he or she has a financial debt to pay upon release," says co-author, Harmon Wray, a minister and director of Restorative Justice Ministries, a project of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, based in Nashville, Tenn. Wray wrote a book the subject for the United Methodists in 2002.

"Beyond Prisons" opens a long-needed national dialogue on our responsibilities as citizens.

Because prisons are a closed system, operating in secrecy, the extreme forms of abuse, violence, and racism practiced daily behind bars go largely unseen by the public. Racial disparities become more and more pronounced as a person moves through the system, from arrest, to conviction, to sentencing.

Beyond Prisons (ISBN/Product No.: 0800638328, $13 US) is published by Fortress Press, a world-recognized leader in biblical studies. Copies are available by dialing 1-888-588-AFSC (2372). Visa and Mastercard accepted.

Backed by more than 40 years of working with prisoners, parolees, and victims of crime, the American Friends Services Committee Criminal Justice Program challenges the morality and effectiveness of a "tough on crime" mentality. Additional information can be found at http://www.afsc.org

The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice, peace and humanitarian service. Its work is based on the belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

-0-

Posted by lois at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2006

Hilda Bernstein, 91, Author and Anti-Apartheid Activist, Dies

Correction from Keith Bernstein (9-27-06)
The blog on my mother Hilda contains two innacuracies;
Hilda Bernstein did not die of heart failure - an artery in her stomach ruptured.
Keith Bernstein did not inform anybody of her death or make any public statement; the infomration, complete with mistakes, was via AP in South Africa who didnt bother to check before they released.

September 13, 2006, NY Times
Hilda Bernstein, 91, Author and Anti-Apartheid Activist, Dies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 12 — Hilda Bernstein, an anti-apartheid activist and author whose husband was tried for treason in South Africa alongside Nelson Mandela, died Friday at her home in Cape Town. She was 91.

The cause was heart failure, her son Keith said.

Ms. Bernstein’s husband, Rusty, and Mr. Mandela were tried along with other anti-apartheid activists in the Rivonia Trial in 1964. Mr. Mandela received a life sentence, while Mr. Bernstein was the only defendant acquitted and freed.

But police harassment made life so difficult for the Bernsteins, a white couple, that they were forced into exile, leaving their children behind. They crossed the border into Botswana on foot — a journey described in Hilda Bernstein’s book “The World That Was Ours.”

In exile, Ms. Bernstein was an active member of the African National Congress and a regular speaker for the Anti-Apartheid Movement organization in Britain and abroad.

The couple eventually settled in Britain, but returned to South Africa after the 1994 democratic elections, which made Mr. Mandela president.

Ms. Bernstein was a founding member of the Federation of South African Women, the first multiracial women’s organization in South Africa. She was also an artist, and her work has been used as book jackets and illustrations, posters and cards for the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Ms. Bernstein was born in London in 1915 and emigrated to South Africa in 1932, working in advertising, publishing and journalism.

A fiery orator, she served as a city councilor in Johannesburg from 1943 to 1946 as the only Communist elected to public office in a “whites only” vote.

She and her husband were active in the early days of the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress. Rusty Bernstein died in 2002.

She is survived by four children, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Posted by lois at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)

35 Years After Attica, Prisons Are Still A Crime

35 Years After Attica, Prisons Are Still A Crime
DAVID A. LOVE

September 13 2006

This month marks the 35th anniversary of the inmate uprising and massacre at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Sadly, 31/2 decades after the bloodiest prison uprising in U.S. history, the problems of prisoner abuse and mistreatment that led to the uprising are still all too common.

On Sept. 9, 1971, Attica's 1,281 inmates - predominantly black and Latino - gained control of the prison. This was after prison officials ignored their requests for better living conditions, showers, educational instruction and vocational training. Inmates in Attica faced overcrowding, racist treatment from white prison guards and such indignities as one shower a week and one roll of toilet paper a month.

After an impasse following four days of negotiations, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller decided as "a matter of principle" to take the prison by force. The governor sent more than 500 troopers with helicopters, tear gas, shotguns and a barrage of 2,200 bullets. The troops killed inmates and hostages alike. In the end, 43 people were killed (including 10 hostages) and 90 were wounded.

After the retaking of Attica, guards sought severe reprisals against the inmates. Guards tortured some inmates and denied medical treatment to others who had sustained wounds. Guards forced prisoners to run down a catwalk and beat them with what they called their "n----- sticks."

Fast forward to 2006: Torture and abuse remain a reality in U.S. prisons.

According to Amnesty International, "thousands of prisoners are held in supermax facilities in long-term solitary confinement under conditions which may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

The human rights organization also condemns as a violation of international law a number of other disturbing practices in U.S. prisons, including the more than 2,000 child offenders serving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole; unsupervised access of male guards to female prisoners, resulting in sexual abuse; the shackling of pregnant women detainees during labor; and the use of electroshock weapons such as tasers.

Our prisons have become overcrowded partly as a result of a "tough on crime" and "lock 'em up" mentality, the abandonment of prisoner rehabilitation, and the severe sentencing brought on by the failed war on drugs.

There are more than 2.2 million incarcerated people in the United States, mostly poor and of color. America incarcerates more people per capita than any other country.

In June 2006, the Vera Institute of Justice's Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, a nonpartisan think tank, identified a wide range of problems. These include a lack of prison oversight and accountability, medical neglect of inmates, prison violence and inappropriate segregation in high-security units and supermax prisons.

The commission recommended a variety of reforms, including reinvestment in prison programs, extending Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement to prisons, better training of corrections officers, and standardized reporting nationwide on prison violence and abuse.

Human Rights Watch reported in 2003 that the nation's prisons have become a repository for the mentally ill. As many as 300,000 prisoners are mentally ill and face inhumane conditions such as lack of treatment, abuse by prison staff, denial of water and confinement in filthy cells.

Some believe that prisoners deserve whatever they get. But we all have rights as human beings. The abuse of prisoners is a human rights violation, a constitutional violation and a threat to us all. We lose our soul as we dehumanize prisoners.

Thirty-five years after Attica, America's abuse of prisoners remains shameful.

David A. Love is a lawyer and writer based in Philadelphia. This was written for Progressive Media Project and distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-love0913.artsep13,0,640651.story?coll=hc-headlines-oped

Posted by lois at 09:44 PM | Comments (0)

VA: Tour of "Up The Ridge" about VA Prison System

Announcing the Virginia Tour of “Up the Ridge,” a new documentary film about the Virginia prison system and human rights.
Touring October 2nd through the 8th.
Up the Ridge is a documentary film produced by Nick Szuberla and Amelia Kirby. In 1999, Szuberla and Kirby were volunteer DJ’s for the Appalachian region’s only hip-hop radio program in Whitesburg, KY when they received hundreds of letters from inmates transferred into nearby Wallens Ridge State Prison, the newest prison built to prop up the region’s sagging coal economy. The letters described human rights violations and racial tension between staff and inmates. Filming began that year and, through the lens of Wallens Ridge, the film offers viewers an in-depth look at the United States prison industry and the social impact of moving hundreds of thousands of inner-city minority offenders to distant rural outposts. Up the Ridge explores competing political agendas that align government policy with human rights violations, and political expediencies that bring communities into racial and cultural conflict with tragic consequences.

View the Up the Ridge preview/trailer at: http://www.appalshop.org/h2h/film/screenings.htm

Where:

Oct. 2nd Newport News, VA (7pm) Christopher Newport University, Ferguson Center for the Arts, 1 University Place

Oct. 3rd Roanoke, VA (7pm) Blue Ridge Public Television, 1215 McNeil Drive

Oct. 4th Charlottesville, VA (7pm) Sojourners United Church of Christ, 1017 Elliot Ave

Oct. 5th Alexandria, VA (to be announced)

Oct. 6th Richmond,VA (7pm) Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, 1720 Mechananicsville Turnpike

Oct. 7th Norfolk, VA (to be announced)

Oct. 8th Harrisonburg, VA (2pm) Eastern Mennonite University, 1200 Park Road

The filmmakers will be present for discussion after the film, along with a panel from the community.

All screenings are free and open to the public.

How you can help:
-Support turnout in your community by downloading and posting a flyer from our website.
-If the tour is not coming to your community arrange your own screening! Sign up for a house party version at our website.
-Pass this e-mail on to your friends or suggest someone to invite.
Learn how at: http://www.appalshop.org/h2h/film/screenings.htm

Contact us:
Nick Szuberla

Tel: 606.633.0108

e-mail: nick@appalshop.org

website: http://www.appalshop.org/h2h/film/screenings.htm

Co-Sponsored by: Appalshop, Holler to the Hood, Virginia CURE, Resource Information for the Disadvantaged, Blue Ridge Public Television, WMMT-FM, Virginia Organizing Project, Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, FedUp, Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, Sojourners United Church of Christ, and Christopher Newport University.

Up the Ridge is a project of Appalshop, a media arts center located in the central Appalachian coalfields.

Posted by lois at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

Block the Vote: The 10 Worst Places to Cast a Ballot

Block the Vote: The 10 Worst Places to Cast a Ballot
By Sasha Abramsky, Mother Jones
Posted on September 13, 2006, Printed on September 13, 2006 http://www.alternet.org/story/41483/

We used to think the voting system was something like the traffic laws -- a set of rules clear to everyone, enforced everywhere, with penalties for transgressions; we used to think, in other words, that we had a national election system. How wrong a notion this was has become painfully apparent since 2000: As it turns out, except for a rudimentary federal framework (which determines the voting age, channels money to states and counties, and enforces protections for minorities and the disabled), U.S. elections are shaped by a dizzying mélange of inconsistently enforced laws, conflicting court rulings, local traditions, various technology choices, and partisan trickery.

In some places voters still fill in paper ballots or pull the levers of vintage machines; elsewhere, they touch screens or tap keys, with or without paper trails. Some states encourage voter registration; others go out of their way to limit it. Some allow prisoners to vote; others permanently bar ex-felons, no matter how long they've stayed clean. Who can vote, where people cast ballots, and how and whether their votes are counted all depends, to a large extent, on policies set in place by secretaries of state and county elections supervisors -- officials who can be as partisan, as dubiously qualified, and as nakedly ambitious as people anywhere else in politics. Here is a list -- partial, but emblematic -- of American democracy's more glaring weak spots.

#1 The New Poll Tax

Atlanta, Georgia

In 2005, Georgia state legislators passed a bill requiring voters to present either a driver's license or a state-issued photo ID that costs between $20 and $35 and is available only from Department of Motor Vehicles offices. Supporters claimed this was necessary to keep people from casting votes in someone else's name, even though Georgia secretary of state Cathy Cox noted that her office had no evidence of this happening. Either way, the measure is likely to have a dramatic effect on who can vote. Two-thirds of the state's counties don't even have a DMV office; Atlanta, the state's largest city, has just one, where waits at the ID counters often run to several hours. In late June, the secretary of state issued a report finding that more than half a million active-status, registered voters in Georgia don't have valid photo IDs. Fully 17.3 percent of African American voters, and one-third of black voters over age 65, wouldn't be able to cast a ballot under the law. When the federal Department of Justice had five experts examine the ID legislation in 2005, four of them objected to it, as the Washington Post discovered. But higher-ups at Justice overruled them and the measure (pushed by conservative think tanks such as the American Center for Voting Rights) went on the books. In October of last year a judge blocked its implementation, and the law -- along with another version that offers free voter IDs -- remains in limbo as appeals continue.

At least two other states, Wisconsin and Missouri, have passed similar ID legislation. (Wisconsin's governor has since vetoed it.) University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor John Pawasarat has found that fewer than a quarter of 18-to-24-year-old black men in that state have valid driver's licenses, the most common state-issued ID. In Indiana, a new law requires valid IDs to bear an expiration date, ruling out Veterans Affairs cards, among others.

"In my view it's an orchestrated vote-suppression strategy by less scrupulous strategists in the Republican Party," says Dan Tokaji, associate director of election law at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law. "It's pretty clear to me that these are disenfranchisement strategies. I try not to use that word too often, but in this case it fits."

Runner-up: Arizona voters in 2004 passed Proposition 200, which requires "proof of citizenship" when a person registers to vote. There's no evidence that noncitizens had been flocking to the polls, but the measure is bad news for Native Americans, the poor, and the elderly, who often don't have the requisite documents. Driver's licenses issued prior to 1996 don't count -- a not-insignificant fact, given that Arizona licenses are valid until a person turns 65. Officials say that 14,000 voter registrations in Phoenix and environs have already been rejected because of the law.

#2 Machine Meltdowns

Beaufort, North Carolina; Fort Worth, Texas; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
(tie)

In 2004, a touch-screen voting machine in Beaufort, North Carolina, erased 4,439 ballots cast during early voting two weeks before Election Day; they were never recovered. A similar problem in Burke County, North Carolina, resulted in several thousand votes for president not being counted. And, according to the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a voting machine in Ohio managed to add 4,000 extra votes for Bush. But those episodes, voting experts say, are just a preview of balloting debacles to
come: The federal Help America Vote Act requires most counties to replace punch-card or lever machines with newer technology by the end of this year, and election officials are scrambling to meet the deadline. Already during this spring's primaries, reports of trouble multiplied: Initial results in Fort Worth, Texas, showed 150,000 votes being tabulated in a county where only about 50,000 people voted. In Pottawattamie County, Iowa, machines suddenly began counting some candidates' votes backward. In Philadelphia, more than 5 percent of voting machines broke down on primary day.

The most sensational claims about voting technology have to do with the possibility of actually programming the machines to manipulate elections; computer scientists have warned that viruses could, for example, be inserted into vote-counting programs to delete a set number of votes and then erase themselves. So far no smoking guns have been found to prove such vote-fixing. But there have been myriad well-documented instances of human error and machine failures, and of extreme reluctance on the part of machine manufacturers to make their software accessible to outside experts. "Elections in this country are becoming proprietary," explains Lillie Coney, coordinator of the D.C.-based National Committee for Voting Integrity. "Vendors are saying, 'You can't investigate our technology, or our software.' They've put the technology in place, but the mechanisms for public officials to manage the technology, they're just not there."

When Ion Sancho, the elections supervisor in Leon County, Florida, discovered last year that Diebold's machines could easily be tinkered with, the company responded by refusing to service or upgrade the county's voting equipment so long as Sancho remained in charge. Since then, researchers in Florida and California have discovered more problems with Diebold technology, finding that the machines could accidentally allow one person to cast multiple votes, could be tricked into terminating an election count before all the votes had been tallied, and could permit changes to election results without detection.

Even some of the "paper trail" systems for electronic voting are deeply flawed. On some machines, logs have been designed so badly that auditors are at risk of counting "tentative" votes instead of the voters' final choices; on others, a voter wanting to check whether her choice has registered must lift an inconspicuous door and then peer, through a plastic screen, at a tiny printout, with the actual vote often not even scrolling into view.

#3 Line Forms Here

Franklin County, Ohio

Like many states, Ohio theoretically requires equal treatment of voters in all parts of the state; in practice, it frequently ignores its own requirements, especially in urban, predominantly Democratic, neighborhoods. In Franklin County, for example, more than 2,500 voters in the city of Columbus found themselves crammed into a single precinct in 2004, even though the state's guidelines call for no more than 1,400 -- apparently because officials assumed that in a poor neighborhood, turnout would be low. The state only partially reimburses counties for buying electronic voting machines, so Franklin, like many poor counties, didn't have enough machines on hand to start with. When record numbers of voters showed up, massive lines snaked toward the handful of machines. The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has sued Ohio; among the complainants was an elderly woman with arthritis who had to leave because no one could find a place for her to sit.

Runners-up: New Orleans and St. Louis have long been plagued by long lines in poor neighborhoods; in 2000, so many polling places failed to open on time in St. Louis that a judge ordered the polls be kept open late, a ruling that Republicans battled to the last minute. In Broward County, Florida, waits stretched to four hours even during early voting in 2004; on Election Day at least one polling station didn't open until the early afternoon, and poll workers frantically calling the county elections office got nothing but busy signals.

#4 Incompetence

Cuyahoga County, Ohio

Dominated by the city of Cleveland and its Democratic machine, Cuyahoga County has a stunning history of poll-worker incompetence and technology failures, resulting in de facto disenfranchisement on a massive scale. In primary elections this spring, so many poll workers failed to show up for work that numerous polling places opened more than an hour late, some because they didn't have extension cords or three-prong adapters. Once voting began, it was promptly undermined by a shortage of voting machines, confusion over precinct voter lists, and paper jams that poll workers did not know how to fix (some asked random voters to repair the machines). Though only 20 percent of registered voters turned out for the primary, it took more than a week to count their votes. Around the nation, says Brenda Wright, managing attorney at the Boston-based National Voting Rights Institute, election administration is massively underfunded, with poll workers paid mere pittances, trained only marginally, and overseen bystate officials who don't provide "any meaningful check on recurrent problems at the local level."

#5 Foul Play

New Hampshire

Intimidation, deception, and assorted trickery have long been staples of American elections, practiced with equal aplomb by both parties and by operatives working with (or without) a nod and a wink from party leaders. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2004, fliers from the nonexistent Milwaukee Black Voters League were distributed in black neighborhoods, warning residents that "if anyone in your family has ever been found guilty of anything, even a traffic violation, you can't vote in the presidential election," and that "if you violate any of these laws you can get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you."

Meanwhile, in (again) Franklin County, Ohio, fliers purporting to be from the county Board of Elections announced that because of high voter registration, Republicans would be voting on Election Day, and Democrats would cast their ballots the next day; they ended with the inspired line, "Thank you for your cooperation, and remember voting is a privilege." In the same county, a group of out-of-state Republicans known as the Mighty Texas Strike Force made phone calls from a hotel warning ex-prisoners that they could be returned to the slammer if they dared to vote, and reportedly telling other voters that their polling places had changed. Congressional investigators later discovered that the Ohio Republican Party had paid the Strike Force's hotel bills.

The dirtiest-trick award, however, goes to New Hampshire, where the state Republican Party -- its executive director, a veteran, working on the military principle of disrupting "enemy communications" -- hired a Virginia-based company named gop Marketplace to jam the Democrats' phone bank system during the 2002 U.S. Senate election. Republican John Sununu won the close contest; three men are serving prison terms as a result of the endeavor, and a fourth is under indictment, with evidence still surfacing that the action may have been approved by senior party officials in Washington.

#6 Gerrymandering

Travis County, Texas

In recent elections, 95 percent of members of the U.S. House of Representatives have been reelected; the vast majority ran in districts drawn to be entirely noncompetitive in the general election. In these districts, registered Republicans or Democrats may have a say in the primaries, but everyone else's vote is for all intents and purposes meaningless.

Gerrymandering got a major boost with the advent of redistricting software in 1991. The new algorithms were first used to boost the chances of black and Latino candidates; soon, both parties realized that you didn't need the fig leaf of minority representation, and they began slicing and dicing districts at will. In Texas, Travis County, which includes Austin, has long dominated a congressional district that reliably sent a Democrat to Washington. But in 2003, the Texas Legislature snipped off various chunks of Travis and attached them to a series of jagged-edged districts snaking north-south and east-west through strongly Republican areas outside the county. This, and a series of other creatively shaped districts in Texas, would be the ultimate legacy of Tom DeLay, who in 2002 launched a push to create a Republican majority in the Statehouse that would redraw the state's electoral map and thus cement the GOP's hold on Washington. Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this was constitutional, even though Travis and other areas were carved up "with the sole purpose of achieving a Republican congressional majority."

At the state level, the redistricting game has also taken the uncertainty out of politics in many places. The New York Public Interest Research Group estimates that only 11 percent of New York's 212 legislative districts are competitive, and that 27 of the state's 62 Senate districts have been engineered to create Democratic advantages of at least 40,000 votes per district. Similarly, researchers at Claremont McKenna College in Pomona, California, have found virtually 100 percent of California legislative districts to be noncompetitive thanks to gerrymandering, and The Economist estimates that November's election outcome is uncertain in only one of the state's 53 congressional districts. Redistricting has produced crazy-looking, swirling districts whose shapes make sense only under an increasingly complex political calculus. In one notorious instance, in 2001, then-Senate leader John Burton, a Democrat, went out of his way to have a specific dis-trict's boundaries redrawn to weaken the election prospects of Fred Keeley, a Democrat from Santa Cruz whom Burton viewed as a troublemaker and who had announced interest in the Senate seat. The Senate district, which previously included all of Santa Cruz County, migrated north, extending a thin southward finger through the city of Santa Cruz. So effective was the maneuver, Keeley didn't even bother to run.

#7 No Felons Allowed

Mississippi Delta

Since the 2000 election, when the state of Florida disenfranchised thousands of people by falsely tagging them as felons, half a dozen states have gotten rid of laws permanently barring felons from voting, but felon bans still affect more than 5 million Americans. In Florida, close to 1 million people, or about 9 percent of adult citizens, cannot vote because they have felony records. In 2000 and 2004 the state went to the trouble of hiring private companies to "scrub" the rolls of suspected felons who had registered to vote; both times, it became apparent that because of shoddy database criteria the companies were flagging many people who either weren't felons or had had their voting rights restored.

But perhaps the nation's most scandalous disenfranchisement law is found in Mississippi, which in the early days of Jim Crow crafted its felon codes with the specific intent of disenfranchising only those convicted of "black crimes." In the Delta, about a quarter of African American men are for all practical purposes disenfranchised, and even more assume that they are: Though not everyone convicted of a felony is automatically barred from voting -- in fact, people convicted of drug felonies retain their voting rights -- corrections and election officials have made no effort to get that information out. One ex-con in Jackson told me that she knew people who were terrified of voting because they had become convinced that any interaction with authority would put them at risk of losing their welfare payments.

What's more, to get re-enfranchised in Mississippi, a felon has to persuade his state senator or representative to author a bill personally re-enfranchising him, has to get the bill approved by both houses, and then has to get the governor to sign it. In reviewing records from January 2001 to December 2004, I could identify just 52 people -- in a state with more than 25,000 prisoners, 2,100 parolees, and 21,000 men and women on probation
-- who had managed to get their voting rights restored.

#8 Voting While Black

Charleston, South Carolina

Though the Voting Rights Act ended many race-based practices, local politicians continue to come up with creative methods to maximize white clout. A favorite is at-large voting, which dilutes minority votes. In Charleston, South Carolina, 38 of the 41 people elected to the county council between 1970 (when the county switched from district-based voting to
at-large) and 2004 were white. A lawsuit from the federal government finally ended at-large voting for council seats in 2004. But Charleston still has at-large voting for school board members; in the 1990s, several black candidates nonetheless managed to get elected when the white vote split among a number of candidates. In response, a conservative state senator named Arthur Ravenel Jr., who'd made a name for himself by defending public display of the Confederate flag and mocking his opponents as the "National Association of Retarded People," pushed through legislation that made the school board election partisan, thus introducing a primary process that ensured a one-on-one fight in the final round. The number of blacks on the nine-member school board went from five in 2000 to one today.

Runner-up: The town of Martin, South Dakota, is sandwiched between two Lakota Sioux reservations; its City Council district map, which according to an aclu lawsuit was drawn specifically to ensure a white majority, was found unconstitutional earlier this year. Voting-rights monitors also allege that voter-registration personnel in South Dakota sometimes "forget" to give registration cards to Native Americans, and that sheriffs harass reservation residents coming into town (often across enormous distances) to vote.

#9 Suspect Students

Waller County, Texas

Prairie View A&M is a black school in the heart of east Texas, where the local leadership has, over many decades, worked to deny the students' claims to being full-time county residents and thus eligible to vote. In 2003, Waller County district attorney Oliver Kitzman wrote a letter to the elections administrator and the local newspaper warning that any students who tried to vote could face 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The NAACP filed suit, noting that as far back as 1979 the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling on a lawsuit brought by Prairie View students, held that students could register to vote in the communities in which they attended college. Students in Arkansas, Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, and Virginia have also been prevented or discouraged from registering; in Williamsburg, Virginia, William and Mary students were denied permission to register merely for acknowledging that they were going home on vacation.

#10 Failing to Register

Florida

Voter registration forms are easily lost. In 2004, for example, headlines focused on a Republican National Committee contractor named Sproul & Associates, which subcontracted with a company called Voters Outreach of America that, in Las Vegas, was found destroying forms filled out by people trying to register as Democrats. Incidents like this would seem to justify a new Florida law that imposes fines of $250 to $500 per form on anyone who registers voters and doesn't immediately deliver the paperwork to election officials, with no exceptions for difficult circumstances or natural disasters. But since it was already illegal in Florida to deliberately delay handing in voter registration forms, and since the new legislation does not apply to the two main political parties, its only likely effect is to intimidate independent voter-registration organizations; the largest among them, the League of Women Voters, has stopped doing voter registration in the state altogether.

For an 11th place that your vote isn't likely to count, visit MotherJones.com.

Sasha Abramsky is the author of Conned: How Millions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House (The New Press, 2006). © 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/41483/

Posted by lois at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2006

Rep. Maxine Waters Introduced Bill That Would Require Fed Prison to Provide HIV Tests for People who are Incarcerated

Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Politics and Policy

Rep. Waters Introduces Bill That Would Require Federal Prisons To Provide HIV Tests for Inmates, Allow Inmates To Opt Out

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) last week introduced a bill (HR 6038) that would require federal prisons to provide HIV tests for inmates at the beginning and end of their incarcerations, The Hill reports. The bill includes a provision that would allow inmates to opt out of testing. Waters included the opt-out provision to address concerns from some HIV/AIDS advocates who say they oppose mandatory testing because of issues associated with confidentiality and stigma, according to The Hill. Waters said that despite the provision, some HIV/AIDS advocates might feel some "discomfort" with the bill, adding, "There's a division among the AIDS groups. I'm moving beyond where they would normally want to go." Under guidelines released in June by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Prisons, prisoners can request HIV tests, and prison medical workers are encouraged to conduct tests among inmates who exhibit symptoms of HIV. Under a 2005 policy statement issued by the bureau, HIV tests are mandatory in some cases, and prisoners cannot refuse to be tested. Waters said the current policy is "not very comprehensive," adding that under her bill, more prisoners would be tested and receive better care in prison and when they are released. Under Waters' bill, the bureau would be required to direct former inmates to treatment and counseling resources in their communities.

HIV/AIDS Among Blacks
According to Waters, the bill is part of a campaign to address HIV/AIDS among blacks, who account for a disproportionate share of the country's prison inmates, The Hill reports (Young, The Hill, 9/12). According to a study released last year by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, government data indicates that in 1996, more than 50% of prisoners in the U.S. were black. The researchers also found that the increase of HIV/AIDS cases among blacks since the 1980s, most notably among women, corresponds with the increase in the proportion of black men in prison (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 3/9). According to a study of 2003 data released in 2005 by the DOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1.8% of men and 2.6% of women in federal and state prisons are HIV-positive. The study also found that 0.51% of federal and state inmates are living with AIDS. According to prison's bureau spokesperson Mike Truman, the most recent federal survey indicates that an estimated 0.9% to 1% of the 192,000 federal inmates in the U.S. are HIV-positive. According to Lester Wright -- chief medical officer and deputy commissioner of the Division of Health Services in New York state's Department of Correctional Services -- Waters' bill might result in more HIV tests among prisoners and better care, but there is no way to foresee how many prisoners will refuse to be tested (The Hill, 9/12).
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=39739

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September 07, 2006

People Who Are Incarcerated Report High Levels of Mental Illness

September 7, 2006
Inmates Report Mental Illness at High Levels
By ERIK ECKHOLM, NY Times

More than half the inmates in the country's prisons and jails reported mental health problems within the last year, according to a Justice Department survey released yesterday.

The findings, based on a sample of about 25,000 inmates, were drawn from personal interviews and prisoners' own reports of symptoms, psychiatric treatments or medications.

The figures are higher than reported in past studies because inmates describing any symptoms of problems like major depression or mania were counted along with those with diagnosed psychiatric disorders, said Fred Osher, director of health systems at the Council on State Governments. Further evaluations would be required to make an official diagnosis of a mental illness.

Still, Dr. Osher said, the findings "underscore what every prison administrator knows - that large numbers of individuals with mental health problems are cycling through their facilities." Correctional institutions have given increased attention to mental health treatment in recent years, he said, but the new findings highlight the need for intensive screening.

The findings also suggest the need to connect released prisoners with mental health treatment in the community, a goal of the emerging "re-entry" movement that tries to prevent ex-convicts from returning to prison. Prisoners with mental health problems were more likely to have had repeated incarcerations and substance abuse problems and to have been homeless, the study found.

Separate findings were reported for state prisons, where 56 percent of inmates were found to have mental health problems; federal prisons, where the figure was 45 percent; and jails, where it was 64 percent. The figure may be higher for jails, the report said, because they often hold mentally ill prisoners temporarily before they are moved to psychiatric facilities.

Women reported higher rates of mental health problems than men, and whites had higher rates than black and Hispanic inmates.

One in three state prisoners, one in four federal prisoners and one in six jail prisoners had received some form of mental health treatment, often medication, during their current incarceration, the study said.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/us/07prisons.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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September 06, 2006

GAO Report Says Anti-Drug Advertising Campaign a Failure

Anti-drug advertising campaign a failure, GAO report says
Drug czar disputes results of study

By Donna Leinwand
USA TODAY 8-29-06
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20060829/a_drugcampaign29.art.htm
WASHINGTON — A $1.4 billion anti-drug advertising campaign conducted by the U.S. government since 1998 does not appear to have helped reduce drug use and instead might have convinced some youths that taking illegal drugs is normal, the Government Accountability Office says.

The GAO report, released Friday, urges Congress to stop the White House's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign unless drug czar John Walters can come up with a better strategy. President Bush's budget for 2007 asks Congress for $120 million for the campaign, a $20 million increase from this year.

Walters' office disputed the study and noted that drug-use rates among youths have declined since 1998. A 2005 survey by the University of Michigan indicated that 30% of 10th-graders reported having used an illicit drug the previous year, down from 35% in 1998.

The GAO report is “irrelevant to us,” says Tom Riley, spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). “It's based on ads from 2½ years ago, and they were effective, too. Drug use has been going down dramatically. Cutting the program now would imperil (its) progress.”

The report was addressed to Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that handles ONDCP, and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the panel's top Democrat. Neither senator was available for comment.

The media campaign, which purchases TV time, radio spots and newspaper ads, changed its advertising theme last year. The old approach said parents and informed teens were “the Anti-Drug.” The latest version encourages teens to be “above the influence.”

The report by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, confirmed the results of a $43 million, government-funded study that found the campaign did not work. That evaluation, by Westat Inc. and the University of Pennsylvania, said parents and youths remembered the ads and their messages. But the study said exposure to the ads did not change kids' attitudes about drugs and that the reduction in drug use in recent years could be attributed more directly to a range of other factors, such as a decline in high school dropouts.

The Westat study also said youths could interpret the ads to suggest that marijuana use is more common than it actually is.

The anti-drug campaign had been criticized before. In 2003, the White House Office of Management and Budget called the campaign “non-performing” and said it had not demonstrated results.

Walters criticized the methodology cited in the GAO report. He said Westat wanted proof of a direct link between the ads and decreases in drug use among teens, which is difficult to show.

The drug czar's office “is being held to a standard that no other … advertiser can be held to,” says Steve Pasierb of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, which helps coordinate the ad campaign.
Page 5A

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September 05, 2006

CA & MI: one article and one op-ed on opening prisons to public scrutiny

Open prisons up to public scrutiny
San Gabriel Valley Tribune
Whittier Daily News 9-5-06

ANYBODY think the state of California's prisons have improved since 1995?

We didn't think so. Obviously, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who called a special session of the Legislature to deal with the prison crisis, doesn't think so either.

So we can't come up with one good reason for him to veto Senate Bill 1521. We can think of one bad reason: government secrecy.

SB 1521, by Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, would give newspapers and other media better access to the state's prisons, which would help taxpayers understand exactly what they are getting for the nearly $9billion they will spend on the correctional system this fiscal year.

Media had freer access to prisons until 1995, when then-Gov. Pete Wilson imposed restrictions after reporters exposed brutality at some of the state's prisons.

Since that time, the correctional system has sunk deeper and deeper into dysfunction, with parts of its authority ceded to federal courts and overseers, the highest recidivism rate in the nation, severe overcrowding, runaway spending and the potential for a total takeover by the feds.

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.

T

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National Advocates for Pregnant Women Summit January 18-21, 2007

National Advocates for Pregnant Women and numerous co-sponsors invite you to attend the National Summit to Ensure the Health and Humanity of Pregnant and Birthing Women, Thursday, January 18 – Sunday, January 21, 2007 at the Hilton Airport Atlanta, Atlanta GA

Please Register Early for this Groundbreaking Event: http://advocatesforpregnantwomen.org/main/events/napw_conference/register_for_2007_summit.php

WHAT THIS SUMMIT IS ABOUT:

Today's highly politicized and polarizing abortion debate creates the false and destructive illusion that there are two kinds of women -- women who have abortions and women who have babies. The reality is that they are all the same women:

• By age 25, approximately half of all women in the United States have
experienced at least one birth.
• By age 44, this figure is approximately 85%.
• Sixty-one percent of women having abortions already are mothers, raising
one or more children.
• A majority of those having abortions, but not yet raising children will
someday become mothers and spend much of their lives raising and caring for their children and other loved ones.
• At least 15-20% of all pregnancies end in miscarriages or stillbirths.

All of these women are facing increasing limitations on access to care as a result of conflicts with professional organizations, imposition of religious directives in health care institutions, anti-abortion/fetal rights laws and rhetoric that affect all pregnant women including those continuing to term, and issues concerning health care financing that interfere with women's ability to make decisions regarding their pregnancies, birthing options, the childbirth process, their lives and their families' well-being.

The fundamental goal of the Summit is to bring people together who are committed to ensuring the health and humanity of all pregnant women -- regardless of what their decisions may be -- and recognizing that there are strong and diverse opinions about both abortion and about how best to birth a child.

This Summit recognizes that while much attention is paid to policies that restrict women who are seeking to end unwanted pregnancies, these and other restrictions are also violating the civil and human rights of women seeking to continue their pregnancies to term. Examples of these violations include pregnant women who have been shamed, coerced, or forced into having unnecessary cesarean sections and the application of punitive criminal and civil child welfare laws to women who are continuing to term.

This summit will address barriers to care for all pregnant and birthing women as well as strategies for change. This summit will also address the fact that regardless of their views on the abortion controversy, pregnant women are increasingly confronting discriminating employment, environmental, health insurance and drug policies, among others, which threaten their health and wellbeing as well as their children's and families'. Summit speakers will address the fact that pregnant women across party lines and of diverse experiences, faiths and backgrounds continue to face domestic violence and discrimination based on race, class, language and ability. And, our presenters will address the fact that, once parents, women face a host of policies that undermine their ability to provide for their loved ones.

The National Advocates for Pregnant Women’s 2007 Summit will acknowledge, honor, and benefit from the recognition that the realities of women’s lives often do not fit simplistic and divisive political labels. This historic event will honor differences of opinion but at the same time recognize common threats and CELEBRATE common threads: Together we can develop policies and strategies that will ensure the humanity, dignity and well being of pregnant and birthing women and their families.

NAPW Mission

The National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) works to secure the human rights and dignity of all women, focusing particularly on pregnant and parenting women and those who are most vulnerable – low income women, women of color and drug-using women. Through litigation, grassroots organizing, public education and bridge-building across public health and social justice movements, NAPW is working to change policies that threaten pregnant women and mothers and undermine the well being of children and families.

The Summit

Pre-Summit Coalition Training, Thursday January 18, 2006

All summit participants are invited to a one-day pre-summit coalition
training facilitated by Be Present Inc. (www.bepresent.org.) This
training will provide an opportunity for participants to spend time getting to know one another, to understand how they came to do the work they do, and to acknowledge the personal as well as the political aspects of taking on extremely controversial issues. This training will provide an essential forum for a diverse group of people to take time for themselves, to learn who their allies are in the struggle to ensure the humanity and dignity of pregnant women, and to learn more about the personal and political work it will take to build effective advocacy efforts. Please join us for this day of extraordinary inspiration and insight.

The Summit Program: Friday January 19- Sunday January 21, 2006

The Summit planning committee is soliciting suggestions for plenaries, workshops and events. Suggestions for presentations are due Sept 15, 2006: Information about submitting a proposal is available as an RFP (Request for
Presentations) on our web site.

Among the topics to be covered:

• Getting on the Same Page: What the millions of women who become pregnant
each year in the US each have in common.
• Barriers to Care and Control, From VBAC bans to TRAP laws, do women have
a say in pregnancy and childbirth?
• How May You Be Prosecuted? Let Me Count the Ways: Criminalizing Women’s
Reproductive Health Choices and Women's Reproductive Health Care Providers.

• Who Controls our Health Care?
• How Health Disparities Impact Women’s Reproductive Health and Family
Lives.
• Strategies that work: establishing affirmative grassroots and legislative
strategies to ensure the rights of pregnant, birthing, breast-feeding and parenting women.

The summit will have a special emphasis on lived experiences and all presentations will include those directly affected by current policies and
practices. A few of the committed participants and presenters include:

• Linda L. Layne, Motherhood Lost: A Feminist Account of Pregnancy Loss in
America
• Carole Joffe, Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion
Before and after Roe v. Wade and The Regulation of Sexuality: Experiences of Family Planning Workers
• Ann Crittenden, The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in
the World is Still the Least Valued
• Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the
Meaning of Liberty // Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare
• Robbie Davis Floyd, Birth as an American Rite of Passage
• Loretta Ross, Undivided Rights, Women of Color Organize for Reproductive
Justice

Organizational Co-Sponsors
Our Bodies Ourselves, International Center for Traditional Childbearing, Citizens For Midwifery, Inc., Mothers United For Midwifery, Realbirth Education Center, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, Gynuity Health Projects, Vanderbilt University Women’s & Gender Studies Program, Justice Now, Feminist Women’s Health Center-Cedar River Clinics-WA State,
ProKanDo, Abortion Access Project, Inc., Civil Liberties & Public Policy Program and Population & Development Program Hampshire College, Reproductive Health Technologies Project, Catholics for a Free Choice,
Choice USA, Harm Reduction Coalition, Brooklyn Childcare Collective, Exhale, Ipas, USA, Pro-Choice Public Education Project, Center For Reproductive Rights, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Real Cost of Prisons Project, Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents, National Organization for Woman, Inc. (List in formation-please check our website for updates)

To learn more about this cutting-edge event, please visit http://www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.org/
To register for the Summit please go to:
https://www.regonline.com/NAPWSummit2007

Posted by lois at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)

September 04, 2006

AL: Private Prisons Is Filled With Undocumented Immigrants

"Warden Bill Bateman, who walks casually among the minimum-security prisoners even with no guards in sight, said the overwhelming majority of detainees have no criminal background; they're just in the country illegally. They come from Central and South America, Africa, China, Russia and Western Europe."

Birmingham News

Private prison fills with illegal immigrants
State said no to Perry facility, which draws praise, criticism Sunday, September 03, 2006

STAN DIEL
News staff writer

UNIONTOWN - The Perry County Correctional Center, off U.S. 80 just east of this hardscrabble Black Belt town, could be mistaken for a manufacturing plant, or even a high school, if not for the razor wire and the electric fence.

Step up to the double security gate, however, and it quickly becomes clear that it's a prison. Walk inside and you see it's not a traditional one.

The privately owned lockup, built earlier this year by Louisiana-based LCS Corrections for $20 million, was meant to take inmates from Alabama's famously crowded state prisons. But after the state rejected an offer from the company as too expensive, LCS found a better deal.

The prison last month began incarcerating illegal immigrants for the federal government, and now nearly 400 illegal immigrants and a handful of other federal prisoners occupy its three wings. Company officials say they may soon expand, nearly doubling the number of beds, and they hope to eventually follow that with another expansion, bringing the total number of prisoners to 1,500.

Warden Bill Bateman, who walks casually among the minimum-security prisoners even with no guards in sight, said the overwhelming majority of detainees have no criminal background; they're just in the country illegally. They come from Central and South America, Africa, China, Russia and Western Europe.

"We couldn't possibly speak all the languages they speak," he said, pausing to talk to two prisoners who were proficient in English.

Lower bid won

While the detainees came from all over the planet, it was American capitalism that built the prison. LCS, a private company with 3,000 prisoners in eight facilities in the South, built the Perry County prison on speculation, gambling that Alabama had such need for prison beds that it would win a contract to house state inmates.

But in May, Alabama awarded a contract to Louisiana-based Emerald Correctional Management, which offered to take Alabama prisoners in one of its Louisiana prisons for $28 per head per day, versus LCS' bid of $34.50.

Johnny Flowers, a Perry County commissioner and early advocate of the prison, said he then turned to U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions for help, and Sessions helped the county get a U.S. Marshal's Service contract that pays $45 per prisoner per day. Piggy-backed onto that Marshal's Service contract was the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deal to take illegal immigrants awaiting either court hearings or deportation.

Prisons, and private prisons in particular, are controversial economic-development tools. But Flowers said the Perry County prison already is benefiting the community, and he expects it to create more jobs and bring more money to tiny Uniontown.

Richard Harbison, LCS vice president, said the prison employs 110 with a payroll of $2 million a year, and employment soon will increase to 130. Most of the people on the payroll - everyone from guards to cooks - came from Perry and surrounding counties.

All of the prison's employees except the warden and deputy warden technically work for the county, not LCS, because of a quirk in Alabama law, Harbison said. But LCS officials do the hiring and manage the prison's day-to-day operations.

Bateman declined to release specifics about the pay scale for guards and other employees, but Flowers said salaries range from $12,000 a year to $38,000.

Those are low wages in much of the state, but not in a county with a median household income of $20,555, just over half the state average, and talk of an expansion has Flowers excited.

"It's going to make a difference in the neighborhoods and the stores," he said.

Criticizes private prisons

LCS, and the private prison industry in general, are not without critics.

Judy Greene, a policy analyst with Justice Strategies, a nonprofit sentencing reform advocacy group in New York, argues that the profit motive leads private prisons to cut corners.

Private prisons typically offer inmates fewer educational programs and have inferior security, and that translates into more escapes and more violence inside prison walls, she said. Private prisons have 65 percent more prisoner-on-prisoner violence than public ones, and 49 percent more assaults on staff, Greene said, citing a 2001 Bureau of Justice Assistance report.

But U.S. Department of Justice statistics from the same year indicated that the incidence of violence against prison staff was actually lower in private prisons than in public ones, and dozens of studies offer contradictory findings. In its first two months of holding prisoners, the Perry County prison has had no escapes and no serious incidents.

And, according to a controversial study done by the state of Florida, the recidivism rate at private prisons is consistently lower than the rate for public prisons.

Turnover and wages

Greene, who visited the Perry County prison in July, said the problem of violence in private prisons is exacerbated by high turnover among the guards.

A new guard at a publicly owned and operated prison makes an average of about $23,000 a year and can hope to one day make as much as $36,000. But a new guard at a private prison averages $17,628 and tops out at $22,082 - $1,000 less than a rookie guard is paid at a public facility.

The lower salaries mean guards often leave for better-paying or less-stressful jobs. The average annual turnover for guards at private prisons in 2000 was 52 percent, versus 16 percent for public prisons, Greene said.

Bateman, who has run both public and private facilities, said turnover among guards is a problem for everyone, not just private operators. And, he said, guards who make sergeant at the Perry County prison are paid about as well as rank-and-file guards at state prisons.

"And it doesn't take much to make sergeant here," he said.

Greene also said that private prisons typically offer fewer amenities such as libraries and classrooms.

At Perry County Correctional, classrooms built for state prisoners sit empty or are used for storage because there's no need to offer educational services to immigration detainees who will spend a few days or months in the prison, and then be deported, the company said.

Bateman showed a visitor the prison's empty vocational-tech room, also intended for state prisoners, anda library, its bookshelves bare while he tries to arrange to get books.

But the half-dozen or so computers were up and running, and kept busy by detainees accessing law books and working on their cases. The library, like the dorms and other areas that house detainees, were air-conditioned and comfortably cool despite the oppressive summer heat.

One of the most common complaints critics have about private prisons is that they sometimes are built using public money - some local governments have borrowed millions of dollars to finance construction - and taxpayers don't get a return on their investment. But Flowers said Perry County didn't share any of the burden of building the new prison.

"Perry County residents put not 1 cent in that project," he said. "They
(LCS) did it all on faith."

Muted outlook

Just west down U.S. 80, the residents of Uniontown, population 1,500, had little to say about their new neighbor. In the heat of the Alabama summer, nearly every bit of shade downtown sheltered someone who knows somebody who got a job at the prison. But no one seems confident that it will improve their lives.

Robert Malone, who runs a gas station at the center of town, said the biggest boost so far came during construction, when the first new jobs were created. Now, he said, people need to be patient.

"I think eventually it's going to help," he said. "We need something, that's for sure."

http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/115727505453130.x
ml&coll=2

Posted by lois at 09:19 PM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2006

More "compassion" from Sheriff means another jail

" State Rep. Timothy J. Toomey Jr., D-Somerville, was also at the
The Somerville News

August 29, 2006
Sheriff and progressives meet to discuss new jail
By George P. Hassett

The sheriff of Middlesex County and the Progressive Democrats of Somerville (PDS) met Aug. 22 to discuss the plans for a new Middlesex County jail and the possibility of it being located in East Somerville.

Middlesex County Sheriff James V. DiPaola said he attended the meeting to clarify any rumors or misinformation that was circulating. He said he agrees philosophically with the members of PDS who are opposed to building more prisons, but he needs a new facility to house inmates awaiting trial because of severe overcrowding conditions in the Middlesex County jail in East Cambridge.

The jail houses 370 inmates, but was designed for only 160, he said. It occupies floors 17 through 22 of the Middlesex County Courthouse, which is targeted for closing by the end of 2007 to undergo asbestos removal and a $125 million rehabilitation.

As progressive Democrats you should have the compassion to be concerned with the overcrowding situation in our jails,² he said. ³These facilities are were not built to rehabilitate prisoners, they were only built to incarcerate. I¹m not out looking for more business, I have a crisis, the conditions are inhumane, unsanitary and unsafe for the officers and the inmates.²

DiPaola said it was very early in the process and the only reason a Somerville location was being discussed for the jail is Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone and his administration expressed interest in bringing it to the city.

The benefit for Somerville of a new jail would be DiPaola¹s plan to include a new Somerville Police headquarters in the building, said Curtatone spokesperson Thomas P. Champion in June. The current station is the subject of a lawsuit by over 60 city employees who say it is filled with molds that are causing their health problems. Champion acknowledged the building was not an effective, modern building for law enforcement.

Officials have toured several sites in East Somerville as potential locations and the Department of Capital Asset Management is currently conducting a feasibility study for the area, DiPaola said.

State Rep. Carl M. Sciortino, D-Somerville, attended the Aug. 22 meeting. Sciortino said he is opposed to building any new jail before cuts in mental health and substance abuse programs are restored to 2001 levels. Funding for preventive programs have decreased 11.6% since 2001, he said.
³We have increased jail capacity over and over and we still have this problem,² Sciortino said. ³We need to improve the programs that keep people out of jail and look at the backlog in the court system that is keeping prisoners waiting trial for excessive amounts of time before using valuable resources to build more jail space.²

DiPaola said he agreed counseling and education options are essential and that he had a track record of doubling and tripling the Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous programs in his jails.

State Rep. Timothy J. Toomey Jr., D-Somerville, was also at the meeting and said a new jail was essential.

The current jail has to be replaced, building no new prisons is just not feasible or possible,² Toomey said. ³When you go there and see people sleeping in cots in the hallway, it is clear that these are not humane conditions. There has to be a prison somewhere, where it goes and how it gets there is up to the community to decide.²
meeting and said a new jail was essential. ³The current jail has to be replaced, building no new prisons is just not feasible or possible,² Toomey said. ³When you go there and see people sleeping in cots in the hallway, it is clear that these are not humane conditions. There has to be a prison somewhere, where it goes and how it gets there is up to the community to decide.²

http://somervillenews.typepad.com/the_somerville_news/2006/08/sheriff_and_pr
o.html

Posted by lois at 07:47 PM | Comments (0)

September 01, 2006

NY: We're A Long Way From Real Democracy

WE'RE A LONG WAY FROM REAL DEMOCRACY
Bad laws and manipulation still keep many people, especially poor and minority, out of the voting booth by Cole Krawitz and Jay Toole, New

York Newsday editorial, August 25, 2006

As we celebrate the 86-year anniversary of the battle for women's suffrage and passage of the 19th Amendment tomorrow, the call for a genuine and just democracy remains ever-present in today's political landscape. The United States has a long history of de jure and de facto disenfranchisement that continues to erode our democracy.

From gerrymandered redistricting and antiquated voting machines, to
purging and suppression of voters through state-regulated photo IDs, historically disfranchised communities continue to experience the erosion of their political power, particularly in low-income communities and communities of color.

Today, more than 23 million adult Americans live in poverty. According to the U.S. Census, in 2004 only 59 percent of citizens in households earning less than $15,000 per year were registered to vote, compared with 85 percent in households earning more than $75,000. Low-income people face several challenges to registering and voting, including less flexible jobs and transportation problems, plus a lack of stable housing, photo identification and user-friendly information on candidates and voting procedures.

In 2004, more than 550 affordable-housing groups across the country registered and mobilized thousands of underrepresented people. We were a part of that effort, registering and mobilizing homeless people in New York City who were unaware of their right to vote. In 1994, homeless people in New York State residing in shelters, hotels or on the street won the right to vote in the case known as Pitts v. Black.

Nearly one of every 20 New York City residents has utilized the shelter system. About 90 percent of homeless New Yorkers are black or Latino - even though 53 percent of New York City's total population is black or Latino.

In speaking with and registering hundreds of homeless people, we were told many stories of their being turned away at the polls because they lived in shelters. Others voiced valid frustrations at not being able to vote in the districts where they had lived all their lives and where they planned on returning once they left temporary housing. Time and time again, we encountered people who still believed they could not vote because they had served time, even though they had not been in prison or on parole for many years - some for more than 20 years. Only those convicted of felonies and currently incarcerated or on parole lose the right to vote.

Quickly, our work was inextricably linked to the fight to restore citizens to voter rolls and the impact of large-scale incarceration due to drug convictions. New York's 1973 Rockefeller Drug Laws, mandating harsh prison terms and incarcerating people (many of whom had no prior records) for low-level, nonviolent offenses, rather than utilizing drug treatment programs, have devastated communities. More than 92 percent of all those convicted under these state laws are people of color, most of whom come from New York City. The collateral consequences are many - one of which is loss of the right to vote.

Meanwhile, federal "one-strike" legislation that can keep former inmates with felony drug convictions from returning to publicly subsidized housing, and places barriers on obtaining licenses and employment, has created a cyclical and compounding impact on communities of color and low-income communities in New York. The state releases almost 30,000 prisoners each year. Most people on parole return to their home communities - a large number to Harlem, the South Bronx, central Brooklyn and Jamaica, neighborhoods that also have the most families who reside in the city's homeless shelters.

Felon disenfranchisement laws in New York State not only dilute the political and economic power of communities of color, they also add to the political clout of upstate, largely white, communities. An organization called the Prison Policy Initiative documented how, in its redistricting process, the New York State Legislature utilized U.S. Census numbers, counting urban prisoners incarcerated in rural prisons as rural residents, creating a phantom population with no representation. In New York, only 24 percent of prisoners are from upstate, while 91 percent of prisoners are incarcerated there. This practice not only reduces the electoral power and representation of urban communities, which are the most negatively affected by incarceration policies; it boosts the political power of rural communities benefiting from the growth of the prison industry.

The celebrations and memories of historic victories such as women's suffrage and the Voting Rights Act are critical today as we continue to work for a genuine democracy that represents and speaks for all people, including those who have been left out of the debate for centuries. What we call for is a day where we find ourselves celebrating not a patchwork of policies piecing together a broken system, but a re-imagining, a visionary call of a people's democracy.

Cole Krawitz is a communications and events associate with Demos. Jay Toole is a shelter organizer for Queers for Economic Justice.
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opkra254863886aug25,0,41338.story

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

Hurricane Recovery & Women- a new report

Katrina Anniversary Report
August 27, 2006
co-released by the Women's Funding Network and the Ms. Foundation for Women
http://www.wfnet.org/donate/katrinarelief.php
Hurricane Recovery Through Women's Funds

As we saw in New Orleans, when disaster strikes, the disaster is indiscriminate but the damage is not. Society does discriminate, and those already denied resources and advantages then become the most affected by the disaster's wholesale destruction.

Hurricane Recovery Through Women's Funds

As we saw in New Orleans, when disaster strikes, the disaster is indiscriminate but the damage is not. Society does discriminate, and those already denied resources and advantages then become the most affected by the disaster's wholesale destruction.

Anticipating Hurricane Katrina's potential for long-term harm to female entrepreneurs, low-income women, single-parent households, and women at risk of violence, the Women's Funding Network partnered with the Ms. Foundation for Women, Inc. and W.K. Kellogg Foundation to issue $500,000 in grants to the following member 1 funds delivering services and support to the scores of female Katrina survivors that have resettled in their states: Atlanta Foundation for Women (Georgia), Chicago Foundation for Women (Illinois), Women's Fund of Birmingham (Alabama), Women's Fund of Greater Jackson (Mississippi) and Women's Foundation for a Greater Memphis.

Evacuation demographics show that poorer families often ended up the farthest away from the Gulf region; many went wherever emergency flights and buses were destined. Among those that lacked cars or lost their vehicle to flooding, a significant number of families are trying to regain their footing and start their lives anew wherever they landed.

Before Katrina, fifty-six percent of families in New Orleans were not two-parent but female-headed, single-parent households with median annual income of just $16,450-notching them below the federal poverty line. The Institute for Women's Policy Research recently found that women represent more than 90% of prime-age American workers (age 26-59) who average low earnings over 15 years. For many of Hurricane Katrina's female survivors, the loss of their home meant the loss of a home-based business as well.

Attempting to turn around their lives' upheaval, Hurricane Katrina's survivors are hoping for better prospects than they had before. The women's funding movement has set out to help make this a reality. Throughout the South and in other parts of the country, women's funds are delivering resources to create sustainable economic opportunities and to reverse social injustices as the centerpiece of long-term relief for the direct impact of the disaster. The role of the women's funding movement in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath is to identify the ways in which women and girls are impacted, and to make them integral to the disaster recovery and rebuilding of their communities. Thirty years of partnership with grassroots women puts women's funds in a crucial position to funnel support to local activists dealing with economic and social justice issues as well as the long-term reconstruction effort.

* Prior to Katrina, The Women's Foundation for a Greater Memphis (WFGM) was recognized as an important link in the community with grant-making, leadership, volunteer and 25 grantee organizations with supportive services that specifically address special needs of low income and women of color. Thus, in the aftermath of Katrina, WFGM was called upon to be represented on a Task Forces created by the City of Memphis to plan a response process to identify and aid the evacuees. WFGM quickly became a direct point of contact for the grantee organizations, evacuee victims, family members, churches, donors, volunteers and the general public. PWFGM estimates that at least 5,000 evacuees have now made Shelby County, Tennessee their permanent home. The Women's Foundation for a Greater Memphis is dedicating $100,000 to programs providing holistic services for Katrina survivors-work readiness, career development, economic literacy, non-traditional training, entrepreneurship development, housing placement, medical needs, child care, and counseling.
* Within one week of the storm, over 300 displaced families and individuals in Alabama had been linked with emergency resources via a one-stop center comprised of 12 organizations. The Women's Fund of Greater Birmingham played a leadership role in ensuring that women received this emergency support. Today The Women's Fund is planning toward the economic self-sufficiency of women re-building on the Alabama coast, and Katrina's survivors who have adopted Birmingham as their home. The Women's Fund is bundling a continuum of services for low-income and women of color, teaching marketable skills for above-minimum wage jobs, offering job search support and mentoring, and providing childcare vouchers and reliable transportation to help ensure successful employment experiences. They want evacuees to "know that Birmingham will be a permanent home community in which they can thrive."

Reconstruction brings the opportunity to transform prior inequalities, not just for women of the Gulf coast. From the aftermath of the Asian tsunami to the earthquake in northern Pakistan, women are re-building their lives and local infrastructure-or providing for the needs of the displaced-while many of the relief agencies struggle to catch up.

Grassroots women were at the heart of many success stories after Hurricane Mitch, the Category 5 storm that wiped out vast areas of Honduras and Nicaragua in 1998. Having survived Hurricane Joan ten years earlier, the women of Mulukutu, Nicaragua, started a brick factory and held carpentry workshops to build stronger homes for their families. Concerned about the conditions that existed prior to the disaster, including high levels of domestic violence, problems with STDs and unwanted pregnancies, the women used their construction skills to build a women's health clinic, which provided shelter and treatment for families displaced by Hurricane Mitch. Not surprisingly, they gained political power in the municipality and earned respect from their community.

Women's funds in the US are taking a similarly holistic approach to evacuees' long-term needs and combining that with their bird's-eye view of challenging the injustices women had long faced in the Gulf Coast region prior to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

* Louisiana lost five domestic violence shelters in Hurricane Katrina, and Mississippi lost three. A 2005 report by the Violence Policy Center highlighted Mississippi as having one of the highest rates of homicides committed against women in the country. The stress of the disaster and displacement combined with lack of jobs and income will contribute exponentially to pre-existing tendencies toward violence. The Women's Fund of the Community Foundation of Greater Jackson is focusing on providing support for shelters, childcare, physical and mental health services, and legal assistance for women and children who have experienced domestic violence or abuse, "to give a voice in rebuilding to those left out of the process."

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, women's funds have led and made visible the approach that women are not passive victims but vital agents of survival, recovery, and change for their families and communities. Women and girls were in the thick of the crisis and are now on the frontline of resource management and rebuilding in every household, school, and community.

Women's funds are investing in local women's leadership, resourcefulness, and resilience, re-building communities to be more resistant to the economic, race, and gender inequalities that eroded their lives long before the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.

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

Katrina: Nationwide is on your side except if you are a Katrina Victim

Cyrus Dugger
Remember: Nationwide Insurance is On Your Side - Unless You are a Katrina Victim
http://www.dmiblog.net/archives/2006/08/remember_nationwide_insurance.html

As we reach the anniversary of Katrina, I thought we should all remember the ongoing manmade elements of the continuing disaster....... by way of my previous post.

Nationwide Insurance is On Your Side - Unless You are a Katrina Victim

The Homepage of Nationwide Insurance

At Nationwide, we're working hard every day to meet the insurance and financial needs of our customers, at every stage of life. Whatever happens.

You can count on it. With more than $157 billion in statutory assets, Nationwide is one of the largest insurance and financial services companies in the world.

We offer a full range of products and services for your home, your car, your family, and your financial security. We're easy to reach no matter where you are, day or night, from any one of the 50 states and Washington D.C. to Europe and Latin America.

Simply put - Nationwide is On Your Side

Unless you are victim of Hurricane Katrina.

Despite the broadly smiling African-American man on their website's homepage, Nationwide is doing nothing close to making hundreds of the many African-American Katrina victims smile.

The insurance company is systematically denying homeowner insurance claims by Katrina disaster victims. The company claims that its home insurance policy only covers damage from wind and not from water.

In the first case of more than 3,000 individual claims against insurance companies mounting similar defenses (Mississippi Attorney General also filed a separate class action lawsuit), Federal District Judge L.T. Senter Jr, the judge who will be responsible for deciding almost all of the other cases, sided with Nationwide and held that:

"The provisions of the Nationwide policy that exclude coverage for damages caused by water are valid and enforceable terms of the insurance contract. Similar policy terms have been enforced with respect to damage caused by high water associated with hurricanes in many reported decisions."

The damage to the home in question owned by Police Lieutenant Paul Leonard and his wife Julie Leonard, is estimated at $130,000. In his decision, the judge increased the sole compensation for wind damage from $1,228 to $2,889. Notably, the Leonards were required to pay a $500 deductible before receiving their benefits.

There are a few problems with this decision.

The first is that despite his ruling, the judge specifically held that the contract's distinction between water and non-water damage was ambiguous, and that if a decision were based on the contract's its plain text, it would also have excluded all claims for any damage if water contributed to the damage in any way.

This finding implies that the insurer purposefully wrote contracts in a way that it could later argue covered nothing if water was involved in damaging the house in any manner. These types of insurance contracts are contrary to established Mississippi law.

As stated in the decision:

A windstorm is a weather condition that is specifically included in the coverage of
this policy. When the policy is read as a whole, I find that this exclusionary provision is ambiguous-the policy as a whole providing explicitly for windstorm coverage in one section and purportedly excluding the same coverage on the grounds that a windstorm, a "weather condition," and an excluded peril, a flood, occurred at approximately the same time - If this second provision were read to exclude wind damage that occurs at or near the time that any excluded water damage occurs, the result would be contrary to well-established Mississippi law.

If the judge found that this language was ambiguous to the extent that if read literally it would have such an absurd result, it is arguably so ambiguous that the distinction between water and non-water damages should be ruled null and void in its entirety.

The plaintiffs' primary argument was that a "storm surge" driven by wind, is different from the classic flood which was specifically excluded form the contract.

As identified in the complaint, the insurance company somewhat acknowledged the ambiguity:

"On September 7, 2005, nine (9) days after Hurricane Katrina, defendant Nationwide suspiciously sent Plaintiffs a "Hurricane Coverage and Deductible Provision Endorsement," which for the first time attempted to exclude damage caused by hurricane "storm surge" for the October 2005 to October 2006 policy period. This conveniently new "Hurricane Coverage and Deductible Provision Endorsement," which of course was not in effect during Hurricane Katrina, conclusively establishes that 'storm surge' damage was not an excluded form of damage."

I'm not a weather expert but, for what it's worth, storm surge has a separate definition than flood on Wikipedia.

The second major issue is that the plaintiffs repeatedly asked their insurance agent if they needed flood insurance. What is significant about the decision is the judge's finding that the evidence did not support the claim that their insurance agent "misled them by implying that their Nationwide homeowners policy would cover water damage caused by storm surge flooding."

The judge found that the insurance agent repeatedly said that there was no need to get additional insurance. Moreover, despite these inquiries and the response the repeated response that additional coverage was not needed, the judge found that the plaintiff "lept" to the conclusion that the agent had said that additional insurance was not needed because his insurance already covered all hurricane related damage.

According to the judge:

"[The insurance agent] sometimes discouraged his clients from purchasing flood insurance policies. That much is clear from the testimony of a variety of witnesses, including Fletcher's office assistant, Cindy Byrd Collins. There was enough evidence on this point to warrant the conclusion that Fletcher, as a matter of habit and routine, expressed his opinion, when he was asked, that customers should not purchase flood insurance unless they lived in a flood prone area (Flood Zone A) where flood insurance was required in connection with mortgage loans - There was no testimony from which I can discern the reason Fletcher discouraged some of his clients from purchasing flood insurance policies."

The court's primary point was that while the agent may have given bad advice, he did not affirmatively mislead the plaintiffs. This point could really go either way. The agent may have just genuinely felt that it was not necessary, but this point also raises the issue of the level of the duty of cared owed by an insurance agent to his or her clients. More importantly, the issue is also illustrative of the fact that even if the insurance agent had misled them, how would they prove it?

There are also two other side issues.

The first is that the insurance adjuster who first surveyed the damage attributable to wind later modified his report to reduce coverage for a variety of items. "The adjuster had also been reprimanded twice by the Texas Board of Professional Engineers for not following 'generally accpeted engineering practices.'"

The plaintiffs' attorney has also cited whistleblowers who have come forward to claim that insurance companies are secretively rewriting their existing contracts to excluded water related damages.

While reasonable minds can disagree about the outcome of this first of 3,000 cases, what is most distressing is the reaction of the insurance community.

In response to the ruling, the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America ("PCIAA") praised the decision and said that the decision allowed

"[I]nsurers and other businesses in the state to operate without a lingering cloud of uncertainty about the validity of their contracts, which will help energize both the insurance market and the economy of Mississippi."

"Help energize both the insurance market and the economy of Mississippi?"

Don't you need repaired homes for that? How is denying claims to rebuild destroyed homes energizing anything but the profits of insurance companies, let alone for the whole of the state?

PCIAA also said that the decision:

"[R]einforced the need for consumers to take proactive steps to prepare for disasters by making sure that their insurance polices are up to date and that they have the correct type of coverage… especially for flood insurance."

But, as previously stated, the plaintiffs in this case repeatedly asked their insurance agent if they needed additional flood insurance coverage, and were repeatedly told - - - no.

The Property Insurers of America also said that:

"A healthy insurance industry is absolutely key to a rejuvenated economy down here."

Except that without people or homes, how can the economy exist?

Is this the twilight zone?

In other news:

"Shares of most property and casualty insurers rose following the ruling, amid a generally surging stock market - - - American International Group Inc. shares added 73 cents to $62.43

Allstate Corp. shares gained 80 cents to $57.22,

St. Paul Travelers Cos. shares rose 93 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $44.02,

and Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. shares jumped $1.01 to $82.49"

and such

and so on

and on

and on

and on.

Posted by Cyrus Dugger at August 29, 2006 03:20 PM

Posted by lois at 05:50 PM | Comments (0)

Black Commentator: Bill Quigley- One Year After Katrina

August 31, 2006 - Issue 195

Cover Story, Black Commentator
New Orleans a Year After Katrina
New Orleans is still in intensive care.
By Bill Quigley http://www.blackcommentator.com/195/195_cover_katrina_quigley.html

Bernice Mosely is 82 and lives alone in New Orleans in a shotgun double. On August 29, 2005, as Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the levees constructed by the U.S. Corps of Engineers failed in five places and New Orleans filled with water.

One year ago Ms. Mosely was on the second floor of her neighborhood church. Days later, she was helicoptered out. She was so dehydrated she spent eight days in a hospital. Her next door neighbor, 89 years old, stayed behind to care for his dog. He drowned in the eight feet of floodwaters that covered their neighborhood.

Ms. Mosely now lives in her half-gutted house. She has no stove, no refrigerator, and no air-conditioning. The bottom half of her walls have been stripped of sheetrock and are bare wooden slats from the floor halfway up the wall. Her food is stored in a styrofoam cooler. Two small fans push the hot air around.

Two plaster Madonnas are in her tiny well-kept front yard. On a blazing hot summer day, Ms. Mosely used her crutches to gingerly come down off her porch to open the padlock on her fence. She has had hip and knee replacement surgery. Ms. Mosely worked in a New Orleans factory for over thirty years sewing uniforms. When she retired she was making less than $4 an hour. “Retirement benefits?” she laughs. She lives off social security. Her house had never flooded before. Because of her tight budget tight, Ms. Mosely did not have flood insurance.

Thousands of people like Ms. Mosely are back in their houses on the Gulf Coast. They are living in houses that most people would consider, at best, still under construction, or, at worst, uninhabitable. Like Ms. Mosely, they are trying to make their damaged houses into homes.

New Orleans is still in intensive care. If you have seen recent television footage of New Orleans, you probably have a picture of how bad our housing situation is. What you cannot see is that the rest of our institutions, our water, our electricity, our healthcare, our jobs, our educational system, our criminal justice systems – are all just as broken as our housing. We remain in serious trouble. Like us, you probably wonder where has the promised money gone?

Ms. Mosely, who lives in the upper ninth ward, does not feel sorry for herself at all. “Lots of people have it worse,” she says. “You should see those people in the Lower Ninth and in St. Bernard and in the East. I am one of the lucky ones.”

Housing

Hard as it is to believe, Ms. Mosely is right. Lots of people do have it worse. Hundreds of thousands of people from the Gulf Coast remain displaced. In New Orleans alone over two hundred thousand people have not been able to make it home.

Homeowners in Louisiana, like Ms. Mosely, have not yet received a single dollar of federal housing rebuilding assistance to rebuild their severely damaged houses back into homes.

Over 100,000 homeowners in Louisiana are on a waiting list for billions in federal rebuilding assistance through the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. So far, no money has been distributed.

Renters, who comprised most of the people of New Orleans before Katrina, are much worse off than homeowners. New Orleans lost more than 43,000 rental units to the storm. Rents have skyrocketed in the undamaged parts of the area, pricing regular working people out of the market. The official rate of increase in rents is 39%. In lower income neighborhoods, working people and the elderly report rents are up much higher than that. Amy Liu of the Brookings Institute said “Even people who are working temporarily for the rebuilding effort are having trouble finding housing.”

Renters in Louisiana are not even scheduled to receive assistance through the Louisiana CDBG program. Some developers will receive assistance at some point, and when they do, some apartments will be made available, but that is years away.

In the face of the worst affordable housing shortage since the end of the Civil War, the federal government announced that it refused to allow thousands of families to return to their public housing units and was going to bulldoze 5000 apartments. Before Katrina, over 5000 families lived in public housing – 88 percent women-headed households, nearly all African American.

These policies end up with hundreds of thousands of people still displaced from their homes. Though all ages, incomes and races are displaced, some groups are impacted much more than others. The working poor, renters, moms with kids, African-Americans, the elderly and disabled – all are suffering disproportionately from displacement. Race, poverty, age and physical ability are great indicators of who has and who has made it home.

The statistics tell some of the story. The City of New Orleans says it is half its pre-Katrina size – around 225,000 people. But the U.S. Post Office estimates that only about 170,000 people have returned to the city and 400,000 people have not returned to the metropolitan area. The local electricity company reports only about 80,000 of its previous 190,000 customers have returned.

Texas also tells part of the story. It is difficult to understand the impact of Katrina without understanding the role of Texas – home to many of our displaced. Houston officials say their city is still home to about 150,000 storm evacuees – 90,000 in FEMA assisted housing. Texas recently surveyed the displaced and reported that over 250,000 displaced people live in the state and 41 percent of these households report income of less than $500 per month. Eighty-one percent are black, 59 percent are still jobless, most have at least one child at home, and many have serious health issues.

Another 100,000 people displaced by Katrina are in Georgia, more than 80,000 in metro Atlanta – most of whom also need long-term housing and mental health services.

In Louisiana, there are 73,000 families in FEMA trailers. Most of these trailers are 240 square feet of living space. More than 1600 families are still waiting for trailers in St. Bernard Parish. FEMA trailers did not arrive in the lower ninth ward until June – while the displaced waited for water and electricity to resume. Aloyd Edinburgh, 75, lives in the lower ninth ward and just moved into a FEMA trailer. His home flooded as did the homes of all five of his children. “Everybody lost their homes,” he told the Times-Picayune, “They just got trailers. All are rebuilding. They all have mortgages. What else are they going to do?”

Until challenged, FEMA barred reporters from talking with people in FEMA trailer parks without prior permission – forcing a reporter out of a trailer in one park and residents back into their trailer in another in order to stop interviews.

One person displaced into a FEMA village in Baton Rouge has been organizing with her new neighbors. Air conditioners in two trailers for the elderly have been out for over two weeks, yet no one will fix them. The contractor who ran the village has been terminated and another one is coming – no one knows who. She tells me, “My neighbors are dismayed that no one in the city has stepped forward to speak for us. We are “gone.” Who will speak for us? Does anyone care?”

Trailers are visible signs of the displaced. Tens of thousands of other displaced families are living in apartments across the country month to month under continuous threats of FEMA cutoffs.

Numbers say something. But please remember behind every number, there is a Ms. Mosely. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people each with a personal story like Ms. Mosely are struggling to return, trying to make it home.

Water and Electricity

New Orleans continues to lose more water than it uses. The Times-Picayune discovered that the local water system has to pump over 130 million gallons a day so that 50 million gallons will come out. The rest runs away in thousands of leaks in broken water lines, costing the water system $2000,000 a day. The lack of water pressure, half that of other cities, creates significant problems in consumption, sanitation, air-conditioning, and fire prevention. In the lower 9th ward, the water has still not been certified as safe to drink – one year later.

Only half the homes in New Orleans have electricity. Power outages are common as hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs have not been made because Entergy New Orleans is in bankruptcy. Entergy is asking for a 25 percent increase in rates to help it become solvent. Yet Entergy New Orleans’ parent company, Entergy Corporation reported earnings of $282 million last year on revenue of $2.6 billion.

Health and Healthcare

Early this month, on August 1, 2006, another Katrina victim was found in her home in New Orleans, buried under debris. The woman was the 28th person found dead since March 2006. A total of 1577 died in Louisiana as a result of Katrina.

A friend of mine, a lawyer with health insurance and a family physician, went for an appointment recently at 11am. The office was so crowded he had to sit out in the hall on the floor to wait his turn for a seat in the waiting room. Three hours later he met his doctor. The doctor thought might have a gall stone. The doctor tried to set up an ultrasound. None were available. He ordered my friend to the emergency room for an ultrasound. At 4pm my friend went to the hospital emergency room, which was jammed with people: stroke victims, young kids with injuries, people brought in by the police. At 5am the next morning, my friend finished his ultrasound and went home. If it takes a lawyer with health insurance that long to get medical attention, consider what poor people without health insurance are up against.

Half the hospitals open before Katrina are still closed. The state’s biggest public healthcare provider, Charity Hospital, remains closed and there are no current plans to reopen it anytime soon. Healthcare could actually get worse. Dr. Mark Peters, board chair of the Metropolitan Hospital Council of New Orleans said within the next two to three months, “all the hospitals” will be looking seriously at cutbacks. Why? Doctors and healthcare workers have left and there is surging demand from the uninsured who before Katrina went through now non-existent public healthcare. There is a shortage of nurses. Blue Cross Blue Shield officials reported, “About three-quarters of the physicians who had been practicing in New Orleans are no longer submitting claims.”

There is no hospital at all in the city for psychiatric patients. While the metropolitan area had about 450 psychiatric beds before the storm, 80 are now available. The police are the first to encounter those with mental illness. One recent Friday afternoon, police dealt with two mental patients – one was throwing bricks through a bar window, the other was found wandering naked on the interstate.

The elderly are particularly vulnerable. Over 70 percent of the deaths from Katrina were people over 60 years old. No one knows how many seniors have not made it back home. Esther Bass, 69, told the New York Times, after months of searching for a place to come home to New Orleans, “If there are apartments, I can’t afford them. And they say there will be senior centers, but they’re still being built. They can’t even tell you what year they’ll be finished.” As of late July 2006, most nursing homes in the 12 parish Gulf Coast area of Louisiana are still not fully prepared to evacuate residents in the face of a hurricane.

The healthcare community has been rocked by the arrest of a doctor and two nurses after the Louisiana Attorney General accused them of intentionally ending the lives of four patients trapped in a now-closed local hospital. The accusations now go before a local grand jury which is not expected to make a decision on charges for several more months. The case is complicated for several reasons. Most important is that the doctor and nurses are regarded as some of the most patient-oriented and caring people of the entire hospital staff. It is undisputed that they worked day and night to save hundreds of patients from the hospital during the days it was without water, electricity or food. Others say that entire hospital and many others were abandoned by the government and that is what the attorney general should be investigating. The gravity of the charges, though, is giving everyone in the community pause. This, like so much else, will go on for years before there is any resolution.

Jobs

Before Katrina, there were over 630,000 workers in the metropolitan New Orleans area – now there are slightly over 400,000. Over 18,000 businesses suffered “catastrophic” damage in Louisiana. Nearly one in four of the displaced workers is still unemployed. Education and healthcare have lost the most employees. Most cannot return because there is little affordable housing, child care, public transportation and public health care.

Women workers, especially African American women workers, continue to bear the heaviest burden of harm from the storm. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research reports that the percentage of women in the New Orleans workforce has dropped. The number of single mother families in New Orleans has dropped from 51,000 to 17,000. Low-income women remain displaced because of the lack of affordable housing and traditional discrimination against women in the construction industry.

Tens of thousands of migrant workers, roughly half undocumented, have come to the Gulf Coast to work in the recovery. Many were recruited. Most workers tell of being promised good wages and working conditions and plenty of work. Some paid money up front for the chance to come to the area to work. Most of these promises were broken. A tour of the area reveals many Latino workers live in houses without electricity, other live out of cars. At various places in the city whole families are living in tents. Two recently released human rights reports document the problems of these workers.

Immigrant workers are doing the dirtiest, most dangerous work, in the worst working conditions. Toxic mold, lead paint, fiberglass, and who knows what other chemicals are part of daily work. Safety equipment is not always provided. Day laborers, a new category of workers in New Orleans, are harassed by the police and periodic immigration raids. Wage theft is widespread as employers often do not pay living wages, and sometimes do not pay at all. Some of the powers try to pit local workers against new arrivals – despite the fact that our broken Gulf Coast clearly needs all the workers we can get.

Public transportation to and from low-wage jobs is more difficult. Over 200 more public transit employees have been terminated – cutting employment from over 1300 people pre-Katrina to about 700 now.

Single working parents seeking childcare are in trouble. Before Katrina, New Orleans had 266 licensed day care centers. Mississippi State University surveyed the city in July 2006 and found 80 percent of the day care centers and over 75 percent of the 1912 day care spots are gone. Only one-third of the Head Start centers that were open pre-Katrina survived.

Public Education

Before Katrina, 56,000 students were enrolled in over 100 public schools in New Orleans. At the end of the school year there were only 12,500. Right after the storm, the local school board gave many of the best public schools to charter groups. The State took over almost all the rest. By the end of the school year, four schools were operated by the pre-Katrina school board, three by the State, and eighteen were new charter schools.

After thirty-two years of collective bargaining, the union contract with the New Orleans public school teachers elapsed and was not renewed and 7500 employees were terminated.

For this academic year, no one knows for certain how many students will enroll in New Orleans public schools. Official estimates vary between a low of 22,000 and a high of 34,000.

There will be five traditional locally supervised public schools, eighteen schools operated by the State, and thirty-four charter schools. As of July 1, not a single teacher had been hired for fifteen of the state-run schools. As of August 9, 2006, the Times-Picayune reported there are no staff at all identified to educate students with discipline problems or other educational issues that require special attention.

Whatever the enrollment in the new public school system is in the fall, it will not give an accurate indication of how many children have returned. Why? Many students in the public charter schools were in private schools before the hurricane.

Criminal Legal System

Consider also our criminal legal system. Chaka Davis was arrested on misdemeanor charges in October 2005 and jailed at the Greyhound station in New Orleans in October of 2005.

Under Louisiana law, he was required to be formally charged within 30 days of arrest or released from custody. Because of a filing error he was lost in the system. He was never charged, never went to court, and never saw a lawyer in over 8 months – even though the maximum penalty for conviction for one of his misdemeanors was only 6 months. His mother found him in an out of town jail and brought his situation to the attention of the public defenders. He was released the next day.

Crime is increasingly a problem. In July, New Orleans lost almost as many people to murder as in July of 2005, with only 40 percent of the population back. There are many young people back in town while their parents have not returned. State and local officials called in the National Guard to patrol lightly populated areas so local police could concentrate on high-crime, low-income neighborhoods. Arrests have soared, but the number of murders remain high. Unfortunately, several of the National Guard have been arrested for criminal behavior as well – two for looting liquor from a home, two others for armed robbery at a traffic stop.

Criminal Court District Judge Arthur Hunter has declared the current criminal justice system shameful and unconstitutional and promises to start releasing inmates awaiting trial on recognizance bonds on the one year anniversary of Katrina. The system is nearly paralyzed by a backlog of over 6000 cases. There are serious evidence problems because of resigned police officers, displaced victims, displaced witnesses, and flooded evidence rooms. The public defender system, which was down to 4 trial attorneys for months, is starting to rebuild.

“After 11 months of waiting, 11 months of meetings, 11 months of idle talk, 11 months without a sensible recovery plan and 11 months tolerating those who have the authority to solve, correct and fix the problem but either refuse, fail or are just inept, then necessary action must be taken to protect the constitutional rights of people,’ said Hunter.

In the suburbs across the lake, Sheriff Jack Strain told the media on TV that he was going to protect his jurisdiction from “thugs” and “trash” migrating from closed public housing projects in New Orleans. He went on to promise that every person who wore “dreadlocks or che-wee hairstyles” could expect to be stopped by law enforcement. The NAACP and the ACLU called in the U.S. Justice Department and held a revival-like rally at a small church just down the road from the jail. Though the area is over 80 percent white, the small group promised to continue to challenge injustice no matter how powerful the person committing the injustice. Recently, the same law enforcement people set up a roadblock and were stopping only Latino people to check IDs and insurance. I guess to prove they were not only harassing black people?

Finally, a grand jury has started looking into actions by other suburban police officers who blocked a group of people, mostly black, from escaping the floodwaters of New Orleans by walking across the Mississippi River bridge. The suburban police forced the crowd to flee back across the two mile bridge by firing weapons into the air.

This is the criminal legal system in the New Orleans area in 2006. None dare call it criminal justice.

International Human Rights

The Gulf Coast has gained new respect for international human rights because they provide a more appropriate way to look at what should be happening. The fact that there is an international human right of internally displaced people to return to their homes and a responsibility on government to help is heartening even though yet unfulfilled.

The United Nations has blasted the poor U.S. response to Katrina. The UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva accepted a report from Special Reporter Arjun Sengupta who visited New Orleans in fall of 2005 and concluded: “The Committee…remains concerned about information that poor people, and in particular African-Americans, were disadvantaged by the rescue and evacuation plans implemented when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States of America, and continue to be disadvantaged under the reconstruction plans.”

Asian tsunami relief workers who visited New Orleans over the summer were shocked at the lack of recovery. Somsook Boonyabancha, director of the Community Organisations Development Institute in Thailand, told Reuters she was shocked at the lack of progress in New Orleans. “I’m surprised to see why the reconstruction work is so slow, because this is supposed to be one of the most rich and efficient countries in the world. It is starting at such a slow speed, incredibly slow speed.”

Warnings to the Displaced

Local United Way officials see the lack of housing, healthcare and jobs and conclude that low-income people should seriously consider not returning to New Orleans anytime soon.

United Way wrote: “Most of these people want to come home, but if they do not have a recovery plan they need to stay where they are. Some of these evacuees think that they can come back and stay with families and in a few weeks have a place of their own. But the reality is that they may end up living with those relatives for years. Sending people back without a realistic plan may have serious consequences: the crowding of families into small apartments/homes/FEMA trailers is causing mental health problems – stress, abuse, violence, and even death – and this problem is going to get worse, not better. Also, when the elderly (and others) are those returning and living in these conditions, their health is impacted and then the lack of medical facilities and hospital beds is a problem. Again the result may be death….Basically if an evacuee says they have a place to stay – like with relatives – those communities will give them bus fare back or pay for U-hauls. If an evacuee was a renter here and they want to return they should be told to plan on returning in 3-7 years, and in the meantime stay there, get a job, and be much better off.”

FEMA officials in Austin are also warning people about returning to New Orleans. They wrote: “Before you return….New Orleans is a changing place…you should consider the conditions you may be returning to. Many neighborhood schools will not be open by August. Your children may have to travel some distance to get to school…Grocery and supermarkets have been slow to return to many neighborhoods. Sometimes there aren’t enough residents back in your neighborhood for a store to open and be profitable. You may have to travel a large distance to groceries. Walking to the store might not be an option…If you or your family members require regular medical attention, or if you are pregnant or nursing, the services you received before the storm may be scattered and in very different and distant locations. Depending on your medical needs, you may have to drive across the river or even as far away as Baton Rouge…If you or your family members have allergies, remember that there is lots of dust and mold still in the city. While you may have suffered from allergies before the storm, please consider that being in the city will only worsen your allergies. If you have asthma, other respiratory or cardiac conditions, or immune system problems, you would be safer staying out of flooded areas due to the mold, particles and dust in the air. If you must return to the city, wear an approved respirator when working in moldy or dusty areas. …Additionally, police, fire and emergency personnel are stretched to their limits…If you own a car, gas and service stations are limited in many areas. You may need to purchase a gas can in the event you cannot get gas near your home…Public transportation (busses) are also limited and do not operate in all areas….Available and affordable housing is extremely rare. Waiting lists for apartments are as large as 300 on the list, depending on how many bedrooms you need. Living inside your home could be dangerous if mold has set in of if your utilities are not in top working condition…Living in New Orleans may be easier said than done until we have fully recovered from the storm.”

This is New Orleans, one year after Katrina.

Where Did the Money Go?

Everyone who visits New Orleans asks the same question that locals ask – where is the money? Congress reportedly appropriated over $100 billion to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Over $50 billion was allocated to temporary and long-term housing. Just under $30 billion was for emergency response and Department of Defense spending. Over $18 billion was for State and local response and the rebuilding of infrastructure. $3.6 billion was for health, social services and job training and $3.2 for non-housing cash assistance. $1.9 billion was allocated for education and $1.2 billion for agriculture.

One hour in New Orleans shows the check must still be in the mail.

Not a single dollar in federal housing rehab money has made it into a hand in Louisiana. Though Congress has allocated nearly $10 billion in Community Development Block Grants, the State of Louisiana is still testing the program and has not yet distributed dollar number one.

A lot of media attention has gone to the prosecution of people who wrongfully claimed benefits of $2000 or more after the storm. Their fraud is despicable. It harms those who are still waiting for assistance from FEMA.

But, be clear - these little $2000 thieves are minnows swimming on the surface. There are many big savage sharks below. Congress and the national media have so far been frustrated in their quest to get real answers to where the millions and billions went. How much was actually spent on FEMA trailers? How much did the big contractors take off the top and then subcontract out the work? Who were the subcontractors for the multi-million dollar debris removal and reconstruction contracts?

As Corpwatch says in their recent report, “Many of the same ‘disaster profiteers’ and government agencies that mishandled the reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq are responsible for the failure of ‘reconstruction’ of the Gulf Coast region. The Army Corps, Bechtel and Halliburton are using the very same ‘contract vehicles’ in the Gulf Coast as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. These are ‘indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity’ open-ended ‘contingency’ contracts that are being abused by the contractors on the Gulf Coast to squeeze out local companies. These are also ‘cost-plus’ contracts that allow them to collect a profit on everything they spend, which is an incentive to overspend.”

We do know billions of dollars in no-bid FEMA contracts went to Bechtel Corporation, the Shaw Group, CH2M Hill, and Fluor immediately after Katrina hit. Riley Bechtel, CEO of Bechtel Corporation, served on President Bush’s Export Council during 2003-2004. A lobbyist for the Shaw Group, Joe Allbaugh, is a former FEMA Director and friend of President Bush. The President and Group Chief Executive of the International Group at CH2MHill is Robert Card, appointed by President Bush as undersecretary to the US Department of Energy until 2004. Card also worked at CH2M Hill before signing up with President Bush. Fluor, whose work in Iraq was slowing down, is one of the big winners of FEMA work and its stock is up 65 percent since it started Katrina work.

Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota has raised many protests and questions over inflated prices. “It is hard to overstate the incompetence involved in all of these contracts – we have repeatedly asked them for information and you get nothing.” Republican U.S. Representative Charles Bustany, who represents an area heavily damaged by Hurricane Rita, asked FEMA for reasons why the decision was made to stop funding 100 percent of the cost of debris removal in his district. FEMA refused to tell him. He then filed a Freedom of Information request to get the information, and was again refused. When he asked to appeal their denial, he was told that there were many appeals ahead of his and he would have to wait.

If a US Senator and a local U.S. Republican Representative cannot get answers from FEMA, how much accountability can the people of the Gulf Coast expect? There are many other examples of fraud, waste and patronage.

How did a company that did not own a truck get a contract for debris removal worth hundreds of millions of dollars? The Miami Herald reported that the single biggest receiver of early Katrina federal contracts was Ashbritt, Inc. of Pompano Beach, FL, which received over $579 million in contracts for debris removal in Mississippi from Army Corps of Engineers.

The paper reported that the company does not own a single dumptruck! All they do is subcontract out the work. Ashbritt, however, had recently dumped $40,000 into the lobbying firm of Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, which had been run by Mississippi Governor and former National GOP Chair Haley Barbour. The owners of Ashbritt also trucked $50,000 over to the Republican National Committee in 2004.

How did a company that filed for bankruptcy the year before and was not licensed to build trailers get a $200 million contract for trailers? Circle B Enterprises of Georgia was awarded $287 million in contracts by FEMA for temporary housing. At the time, that was the seventh highest award of Katrina money in the country. According to the Washington Post, Circle B was not even being licensed to build homes in its own state of Georgia and filed for bankruptcy in 2003. The company does not even have a website.

FEMA spent $7 million to build a park for 198 trailers in Morgan City Louisiana – almost 2 hours away from New Orleans.

Construction was completed in April. Three months later only 20 of the trailers were occupied. One displaced New Orleans resident who lives there has to walk three miles to the nearest grocery.

Hurricanes are now a booming billion dollar business. No wonder there is a National Hurricane Conference for private companies to show off their wares – from RVs to portable cell phone towers to port-a-potties. One long time provider was quoted by the Miami Herald at the conference that there are all kinds of new people in the field - 'Some folks here said, `Man, this is huge business; this is my new business. I'm not in the landscaping business anymore, I'm going to be a hurricane debris contractor.' "

On the local level, we are not any better.

One year after Katrina the City of New Orleans still does not have a comprehensive rebuilding plan. The first plan by advisors to the Mayor was shelved before the election. A city council plan was then started and the state and federal government mandated yet another process that may or may not include some of the recommendations of the prior two processes. One of the early advisors from the Urban Land Institute, John McIlwain, blasted the delays in late July. “It’s virtually a city with a city administration and its worse than ever…You need a politician, a leader that is willing to make tough decisions and articulate to people why these decisions are made, which means everyone is not going to be happy.” Without major changes at City Hall the City will have miles of neglected neighborhoods for decades. “We’re talking Dresden after World War II.”

Signs of Hope

Despite the tragedies that continue to plague our Gulf Coast, there is hope. Between the rocks of hardship, green life continues to sprout defiantly.

Fifteen feet of water washed through Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School for Science and Technology in the lower 9th Ward. When people were finally able to get into the building, the bodies of fish were found on the second floor. Parents and over 90% of the teachers organized a grass-roots effort to put their school back together. Their first attempts to gut and repair the school by locals and volunteers from Common Ground were temporarily stopped by local school officials and the police. Even after the gutting was allowed to resume, the community was told that the school could not reopen due to insufficient water pressure in the neighborhood.

But the teachers and parents are pressing ahead anyway in a temporary location until they can get back in their school. Assistant Principal Joseph Recasner told the Times-Picayune: “Rebuilding our school says this is a very special community, tied together by more than location, but by spirituality, by bloodlines, and by a desire to come back.”

New Orleans is fortunate to have a working newspaper again. The Times-Picayune won a well-deserved Pulitzer for its Katrina coverage. Its staff continues to provide quality documentation of the Gulf Coast region’s efforts to repair and rebuild.

The New Orleans Vietnamese people continue to inspire us. They were among the very first group back and they have joined forces to care for their elders, rebuild their community church, and work together in a most cooperative manner to resurrect their community. Recently they took legal and direct action to successfully stop the placement of a gigantic landfill right next to their community. Their determination and sense of community-building is a good model for us all.

The only Republican running for Congress in New Orleans is blasting President Bush over failed Katrina promises. Joe Lavigne is running radio ads saying, “Sadly, George Bush has forgotten us. He’s spending too much time and money on Iraq and not enough living up to his promise to rebuild New Orleans. His priorities are wrong. I’m running for Congress to hold President Bush accountable.” Maybe other Republicans will join in.

Tens of thousands of volunteers from every walk of life have joined with the people of the Gulf Coast to help repair and rebuild. Lawyers are giving free help to Katrina victims who need legal help to rebuild their homes. Medical personnel staff free clinics. Thousands of college, high school and even some grade school students have traveled to the area to help families gut their devastated homes. Churches, temples, and mosques from across the world have joined with sisters and brothers in New Orleans to repair and rebuild.

Despite open attempts to divide them, black and brown and white and yellow workers have started to talk to each other. Small groups have started to work together to fight for living wages and safe jobs for all workers. Thousands came together for a rally for respectful treatment for Latino and immigrant workers. Seasoned civil rights activists welcomed the new movement and pledged to work together.

Ultimately, the people of the Gulf Coast are the greatest sign of hope. Despite setbacks that people in the US rarely suffer, people continue to help each other and fight for their right to return home and the right to live in the city they love.

On Sunday morning, a 70 year old woman told a friend where her children are. “They are all scattered,” she sighed. “One is in Connecticut, one in Rhode Island, one in Austin.” When he asked about her, she said, “Me? I am in Texas right now. I am back here to visit my 93 year old mother and go to the second line of Black Men of Labor on Labor Day. But I’m coming back. Yes indeed. I will return. I’m coming back.”

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach him at Quigley@loyno.edu.

For more information visit www.justiceforneworleans.org

Posted by lois at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)

KS: Prison Museum Estimated at $3 million

To complete the prison atmosphere, one building in the museum will include space for prison cells and a gallows chamber.

“We are trying to replicate it as closely as possible,” Johnson said.

Prisons museum estimated at $3 million
By RACHAEL BOSSOW, Times Staff Writer, Leavenworth Times
8-31-06

Construction of the Kansas Regional Prisons Museum in Lansing could cost more than $3 million, according to members of the prison museum board of directors.

Bill Johnson, chairman of the infrastructure committee, discussed the projected costs for constructing the museum. He included $25,000 for a consulting fee for a memorial, $25,000 for furnishings and $253,000 for a contingency fund in addition to the estimated costs of construction. The total museum project is estimated at $3,043,837.

“We haven’t covered everything, with inflation or with prison labor,” Johnson said.

Johnson displayed several artists’ renderings of the museum. The plans call for building an addition to the current Lansing Historical Museum on Kansas Avenue and constructing additional museum facilities north of the building. The addition will include restroom facilities and museum displays in front of the entrance to the prison museum.

An admission will be charged upon entrance to the prison museum. Visitors will cross through a sally port into a prison yard surrounded by a 12- to 14-foot stone wall. They will also exit through the same sally port back into the museum gift shop.

“It will make you feel enclosed,” Johnson said.

The walls will extend to the north and east toward Lansing Correctional Facility. In addition to the stone walls and prison yard, two guard towers will be constructed for the museum. One tower will be open to visitors, who will be able to see the Lansing Correctional Facility.

To complete the prison atmosphere, one building in the museum will include space for prison cells and a gallows chamber.

“We are trying to replicate it as closely as possible,” Johnson said.

Meeting rooms will also be constructed in the new museum facility, along with a separate exit. New parking would be located east of the current museum building, with extra space for bus parking.

The museum could be constructed in several phases, depending on the funding that is provided for the project. The museum’s total assets are currently $30,367.

The area of the prisons museum is significantly larger than the current structure occupied by the Lansing Historical Museum. The gift shop will have 3,372 square feet; meeting rooms, 2,408 square feet; and the museum displays will have 7,824 square feet for a total of 13,604 square feet. The Lansing Historical Museum has 1,426 square feet of existing display space.

David McKune, warden of Lansing Correctional Facility, said inmates could create a model of the museum facility. He suggested having a model with “lift-off” roofs, which will allow board members and area residents to see the layout of the museum complex.

“The model could help build community support with more detail,” said Lansing resident Bob Ulin.

Also in the meeting:

* Web site — Shanae Randolph, economic development director, discussed establishing a Web site for the prisons museum. She suggested hosting the site through the city of Lansing’s Web site, which can reduce the cost.

“It’s our own domain name hosted through the city,” Randolph explained. “We are familiar with the software and the cost is minimal for a Web site.”

Using the CivicPlus program, the Web site could be established for a one-time fee of $1,250, with a $15 monthly domain fee. The site could also include e-commerce for purchasing items from the museum store.

Ulin suggested contacting a Kansas City fulfillment company that packs and ships purchases off e-commerce sites instead of hiring additional staff.

“It’s a cost-effective way to do business,” Ulin said.

The board approved using CivicPlus to host the museum Web site.

* Letter — The board reviewed a letter from the city of Leavenworth regarding support for the museum. City commissioners expressed their “qualified support” for the museum but requested that the name of Leavenworth not be associated with the facility or used in promotional materials.

“It’s a letter, that’s about all I can say,” said Lansing Mayor Ken Bernard. “We can’t use Leavenworth, but we can use Leavenworth County.”

* Funding — Bernard also discussed securing grant funding or low-interest loans for the museum project. Randolph said that more funding may be available from educational grants than from museum grants.

Ulin suggested contacting the Kansas Non-profit Association, which researches philanthropic organizations that might donate funding to various projects.

“People that are passionate about the project will pony up the money,” Ulin said.

* Logo — Peter Grande, director of the United States Disciplinary Barracks, asked about a logo for the museum and for souvenirs that will be sold in the museum gift shop or online.

Bernard directed Laura Phillippi, Lansing Historical Museum site director, to create a logo for the museum.

Posted by lois at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Schwarzenegger prison plan stalls in Assembly

Schwarzenegger will be back with more of the same in January. Below is the AP story and bits from longer SacBee and LA Times
stories.

Schwarzenegger prison plan stalls in Assembly
- By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, August 31, 2006
(08-31) 23:42 PDT SACRAMENTO, (AP) --
A scaled-down plan to add thousands of beds to
the nation's largest state prison system stalled
in the Assembly late Thursday, leaving Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger empty-handed after he
called a special session of the Legislature to
address problems with the prisons.

Lawmakers said there was little appetite to
consider a $918 million Senate-approved package
of bills that would let Schwarzenegger's
administration build 5,340 beds at 11 existing
prisons and help ease crowding in a system that
is more than 70 percent over capacity with
172,000 inmates.

The governor had asked lawmakers to approve a far
more ambitious, $6 billion, multi-prison building
plan in the special session he called that runs
through November.

While lawmakers could technically return to take
up the debate, Democratic legislators said there
was little interest in aiding the Republican
governor in what some saw as an election-year
effort.

"There was just no support for the governor's
proposals, either Democrat or Republican, and we
didn't want to embarrass the governor by putting
them up for a vote," said Steve Maviglio, a
spokesman for Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez,
D-Los Angeles.

Schwarzenegger promised to try again to persuade
lawmakers when they return in December and to
consider what he could do in the meantime to ease
overcrowding.

"We must act immediately to ensure the safety of
the public, correctional officers, and the men
and women in our custody," Schwarzenegger said in
a statement.

Schwarzenegger met privately Thursday with Mike
Jimenez, president of the powerful California
Correctional Peace Officers Association, assuring
him that he intends to keep working with the
union toward reform.

Top Schwarzenegger aides, including Chief of
Staff Susan Kennedy, a Democrat who enjoys good
relations with organized labor, lobbied lawmakers
throughout the day to take up at least some of
the prison bills. But with the prison guards'
labor contract still unresolved, the union
remained vehemently opposed to even the stopgap
prison package.

Chuck Alexander, the union's executive vice
president, denied any connection between the
deadlocked contract talks and what he labeled a
"quick-fix, piecemeal, do-nothing package."

"If these (bills) don't go through, we're hoping
they'll be motivated to come sit at the table
with all the stakeholders, including us,"
Alexander said.

Other state employee labor unions also opposed
the package that would transfer nearly 10,000
inmates to privately run prisons.

"I think a lot of the members realize that none
of this can be successful unless it has the
support of the work force," said Sen. George
Runner, R-Lancaster, who helped negotiate the
compromise bills. Most of the bills cleared the
Senate Wednesday with the minimum votes needed,
with Republicans generally opposing the
Democratic package.

Lawmakers were also at odds over the
administration's proposal to involuntarily send
up to 10,000 inmates to prisons in other states,
with Democrats opposing it.

"We just wasted a month in special session," said
Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange. "We're
obviously not going to do anything about prisons
tonight, the courts are going to take over the
prisons and start releasing inmates." _________________________________________________________________

from the LA Times:
Meanwhile, as lawmakers debated dozens of bills
into the evening Thursday, Schwarzenegger's
prisons package languished. Like lobbyists for
the tribes and scores of other interest groups,
lobbyists for the California Correctional Peace
Officers Assn. spent hours this week crowded
outside the Assembly and Senate chambers,
buttonholing legislators.

The prisons bills represented a slimmed-down
version of the $6-billion package Schwarzenegger
proposed in June when he called a special
legislative session on the prison system. The
governor had warned that overcrowding had become
so severe a federal judge might order the release
of thousands of inmates.

But Democrats, criticizing the governor's
offerings, junked those bills and responded with
four of their own, with a far more modest price
tag of $918 million. One measure included the
governor's proposed transfer of 4,500 female
convicts, while others would let the
administration add 5,340 beds at 11 existing
prisons and begin planning for new medical
centers for inmates.

The Senate approved the bills late Wednesday. But the Assembly balked.

"We haven't had an opportunity to vet all this
legislation and to think thoroughly about what is
the best way to improve a failing prison system,
which we have here in California," Nuñez said.

"These are bad bills," said Lance Corcoran, a
spokesman for the guards union. "They are window
dressing, some sleight-of-hand gimmicks designed
to allow everybody to go home and say
everything's hunky-dory when it is not."

___________

from the Sacramento Bee:

The state correctional officers union, meanwhile, launched an all-out effort to derail a package of bills supported by Schwarzenegger and aimed at reducing overcrowding in California's 33 prisons.

With the prison measures having already cleared the state Senate, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association stationed teams of lobbyists and union officials -- more than a dozen in all -- outside the Assembly chambers and fanned their forces throughout the Capitol to buttonhole lawmakers on the final day of the legislative session.

"We're talking to anybody that will listen," CCPOA Vice President Chuck Alexander said in an interview. "We're telling them we need reform, real reform, and we support that. But this package is not reform. This is nothing more than a cover tactic on the part of whoever is running these issues to say, 'We did something.'"

Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Acting Secretary James Tilton also worked the crowded halls of the Capitol in an effort to counteract the CCPOA onslaught.

But by midnight, the Legislature had not taken up the bills and Schwarzenegger issued a statement saying he would seek ways he could act unilaterally.

"The situation … is still critical and we must act immediately to ensure the safety of the public, correctional officers, and the men and women in our custody," Schwarzenegger said. "I will take executive action wherever possible and reintroduce a comprehensive proposal when the Legislature reconvenes."

Núñez spokesman Steve Maviglio said the prison package collapsed because "there was a bipartisan rejection of what the governor presented to the Legislature less than a month ago."

"Rather than embarrass the governor by putting it up for a vote, we'll continue on in the fall and after the election." he said.

Posted by lois at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)