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January 31, 2007

Research Shows Prisons Decreasingly Effective in Reducing Crime

Research Shows Prisons Decreasingly Effective in Reducing Crime Wednesday January 31, 2007

NEW YORK, Jan. 31 /PRNewswire/ -- Although crime is up in many American cities, lawmakers should think twice before raising penalties and extending prison sentences, advises a study released today by the Vera Institute of Justice, a 45-year-old nonprofit organization that works on safety and justice issues and is headed by Michael Jacobson, who ran New York City's jails and probation system for Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

FBI reports of a 3.7 percent nationwide increase in violent crime in the first half of 2006 -- the largest annual increase in 15 years -- may soon have lawmakers calling for tougher measures to protect public safety. However, after surveying the most recent research on the effectiveness of increasing incarceration to reduce crime, Don Stemen, director of research in Vera's Center on Sentencing and Corrections, argues in Reconsidering
Incarceration: New Directions for Reducing Crime that putting more people in prison may not be the most effective solution.

"Thirty years ago, prevailing wisdom was that sending people to prison was the best and only response to rising crime," says Stemen. "But crime is a complex phenomenon, influenced by many factors. Incarceration is just one potential influence, and research shows that increasing incarceration isn't the best or only way to reduce crime."

Instead, Stemen's research review suggests that policymakers consider investing in areas such as policing or education, which show equal or better correlation with lower rates of crime.

"It's always reassuring when empirical evidence supports what one's common sense suggests," says David Keene of the American Conservative Union, the nation's oldest and largest conservative lobbying group. "This study does just that for policymakers and others interested in the question of whether anything worth doing is really worth overdoing," he says.

"The time has come for America to engage in a serious discussion to determine the best way to deal with incarceration," agrees Richard A. Viguerie, chairman of American Target Advertising and a leading conservative voice. "The old ways have failed us."

Little empirical study had been done to confirm or refute the effectiveness of incarceration in reducing crime rates when America began its historic reliance on prisons in the 1970s. Today, conversely, policymakers are faced with a large, complex, and sometimes contradictory body of research. By making sense of this information, Reconsidering Incarceration offers a clear, up-to-date understanding of what works best.

Highlights of the report include:

* Over the past 35 years a 10 percent higher incarceration rate was
associated with a 2 to 4 percent lower crime rate, according to the most
reliable research.

* Ever greater rates of incarceration have been subject to diminishing
returns in effectiveness. In some neighborhoods with already high rates
of incarceration, additional increases have correlated with even more
crime than before.

* Government investment in things such as more police, reducing
unemployment, or raising education levels may be more cost effective in
reducing crime. One national study found, for example, that a 10 percent
increase in wages corresponded with a 12 percent drop in property crime
and a 25 percent drop in violent crime.

"This report could not have come at a better time," says Vera's Michael Jacobson. "With crime rates going up in many parts of the country, calls for harsher penalties and more prisons are inevitable. Governors, legislators, and the public need to know that more prison doesn't equal more public safety. You can effectively provide for public safety without overinvesting in prisons."

Between 1993 and 2005, New York City's violent crime rate fell 64 percent. During that time, the number of people sent to prison from the city likewise dropped 47 percent, and its jail population fell 27 percent. Similarly, New York State, which leads the 10 most populous states in violent crime reduction, experienced a 58 percent decline in violent crime between 1993 and 2005. Its incarceration rate also fell during that period by 7.9 percent.

"Removing violent repeat offenders from society obviously makes sense," concludes David Keene, "but the idea of jailing virtually everyone who breaks our laws and throwing them into institutions that are little more than warehouse lock-ups quickly reaches the point of diminishing returns."

A copy of Reconsidering Incarceration: New Directions for Reducing Crime, may be downloaded from Vera's web site at http://www.vera.org/reconsideringincarceration or ordered from the Vera Institute of Justice at (212) 334-1300.

The Vera Institute of Justice is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing safety and justice, promoting fair and efficient policy and practice, and working with leaders of government and civil society to improve the systems people rely upon for safety, security, and justice. Vera is a founding member of the Altus Global Alliance.

Learn more about Vera at http://www.vera.org.
Source: Vera Institute of Justice

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

U.S. H.R. 555: A Bill to Regulate Inmate Telephone Service Rates

110th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 555
To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to require the Federal
Communications Commission to prescribe rules regulating inmate telephone service rates.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 18, 2007

Mr. Rush (for himself, Mr. Boucher, Mr. Gutierrez, Mr. Wynn, Mr. Towns, Mr. Cleaver, and Mr. Cummings) introduced the following bill; which was
referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce

________________________________________________________________

A BILL
To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to require the Federal
Communications Commission to prescribe rules regulating inmate
telephone service rates.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ``Family Telephone Connection Protection Act of 2007''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

The Congress finds that:
individuals correspond and maintain contact with family members who are incarcerated in correctional institutions.

2) Except for emergency purposes, family members are not
allowed to call people incarcerated in correctional
institutions; incarcerated persons are typically allowed to
call family members and other pre-approved individuals only
through payphones physically located on the premises of
correctional institutions

(3) Inmate telephone service in correctional institutions
often is limited to collect calling.

(4) Regardless of whether the prisoners' calls are placed
members typically pay for the calls, either through their
telephone bills, in the case of collect calls received from
prisoners, or by making deposits directly into prisoners' debit
accounts.

(5) Innocent citizens are paying excessive telephone
charges simply due to having a family member or loved one who is incarcerated.

(6) The rates for calls from correctional institutions are
some of the highest rates in the United States, with with some per-
minute charges reaching $1 and service or connection charges of
$3.95 per call.

(7) Information compiled by the Congress and the Federal
Communications Commission shows that the high rates are due in
part to the lack of competition between telephone companies
that provide long distance inmate telephone service to
correctional institutions.

(8) There are no competitive forces providing incentives
for those carriers to lower prices or operate efficiently
because, unlike the mass market, only one carrier is typically
permitted to provide long distance inmate telephone service
within each correctional institution.

(9) High calling rates also are due in part to commissions
that carriers pay to correctional institution administrators
for the exclusive right to provide long distance inmate
telephone service in a correctional facility. In some cases,
such commissions account for 50 percent or more of the total
charges.

10) The collection of such commissions by correctional
institution administrators and state departments of correction
based upon interstate telecommunications revenues is a burden
on interstate commerce.

(11) Due to the lack of competition for telephone services
within correctional institutions, families of people in prison,
many of whom have low incomes, cannot choose the long distance
carrier with the lowest calling rates and must pay the
excessive rates charged by the carrier having the exclusive
right to provide long distance service to the correctional
institution from which the call originates.

(12) It is the policy of the United States to ensure that
all Americans are afforded just and reasonable communications
services, including those families that pay rates for inmate
telephone service.

(13) It is clear from various studies that maintaining
frequent and meaningful communications between people who are
incarcerated and family members is key to the successful social
reintegration of formerly incarcerated individuals. Such
contact reduces recidivism and facilitates rehabilitation,
which in turn reduces crime and the future costs of
imprisonment.

(14) Frequent communications between incarcerated persons
and family members is burdened, and in some cases, prevented,
by excessive inmate telephone service rates. Excessive inmate
telephone service rates thus weaken the family and community
ties that are necessary for successful reentry into society by
persons who were formerly incarcerated and the reduction in
crime resulting from successful reentry.

(15) The Commission has the expertise and authority to
regulate inmate telephone service. Because parties to
Commission rulemaking proceedings have raised issues regarding
its authority to implement meaningful relief for excessive
inmate telephone service rates, Congress finds it necessary and
appropriate to reaffirm that the Commission has the authority
to implement the types of relief set forth in this Act.

SEC. 3. RESTRICTIONS ON THE PROVISION OF INMATE TELEPHONE SERVICE.

(a) Definitions.--Section 226(a) of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 226(a)) is amended adding at the end the following new paragraphs:
``(10) The term `collect' or `collect call' refers to a
telephone call from a person incarcerated in a correctional
institution that is billed to the subscriber receiving the
call.
``(11) The term `commission' refers to a fee or other
payment by a provider of inmate telephone service to an
administrator of a correctional institution, department of
correction, or similar entity, based upon, or partly upon,
inmate telephone service revenue.
``(12) The term `debit account' refers to the payment of
inmate telephone service through a prisoner's prepaid card or
other account, which can be accessed only through an access
code, personal identification number, or similar identifier.
``(13) The term `inmate telephone service' includes the
provision of telephone service enabling persons incarcerated in
correctional institutions to originate interstate calls at
payphones or other telephones that are designated for
prisoners' personal use, regardless of whether the calls are
collect, paid through a debit account, or paid through any
other means.
``(14) The term `provider of inmate telephone service'
means any common carrier that provides inmate telephone service
or any other person determined by the Commission to be
providing inmate telephone service.''.
(b) Regulations.--Section 226 is further amended--
(1) by redesignating subsection (i) as subsection (k); and
(2) inserting after subsection (h) the following new
subsections:
``(i) Regulation of Inmate Telephone Service.--
``(1) Rates.--In order to ensure that charges for inmate
telephone service are just, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory,
the Commission shall consider, either in a rulemaking
proceeding that is pending as of the date of enactment of the Family Telephone Connection Protection Act of 2007 or in a new
rulemaking proceeding, the following types of regulation of
inmate telephone service, all of which are within the
Commission's jurisdiction and authority:
``(A) prescribing a maximum uniform per-minute
compensation rate;
``(B) prescribing a maximum uniform service
connection or other per-call compensation rate;
``(C) prescribing variable maximum compensation
rates depending on such factors as carrier costs, the
size of the correctional facility served, and other
relevant factors identified by the Commission;
``(D) requiring providers of inmate telephone
service to offer both collect calling and debit account services;
``(E) prohibiting the payment of commissions by
providers of inmate telephone service to administrators of correctional institutions, departments of
correction, and similar entities; and
``(F) requiring administrators of correctional
institutions, departments of correction, and similar
entities to allow more than one provider of inmate
telephone service to provide interstate inmate
telephone service at a correctional institution in
order that prisoners have a choice of such providers.
``(2) Scope.--The regulations adopted by the Commission
shall be technologically neutral and shall not jeopardize
legitimate security and penological interests. To the extent
the Commission regulations reduce or eliminate the revenue
derived by administrators of correctional institutions,
departments of correction, and similar entities from the
receipt of commissions, such effects of Commission regulations shall not be considered as jeopardizing or otherwise affecting legitimate security or penological interests.
``(3) Deadlines and periodic review.--The Commission shall prescribe regulations to implement the provisions of this
subsection within one year after the date of enactment of the Family Telephone Connection Protection Act of 2007. The
Commission shall review, on a triennial basis, the regulations promulgated under this subsection, including whether any
Commission-established compensation rates should be modified.
``(4) State preemption.--To the extent that any State
requirements are inconsistent with the Commission's regulations affecting or pertaining to interstate inmate telephone service including restrictions on the payment of commissions based upon
interstate inmate telephone service revenues or earnings, the
Commission's regulations on such matters shall preempt such
State requirements.
``(j) Inmate Telephone Service Fully Subject to Sections 251 and
252.--
``(1) Inmate telephone service is fully subject to the
requirements of sections 251 and 252 of this Act.
``(2) No provider of inmate telephone service may block or
otherwise refuse to carry a call placed by an incarcerated
person on the grounds that the provider has no contractual or
other arrangement with the local exchange carrier serving the
intended recipient of the call or other common carrier involved
in any portion of the transmission of the call.''.

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

VA Senate passes a proposed consitutional amendment to restore voiting rights to people convicted of non-violent felonies

Measure on felons' voting rights OK'd
Richmond Times-Dispatch Friday,
January 26, 2007

The Virginia Senate passed 29-10 yesterday a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the General Assembly to set procedures in law for restoration of voting rights to nonviolent felons.

Currently, only the governor can restore felons' civil rights. People seeking to have their rights restored must go through a laborious process to have the governor review their case. Felons in Virginia automatically lose their right to vote when they are convicted. More than 200,000 have lost the right, and the largest number live in Richmond. Sen. Yvonne B. Miller, D-Norfolk, sponsor of the proposal, said some of those convicted have plea-bargained away their rights in return for a lighter sentence. Sen. Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City, noted that some people were convicted of felony drug charges in the 1970s. Today, with more tolerant community standards, those same crimes would be a misdemeanor, he said. Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, R-Fairfax, objected. He said the governor can devote more personal attention to each case. The amendment would not affect the governor's restoration powers. -

Posted by lois at 05:44 PM | Comments (0)

ID: Idaho's drug courts seek 50 percent more money

Idaho Statesman
Jan 29, 2007
Idaho's drug courts seek 50 percent more money

POCATELLO, Idaho (AP) -- Administrators of Idaho's drug and mental health court are seeking an additional $4 million to increase the number of people who can participate.

In a six-page report to Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter and the Legislature, court administrators said 888 people were supervised by the court during any given month in 2006.

Boosting spending on the program by 50 percent would allow 506 additional people throughout the state to participate, 6th District Judge N. Randy Smith said.

Idaho ranks second in the nation in drug court availability based on the number of courts per capita. The first two drug courts opened in 1998, and the state had 40 drug courts as of Dec. 4, meaning there was one court for every 36,000 Idahoans, according to the report.

Otter spokesman Jon Hanian said Monday that the governor's office did not immediately have a comment to the request.

Smith oversees Bannock County's drug court, which opened its doors in 2002.

A defendant can go to drug court before or after sentencing. In both cases the defendant is likely facing prison time, but Smith said he believes choosing the drug court, rather than being sentenced to the program, empowers a defendant to start being accountable.

The recidivism rate, the percentage of people who are re-arrested, for Bannock County drug court graduates is just 4 percent. That compares to 19 percent for Ada County drug court graduates and 20 percent for Kootenai County graduates.

Recidivism rate for drug offenders throughout the state who have not gone through drug court is well over 50 percent.

Charles Snowden, a Bannock County drug court participant, knows he would be in prison if not for drug court. Snowden said rock bottom came for him last year when his youngest child was born while he sat in Bannock County Jail facing prison time.

"I didn't even get to see him be born," Snowden told the Idaho State Journal for a story Sunday. "It made me think of my kids and I felt ashamed."

Snowden, a father of four, was arrested last year for possession of methamphetamine. Today, he has been drug-free for seven months and credits Bannock County's drug court and Smith with saving his life.

The report, which was submitted to the governor's office and lawmakers last week, also noted that drug court programs cost the state less than other penalties. Per participant, the drug court costs $6,500, compared with $20,000 for each prison inmate and $10,600 for each inmate in a work release center.

---http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ID_DRUG_COURT_IDOL-?SITE=IDBOI&SECTIO
N=US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-01-29-17-15-57

Information from: Idaho State Journal, http://www.journalnet.com

Posted by lois at 05:02 PM | Comments (0)

CO: Crammed state jails will "pop"

Crammed state jails will "pop"

By Erin Emery, Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 01/30/2007 06:23:02 AM MST

Ari Zavaras, the new man in charge of Colorado's Department of Corrections, has inherited a prison system that is like a balloon ready to pop.
The problem, corrections officials say, is Colorado has doubled its prison population in the past 10 years, slashed programs designed to rehabilitate inmates and slowed construction of new prisons.

Corrections officers say they feel a sense of unease because fewer people patrol the state's prisons. About 200 corrections- officer positions were eliminated during a statewide fiscal crisis that began in 2001, and only 62 of those have been restored. That leaves officers with less time to glean the kind of intelligence from inmates that can avert violent uprisings.

"I would contend that every prison in the state has the potential for a riot situation - every one of them," said state Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, whose district includes many southern Colorado prisons.

Colorado's prison population exploded - from 4,000 inmates in 1985 to more than 22,000 today - after the state toughened its sentencing laws in the late 1970s and 1980s. During the same period, the budget grew from $57 million to $533 million.

Good news, bad news

The good news: Violent crime in the 1990s dropped by 33 percent, according to a report by the Colorado Lawyers Committee.

The bad news: There's not enough room. The state is trying to manage its prisons by double-bunking prisoners and sending some offenders out of state. Over the next five years, though, the Department of Corrections says it needs $806 million for prison construction projects alone. By 2011, the department projects that 29,000 people will be behind bars.

Zavaras said his first priority is to keep the public safe. Secondly, he believes the way to get more bang for the taxpayers' buck is to change the behavior of prisoners, most of whom are scheduled to return, eventually, to the streets.

"We are going to have a heavy focus and a heavy emphasis on what we can do to slow down growth in the department," said Zavaras, who served as director of the Department of Corrections from 1993 to 1998 and as Denver's police chief before then.

Among Zavaras' first moves will be to try to restore programs cut during the budget crisis. Drug, alcohol and sex-offender programs, along with education programs, were sharply curtailed.

Between 2001 and 2005, state lawmakers cut $11.4 million in funding for inmate programs, according to a Joint Budget Committee study of budget cuts during the recession. Almost none of that funding has been restored.

If programs are not restored, the current recidivism rate of 49.2 percent could get even higher, Zavaras said.

The Colorado Lawyers Committee recently drafted a report recommending that a commission be formed to study modifying sentences.

Glen Keller, a Denver lawyer who co-authored the report with lawyer Jim Scarboro, suggested that sentences for more severe crimes could be made longer, while sentences for lesser crimes could be shorter. "Other states have done this, and they've been very successful in reducing their costs," Keller said.

Sentencing reforms could help free up money for inmate re-entry and crime-prevention programs, said Rep. Terrance Carroll, D-Denver, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Carroll said his committee will be looking at the Colorado Lawyers Committee report.

Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, said he supported putting state money into faith-based programs. "Education is not enough," he said. "You have to cure the heart."

Incidents fluctuating

Inside prisons, it is difficult to measure whether violence is on the rise because the Department of Corrections three years ago revamped its definitions of serious incidents. In the past three years, the number of serious incidents has fluctuated from year to year.

In July 2004, inmates rioted at the Crowley Correctional Facility in Olney Springs. In October 2002, prison guard Eric Autobee was bludgeoned to death at Limon Correctional Facility. However, prison officials say that extensive training of officers may have prevented more violence.

"We have managed to keep the lid on the place, and it almost becomes a Catch-22. It's easy to become lulled into the thought that if we're managing it, we can do it," said Alison Morgan, corrections spokeswoman. "But it's inevitable that it is going to pop at some point, whether it is a serious staff assault, an inmate death, another riot."

Some corrections officers worry that a drop in their number will lead to trouble. "You lose intelligence," said Joe Nicolini, a corrections officer who recently retired after 10 years.

With fewer hours spent walking the units, there are fewer opportunities for inmates to inform management of potential problems inside.

In southern Colorado, representatives of Teamsters Local 537 are trying to organize corrections officers who, according to Nicolini and union officials, have been forced to work 16- hour shifts or longer.

Along with the decreasing number of corrections officers are problems created by the loss of inmate programs, Morgan said.

"We have a philosophy that a busy, tired inmate is an inmate that does not cause problems," she said. "If an inmate is not in a program or in a class or has yard time, then you absolutely have a greater reliance on these officers." As a result, "there has been a greater unease among our line staff and we recognize it, absolutely," she said.

Zavaras said locking up prisoners without trying to change behavior is "shortsighted."

"If we don't change behavior, it's a public-safety issue," Zavaras said. "There's going to be more victims, more crimes."

Staff writer Mark P. Couch contributed to this report.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_5115285

Posted by lois at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)

UT: Inmates might have to pay for jail costs

Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Inmates might have to pay for jail costs

LORETTA PARK - STANDARD-EXAMINER

County jail inmates may be paying some of the costs of keeping them incarcerated if a bill becomes law.

Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings spoke Monday on behalf of House Bill 263, sponsored by Rep. Curt Oda, R-Clearfield. The House committee approved the bill, and it now moves to the House floor for a vote.

Rawlings said current law allows judges to order inmates to pay for a portion of their jail stay to offset costs, but judges are reluctant to do so. Rawlings said Davis County judges do not want to be "the heavy-handed collector."

Oda's bill would automatically allow counties to bill inmates for a portion of their jail stay unless a judge orders otherwise.

If the fee is not paid, the inmate could have his probation extended until it is paid, or the bill could be sent to the Office of Debt Collection, Rawlings said.

Rawlings spoke in front of the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee. Attorney Reed Richards also spoke in favor of the bill on behalf of the Utah Sheriff's Association.

He said Weber County is in the process of allowing the jail to bill inmates for their stay. The county is considering charging $10 a day. It costs the county about $42 a day to house an inmate.

Charging an inmate the full price would "more than likely make it impossible to collect," Richards said.

Davis County Sheriff Bud Cox said after the hearing an inmate convicted of a misdemeanor stays in jail an average of 22 days after conviction.

One of the longest stays by an inmate waiting for a trial was Todd Jeremy Rettenberger, Cox said. Rettenberger stayed in jail for five years until he pleaded guilty to third-degree felony manslaughter in connection with the death of Motel 6 night clerk, Matthew John Whicker in 1996. "This is just a matter of them realizing they are costing the taxpayer money for their stay in jail," Cox said.

A $10 fee is "better than nothing," Cox said.

HB 263, Jail Expenses Amendments, Rep. Curt Oda, R-Clearfield. This bill would require inmates to pay restitution for the cost of incarceration, unless otherwise ordered by the court. Under the bill, the inmate would pay the cost of incarceration to the county correctional facility before and after sentencing, unless the amount is reduced or eliminated. The county jail would determine the cost of incarceration, but it couldn't exceed the costs established in state law.

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/208437/
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A3.

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

TX: Study says policy changes could alleviate need for more prisons

Study says policy changes could alleviate need for more prisons
More prison treatment programs plus following parole guidelines could save Texas taxpayers $65.1 million, according to analysis.

By Mike Ward, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, January 29, 2007

Providing additional prison treatment programs and paroling offenders according to longstanding release guidelines would allow Texas to avoid building prisons, a new study reveals.

The analysis by the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments, to be made public Tuesday at a joint meeting of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee and the House Corrections Committee, said that Texas would have just 151,817 convicts in prison by 2012 — fewer than are currently serving time in the state's near-capacity prisons — if it opts for two changes in policy.

That could save taxpayers $65.1 million by sidetracking plans to build three prisons, the study contends.

"It's a road map to what's causing our problems, to what other states are doing, to what we should be doing," said Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, who is chairman of the chamber's Criminal Justice Committee.

Supporters of the prison-alternative programs, such as Whitmire, are expected to applaud the analysis as confirmation that treatment programs are one solution to the problem of crowded prisons. Opponents are expected to dismiss it as flawed research designed to support a specific conclusion.

A copy of the three-part analysis, obtained this afternoon by Statesman.com, proposes that the state could avoid building maximum-security prisons by:

•Building a 1,000-bed lockup that would be used to treat drunken driving offenders, drug addicts and alcohol offenders.

•Adding 150 halfway house beds.

•Ensuring that the Board of Pardons and Paroles adheres to its parole-release guidelines, a move that would increase the overall parole rate from 26 percent last year to 29 percent by 2012.

•Providing funding for new lockups to house parole and probation violators for short terms, instead of returning them to a regular prison.

•Adding more treatment programs to cut the backlog of prisoners who are awaiting those programs before they can be paroled.

The principal involved in completing the analysis was national justice consultant Tony Fabelo, who formerly oversaw analyses of Texas' incarceration and prison-growth trends as director of the Criminal Justice Policy Council.

"Assume that these treatment facilities will receive some people who would not have otherwise been incarcerated, and therefore contribute to some 'net widening,' " the study states. "These projections assume that a significant number of people participating in these programs will fail and return to prison.

"Funded at an appropriate level and administered effectively, however, these programs could engage in minimal net-widening and have low recidivism rates . . . (The options) would divert a significant number of people from prison to community-based sanctions programs/treatment programs."

The findings generally agree with proposals by House and Senate leaders who have insisted for months that the state can avoid building maximum-security prisons by diverting thousands of felons into treatment and rehabilitation programs, in a move they say can reduce recidivism rates. It was those leaders who commissioned the study late last year.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/01/30/30prisons.html

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

Iraqis Get Ideas From S.C. Prisons

Iraqis Get Ideas From S.C. Prisons
By MEG KINNARD
The Associated Press
Monday, January 29, 2007
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Iraqi prison officials looking to rebuild their nation's jail system toured a state prison Monday, gathering ideas _ including electronic door locks and an onsite license plate plant _ to take back to their country.
A delegation that included U.S. Justice Department officials and their Iraqi counterparts visited the maximum security Broad River Correctional Institution, where the Iraqis watched inmates make South Carolina license plates and traffic signs.
Iraqi prisoners don't have a place to work, one visitor said through an interpreter.
The plant enables an inmate "to help himself and his family. We can have productive inmates, not just consumer inmates," said the warden of a Nasiriyah prison, whose name was withheld by the Justice Department for his own safety.

The group also was interested in the prison's security system, which includes electronically locking doors and video monitoring.

"My first impression is that the prisons here are totally different from ours," the warden said. "For example, the security system, the electric doors _ we don't have this technology."

The delegation visited South Carolina because the state prison system was similar in size and organization to the existing Iraqi system, said Georgette Thornton, who works in Baghdad with the department's International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program.

The two-week visit to South Carolina will include trips to other state prisons as well as a federal prison. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR2007012901 870.html

Posted by lois at 04:42 PM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2007

Father Robert Drinan, Ex-Congressman, Dies aat 86

January 28, 2007
Rev. Robert Drinan, Ex-Congressman, Dies at 86
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 9:09 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Rev. Robert Drinan, a Jesuit who -- over the objections of his superiors -- became the first Roman Catholic priest to serve as a voting member of Congress, died Sunday.

Drinan, 86, had suffered from pneumonia and congestive heart failure during the previous 10 days, according to a statement by Georgetown University.

''His death was peaceful, and he was surrounded by his family,'' said the Rev. John Langan, rector of the Georgetown University Jesuit Community where Drinan lived.

An internationally known human-rights advocate, Drinan represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House for 10 years during the turbulent 1970s, and he stepped down only after a worldwide directive from Pope John Paul II barring priests from holding public office.

He was elected in 1970, after he beat longtime Democratic Rep. Philip J. Philbin in a primary -- and again in the November election, when Philbin was a write-in candidate. The only other priest to serve in Congress was a nonvoting delegate from Michigan in 1823.

Although a poll at the time showed that 30 percent of the voters in his district thought it was improper for a priest to run for office, Drinan considered politics a natural extension of his work in public affairs and human rights.

His run for office came a year after he returned from a trip to Vietnam, where he said he discovered that the number of political prisoners being held in South Vietnam was rapidly increasing, contrary to State Department reports. And in a book the next year, he urged the Catholic Church to condemn the war as ''morally objectionable.''

He ran for Congress on an anti-Vietnam war platform. During his Congressional tenure, Drinan continued to dress in the robes of his clerical order and lived in a simple room in the Jesuit community at Georgetown.

But Drinan wore his liberal views more prominently. He opposed the draft, worked to abolish mandatory retirement and raised eyebrows with his more moderate views on abortion and birth control.

And he became the first member of Congress to call for the impeachment of Richard Nixon -- although the call wasn't related to the Watergate scandal, but what Drinan viewed as the administration's undeclared war against Cambodia.

''Can we be silent about this flagrant violation of the Constitution?'' Drinan demanded angrily back then. ''Can we impeach a president for concealing a burglary but not for concealing a massive bombing?''

Decades later, at the invitation of Congress, he testified against the impeachment of another president: Bill Clinton. Drinan said Clinton's misdeeds were not in the same league as Nixon's, and that impeachment should be for an official act, not a private one.

He told the Judiciary Committee members reviewing Clinton's case, that in 1974, ''the country knew there was extensive lawlessness in the White House. ... The documentation of appalling crimes was known by everyone. Abuse of power and criminality were apparent to the American people.''

Drinan left office in 1980 -- ''with regret and pain'' -- finally succumbing to the increased pressure from his superiors, including the Pope.

But he continued to be active in political causes. He served as president of the Americans for Democratic Action, crisscrossing the country giving speeches on hunger, civil liberties, and the perils of the arms race. He spoke out against President Reagan and President Bush, and lectured and wrote about gun control, world hunger, and the war on terrorism's impact on human rights.

He also took a post as professor of law at Georgetown University in 1981, where he taught courses on international human rights, constitutional law, civil liberties, legislation, ethics and professional responsibility.

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

OR: Changes in Prisons Urged

"There is recognition that our current state strategy hasn't made us any safer, but it has been very expensive," said David Rogers, the partnership's executive director.

Changes in prisons urged
By Sherri Buri McDonald
Eugene The Register-Guard
Published: Sunday, January 28, 2007

In the past decade, Oregon has had the third-fastest growing prison system in the nation, exploding from fewer than 5,500 prisoners in 1990 to more than 13,000 today.

The state Department of Corrections' budget likewise has skyrocketed, from $377 million in the 1993-95 budget period to a proposed $1.38 billion this biennium.

These were among the eye-popping statistics that the Partnership for Safety and Justice shared at a session Saturday that attracted more than 100 people, including six state legislators.

The Portland-based partnership advocates for greater fairness and effectiveness in the state's criminal justice system.

Heavy spending on prisons - at the expense of social services such as education and treatment programs for alcohol and drug abuse - is the legacy of Measure 11, members of the partnership told the group. The voter-approved ballot measure, which establishes mandatory sentences for certain crimes and treats youths as adults when they're charged with those crimes, took effect in 1995.

The partnership believes that the timing is right for the state to change its public safety strategy.

"There is recognition that our current state strategy hasn't made us any safer, but it has been very expensive," said David Rogers, the partnership's executive director.

The legislators who took part in Saturday's session at the Campbell Senior Center - Sens. Bill Morrisette, Floyd Prozanski and Vicki Walker, and Reps. Phil Barnhart, Chris Edwards and Nancy Nathanson - agreed that reform is needed.

A major overhaul of Measure 11 isn't likely because that would needing a "super-majority," requiring support of two-thirds of the 60-member House and two-thirds of the 20-member Senate to pass, Walker said.

However, several bills will be circulating this session. Walker said she's exploring a bill that would prevent criminal fines from accruing interest while an offender is in prison.

"We're setting these people up for failure," Walker said, noting that the interest can be substantial, especially after a prisoner has served a long sentence.

Preparing prisoners to re-enter the community and providing them the support they need to succeed is a key issue, she said, because 95 percent of the people who enter the prison system eventually come back out.

The issue hit home for her, Walker said, when her brother was released four years ago after serving 15 years in prison.

With no driver's license, no credit history and no job, "the stress level is intense," she said. "If we don't make progress to make that re-entry easier for them, they're going to go back."

The partnership supports two bills aimed at achieving greater fairness and rehabilitation of youths ages 15 to 17 who have been charged with Measure 11 crimes. Both bills would allow judges more discretion in determining how young offenders should be held accountable for their actions.

The partnership also will be active in the budget process, seeking to boost funds for programs that reduce recidivism, or relapse into crime, Rogers said. Voter sentiment appears to be changing, he said.

Department of Corrections officials estimate that in two years the state will have to build another prison, at an estimated cost of $660 million, including debt service, according to the partnership. But 44 percent of voters think building a new prison is a poor idea, according to a recent poll of 600 registered voters that was conducted for the partnership.

More than 80 percent of voters support requiring prisoners to get their GED - the equivalent of a high school diploma. Also, more than 80 percent support investing in programs to help released prisoners re-enter the community, according to the poll.

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2007/01/28/printable/c1.cr.prisonreform.0128.5f10UeR6.phtml

Posted by lois at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)

NC: Juvenile prisons’ audits lapse

Ashville CITIZEN-TIMES.com
Juvenile prisons’ audits lapse

By Jordan Schrader
January 28, 2007

SWANNANOA — The state’s juvenile prisons, like their adult counterparts, are not accredited and do not undergo regular audits by any independent agency.

Juvenile justice officials say they still abide by the standards of the American Correctional Association, even after their accreditation by that group lapsed for reasons that aren’t clear. They also point to myriad other internal and state rules that facilities are supposed to obey.

The ACA government affairs director said the group has talks scheduled with the N.C. Juvenile Justice Department that could lead to renewed pursuit of accreditation.

About 80 percent of state departments of corrections and juvenile services participate in ACA, the group says, including at least 18 state juvenile departments.

Learning that Swannanoa Valley Youth Development Center no longer is one of them came as a surprise Friday to the former director of the lockup, which is now the subject of a soon-to-conclude investigation into attacks on staff.

Bill Stanley said the state first sought ACA oversight of its juvenile prisons while he led Swannanoa from 1993-96.

“Whew, that was tough to get accredited,” recalled Stanley, a Buncombe County commissioner. “Man, you had to meet some stiff requirements.”

But it was worth it, he said.

The auditors provided an independent validation that health, safety, security, employee training and the budget met expectations, he said. They pored over records, inspected the cafeteria and sat down with staff and teens.

It was also expensive.

The ACA did not provide its fees, but Kentucky officials said the state pays an annual rate that has varied between about $50,000 and $100,000.

Among its benefits could be a defense in lawsuits — of which the N.C. Juvenile Justice Department has had its share — said Percy Pitzer, owner of consulting firm Creative Corrections.

“How much is $10,000 if you prevent litigation, if you prevent serious incidents, if you prevent deaths, if you prevent escapes?” Pitzer said. “It’s a drop in the bucket.”

The ACA declined to release records of their inspections, but Stanley and a former maintenance director remembered the inspections every three years giving high marks to Swannanoa and providing important checks and balances.

“Students got to talk to the ACA inspectors,” said Harry Biddix, a Weaverville man who worked there from 1992-2000. “Students got someone who was qualified to listen to them, who would actually sit down with them. And part of our grade was how the students responded.”

The department didn’t respond to questions about when the inspections stopped, but by summer 2002 an inspection report listed auditors coming from the same department as the audited.

That same year, inmates sued for being sexually and physically abused by an employee who later was convicted of sex offenses. Reports of abuse led to a state audit that reported problems in discipline and training, then plans to reorganize facilities on a new therapeutic model of care.

Last year, several staff members were assaulted.

Carolyn Donohue, who says administrators in Raleigh share responsibility for the beating of her husband, Tom, in the most serious of those attacks, said she doesn’t believe internal checks are sufficient.

“If the people running the department are the source of the problem,” she said, “then you have the fox watching the chickens.” Copyright 2007 Asheville Citizen-Times. All rights reserved. http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200770127058

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

NY Times Editorial: "Closing the Revolving Door"

January 25, 2007
Editorial, NY Times
Closing the Revolving Door

The United States is paying a heavy price for the mandatory sentencing fad that swept the country 30 years ago. After a tenfold increase in the nation’s prison population — and a corrections price tag that exceeds $60 billion a year — the states have often been forced to choose between building new prisons or new schools. Worse still, the country has created a growing felon caste, now more than 16 million strong, of felons and ex-felons, who are often driven back to prison by policies that make it impossible for them to find jobs, housing or education.

Congress could begin to address this problem by passing the Second Chance Act, which would offer support services for people who are leaving prison. But it would take more than one new law to undo 30 years of damage:

¶Researchers have shown that inmates who earn college degrees tend to find jobs and stay out of jail once released. Congress needs to revoke laws that bar inmates from receiving Pell grants and that bar some students with drug convictions from getting other support. Following Washington’s lead, the states have destroyed prison education programs that had long since proved their worth.

¶People who leave prison without jobs or places to live are unlikely to stay out of jail. Congress should repeal the lifetime ban on providing temporary welfare benefits to people with felony drug convictions. The federal government should strengthen tax credit and bonding programs that encourage employers to hire people with criminal records. States need to stop barring ex-offenders from jobs because of unrelated crimes — or arrests in the distant past that never led to convictions.

¶Congress should deny a request from the F.B.I. to begin including juvenile arrests that never led to convictions (and offenses like drunkenness or vagrancy) in the millions of rap sheets sent to employers. That would transform single indiscretions into lifetime stigmas.

¶Curbing recidivism will also require doing a lot more to provide help and medication for the one out of every six inmates who suffer mental illness.

The only real way to reduce the inmate population — and the felon class — is to ensure that imprisonment is a method of last resort. That means abandoning the mandatory sentencing laws that have filled prisons to bursting with nonviolent offenders who are doomed to remain trapped at the very margins of society.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/opinion/25thu3.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Posted by lois at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2007

Offering Help for Former Foster Care Youths

January 27, 2007
Offering Help for Former Foster Care Youths
By ERIK ECKHOLM, NY Times

DETROIT — When current and former foster children formed a group to help youths who had turned 18 and were “aging out” of the system, one of the first things they did was hold a luggage drive.

“We saw that a lot of the kids were taking their clothes out in garbage bags,” said Chilton Brown, 23, a former foster child who spent ages 3 to 18 as a ward of the state, bouncing around 15 family homes or group residences.

A life contained in green plastic bags: it is the kind of humiliating detail that hits home hardest among foster youths themselves. It is also a telling sign of how unprepared many of these 18-year-olds are to live on their own, without families, jobs or school diplomas to shore them up.

In part because of the increasing advocacy by foster youth groups like Mr. Brown’s, many states are expanding efforts to help young adults prepare for life outside the system, offering transitional housing, education, medical care and mentoring as they step out on their own. States are also extending aid for extra years, in some cases to age 21 or even beyond.

“We’re finally seeing a recognition by public agencies that they have a responsibility to this population beyond the age of 18,” said Gary Stangler, director of Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative, a foundation in St. Louis that is helping to organize foster youth boards and offers matched savings accounts as well as job aid in 10 states. “In our society, most 18-year-old kids aren’t ready to be thrust into the world.”

Long in the shadows, the plight of aging out foster youths — some 24,000 a year nationwide who fail to be adopted and usually leave court-monitored care at 18 — is gaining new attention, as youths speak out and research reveals the numbers who end up in homeless shelters, jail and long-term poverty.

California, spurred by the lobbying of the country’s largest and most powerful group of former foster children, the California Youth Connection, plans to provide 1,200 transitional housing units, and support counseling, for young adults emerging from care.

In New York City, as part of a wider effort to fight homelessness, the state and city are creating 200 apartments for foster care veterans with special needs. Several private agencies are expanding their programs, as well.

Washington and Iowa have recently joined at least 17 other states, including New York, that allow youths under some circumstances to remain in foster care until age 21. The move keeps the youths under the protection of a court that can press for aid to which they may be entitled into their twenties but is not always offered by overwhelmed state agencies.

But a universal option to remain in foster care until age 21, which is supported by the American Bar Association and many experts, has been hampered by a lack of money. The large federal subsidies that help pay for the system’s courts, lawyers and social workers are provided only up to the age of 18, or 19 for those finishing high school.In Illinois, where nearly half of foster children now stay to 21, the extra years are paid for by the state. Early studies by the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago indicate that those who remain are faring better than those who leave at 18.

But it is too soon, scholars say, to know how much difference all the new efforts will make in the lives of children who have suffered abuse or neglect and separations from their families.

In Michigan, nearly 500 youths age out annually, usually at 18. A study of 264 former foster children, released in October by psychologists at Wayne State University, showed how poorly many had fared.

Youths from Detroit and two surrounding counties who aged out in 2002 and 2003, mainly African-American, were surveyed three and a half years after they left care. Seventeen percent had stayed in the streets or in shelters for an average of two months each. Some 33 percent had spend long periods “couch surfing” with friends or relatives.

Four in ten were high school graduates. The average youth had been unemployed half the time since leaving care; most jobs were in fast food, averaging just $600 per month. More than one in four males had spent time in jail.

Under a 1999 federal law that provides some “independent living” assistance to age 21, many aged-out youths can get financial aid, including up to $1,000 to help rent an apartment and up to $5,000 a year for those enrolled in college or training schools.

“If it weren’t for these programs, I’d probably be in a shelter and I’d have to drop out of school,” said Stacey Kline, 21, who left Detroit’s foster system at 18. Ms. Kline has been an active leader in the city’s youth boards and is now in college, hoping to someday run a home for aged-out youths.

Still, for Ms. Kline it has been two steps forward, one step back: she recently borrowed emergency money from the Jim Casey program to help her rent a new apartment after, she said, an angry ex-boyfriend vandalized her previous apartment.

In other common patterns, many youths are eager to sever ties with the child welfare bureaucracy, some squander their limited aid and others are in no shape to take advantage of these benefits.

Michael Morris, 21, says he regrets forfeiting his transitional aid. Born to teenage drug users, he was in foster care in Detroit from the age of six months, drifting through dozens of private and group homes.

Though he had never even met his parents, Mr. Morris said, “I wanted a family and I wanted to be with my parents no matter whether they were on drugs.” Before he turned 18 and exited foster care, he met his sister and mother for the first time and decided to move in with his mother without the consent of the court, thus losing transitional rent and school subsidies.

He later joined one of the emerging foster youth boards in Detroit and received some matching money for what he saved while working as a security guard.

But living with his mother did not last long. Mr. Morris then tried sharing apartments, but the roommates did not pay their share of the rent. He became unemployed and recently arrived at the crisis center of Covenant House in Detroit, where he shared a barren room with two other homeless youths.

“I hope to be out by March,” Mr. Morris said. “I got a good lead on a job at Popeye’s,” he added, which would pay $7.25 an hour. Through the matched savings program, he hopes to rent his own apartment and enroll in community college.

The growing advocacy by foster children themselves has done more than anything else to draw the attention of state and national officials, said Robin Nixon, director of the National Foster Care Coalition.

In Michigan, Marianne Udow, director of human services, said one of her first acts after taking office in January 2004 was to meet with youth boards to ask for advice.

“I left that meeting feeling that the whole system was broken,” Ms. Udow said. The youth boards later issued 15 recommendations for improving the system and lobbied the governor and legislators. Some suggestions were accepted, including making sure that all foster children get a certified copy of their birth certificate and a Social Security card and help obtaining driver’s licenses.

Other suggestions would be more costly and remain under discussion, including offering free college tuition, giving former foster children cars being auctioned by the state and giving all the option to remain in care to 21.

But the youths also made it clear they believed that the problems start when the state removes children from their parents — sometimes too readily — and moves them away from relatives, friends and familiar schools.

Their first recommendation was that foster youths should have a say whenever changes in their status were considered. Their second was to provide them help maintaining ties with their birth families and hometown friends.

The state created a task force with youths on every panel. One top recommendation, the automatic extension of Medicaid coverage to age 21, has just been put into effect. The State Housing Development Authority has also allocated $3 million for rent subsidies, whose recipients will also be eligible for regular mental health and other services.

At the same time, Ms. Udow said, the state is working to reduce the frequency with which children are removed from their parents and trying to keep more children with relatives and in the same schools. The state is in settlement talks with the advocacy group Children’s Rights, which brought a suit accusing Michigan of providing inadequate protection and support to children in its care.

For the hundreds who have joined, the youth boards, with their weekly meetings and election of officers, have offered personal breakthroughs as much as a way to influence policy.

“When we come together it’s like family,” said Alice Harris, a 22-year-old mother of three children who lived in a home for unwed mothers when she entered foster care, then ran away at 16 and survived on the streets for more than a year.

More recently Ms. Harris has lived with a boyfriend, received welfare and become certified as a nurse’s assistant. She has become heavily involved with her local youth board in central Detroit, getting elected as an officer and lobbying in the state capital.

When she attended her first board meeting two years ago, she said, “I didn’t want to leave.”

“We were just gossiping, and I made friends, some of them worse off than I was.”

Chilton Brown, who says he “acted out” during his 15 years in foster care, has benefited from the new aid programs in Michigan but also illustrates how hard it can be to turn things around.

Mr. Brown gained confidence as a public spokesman, especially for the special challenges facing gay youths like himself, and has worked as a trainer of new foster parents. He entered Wayne State University with financial aid and aspirations to become a social worker. He took advantage of the matched savings program to buy a car.

But he has also lost a series of jobs, could not keep up payments on his car, lost his home when a relative moved away and has missed the last two semesters of college. He has spent the last three months living in Covenant House.

“I got too adapted to having other people take care of me,” he said in the sparse double room he shares. Now Mr. Brown’s belongings are stuffed into one suitcase, and two large plastic shopping bags.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/us/27foster.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2007

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton Replaced

January 26, 2007
Outspoken Catholic Pastor Replaced; He Says It’s Retaliation
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN, NY Times

In his last Mass as pastor at the inner-city parish in Detroit where he had served for 23 years, Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton told his parishioners that he was forced to step down as pastor because of his lobbying efforts on behalf of the victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy, a stance that put him in opposition to his fellow bishops.

Last weekend, the archbishop of Detroit, Cardinal Adam Maida, sent a letter to the parish, St. Leo, saying Bishop Gumbleton had to be removed because of church rules on retirement. But as Bishop Gumbleton, who turns 77 on Friday and had already retired last year as a bishop, told his parish last Sunday, there are many pastors even older than he who are allowed to continue serving.

“I’m sure it’s because of the openness with which I spoke out last January concerning victims of sex abuse in the church. So we’re all suffering the consequences of that, and yet, I don’t regret doing what I did because I still think it was the right thing to do,” he said, as the congregation rose and erupted in applause.

Bishop Gumbleton, though he never led a diocese, is known nationally in church circles as a liberal maverick. He co-founded the peace ministry Pax Christi and accompanied antiwar delegations to Haiti and Iraq. He broke ranks with church teaching by preaching in favor of acceptance of gay men and lesbians and the ordination of women.

Last January, he lobbied in favor of a bill in Ohio to extend the statute of limitations and allow victims of sexual abuse to sue the church many years after they were abused. He said he was speaking out because he had been abused by a priest as a teenage seminarian and knew how hard it was to speak publicly even decades later. Bishops in Ohio opposed the bill, which failed.

A spokesman for the archdiocese of Detroit, Ned McGrath, said Bishop Gumbleton’s removal from St. Leo Parish had nothing to do with his lobbying on sexual abuse or his political stands.

All bishops are required at age 75 to submit resignation letters to the pope, Mr. McGrath said, and the pope has the option to accept or reject the resignation. Bishop Gumbleton’s resignation was accepted last year, and, Mr. McGrath said, “it was with the understanding that he would give up any pastoral office.”

Cardinal Maida announced in his letter to parishioners that he had appointed a new pastor, the Rev. Gerard Battersby.

In his brief remarks at Mass on Sunday, Bishop Gumbleton told the parish that after he turned 75, he had sent a separate resignation letter to Cardinal Maida asking to stay on as pastor at St. Leo’s on a year-by-year basis. He said he was surprised by his sudden replacement.

“I did not choose to leave St. Leo’s,” he said. “It’s something that was forced upon me.”

Three canon lawyers interviewed on Thursday said there was nothing in canon law that would prohibit an archbishop from permitting a retired auxiliary bishop from serving as a pastor after 75.

Bishop Gumbleton, who has already moved out of his room behind the church and plans to move into an apartment in Detroit, did not respond to an interview request. A video of his remarks during Mass was taken by a parishioner and posted on the Web site of the National Catholic Reporter, an independent Catholic weekly newspaper that publishes a column by Bishop Gumbleton.

Mary M. Black, a parishioner at St. Leo’s, said: “Almost universally, everyone in the parish is hurt and angry and upset and bewildered.”

Ms. Black said: “He talks after Mass with people, and he is there ahead of Mass to say the rosary for anybody who has problems. And we all have his personal phone number. You do not have to go through a secretary. He was a pastor in the truest sense of the word.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

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

Safety fears as US demonstrates crowd control heat-ray weapon

Safety fears as US demonstrates crowd control heat-ray weapon
How the wave device works

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Friday January 26, 2007
The Guardian

It looks like a table top stuck on a Humvee, but to the US military it is a revolutionary new weapon, a controversial heat-ray destined to change the face of conflict by dispersing mobs, protecting military bases and sorting friend from foe without inflicting injuries.

Called Silent Guardian, the prototype fires a high-intensity beam of millimetre waves, inflicting a burning sensation like a light bulb pressed against the skin. After 12 years in development it has been demonstrated in public for the first time, at Moody air force base in Georgia.

For the US defence department it marks the beginning of an era of "non-lethal, directed energy, counter-personnel" weapons, intended to cause temporary pain instead of killing or maiming. But critics yesterday raised fears that the weapon could cause serious, even life-threatening burns through accident or misuse.

During the demonstration a two-man crew used built-in rangefinders to target volunteers playing the part of angry rioters 500 metres away. Those hit by the beam jumped out of the way immediately to escape the sudden flash of heat.

The beam has a range of up to 1km, 10 times that of other non-lethal weapons such as plastic bullets or beanbag-firing guns. The waves penetrate clothing, but travel less than half a millimetre into the skin, where they cause water molecules to heat up. Within seconds, the beam heats the skin to around 50C (122F). Military officials plan to use the so-called Active Denial System to keep would-be attackers from approaching military installations or navy ships in dock, or for repelling mobs. It may also be useful in sorting combatants from bystanders, who are more likely to quickly leave the scene.

Speaking from the Pentagon yesterday, Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Maka said the device, which is not expected to be ready for deployment until 2010, was built to "stop, deter and turn back an adversary at a distance that lessens the potential for causing injury".

But Neil Davison, an expert in non-lethal weapons at the Disarmament Research Centre, Bradford, said that in tests so far volunteers had been allowed a cooling off period after being hit before being targeted again. "There's no way of guaranteeing people won't be targeted for longer in a real situation," he said.

Jürgen Altmann, an expert in military technology at Dortmund University, found that if the beam is tracked on a person for longer the skin temperature can quickly rise above 55C, and begin to burn.

"Even if they build in a mechanism that limits it to work for only a few seconds at a time, people can immediately be re-targeted," he said. "If more than 20% of their body receives second or third degree burns, it's potentially life-threatening."

According to papers released under freedom of information requests, mishaps during trials have caused blistering at least six times and one second degree burn when the beam was fired on too high a setting. According to the US military, the risk of injury is less than 0.1%.

Posted by lois at 05:23 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Berkeley students counter drug rule

Berkeley students counter drug rule
Student government will let those with a conviction apply for a stipend, something the U.S. won't let them have.
By Seema Mehta, Times Staff Writer
January 26, 2007, LA Times

Some UC Berkeley students who are denied federal financial aid because of a drug conviction will be eligible for a new scholarship funded by the student government, the organization decided this week. Though the stipends are only $400, supporters say they are a symbolic protest against a law they call unjust.

"It's a very poor way for the government to fight the war on drugs," said David Israel Wasserman, a senior political science major and the senator in the Associated Students who wrote the resolution. "I don't think that the government should find more and more ways to deprive students of a means to an education."

David Murray, chief scientist with the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, called the Berkeley effort "misguided," saying federal aid is a privilege and that the government has an obligation to use whatever means necessary to dissuade young people from using drugs.

"If you are enabling self-destructive behavior by supporting it, condoning it or even paying for it, you're probably not helping the person get the help they need to deal with their disease," he said.

As tuition costs have skyrocketed, students are increasingly relying on financial assistance. Nearly two-thirds of undergraduates in 2003-04 received government or private aid, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Last year, the federal government gave out $82 billion in grants, loans and other assistance to more than 10 million students.

A drug conviction after a student begins receiving aid is the only crime that cuts off the federal money, a penalty that lasts at least a year. Students with three drug-use convictions or two drug-sale convictions are permanently ineligible. The lesser offenders can regain eligibility by completing drug treatment programs.

Since the law took effect in 2000, more than 189,000 students have been deemed ineligible because they admitted to a conviction or refused to provide the information on aid applications, according to the Education Department. California has a disproportionately high rate: one in every 278 applicants, 44% higher than the national average.

It's unknown how many of Berkeley's 34,000 students the rule has affected, but in the late 1990s, the school was known for having more campus drug arrests than nearly every other four-year institution in the country.

On Wednesday, the Associated Students board voted unanimously to give at least one $400 scholarship per year to a student who loses eligibility for federal aid because of a drug conviction. The recipient must maintain a 2.5 grade-point average, perform 20 hours of community service and have the "moral obligation" to contribute to the scholarship program after graduation, "once they find themselves in the financial position to be of assistance to the program."

The money, which can be spent only on college-related expenses, will come from the Associated Students' $1.5-million annual budget. The organization's funding comes from an activities fee students pay.

UC Berkeley officials who could comment on the matter couldn't be reached Thursday.

*

Posted by lois at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)

CA: Littel Hoover Commission: "State Prisons in 'tailspin'"

State prisons in 'tailspin,' panel says
In a blistering report, the nonpartisan Little Hoover Commission links problems plaguing the correctional system to a lack of political will.
By Jenifer Warren, Times Staff Writer
January 26, 2007

SACRAMENTO — Three decades of tough-on-crime lawmaking has sent California's prison system into a "tailspin," creating the most pressing crisis facing the state, the government's own watchdog panel declared Thursday.

In a blistering 84-page report, the nonpartisan Little Hoover Commission linked the problems plaguing the correctional system to political cowardice among governors and lawmakers fearful of being labeled soft on crime.

If policymakers are unwilling to make bold changes, the commission said, they should appoint an independent entity — modeled after the federal Base Closure and Realignment Commission — with the power to do it for them.

"For decades, governors and lawmakers fearful of appearing soft on crime have failed to muster the political will to address the looming crisis," the commission said.

"And now their time has run out."

The 13-member commission is an independent agency composed of Republicans and Democrats appointed by the governor and legislative leaders. Since its inception in 1962, the commission has worked to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of state programs.

The report, delivered directly to the governor and the Legislature, included suggestions for sentencing reform and other changes, many of them previously offered by the commission and other critics. It broke new ground, however, by bluntly stating that when it comes to corrections in California, political posturing has trumped sound lawmaking.

The state's 33 prisons are packed to twice their intended capacity, with more than 16,000 inmates bunking in hallways, classrooms and other areas not designed as housing. Prison leaders say they will be out of room for new inmates by summer, and concern about riots is extremely high.

A federal judge, meanwhile, has given the state until June to relieve the crowding or face a possible cap on the inmate population, now about 172,000.

Though Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has unveiled an ambitious $10.9-billion prison building and reform plan, its fate in the Legislature is uncertain, and most of the proposed solutions would take years to enact.

The governor has a short-term program to ease crowding — transferring inmates to other states — but it is faltering because few convicts are volunteering to go.

In October, the commission noted, the governor declared a state of emergency in the prisons: "But even that didn't bring action, only more reports to federal judges that underscore the fact that the state's corrections policy is politically bankrupt."

In an interview, Commissioner Dan Hancock said the report's unusually harsh tone was designed to highlight the desperate state of affairs, which he said extends beyond crowding to medical and mental health care and a criminal sentencing system the commission called a "haphazard jumble."

Hancock said the crisis had been caused largely by a ceaseless game of one-upmanship by politicians seeking to burnish their reputations as crime-fighters.

"Each has tried to outdo the other on who could be toughest on crime, but nobody was thinking clearly about what the ramifications would be for the state," he said. The result is an incoherent penal code dominated by what experts call "drive-by sentencing laws," often enacted by politicians responding to a single high-profile crime.

The report comes just days after Schwarzenegger and the top Democrat in the Assembly publicly lamented the lack of political will to tackle the problem.

In an interview with The Times last week, Schwarzenegger said prisons had not been a priority because they were not a "sexy" topic that affects the lives of voters — and thus had attracted little interest from lawmakers.

"You talk about prisons, people feel like, 'OK, go out and get the criminal and you send him somewhere, but wherever that is, I don't want to look there, I don't want to know,' " the governor said.

"When the people are not excited about it, how do you make the legislators excited about it?"

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) was more pointed in his comments, blaming legislators for a short-sighted "lock up everybody" mentality that has wrought painful consequences.

"It's good politically, because you can champion it as you're tough on crime," Nuñez told a news conference Monday. "But in the end, the prisons are overcrowded, we don't do enough rehabilitation, the prisoners get out of jail and go back and commit more crimes, we have the highest recidivism rate of any state in the nation.

"It's a shameful part of the California body politic. We've got to change that."

Whether the rhetoric — or the commission's report — will have any substantial effect on lawmakers is unclear.

Analysts say the political fear of being tagged as a friend of felons runs deep. And voters enthusiastically embrace ballot initiatives seeking to toughen penalties, such as the "three strikes" law of 1994 and the crackdown on sex offenders passed last year.

"We're always ever so nice to furry animals and very, very mean to criminals," said Shaun Bowler, a professor of political science at UC Riverside. "It's almost reflexive, the voters' desire to be tough. If the prisons are a cross between a sewer and the Roman Colosseum, their answer seems to be, 'Good.' "

But some criminologists say the public has been misled about just what sort of policies make the streets safer. At UC Irvine, Joan Petersilia said the "cookie-cutter" approach has put a lot of people in prison but failed to deliver much in the way of public safety.

"I don't think the public really understands that all this money we're spending isn't yielding much in return," Petersilia said. California, she noted, may spend more than $8 billion a year on corrections — a 52% increase over the last five years — but roughly 70% of inmates released by the state wind up back behind bars.

"Everyone agrees we've got a crisis, but no one is willing to put forth an agenda and lead," Petersilia said.

"That's the key ingredient that's been missing."

The Little Hoover report is available at http://www.lhc.ca.gov/lhc.html .

*

Posted by lois at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)

MA: Cash-strapped state legislators are finally considering relaxing mandatory drug sentences.

Cheap trick
Cash-strapped state legislators are finally considering relaxing mandatory drug sentences.
Will budget woes succeed where appeals to justice have failed?
BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI
Boston Phoenix, January 26, 2007

AFTER MORE THAN a decade of tough-on-crime policies — fueled by 13 years of Republican administrations committed to re-introducing prisoners to the joys of lethal injection — the law-and-order atmosphere at the Massachusetts State House has begun to dissipate. A case in point: two bills recently filed on Beacon Hill that take aim at the state’s draconian mandatory-minimum-sentence drug laws.

The first measure, known as Senate Bill 167, would make drug offenders who have already served two-thirds of mandatory-minimum sentences eligible for parole — something that they currently cannot seek, unlike rapists, armed robbers, and child molesters, who are not subject to mandatory minimums. Sponsored by State Senator Cynthia Creem (D-Newton), Senate Bill 167 constitutes a kind of baby step toward reform. The proposal does not repeal mandatory minimums for drug convictions. Nor does it offer a get-out-of-jail-free card for the thousands of drug offenders who’re now languishing in the state’s 22 correctional facilities. It simply tries to ease the impact of these sentences for those who’ve done substantial time.

Senate Bill 167 also dovetails with a much larger reform effort that would moderate the mandatory-sentencing drug laws. That bill, known as House Bill 3302, would institute a comprehensive set of sentencing guidelines for all the state’s 1922 statutory crimes. Under the guidelines, judges would be allowed to depart from the rigid penalties dictated by the mandatory-sentencing drug laws and instead sentence addicts to treatment and intense supervision. The bill, sponsored by State Representative David Linsky (D-Natick), mirrors legislation first drafted seven years ago by the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission, a state agency dedicated to overhauling the criminal-justice system — legislation that has died at the State House every single session since.

But in these tough fiscal times, such sentencing reforms are gaining ground. Senate Bill 167, in fact, has extra appeal. According to the Sentencing Commission, approximately 2000 prisoners are currently serving mandatory minimums — out of close to 20,000 county and state prisoners. Of those, 650 people would be eligible for parole immediately if Senate Bill 167 were to pass. The commission estimates that up to 325 of these drug offenders would receive parole in the first wave. Given that it costs $36,000 per year to house one prisoner, the measure could save as much as $11.7 million almost instantly. These savings were highlighted at a packed, 100-strong May 21 hearing on the two bills before the legislature’s Joint Committee on Criminal Justice — which is expected to recommend the bills in upcoming weeks. Numerous organizations, including the Sentencing Commission, the Supreme Judicial Court, and local and state bar associations, spoke in favor of the proposed legislation. Those who attended the hearing say committee members repeatedly questioned the cost of the current drug policies. Even the state’s district attorneys, who’ve consistently opposed loosening mandatory minimums, seemed willing to compromise. Although the district attorneys reject Senate Bill 167 and House Bill 3302, they have expressed a willingness to modify certain mandatory minimums.

For those who back sentencing reform, the state’s ballooning budget crisis has opened a window of opportunity. Advocates who’ve long criticized the mandatory-drug-sentencing policies are seizing on the existing climate as a chance to change hearts and minds among fiscal conservatives and unlikely political allies. As Lynn Holbein, a member of the local chapter of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), puts it, "Today, there’s opportunity in the midst of our budget crisis. Politicians who were unwilling to make these decisions based on what’s right may do so based on money." After all, she aptly points out, "Money has a way of causing introspection."

THERE’S NO doubt that the state’s mandatory-minimum-sentence drug laws need revamping. As it stands, Massachusetts’s mandatory sentences for drug convictions rank among the harshest in the nation. Trafficking in as little as 14 grams of cocaine — an amount equal in volume to 14 packets of sweetener — gets you three years behind bars. If you’re convicted of selling those 14 grams near school property, you get another two years. If you’re convicted of possessing those 14 grams with intent to sell to minors, it’s an additional three years on top of that. And all this happens automatically.

This rigid, one-size-fits-all approach to criminal justice — an approach that shifts discretion from judges to prosecutors, who choose what charges to pursue in the first place — has long come under fire. These laws lump disparate behaviors and people into neat categories, with no room for common sense. As a result, people who deserve less severe penalties are left languishing in jail cells for decades. People who had never broken the law before. People who had unwittingly dated a drug dealer. People whose habits put them at the wrong place at the wrong time. In Massachusetts, first-time, nonviolent drug offenders routinely spend more time behind bars than rapists and child molesters. Says Martin Rosenthal, of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (MACDL), who’s pushed to repeal mandatory minimums for drug convictions since 1990, "Nobody likes to talk about the huge injustices. The poor drug mules and petty dealers who go away for 10, 15, and 20 years." Count Charles Ginsberg among the lot. A Web-page designer from Arlington, Ginsberg, 53, spent most of the 1990s locked up in a tiny cell in a Georgia penitentiary, serving a 10-year mandatory sentence for conspiring to sell marijuana. Because the "conspiracy" in question extended beyond Massachusetts, Ginsberg, a Winthrop native, was sentenced under federal mandatory-minimum laws, which, unlike the state’s, allow offenders to earn "good time" for early release. After nearly nine years and the successful completion of a drug-treatment program, he managed to shave six months from his prison term. Nevertheless, Ginsberg considers his punishment "out of whack" with his crime.

It’s not as if he didn’t sell pot. Indeed, he readily admits he became the pot dealer of choice for customers in and around Winthrop. "But I was a small fish in a big tank," he says. At the time of his November 1991 arrest — when a buyer who’d been charged with conspiracy to sell gave him up — Ginsberg had been in trouble with police only once, when, at 19, he was arrested for possessing pot. He had never owned or fired a gun. Two years before his arrest, he had stopped selling marijuana at all. And so, he says, "I didn’t deserve 10 years. If you’re a small fry and you don’t hurt anyone, I see no reason to go to prison that long." Ginsberg’s time behind the wall provided him with firsthand lessons on the failed results of mandatory minimums — not just the injustices of their severity, but also the racial disparities they deepen. More than 80 percent of people convicted under Massachusetts’s mandatory-sentencing drug laws are minorities, according to the Sentencing Commission. And the same holds true at the federal level — even though blacks and Latinos consume drugs at the same rate as whites. Ginsberg recalls meeting black and Latino men who’d done, as he puts it, "a lot less than me," yet faced much stricter penalties. Some were teenagers who had run with the wrong crowd, gotten caught with an ounce of crack, and been sentenced to 20 years. Others smoked joints inside their homes in cities, like Boston, where entire neighborhoods fall within a school zone. The experience left him convinced of the need for reform. He adds, "I feel a duty to speak out with whatever breath I have in me."

So does Nancy Brown, who heads the New England chapter of FAMM. Brown got involved in FAMM back in 1991, when her son, then 20, was charged with conspiracy to transport a controlled substance across state lines. When she heard her son, who had followed the Grateful Dead, was facing a 10-year mandatory, "I was floored," she says. "I thought, ‘Oh, my God. He must have killed someone.’" On the contrary, her son, whose name Brown asked the Phoenix not to publish, had sent an envelope containing several tabs of LSD through the mail to a friend. To this day, the sentence — which her son served in various penitentiaries until his 1999 early release for good behavior — strikes Brown as extreme. She explains, "My son used illegal substances and should pay the consequences." Yet for a young college student who’d never been in trouble, she adds, "the sentence did not fit his crime."

It’s a message that Brown and FAMM advocates have tried to send to Massachusetts legislators for years now. Ever since 1996, when the Sentencing Commission composed its set of comprehensive sentencing guidelines, advocates have fought to ease mandatory drug sentences — to no avail. When it comes to these sentences, the commission’s recommendation seems nothing if not modest: it would simply give judges discretion to sentence drug offenders to less than the mandated minimum. By having to provide written reasons for the departure, judges would be held accountable. And prosecutors could appeal such decisions at any time.

Despite these safeguards, the law-and-order brigade has sounded off against the commission’s guidelines in every legislative session since 1996. Legislators and prosecutors have criticized the measure as too soft — principally because it eliminates mandatory minimums for drug convictions. Last legislative session, however, reformers came closer than ever to success. In October 2001, the Criminal Justice Committee reported favorably on a tinkered version of the commission’s guidelines, one that would have allowed for some deviation from mandatory sentences for drug convictions. The bill specified "six mitigating circumstances" under which a judge could veer from the mandated minimums — if, for instance, a defendant has little or no prior record, is a minor player in the offense, and didn’t cause grave injury or death. Later that month, then–House minority leader Francis Marini led the effort to tighten the guidelines with an amendment that would have ratcheted up punishment for 30 crimes, from weapons possession to child molestation, but that would have left the drug-sentencing-reform measures intact. The House passed the amended bill (currently filed as House Bill 2749) on a voice vote — only to watch it die in the Senate.

Maybe it’s a coincidence that legislators seemed more open to flexible sentencing for drug offenders during the last legislative session, just as the state’s escalating fiscal crisis began to take hold. But then, maybe it’s not. As legislators grapple with a projected budget deficit of $3 billion and counting, Beacon Hill’s law-and-order culture has begun to give way to financial realities. According to Michael Cutler, a Boston attorney who heads the Drug Policy Forum of Massachusetts, a pro-drug-reform group, the problem for advocates has always come down to money. Legislators, he notes, "have had plenty of money to persecute drug users and to pay for schools and all the other services." They’ve never had to make a choice — until today. Now, no one at the State House can deny that a dollar more for prison cells equals a dollar less for classrooms, human services, and health care. Those who don’t fit the mold of what Cutler calls "the true moral crusader" can acknowledge the failures of the mandatory-sentencing drug laws without fear of attracting the weak-on-crime label. "At some point," Cutler observes, "morality falls victim to cost. Legislators can no longer afford to be moral."

Lawmakers who’ve pushed for reform agree. More and more these days, Linsky, the Natick representative, sees his colleagues "starting to scrutinize the costs of our criminal-justice system." As a result, he says, "We’re asking questions about whether or not these mandatory sentences serve the public purpose." For those eager to stop the hemorrhage of red ink, the new guidelines and parole measures offer new incentive. Adds Senator Creem, "The budget crisis means that these bills can appeal to a broader base of people. Even past opponents of reform may see a way to support" these bills.

THE MASSACHUSETTS legislature is not alone. Desperate to avert projected budget deficits, legislatures in states across the nation have begun to curtail corrections spending by moderating tough sentencing laws. As many as 20 states have loosened mandatory minimums for drug convictions since 2001, when states first began to encounter huge revenue shortfalls. So pervasive is the state-government fiscal crisis that similar sentencing reforms have unfolded even in places that pride themselves on getting tough, such as Ohio, Louisiana, Kansas, and Oklahoma.

By far, the most dramatic effort has occurred in Michigan, which boasted the harshest mandatory-sentencing drug laws in the US. The state has become notorious for its "650 Lifer Law," which sentenced even first-time offenders caught with over 650 grams of cocaine or heroin to life in prison without parole — the same term meted out to a first-degree murderer. Criminal-justice experts and advocates had been lobbying to ease the strict drug penalties for six years. But it wasn’t until last December, when lawmakers began slashing expenditures to make up for a $500 million shortfall, that the campaign gained momentum. On December 27, then–Michigan governor John Engler, a conservative Republican, signed into law a bill repealing the state’s mandatory sentences and replacing them with flexible guidelines similar to those proposed in Massachusetts — a step that’s already reduced the number of first-time offenders going to jail. Not only did the effort enjoy across-the-board support from politicians, but it was trumpeted even by long-time opponents like the Prosecuting Attorneys Association. The turnaround isn’t surprising, given that the elimination of mandatory drug minimums in Michigan has saved the state an estimated $41 million in 2003 alone.

To be sure, money isn’t the sole factor fueling this trend. Criminal-justice issues in general have become less politicized than in, say, the mid 1990s, when politicians and the public ate up measures like three-strikes-you’re-out mandatory sentences and prisoner chain gangs. Michael Mauer, of the Washington, DC–based advocacy group the Sentencing Project, explains that the "level of tension and emotion" surrounding these issues is lower today partly because of the reduced crime rate, which, despite a recent slight rise, plummeted during the 1990s. Part of the shift in attitudes, too, has to do with the success of such incarceration-alternative programs as the nation’s 800 drug courts, which divert first-time, nonviolent drug offenders into drug-treatment programs rather than jail. But even so, Mauer views money as the main force behind the reforms. "There’s no question that the fiscal crisis is driving these efforts," he says. "Legislators have got to balance their budgets, so they see these get-tough policies come with an expensive price tag."

This isn’t necessarily unusual. According to Jack Levin, who directs Northeastern University’s Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict, changes in criminal-justice policy often result from economic necessity. While reaction to extraordinary events can drive such changes — when Somerville resident Eddie O’Brien stabbed his best friend’s mother 98 times in 1996, for instance, his case became the exemplar for trying juveniles as adults, now a favored criminal-justice policy — fiscal concerns can exert similar pressure. Levin points to the trend of de-institutionalizing the mentally ill during the 1970s, a time of comparable financial turmoil. Back then, the state adopted a policy of emptying out the institutions and integrating the mentally ill back into the community, where they’d receive services. Community-based mental-health care was touted as humanitarian reform. But, Levin says, "the real reason for this policy shift was to cut costs at the expense of mentally ill people who needed services." In the same way, he adds, "the underlying motivation for relaxing mandatory minimums has an economic basis."

For many, this economic impetus says something troubling about how we determine our criminal-justice policy. Experts like Mauer find it "sad commentary" that money has become the catalyst for drug-sentencing reform. "For years," he says, "legislators have overlooked all the evidence about the injustices, racial disparities, and inefficiencies of this system. Only when cost becomes an issue do we see this rising concern." Levin, too, thinks the latest trend shows how politicians and the public have "an infinite capacity to rationalize criminal-justice policy based on money." He then echoes the sentiment among many advocates when he concludes: "It’s not a very pretty picture whether you agree with the outcome or not. But, at least in this case, it’s positive. We’re doing the right thing for the wrong reason."

HERE IN Massachusetts, of course, it remains to be seen whether the pain of incessant budget cuts will cause lawmakers to rethink the state’s mandatory-sentencing drug laws. Although the May 21 hearing brought out scores of supporters for the parole and sentencing-guidelines measures, it also attracted opponents — namely, the district attorneys. Hampden County prosecutor William Bennett testified at the hearing on behalf of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association. He told the Phoenix that the DAs reject Creem’s bill because it wouldn’t "maintain the integrity of mandatory sentences." Rather than parole drug offenders, he and his colleagues propose placing them on supervised work release. That way, they would be able to reintegrate into society by working outside the prison walls while still serving out their sentences. The DAs also oppose Linsky’s proposed sentencing-guidelines measure. But they’ve made a nod toward compromise by embracing the last session’s House Bill 2749, which does call for some deviation from the mandatory-sentencing drug laws. Explains Bennett, "There is merit in considering exceptions to the mandatories in certain circumstances," particularly as they relate to school zones.

And so, for the most part, the prosecutors aren’t too keen on easing the mandatory-sentencing drug laws. Bennett even implies that the state has no need for full reform because it doesn’t have mandatory sentences for drug possession, as other states do. Only 1.8 percent of the state’s drug convictions involve a mandatory sentence, he says, explaining that DAs turn to mandatory minimums only to prosecute "aggravating factors," such as large quantities, repeat offenders, and sales to minors. Claims Bennett, "We have a much different set-up than other states do."

As the Criminal Justice Committee weighs the opposition and support for sentencing reform in upcoming months, all advocates can do is wait and hope. No doubt, many reformers feel saddened that budget woes — as opposed to concerns about justice and fairness — are moving their agenda forward. As Ginsberg bluntly puts it, "I think it’s sickening that once the money gets tight legislators are willing to listen." Then again, even he can see the silver lining in the current financial clouds. If money causes state legislators to re-examine and reduce mandatory minimums for drug convictions, so be it. To look at it another way, advocates say, it’s sadder still that Massachusetts has remained behind while other states enact their sentencing reforms. And saddest of all, that legislators here are debating only partial reforms, despite the fact that mandatory minimums have proven a failed and costly experiment. http://72.166.46.24/boston/news_features/other_stories/multipage/documents/02931078.htm

This and other news about the war on drugs can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

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

January 25, 2007

TX: Plan for 5000 more cells at odds with report promoting rehab and reforms

"The criminal justice committees in the House and Senate plan to meet jointly next week to hear findings of a major report outlining several alternatives to incarceration. The report, "Justice Reinvestment," was conducted by the Council of State Governments with support from the U.S. Justice Department. It promises "data-driven" strategies to reduce corrections spending and protect the public, a committee staffer said."

Houston Chronicle

Jan. 24, 2007
The Legislature

Lt. Gov. Dewhurst calling for more prisons

Plan for 5,000 more beds is at odds with a report promoting rehab and reforms
By POLLY ROSS HUGHES

AUSTIN ‹ Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said Wednesday that Texas needs to build prisons to hold 5,000 new beds, a view at odds with a major report key lawmakers will release next week that will stress treatment programs and prison alternatives.

"We respect the lieutenant governor, but we respectfully disagree with him on this one if he's talking about building maximum-security facilities," said Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, chairman of the House Corrections Committee.

Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, said Texas could ease crowded prisons and save money by increasing treatment options and returning fewer parolees to prison for minor infractions.

Even if some of Whitmire's suggestions for treating substance abusers are adopted, Dewhurst argues that the state still needs more prison space for a growing population.

"We haven't built any new prison beds in Texas for a number of years, and our population is exploding," Dewhurst said.

"I don't ‹ and the people of Texas don't ‹ want to have dangerous people on our streets, and that's what we're going to prevent. I've been looking at a number of 4,000 to 5,000" over the next four years, he said.

That projection is in line with the budget request by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which wants to add three prisons to hold 5,000 prisoners. That would cost $440 million just for construction, a state expense opposed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which advocates limited government.

"We've suggested a number of reforms in terms of probation, parole and sentencing. By adopting those, we would certainly not need more beds," said Marc Levin, director of the foundation's Center for Effective Justice.

Levin said more than 20,000 of Texas' 150,000 prisoners are incarcerated for nothing more than nonviolent drug possession. "If we re-routed those people into community-based drug-treatment programs, we would be able to reduce the number of prison beds we need below what we have now," Levin said.

Whitmire and Madden list several other options, such as shifting drunken drivers out of maximum-security cells and converting other cells for treatment within prison.

They note that 600 nonviolent offenders have been approved for parole. They remain in prison, however, because they've been placed on waiting lists for too few halfway houses.

Levin points out that a technical infraction of parole can land an offender back in prison for an average stay of 2.5 years.

Whitmire and Madden favor more 90-day "safety" facilities, where a parole violator could be locked up and penalized for a minor infraction without landing back in an expensive prison cell for years.

The criminal justice committees in the House and Senate plan to meet jointly next week to hear findings of a major report outlining several alternatives to incarceration.

The report, "Justice Reinvestment," was conducted by the Council of State Governments with support from the U.S. Justice Department. It promises "data-driven" strategies to reduce corrections spending and protect the public, a committee staffer said.

"I think when we have our hearing starting next Tuesday, we will demonstrate to everyone we have adequate capacity if we use what we have correctly," Whitmire said.

District Attorney John Bradley of Williamson County said he supports Dewhurst's call for more prison beds.

"I think his response is right on target if you just simply look at the growth that Texas has seen in new people coming in," he said.

Bradley said treatment is the only way some offenders ever will be rehabilitated, but he disagrees that treatment is enough.

"I completely, philosophically disagree with the premise that someone shouldn't be punished if they have a drug or alcohol problem," Bradley said. "It's very easy for a legislator who doesn't want to build prisons to say in broad strokes, 'There are too many people (in prison) who have drug or alcohol problems.'"

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4497258.html

Posted by lois at 09:48 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Poll_ health Care, Yes....Prisons, NO

Capital Notes
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Health Care, Yes... Prisons, No
Some interesting tidbits can be found in the just-released poll from the Public Policy Institute of California about Californians' opinions on health care reform, their elected leaders, and the state's troubled prison system.

You can read the entire poll here. But the highlights:

* The mood seems brighter out there. 55% of those surveyed think things in California are going in the right direction... 40% approve of the job being done by the Legislature (that may look low, but the legislative branch's ratings have been much lower for a long time)... and 58% now approve of the job being done by Governor Schwarzenegger.

* 71% say they approve of the governor's health care reform plan, based on what they know, while 63% support going even further: a state-run health care system, even if it means raising taxes to pay for it... 79% like health care for kids in low-income families, but that drops to 56% when undocumented children are included.

* 63% of those surveyed say they support the governor's call for an additional $43 billion in bond borrowing. And while that proposal includes money for prisons, a separate question in the PPIC survey finds some unhappiness about new prison spending. 54% oppose using new state revenues for prisons. And only 34% of those queried want the state to devote more resources to prisons.

posted by John Myers at 10:01 PM John Myers is Sacramento Bureau Chief for KQED's "The California Report"

http://www.kqed.org/weblog/capitalnotes/2007/01/health-care-yes-prisons-no.j
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Posted by lois at 05:05 PM | Comments (0)

Immigrants' Rights Violated, ACLU says

Immigrants' rights violated, group says

By Greg Moran, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
January 25, 2007
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20070125-9999-1n25aclu.html

Immigration detainees at an Otay Mesa facility live in overcrowded and unsafe conditions that threaten their overall health and are unconstitutional, the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego alleged in court documents yesterday.

Hundreds of detainees are crammed three to a cell built for two, and the 1,232-bed facility is “chronically and dangerously overcrowded,” the ACLU alleged.

“They are basically stuffing people like sardines in these tiny cells,” said David Blair-Loy, legal director for the local ACLU. “This isn't just saying, we're a little cramped in here. This is systematic, long-term outrageous overcrowding.”

The ACLU is seeking to join in a lawsuit filed in 2005 by a detainee at the facility that also alleged overcrowding problems. The group is trying to expand the suit to class-action status on behalf of those who are held there.

A key argument in the suit contends that people being held for immigration violations – which are violations of civil and not criminal law – are constitutionally entitled to better conditions than criminal defendants.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers California and most of the western United States and has the most immigration-related cases of any court in the country, made that finding in a 2004 case.

“This is the first case that has challenged the conditions of confinement for immigration detainees using that theory,” said Gouri Bhat, a prison rights lawyer with the ACLU in New York.

If successful, it could have wide-ranging effects on the conditions of confinement for the thousands of people held in immigration centers around the country.

Conditions in those facilities have been criticized by immigration advocates before. But Bhat said that since 2001, the number of people in detention has increased to 27,500 nationally, and conditions have not improved.

“This is the first suit of its kind that really takes aim at ICE for their practices in housing immigrant detainees,” she said.

The suit names officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private, for-profit prison company.

If the suit forces changes in the San Diego facility, “we're hopeful that will have positive ramifications across the country,” Bhat said.

Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for ICE in San Diego, said the agency does not comment on pending litigation. However, she said, the agency conducts its own audits of detention facilities “to make sure we are adhering to all our standards.”

A spokesman for Corrections Corporation of America declined comment.

The detention facility, about 4½ miles from the Otay Mesa border crossing, is in an area that has a county jail, a juvenile hall and a state prison. It opened in 1998 and houses people caught illegally crossing the border, asylum seekers and those challenging deportation orders.

Because of the backlog of immigration cases, detainees can spend months and years awaiting a decision. Since they are charged with civil crimes, they are not entitled to lawyers and exist in a kind of limbo until their cases are resolved.

Among the chief complaints in the lawsuit is the practice of putting three detainees in a 12-foot by 6-foot cell built for two. About two-thirds of detainees are housed in this manner.

The suit contends others have to sleep in beds on the floor of the common room because of overcrowding.

The conditions have led to delays in medical treatment, poor sanitation and mental health problems for detainees, according to the lawsuit.

Courts have held that people being detained under civil law violations have to be held in conditions that are superior to people held under criminal laws, Blair-Loy said.

“The government has a higher obligation to them,” he said. “They can't be held to conditions that amount to punishment.”

Doing so is a violation of the due process rights under the Fifth Amendment, Blair-Loy said.

The same facility was examined in an audit released last week by investigators with the department, which looked at conditions at five facilities across the country.

Some violations of health and safety rules were noted at the Otay Mesa facility. But the audit did not mention what the ACLU said is severe overcrowding, nor other poor conditions and abuses the ACLU outlined in its lawsuit.

Blair-Loy said the audit, which did not discuss the practice of placing three people in a two-person cell, was no more than a “whitewash.”

The overcrowding has led to increased tensions at the facility and conflicts between the guards and the detainees. The suit said that in September, a group of detainees who wanted to speak to ICE officials about the overcrowding were “abruptly tear-gassed and pepper sprayed” by guards.

That ICE detention facilities are overcrowded is “nothing remarkable,” said John Keeley of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., which favors stricter immigration policies.

The agency does not have adequate resources, he said, and the ultimate solution to the immigration issue is the enforcement of laws.

“The solution here is not to point the finger at the men and women of ICE,” Keeley said.

The lawsuit does not seek damages, but does seek a court order that will stop the overcrowding and other practices, Blair-Loy said.

“The main motivation here is to change the system,” he said. “It's not about making money, but trying to cure the inhumane conditions down there.”

Posted by lois at 05:02 PM | Comments (0)

Mendy Samstein, 68, Dies; Championed Civil Rights

Mendy Samstein, 68, Dies; Championed Civil Rights
By DOUGLAS MARTIN, NY Times, January 25, 2007

Mendy Samstein, who left graduate school to put himself in the forefront of the fight for black voting rights in Mississippi, enduring bombings and beatings in the crucial summer of 1964, died yesterday at his home in New Lisbon, N.Y. He was 68.

The cause was carcinoid cancer, his wife, Nancy Cooper, said.

Mr. Samstein abandoned his pursuit of a doctorate in history to join the historic turmoil in the South and became known as an adept organizer and pull-no-punches speaker. He helped recruit and deploy the more than 800 college students, mainly white, who traveled from many states to rural Mississippi towns, mainly black, as part of the Mississippi Summer Project in 1964.

He became a full-time organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Stokely Carmichael, who later became the group’s chairman, called him “one in a million.”

In “Ready for Revolution” (2003), which Ekwueme Michael Thelwell helped write, Mr. Carmichael said volunteers like Mr. Samstein stopped being white “except in the most superficial sense of the word.” He explained that they, too, experienced white hatred.

Mr. Samstein was one of nine committee workers in a house in McComb, Miss., on July 8, 1964, when three blasts ripped the house apart.

Abbie Hoffman, the mischievous radical whom Mr. Samstein had known at Brandeis, was at home in Massachusetts watching the news when he saw his friend crawling from the rubble. “It was then I decided to head South,” Mr. Hoffman said, according to “For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman” (1996), by Jonah Raskin.

In August 1964, Mr. Samstein, then a field secretary for the committee, told The New York Times about problems in rural Mississippi and said one county, Amite, had been under “a reign of terror.” Policemen pulled him from his car at a stoplight to beat him, Mr. Samstein’s wife said.

Mr. Samstein went on to work with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s largely black delegation trying to supplant or join the all-white Mississippi delegation already chosen for the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City in 1964. His radicalism flared when Bayard Rustin, the legendary civil rights organizer, suggested compromise. According to Taylor Branch in “Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65” (1998), Mr. Samstein jumped up and shouted, “You’re a traitor, Bayard!”

The failure of the Freedom Democrats, the slowed pace of civil rights progress, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s own metamorphosis into a black nationalist group demoralized Mr. Samstein.

“I curse this country every day of my life because it made me hate it, and I never wanted to,” he said in an interview with Jack Newfield in “A Prophetic Minority” (1966).

Jehudah Menachem Mendel Samstein was born on July 20, 1938, in Manhattan. His father, a kosher butcher became ill, switched to real estate investing and died when Mendy was 10.

Mendy Samstein’s education began in a yeshiva and continued at Stuyvesant High School. He majored in European history at Brandeis and earned a master’s degree in the subject from Cornell. He was a history Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago when he was offered a teaching job at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He grabbed it to be near the civil rights movement.

His wife said his ardor came from his deep feelings about the Holocaust. “He did not want to permit that kind of destruction of a race to happen again,” Ms. Cooper said.

Bob Moses, who led a federation of civil rights groups in Mississippi, invited him to the state, where he worked with Allard K. Lowenstein, later a New York congressman, to recruit and train students from Stanford and Yale for a mock election in October 1963. The “election” did not count, but 80,000 “voters” vividly demonstrated blacks’ electoral clout.

Mr. Samstein met Nancy Cooper the same weekend the bodies of three slain civil rights workers were found. She had been a classmate of one, Andrew Goodman, at Queens College, and followed him south to teach in the so-called freedom schools.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Samstein is survived by his sons, Ivan, of Chicago, and Ben, of Manhattan; and a granddaughter.

After his civil rights days, Mr. Samstein organized against the Vietnam War, taught school, was a psychoanalyst and ran a summer camp, among other things. In 2000, he joined civil rights veterans to protest the handling of the presidential vote in Florida.

He also helped Mr. Moses with his Algebra Project, an effort to bring mathematical literacy to the poor. In a recent communication to Mr. Samstein’s family, Mr. Moses noted that it had not taken multitudes to bring change to Mississippi in the 1960s.

“It took a few people willing to risk everything,” he said.

Posted by lois at 02:31 PM | Comments (0)

Childhood Poverty Is Found to Portend High Adult Costs

January 25, 2007
Childhood Poverty Is Found to Portend High Adult Costs
By ERIK ECKHOLM, NY Times
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - Children who grow up poor cost the economy $500 billion a year because they are less productive, earn less money, commit more crimes and have more health-related expenses, according to a study released on Wednesday. "The high cost of childhood poverty to the U.S. suggests that investing significant resources in poverty reduction might be more cost effective than we thought," said Harry J. Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and the Urban Institute and one of the four authors of the report.

Mr. Holzer was one of several poverty experts who testified Wednesday to the House Ways and Means Committee as the report was released. The new chairman of the panel, Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, said the experts were appearing "not as bleeding hearts, but to calculate the costs of poverty to our economy and society."
"We're talking about saving money and making productive people in the age of globalization," Mr. Rangel said in comments that seemed to reflect an awareness by Democratic lawmakers of the financial and political constraints they face.
The hearing was the first of many expected over the coming year intended to focus attention on the 37 million Americans who live below the official poverty line, defined as $19,350 a year for a family of four. For more than 10 years, lawmakers had mainly focused on sweeping welfare changes passed in 1996 that imposed time limits and strict work requirements on welfare recipients. In the process, Democratic staff members in the House and Senate said this week, other crucial poverty-related topics were neglected.
Apart from an increase in the minimum wage, which the House passed on Jan. 10 but was blocked on Wednesday in the Senate by Republicans insisting on concessions for small businesses, the Democrats have not put together a broad list of initiatives to combat poverty, staff members said, and they will spend time evaluating research and cost-effective tactics.
The report on the price of child poverty was commissioned by the Center for American Progress, a liberal group here that plans to issue detailed antipoverty recommendations in the spring.
A Republican scholar and former official who testified at the hearing, Ron Haskins, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, called the study superb and said that while economists might quibble over details, the $500 billion cost estimate costs "might be in the ballpark."
Mr. Haskins noted that the authors had not specified the high cost of eliminating child poverty, which census figures show affected 12.3 million children in 2005, or 17.1 percent of those younger than 18.
"Do not think that if we suddenly gave a bunch of money to poor people, everything would change," he told lawmakers, adding that behaviors, neighborhoods and parents' actions need to change if children's life paths are to change.
Mr. Haskins said it was important to continue work requirements for most welfare recipients, along with government support for programs like child care and tax credits. Promoting the economic benefits of marriage is also important, he said, because a disproportionate number of single-parent families are poor.
In the only flare of partisan discord, some Democratic lawmakers questioned the effectiveness of promoting marriage, a favorite initiative of the Bush administration. But Democrats voiced no inclination to reverse the transformation of the welfare system into more of a work program.
Mr. Holzer and others said that although various proposals to ease pov