The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Jitendra Lakram, 36, died that way.

The son of South American immigrants, Lakram hoped to start a new life once released from Attica state prison, perhaps returning, his family said, to their home country of Guyana. He never got the chance.

Neither did Michael Vlahoff, 31, a former worker in Ford's Woodlawn plant, who got mixed up in drugs, and landed in Collins state prison.

"I was so shocked that I couldn't believe it," said Lakram's mother, Kamlawaty Lakram. "I figured my son . should be safe and drug free there."

It makes no sense."

"He's not on the street," one of Vlahoff's relatives added. "He is (supposed to) dry out and get the help he needs," one of Vlahoff's relatives added. They're not supposed to get that stuff when they are in there."

Perhaps not, but it's happening.

With some 3,500 drug tests coming back positive each year, three inmates, on average, die from illegal drugs in New York prisons annually, The News found. At least 19 died this way since 2000.

But beyond that, countless other inmates are released with drug addictions, often to commit more crimes on the street.

"It [drug addiction] was just as bad when I got out," said Cheryl Davis, who resumed her "career" as a Buffalo drug addict and thief upon leaving Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.

People come into court . . . want[ing] to detox off the drugs that they had been using while in custody," said Buffalo City Court Judge Robert T. Russell.

While drugs behind bars are a national problem, The News found drug use in New York prisons more widespread than in surrounding states - with marijuana and heroin being the drugs of choice. About 70 percent of all positive drug tests are for marijuana; 30 percent for heroin.

Among The News' findings:

• A greater percentage of random drug tests are positive in New York prisons than in surrounding states - more than 10 times greater than Pennsylvania. The numbers may be conservative because New York administers fewer random tests than the other states surveyed.

• New York's maximum-security prisons tend to have the biggest drug problem. Less than 30 percent of prison inmates are in the state's 17 maximum-security prisons, where more than 60 percent of drug incidents occur.

• Drugs or drug paraphernalia were found in prisons about 2,000 times in the last 51/2 years. Some 868 inmates were arrested for possessing drugs in prison over the past decade. At least 300 visitors were arrested with drugs over the past five years. About 20 prison employees are disciplined or resign annually for drug involvement in and out of prison.

• Four times as many inmates died from accidental drug overdoses in New York prisons from 2002 to 2004 as in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan combined. Nationally, inmates are nearly twice as likely to die from drug overdoses in New York prisons as in state prisons around the country.

• Similar problems exist in some county jails. Seven inmates died in New York City jails and eight in county jails outside New York City since 2000. Among them was an Erie County man whose heroin addiction, family members said, started years ago in state prison.

"Anything I can get at Genesee and Jefferson, they got in there [prison and jail]," said former inmate Reginald Brown, an ex-drug user now counseling other former convicts in Buffalo.

"We've heard from some it's even easier [to get drugs in prison than on the streets], and there's less chance of getting caught," said Erie County Deputy District Attorney Molly Jo Musarra.

Question of Safety

New York State Department of Correctional Services officials call illegal drugs a threat to prison safety, and say keeping them out is a constant challenge, given 72 percent of inmates enter prison with a history of substance abuse.

But the department says it does a good job keeping the situation under control in a system with 69 prisons that some 90,000 inmates go through each year - an average 63,000 on any given day; as well as 770,000 visitors, and some 585,000 packages to inmates annually.

"We believe we have an effective and comprehensive strategy to tackle drugs in prison," department spokeswoman Linda M. Foglia said.

b With the department's emphasis on drug treatment for addicts, and punishment for those caught with drugs in prison, positive drug tests, she said, declined in recent years, although 2005 showed an increase Of 81,000 drug tests administered last year, 3.4 percent of all tests, and 2.9 percent of randomly administered tests, were positive.

But what the state sees as a strong, successful program, others see as lacking, especially in maximum-security prisons. As many as 7 percent of random drug tests in maximum security prisons are positive, as are 10 percent of follow-up tests given to inmates who previously tested positive, and 17 percent of tests given to inmates acting suspiciously, The News found.

"You would go to the yard on Saturday or Sunday night, and it would be like a bazaar, with people going from table to table making drug deals," said Kevin Muscoreil, a former Attica inmate now working as a legal assistant to a top Buffalo defense attorney.

"We have a terrible problem with heroin in Attica. Drugs are rampant," said Corrections Officer Rick Harcrow, a union steward at the prison.

Corrections Department officials challenged those characterizations, saying positive drug tests at Attica, with 2,200 prisoners, dropped in recent years to 4 percent in 2005, from 6 percent in 2001.

"We don't have heroin rampant in Attica," Foglia said. "There is absolutely no evidence to support these claims."

Nevertheless, with New York having a higher rate of positive random drug tests than surrounding states surveyed, The News found New York is less aggressive in battling its drug problem - a situation critics say goes back 30 years.

"System failure'

In what now seems like a double whammy, the state imposed Gov. Rockefeller's tough, new drug laws - putting more drug users and sellers behind bars - at the same time it implemented some of the most liberal prison visitation policies in the country as a response to the 1971 Attica uprising.

With all the hand holding, kissing and hugging permitted - during daily visitation at maximum-security prisons and weekend and holiday visits at the others - it got easier to smuggle illegal drugs into prisons, critics say. And with more inmates coming into prison with drug histories, the demand for drugs got higher.

"Obviously, there was a system failure that allowed this high volume of drugs to be getting into the prisons," said George King, a former State Parole Board member for 10 years.

The News also found the New York prison system doesn't share drug overdose information with families.

"They told us he died of a heart attack. If the lawyer hadn't investigated, I would have never known," Jitendra Lakram's mother said. "I kept calling the investigator in [the Department of Correctional Services], and he never has given an answer."

"We were never told he had drugs in him," said Eddie Reid, whose brother-in-law, Louis Telese, died from a drug overdose at Attica last year. "We were told it was a heart attack."

It's the coroner's responsibility, not the corrections department's, to notify families on how their loved ones died, corrections officials said.

"Corrections law says the cause of death must be decided and given to the public from the coroner," Foglia said.

The cocaine habit

Michael Vlahoff grew up in Lancaster and had a good job at the Ford plant, but the father of two young boys developed a cocaine habit that overtook his life.

He ended up divorced, fired from his job and, eventually, behind bars.

His legal trouble started with a 2000 burglary and continued in 2001, when he stole a car in Hamburg. When an officer approached, Vlahoff sped away, dragging the officer, who suffered a fractured shoulder.

Vlahoff ended up in Collins Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison, serving up to three years behind bars.

His family never gave up on him. With drug counseling, they hoped he would turn things around.

"The family was supportive of him," said State Sen. Dale Volker, who knows the Vlahoffs as a "good, hardworking family" that tried to help Vlahoff beat his drug addiction.

But in prison, Vlahoff's drug habit only got worse.

At home, he did crack cocaine, his family said.

In prison, he did heroin.

One night in October 2003, Vlahoff and his cellmate were "doing lines" of heroin. The next morning, Vlahoff was dead from an overdose.

The American dream

Jitendra Lakram and his family moved to the United States in 1970, searching for the American dream after escaping discrimination against Indian families in their home country, Guyana, South America.

Lakram's parents prospered in New York, moving from Queens to Long Island's Nassau County. His sister went on to finish college and get a good job in the business world.

But Jitendra Lakram foundered. He was smoking marijuana and stealing cars.

In 1986, he went to prison for car theft. In 1991, not long after his release, Lakram threatened a man at gunpoint - he claimed the gun wasn't loaded - and stole a car.

At age 23, Lakram was back behind bars, serving 121/2 to 25 years in Attica.

Lakram's parents hoped that, once released, their son would start a new life in Guyana, . perhaps marketing an idea he patented in prison for an "unsinkable ship."

But drugs behind bars got in the way.

"We're concerned about [you] having drugs," one parole commissioner said during a hearing in 2003. "Why is this going on in jail?"

"I use drugs recreationally to relieve my stress," Lakram said. Parole commissioners reacted harshly.

"You do realize how outrageous that is, given your situation, and where you are?" a commissioner responded.

The following year, on Nov. 22, 2004, Lakram was found dead in his cell. He overdosed on heroin.

Thriving drug culture

The drug culture thrives in prisons, The News found, partly because of innovative ways drugs are smuggled in, but also because of New York's liberal visitation policies.

"It is mostly girlfriends, wives, family members bringing drugs in," said District Attorney John Trice from Chemung County, where two prisons are located. "I've had mothers bringing it in to Junior."

Other states do background checks on visitors, send trained dogs to find drugs on visitors and in their cars, and conduct high-tech drug screening of everyone entering the prison.

Not in New York State prisons.

The state has three electronic ion scanners shared among the 69 prisons to detect drugs on visitors.

Most visitors to New York prisons can show up, sign in, walk through a metal detector and visit an inmate. Even if the visitor is a drug dealer.

And while some states keep inmates and visitors physically apart - with glass partitions or video visitation rooms - New York, despite rules to the contrary, allows many inmates and visitors to spend hours hugging and kissing in crowded rooms, often with limited supervision, The News observed.

"When I started back in the 1970s, many of the prisons had glass partitions, and you spoke through a phone, and there was minimal contact visitation," said Denny Fitzpatrick, spokesman for the New York State corrections officers' union, after the Attica riot, many things were changed, and they took a very liberal approach in dealing with inmates."

How liberal?

New York is one of just six states that allows married inmates conjugal trailer visits, according to the National Institute of Corrections.

State officials say they are considering the purchase of more scanners to check inmates for drugs, but that it would be inefficient to do background checks and use drug dogs on visitors in a prison system as large as New York's.

Deadly mystery

State Police investigators believe Vlahoff got his deadly heroin through another inmate, who had a visitor smuggle the drugs into prison.

"When he got back to the cell . . . we started doing lines," cellmate Bruce Ferguson said.

Authorities don't know how Lakram got or ingested the heroin that killed him.

"They searched his cell, and no apparatus, a needle or smoking device, was found," State Police Capt. George Brown said.

It all leaves the Vlahoff and Lakram families struggling to come to terms with the deaths.

And it raises concerns within the law-enforcement community for society in general.

If you can't keep drugs out of a facility like Attica, there's no hope of keeping them out of other institutions like schools," said Gerald L. Stout, district attorney in Wyoming County where two state prisons, including Attica, are located.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Buffalo News

SPECIAL REPORT: JAILHOUSE HIGHS
THREE MONTHS TO GET CLEAN

Inmates get 90 days to kick habit at one prison devoted to treatment

By LOU MICHEL and SUSAN SCHULMAN
News Staff Reporters
9/20/2006

Cheryl Davis and Stacey Baxter are longtime drug addicts who have been in and out of jail for years.

Davis still roams the streets of Buffalo, stealing to pay for her dope.

Baxter is now drug-free, although it's a constant struggle.

The difference, in part, could be how the criminal-justice system treated the women.

Baxter was scooped up by her parole officer and sent to Willard Drug Treatment Center after the 35-year-old Jamestown woman injected herself with heroin in an inpatient drug treatment center.

Years earlier, when Davis' drug addiction landed her back in court, her attorney begged the judge to place Davis, 37, in Willard, too.

"If she has any chance at all of ever being successfully assimilated into society and having any kind of a meaningful and productive life, she has to deal with her addiction problem," attorney Bonnie McLaughlin told the judge.

But Davis didn't meet Willard's court-required entrance criteria, so instead was sent to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a women's prison in Westchester County.

"We'd do heroin at the Erie County Holding Center," Davis said. "In state prison, [drugs] are more plentiful. I got drugs from other convicts and guards."

A one-time agricultural school converted into a state hospital for the mentally ill, Willard was transformed in 1995 into New York's only prison exclusively for drug addicts, a 900-bed facility in the Finger Lakes.

Some say Willard offers lessons on how to keep illegal drugs out of New York's prisons.

But Willard's not a panacea. It doesn't transform everyone.

Craig M. Lynch went to Willard twice, only to kill a beloved Buffalo nun while high on crack cocaine less than a year after his release.

Bruce Ferguson, who grew up in Williamsville, also went there but returned to committing crimes when he got out. He ended up in state prison, snorting heroin with another inmate. Ferguson survived. His cellmate, Michael Vlahoff of Lancaster, didn't.

There are others. No one knows how many. The state doesn't keep statistics on former Willard inmates. They don't know how many succeed on the outside, and how many relapse. They don't know if the recidivism rate is any better than the 40 percent in traditional prisons.

Nonetheless, Willard is one of the few correctional facilities in New York where inmates can't seem to get their hands on drugs. No Willard inmates tested positive in drug screenings, and there are no reports of drug confiscations at the center, state officials said.

Inmates don't bring drugs into the facility because the program is devoted to changing behavior, and because inmates know if they get caught with drugs, they will get an extended sentence at a traditional prison, rather than 90 days at Willard, officials said.

"They know they're going home rather than going to prison. It's a carrot," said Deputy Superintendent Daniel M. West.

Intense experience

Stacey Baxter was at Willard for three months last fall. It was an intense experience, she said.

The day began at 5:30 a.m., with a one-to three-mile run before breakfast, followed by drug treatment sessions, academic instruction and vocational training. Random drug tests are also part of the routine.

It's all in a military-like setting, with dormitory-style quarters rather than cells and corrections officers acting more like drill sergeants than prison guards. In fact, officers come around making sure beds are properly made and personal items are kept neatly in cabinets.

Inmates are allowed visitors once every two weeks, on weekends only. Contact visits are allowed, just as at traditional prisons.

"I hated it when I came here," Baxter said of Willard, but added: "If I didn't [go to Willard] I'd be dead. I think it is the best thing I've done."

Now home in Jamestown, Baxter regularly attends outpatient drug treatment sessions initially set up by Willard. Still, it's a constant battle.

Since she was 12 years old, Baxter says, she has taken drugs. She spent much of her life in foster care, detention and behind bars. Now, while drug-free, she dreams of getting high at night and thinks about drugs during the day. In fact, she had one slip since being released from Willard that landed her back in the hospital.

But with two children, and a third on the way, Baxter says she's committed to staying clean.

"Now I'm fine. I'm clean off everything. I put myself back in outpatient," she said, adding: "It's too hard to be a dope fiend. I don't miss that life."

Cheryl Davis' world

Cheryl Davis still lives in that world.

Standing outside her West Side apartment last winter, Davis was thin and tired. She wanted a heroin fix.

"You know I'm a drug addict," she said. "I can't talk today."

Another day, when doped up and feeling better, Davis said her mother, then father, died in separate car accidents only months apart when she was a young girl.

"I come from a very good family," she said.

By the time Davis turned 16, she was a high school dropout and prostitute. Her life has been a constant mix of drugs, prostitution and thievery, broken up periodically by jail, prison and halfway houses. She has been arrested 71 times in the Buffalo area.
In 1999, after stabbing another drug user, Davis was back in court.

While her attorney wanted Davis sentenced to Willard, the judge said Davis didn't qualify because she was a violent felon. She got a prison sentence of 16 months to 3 years.

She came out of prison as drug-addicted as when she went in.

And since her release, she's been arrested 13 times on drug, prostitution, theft, assault and forgery charges. Davis spent the better part of 2006 in jail, after being caught stealing from stores along Niagara Falls Boulevard. She is now back on the streets.

Judges can place convicts in Willard for drug-related offenses, but not violent felonies. District attorneys and judges, however, appear reluctant to ship convicts to Willard's 90-day program in lieu of lengthier prison sentences. Just 18 of the state's 62 counties refer convicts to Willard directly from court, Willard Superintendent Melvin Williams said.

Willard inmates are also referred to the facility for violating parole. Unlike the courts, parole can commit violent felonies to Willard. That's how Baxter got in. Davis qualified under those terms, but never got such a referral.

"The community wants people to go to prison," Williams said.

Seeking solutions

Some suggest beefing up drug tests and imposing tighter procedures on contact visits, including drug-sniffing dogs as a way to combat drugs in state prisons. But those ideas have detractors, who complain of costs to the state and civil rights of visitors.
An alternative, some say, is to expand programs such as those offered in Willard into regular prisons, even creating drug-free wings.

Inmates in these wings would voluntarily receive aggressive drug testing as well as early drug treatment.

Buffalo City Judge Robert T. Russell Jr., who runs the city's drug court, said he has seen drug-free wings in European prisons, where corrections officers take a more active role in rehabilitating drug addicts.

Such programs disrupt the market for drugs in prison, said Alan Rosenthal, director of justice strategies at the Center for Community Alternatives in Syracuse.

"Many people are processed through [prisons], and they never receive drug treatment," Rosenthal said. "The inmate who is in an intensive treatment program is less likely to be searching out drugs."

Beyond that, better outpatient treatment when prisoners are released is also needed, Rosenthal said.

Improved drug treatment in and out of prison, Russell said, would help inmates and better protect the public - and could also save money.

Drug-addicted inmates released back into society "are going to come back, and you're going to spend $35,000 a year to reincarcerate them," Rosenthal said.

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

SPECIAL REPORT: JAILHOUSE HIGHS
NO SAFE HAVEN

County jails are just as drug-infested as state prisons housing convicted felons

By LOU MICHEL and SUSAN SCHULMAN
NEWS STAFF REPORTERS
9/19/2006

It's not just the state prisons, with their razor-wire fences and mammoth brick walls, letting drugs in.

County jails, often holding people awaiting trial, can be just as drug-infested, some more so, The Buffalo News investigation found.

And jail inmates, like prison inmates, are dying.

In New York State, the dead include:

Jason Ciurczak, 30, the son of Amherst man and a Youngstown woman, being held in the Erie County jail on drug charges.

Daniel Riccio, 28, from a suburban Long Island family, being held in the Nassau County jail because of drugs charge.

Kathleen Brennan, 26, the daughter of a New York City police officer, being held in the Orange County jail because of drug charges.

All three were drug addicts - awaiting trial, sentencing or rehabilitation placement on drug charges - who fatally overdosed on drugs they obtained while in county jails.

In New York State, at least 10 inmates fatally overdosed in 10 county jails outside New York City since 2000. Another 10 died of drug overdose in New York City's jails, state records show. That's in addition to the 19 who died of drug overdoses in New York state prisons.

Nationally, a prisoner in a county jail is more than four times as likely to die of a drug overdose than a state prison inmate. Overdoses represent 1.2 percent of deaths in all state prisons versus 5.2 percent of the deaths in county jails.

"Jails are a stepchild of the criminal justice system," said Ken Kerle, with the American Jail Association.

Jailers bringing drugs in

With their budget limitations, constant flow of inmates and sometimes head-in-the-sand attitudes, The News found, county jails often don't have the ability or interest to keep illegal and deadly drugs away from inmates.

As with prisons, visitors smuggle most of the drugs into jails, but employees are also involved. The News found at least a dozen county corrections officers arrested over the past decade for smuggling drugs into jails outside New York City, including one who allowed drugs to be mixed in with orders of Chinese food brought into jail. Another 26 corrections officers at Rikers Island, New York City's primary jail, were arrested over the past 15 years, state records show.

The state doesn't keep statistics on drug-related incidents in county jails, but a News survey found more than 300 inmates and visitors arrested on drug-related charges annually in the state's 60 county jails outside New York City and some 250 last year in New York City jails.

Outside New York City, the incidents are more prevalent in the state's most-populous urban counties, including Erie and Monroe, and suburban New York City counties, including Orange and Nassau.

That's also true with overdose deaths.

Addicts in the family

The Brennan, Riccio and Ciurczak families acknowledge their loved ones were drug addicts.

"He was at my house with [a girlfriend], and they went into the bathroom, and I happened to walk around the corner and the door was open. I just wanted to collapse. It was heartbreaking," said Ciurczak's mother, Susan Canfield. "[His girlfriend] was shooting him up. He had a bungee cord around his left arm. I yelled at him, "Why the hell are you doing this? You're letting this ruin your life.' "

Canfield, like relatives of the other overdose victims, was relieved when her son ended up in jail on a drug possession charge. There, she felt, her son would be safe, away from the drugs she feared were killing him.

But within months, Ciurczak was dead, killed on Jan. 17, 2005, by an overdose of heroin that a fellow Erie County jail inmate injected into the 30-year-old's neck.

It was a similar story with Daniel Riccio, a drug addict sent back to jail in 2001 after his parole officer determined Riccio was still using drugs. He died of a drug overdose in Nassau County jail on Feb. 14, 2001, while waiting to be placed in a drug treatment program.

Kathleen Brennan was sent back to jail after failing to complete a drug rehabilitation program. On Nov. 26, 2003, four days before her release from the Orange County jail, Brennan was snorting heroin that another inmate smuggled into jail. She died of an overdose.

"We were totally blown away when we heard she OD'd," said her mother, Denise Brennan. "How was another inmate able to secret 100 bags of heroin into the jail?"

Kissing bans overturned

In their defense, some county jail officials say that they recognize visitors are smuggling drugs to inmates but that they don't have the wherewithal to stop it.

Two counties - Cayuga and Wayne - banned inmates and visitors in recent years from kissing on the lips, hoping that would stop drug exchanges.

But the bans were challenged by the state Commission on Corrections, which oversees county jails, and overturned.

In addition, while state prisons confine inmates already convicted, usually of felonies, county jails hold inmates convicted of misdemeanors and also serve as holding centers for defendants awaiting resolution of pending court cases. These people are still considered innocent.

Given that, local jails can't routinely strip-search inmates, something state prisons do.

Jails also handle inmates serving weekend jail sentences.

"Weekend-sentenced inmates often bring in the drugs. They have all week to figure out how to get it in," said Lt. James Ginty, a Sullivan County jail supervisor.

Also, most jail inmates live in the community where the facility is located, making it easier for friends, family and criminal associates to visit. It also may be why county jails appear to have more problems than state prisons with corrections officers bringing drugs into the facilities.

"It might be in some localities the officers know the inmates from their neighborhoods, and, unlike state prisons, there's a familiarity that occurs with inmates who keep coming back," said Dominick Orsino, administrator of the Orange County jail and a former deputy superintendent at two state prisons.

Many jail officials also say they just don't have the money needed for such things as drug testing, electronic drug detection devices, drug-sniffing dogs.

"We're looking at [electronic drug detection] scanners, but they are pretty expensive for a small, local jail," said Lt. John Mack, head of the Cayuga County jail.

Not that all jail administrators think there are problems.

Erie County Correctional Facility - where Jason Ciurczak died - requires visitors to open their mouths before entering the visiting room so officers can check for drugs. Visitors are also often searched by drug-sniffing dogs.

"I don't think drugs are a problem in jail," said Donald J. Livingston, the facility's superintendent. "Jason was an anomaly in my mind. He was determined to get drugs in, and he did."

Questions raised

Yet, Ciurczak's death raised questions among state investigators over the Erie County jail's procedures for detecting drugs smuggled into the facility, as well as the training deputies receive for recognizing signs of drug abuse.

Ciurczak was dead in his bunk for three hours, the state found, before he was discovered by jail deputies.

The commission also recommended the Erie County jail revise its inventory controls on the distribution and disposal of hypodermic syringes that the jail's medical staff controls.

Authorities never determined how Ciurczak obtained a needle in jail, but the man who fatally injected him told authorities Ciurczak got it from a diabetic inmate.

The state had similar criticisms and recommendations for the jails in Orange and Nassau counties, where Brennan and Riccio died.

Nassau County should increase the use of drug-detecting dogs and purchase other types of interdiction equipment, the commission wrote.

"Introduction of prison contraband continues to be an issue and has been cited as a contributing factor in previous inmate deaths at the Nassau County Correctional Center," the commission stated.

The jail also needs to develop a system identifying inmates, like Riccio, who got caught with drugs during prior incarcerations in the jail, the state said.

After Brennan's death in Orange County, the state also determined that the jail needs better drug detection equipment and inmate supervision.

Brennan was so high the night she died, other inmates had to help her into her cell and came by to check on her, with permission from a corrections officer. Apparently, jail officers didn't question what was going on, the state found.

The state also questioned a statement from a corrections officer who claimed to have checked Brennan at 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 26, 2003, and found she was fine. In fact, the state pointed out, she had died 71/2 hours earlier.

Jail personnel should "have their conduct reviewed for not verifying that Brennan was alive and breathing . . . ," the commission wrote.

-----------------
Other articles in this series are on line at http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/jailhousehighs.asp