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May 31, 2007

CA: Our Opinion: Sad day when prisons trump schools

Our Opinion: Sad day when prisons trump schools
Article Last Updated:05/31/2007
Alameda Times-Star, Alameda, CA
CALIFORNIA has reached a milestone that clearly shows how misguided our priorities have become. In five years, based on current trends, California's prison budget will overtake spending on the state's universities.

Thanks in big part to the state's - and federal courts' - priorities of fixing our troubled corrections system, the state will throw more money into warehousing inmates than educating college students. No other big state in the country comes close to spending as much on its prisons compared to its universities. Have we really come to the point where walls are more valuable than knowledge?

California's new investment in prisons is in response to a federal court order to clean up the system and cut down on overcrowding where more than 175,000 prisoners are jammed into space designed for 100,000. The state will spend

$7.4 billion to build

40,000 new beds on top of a prison operating budget of more than $10 billion, which means prisons will eat up a larger share of taxpayer money. What that also means is we're putting more money into a broken system, hoping somehow it gets fixed.

That even baffles those who oversee prison construction.

"The department is in a shambles. They couldn't build their way out of a paper bag," said Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange.

Well, that's a good reason to put more money into prison construction.

In the meantime, education and other needy areas suffer. They will be deprived of as much as $330 million a year by 2011 due to out-of-control prison spending. That's to cover interest payments on billions of dollars of bonds that must be sold to finance the new construction.

"Our policies are hurting the economy of California," said Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles.

If this is the way our lawmakers feel, why do they keep driving in the wrong direction?

If Nunez thinks the economy is hurting now, he hasn't seen anything yet. According to researchers for the Public Policy Institute of California, more college graduates are leaving the state than coming in from elsewhere. Researchers found that California needs to attract nearly 160,000 college graduates from other states and countries by 2025 to meet economic demands. Chances of doing so look pretty bleak.

We understand that the prison problem didn't sprout up overnight. Part of it could probably be traced back to when Jerry Brown was governor. Brown changed California's sentencing structure and sent the ball rolling toward the prison overcrowding mess we are in today. He's even admitted regret about that change.

But Brown is not solely to blame. Californians spend $40,000 per inmate per year. The powerful prison guard union shoulders part of this - while guards' base pay was $57,000 a year in 2005, a total of 182 San Quentin guards earned more than $100,000, far more than what a Highway Patrol officer earns.

We have not focused enough on rehabilitation and education of inmates, thus, we set them free unprepared and with little hope of getting or holding jobs. So what happens? California has the highest recidivism rate in the country.

It's as if our mentality has become lock 'em up and throw away the key - just look at the unrealistic "Three-Strikes" law. One man featured recently on CBS' "60 Minutes" received two jail sentences of 25-years-to-life for stealing nine children's video tapes - valued at $153.54. He had two prior home burglaries on his record, yet there was no weapon and no violence in any of the cases.

If California lawmakers can't come up with a way to revamp the system, they should look at what's going on in other states. To reduce prison budgets, other states are canceling new prison construction; paroling people scheduled for parole a few weeks earlier at savings of millions of dollars; eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for certain offenses; providing treatment rather than prison for drug offenses.

No, instead California has taken and is taking the easy way out - we build more prisons and watch our education system struggle. Where have our priorities gone?

http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_6027448?source=most_emailed (cartoon at this URL)

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

Know Your Rights: A Guide to Young People's Rights in Juvenile Delinquency Court.

Know Your Rights: A Guide to Young People's Rights in Juvenile Delinquency Court. (May 2007) The booklet is designed to teach young people their basic constitutional rights as it applies to the law.
According to the Know Your Rights booklet in 2003:
2.2 million arrests were made of persons under the age of 18;
136,500 of these arrests were for violating curfew and loitering laws;
Black youth account for 27% of all juvenile arrests, even though they only make up 16% of the youth population; and
Girls account for 29% of all juvenile arrests, which represents a 45% increase in arrests of girls over a period of approximately twenty years
Additionally, the booklet cites in recent years, reports of abuse and mistreatment in youth correctional facilities have increased. For example, in 2004 there were 2,821 reports of sexual violence against youth and 26 deaths of youth in facilities.
http://www.gaultat40.info/pdfs/kyr_booklet.pdf

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

May 30, 2007

MA: Cori: The Scarlet Letter

Cori: The Scarlet Letter
A criminal record can haunt anyone who's ever been arraigned in court - whether they're found guilty or not.
By Maureen Turner

May 31 2007

Who is Don Petigny-Perry? Your answer might depend on what document you’re looking at.

On his resumé, Petigny-Perry is a man dedicated to helping other people: He’s worked for the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office, helping ex-offenders reintegrate into society, and for the now-defunct Hampshire Community Action Commission, where he was a housing specialist. These days, Petigny-Perry estimates that he logs about 70 hours a week at two jobs: one on the overnight shift at the Grove Street Inn homeless shelter in Northampton, the other as the outreach coordinator for several single-room occupancy, or SRO, buildings in Northampton and Florence.

Petigny-Perry might seem like a very different man, though, if you’re looking at another document: his criminal record. That document runs about four pages long, beginning with a minor larceny arrest in 1971, when Petigny-Perry was 17—so long ago that, he says, that he can’t even recall the details of the incident.

There were other arrests, too, including a charge of assaulting a police officer that Petigny-Perry suggests had more to do with heavy-handed policing in his hometown (“I’m a black man in Springfield, and I jumped on seven police officers? Come on.”). In his 20s, Petigny-Perry committed several armed robberies of Springfield-area grocery stores, using the money, he says, to feed his addictions to cocaine and heroin. Those robberies landed him in prison. He was released in 2001, after serving 18 years and seven months.

In reality, of course, it’s impossible to define any person by the words on a few sheets of paper; neither his resumé nor his record can begin to capture who Petigny-Perry is, who he was, how he’s changed over his 53 years of life. Many of those changes, in fact, took place during his years behind bars: He kicked his drug habit and took advantage of the sort of prison programs—academic classes, vocational training, personal counseling—that have dried up in recent years. After his release, Petigny-Perry lived for a time at the Honor Court, a local rehab program that focuses on community service, finished a degree at UMass, and began a new career in the human service field.

But no matter who Petigny-Perry is now, his criminal record will always be with him. And he’s not alone: About 2.8 million people have records (commonly known as CORIs, short for Criminal Offender Record Information) with the Massachusetts Criminal History Systems Board. They include anyone who’s ever been arraigned in court—even if the person was found not guilty, or if the charges were later dropped. And, depending on the circumstances, those records might be considered when they apply for a job, for housing, for a loan—creating, critics say, sometimes impassable roadblocks to the very things that ex-offenders need to make a successful start at a new life.

Petigny-Perry is part of an increasingly vocal collection of activists who are pushing to change the CORI system. Their goal isn’t to eliminate the system, they say, but rather to make it fairer to people with records, more useful to the public—and, ultimately, more likely to serve the interest of public safety. To get there, they need to persuade a lot of people: nervous voters who worry about high crime rates, nervous employers who don’t want the liability that comes with hiring someone who might pose a security risk, nervous legislators who don’t want to be tagged as weak on crime.

They also need to force a public conversation about what we, as a society, really want from our criminal justice system. Are jails and prisons really part of a “corrections” system, where offenders can reform their ways and atone for their misdeeds? If so, by what standards should we decide that a person has changed for the better and poses no risk to the rest of us? Should someone who’s committed a crime be forever marked by it? Most fundamentally, do we believe that people can change?

“People have this notion: I did my time; I paid for my crime. But that’s not true,” Petigny-Perry says. “Because anybody who can get their social security number can find [their record] and give them their own form of justice.”

T he CORI system was created by the state Legislature in 1972 to modernize the maintenance of criminal records. Cumbersome paper records were replaced by a computerized format that was used primarily by people within law enforcement: police, judges, parole and probation officers, prison officials. Ironically, the new system was also intended to protect the privacy of people who had criminal records, by tightening up guidelines about who could see those records.

Any time a person is arraigned before a Massachusetts judge, a CORI is created. The record includes personal information (date of birth, social security number, occupation, spouse’s name) and the charges he or she faces. The record is updated as the case proceeds through the court system to its conclusion, including sentencing. If the person is found not guilty, or if prosecutors drop the charges, that information is included, but the CORI does not disappear.

While access to CORI records was initially limited mostly to law enforcement officials, over the years the number of organizations with access to CORIs has grown dramatically. According to a 2005 study by The Boston Foundation and the Crime & Justice Institute, more than 10,000 organizations have been certified for access to CORI records, up from just 2,000 in 1993. Those groups that, by law, have the right to review CORIs include public housing agencies and organizations looking to hire employees to work with “vulnerable populations,” such as schools, summer camps, nursing homes and hospitals.

In addition, other employers and agencies can apply to the Criminal History Systems Board, or CHSB, for permission to see CORIs in cases where, they argue, the interest of public safety outweighs the privacy rights of the subject. This group might include hotels, airlines or security firms. Individuals may also request CORIs in certain cases, including if the subject is currently on probation or parole or has recently been released from prison.

What records they see varies depending on who they are; at a minimum, applicants usually receive a report showing the subject’s prior convictions and pending charges. In some cases, the report will include things like juvenile convictions, charges that were dismissed or continued without a finding, or cases where the subject was found not guilty.

According to the Boston Foundation/Crime & Justice Institute report, the CHSB processed more than 1.4 million requests for CORIs in 2005, more than three times the number in 1998. Over the years, the state Legislature has passed new laws expanding who has access to these records. In some cases, the organizations aren’t just granted access, but are in fact mandated to evaluate the CORIs of job applicants.

The reason for this expansion is obvious and largely understandable; who wouldn’t want the reassurance that their baby’s daycare provider isn’t a violent psycho, that their grandmother’s home health aide doesn’t have a weakness for other people’s prescriptions, that the cashier they just hired doesn’t have a history of sticky fingers? There are legitimate public safety concerns that make the CORI system necessary—a point even would-be reformers take pains to make. But, they argue, the current system is filled with weaknesses and injustices and, in the long run, can compromise rather than improve public safety.

In part, the problem springs from the presentation of a CORI. Originally intended for law enforcement officials, the reports can be daunting reading for a lay person. The Mass. Law Reform Institute—a Boston-based legal services organization working on CORI reform—publishes a document called “The CORI Reader” (available at www.mlri.org/cori_project), which attempts to explain the complicated system. The document includes a six-page glossary of the various abbreviated legal terms that turn up on CORIs, an alphabet soup of CWOF (continued without a finding) and DWOP (dismissed without prejudice), HWB (held without bail) and FILE NF (filed no finding). Tossed in for good measure are several Latin terms: NOLO (Nolo contendere), NP (nolle prosequi).

Those terms might make sense to a prosecutor, but will they to the human resources manager at a corporation, or the owner of a small business looking for help? While the CHSB does offer training and information on its website about interpreting CORIs, employers are not required to take the training, and most don’t, according to the Boston Foundation report.

And while some employers may take the time to read the report carefully, others, activists fear, will automatically disregard any job applicant who has a CORI. This can be especially problematic when a person has a record for a minor incident, like a traffic violation, or when she was ultimately found not guilty, or the charges against her were dropped. Even a lengthy CORI report doesn’t necessarily mean the subject has been arrested many times; a report stemming from a single charge could have multiple entries, each reflecting court dates, pleas and dispositions.

“If you talk to the average person about CORI, most people think we’re talking about an ex-offender who’s coming right out of jail,” notes Richard Ward, program officer at The Boston Foundation. “But most people who have CORIs never served a day in prison.”

And as the number of organizations with access to CORIs has grown, the records system has become strained. The CHSB staff and budget has not kept pace with the increased demand for records. That, The Boston Foundation notes, opens the door for increased errors in reports, a problem compounded by the fact that Massachusetts, unlike most states, does not use fingerprints to verify the identity of subjects in its criminal records system.

Complicating matters are the numerous private companies that do background checks. Type “criminal records” into Google and you’ll find a flood of sites, with names like criminalsearches.com and sentrylink.com. Unlike official CORIs, which are only available to certain organizations or with the approval of the governing board, anyone with a credit card and a computer can hire one of these private companies to check out a job applicant, a potential babysitter, a new boyfriend.

But because these companies are unregulated, they present a host of problems, critics say. There’s no guarantee their information is correct or current, for instance; because they often gather their information from incomplete public records—a police log at the station house or a daily docket at a courthouse, for example—it may not include later information that shows a favorable outcome for the subject.

T he Boston Foundation took up the CORI issue several years ago, after holding a series of community meetings in response to a spike in violent crime. “This issue of CORI kept coming up over and over again, a steady drumbeat,” Richard Ward says.

“It was a difficult issue to talk about,” he says. On one side were employers and others who feel that public safety demands complete disclosure of criminal records; on the other side were people who’ve committed relatively minor offenses and believe their records create unwarranted roadblocks, or those who’ve changed their lives dramatically but fear they’ll never be granted a fresh start as long as their CORIs haunt them.

The foundation, Ward says, has worked to maintain a neutral position. Ultimately, the group decided to avoid the more controversial questions, like whether records should be automatically sealed after a period of time, or if more restrictions should be placed on who can access CORIs (“There are good arguments on both sides,” Ward says). Instead, the foundation has opted to focus on how employers use information from criminal records. “Our feeling is, if this is going to be used by employers, we need to know they’re using it [correctly],” Ward says.

The Boston Foundation has organized a task force of interested parties—business and non-profit representatives, ex-offenders, victims’ advocates—to come up with recommendations for making the CORI system more workable, both for people with records who want a fair shake in the job market and for employers who might want to help someone re-entering society but are concerned about liability, or lack the tools to assess who truly poses a risk and who doesn’t.

“Everybody’s looking at this as a public safety issue,” Ward says. “I think it’s more of a workforce issue”—particularly given Massachusetts’ dwindling workforce.

“We have a lot of empty seats,” adds David Trueblood, public relations director at The Boston Foundation. “We can’t afford to lose people who could be important contributors. … We can’t say, ‘If you’ve ever offended, you’re just out of the game.’”

Don Petigny-Perry knows firsthand the challenge of getting back into the workforce after prison. His criminal record resurfaces every time he applies for a job, and different employers have had different responses. When he applied for his job at HCAC, he says, it was a pretty straightforward procedure: Management reviewed his CORI, then a hearing was held where he addressed his record and explained how he’d changed. After he was hired, the agency held annual reviews to make sure no problems had cropped up. He went through a similar process when he was hired at the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department—where, he says, he was a sort of poster child for the sheriff’s celebrated reintegration programs.

Things were more complicated when Petigny-Perry applied for his job at the Grove Street Inn. After several interviews—at which, he says, he was upfront about his record—he was hired. But on his first day on the job, he says, he was told by a manager he’d have to leave, after someone in Human Resources spotted his felony conviction.

“I was so humiliated,” Petigny-Perry says. He decided to fight the decision.

Because ServiceNet receives state money, it’s bound to follow the strict CORI guidelines set by the Department of Health & Human Services. In 1996, H&HS issued a directive to private agencies with which it contracted: Before the agency could hire any employee who would interact with clients, it must do a CORI check. Applicants who’d been convicted of any of several dozen crimes—the list ranges from murder, rape and kidnapping to perjury, marijuana trafficking and mayhem—could not be hired. In some cases, depending on the crime, the ban would be lifted after a determined waiting period; in other cases, the ban was permanent.

That directive was challenged in court. A Superior Court justice found the lifetime ban unconstitutional and ordered H&HS to provide a means for a job applicant whose record put him on the lifetime ban list to challenge that decision.

The challenge process is long and complex—unduly so, say critics. The applicant must provide a letter from a criminal justice official saying he would not pose “an unacceptable risk” if he were hired. If he can’t obtain that letter (and it’s likely he won’t, according to the CORI Reader, “since these officials are generally trained not to make such certifications”) he needs to get a similar letter from a mental health professional with a relevant background. Next, the hiring agency must conduct an evaluation to determine whether the applicant poses a threat to clients, based on things like his age when he committed the crime, the seriousness of the crime, its relevance to the work he’d be doing and evidence of rehabilitation.

Petigny-Perry says it took him eight months to complete the appeals process, collecting letters of recommendation, undergoing a psychiatric exam and writing a narrative about his rehabilitation process. Then he had to sit down with a ServiceNet staff member and explain his CORI, item by item. “It was really invasive,” he says.

In the end, Petigny-Perry was rehired, to the same job he’d been sent home from all those months before. Going through the process was a worthwhile experience, he says, because now he at least has all the paperwork ready the next time he applies for a job. “Now that I’ve gone through the process it at least eliminates the glass ceiling. As tedious as it was,” he says.

Petigny-Perry says he doesn’t think CORI checks are unfair or unwarranted when the circumstances call for one. But he would prefer to leave it to the state Criminal History System Board to handle appeals and determine whether an ex-offender is ready to work in sensitive positions. That would put the power in the hands of experts trained in issues of crime and recidivism, and take it out of the hands of employers and human resources staff who don’t necessarily have the training to make those kinds of decisions, and who may bring their own biases and prejudices into the process, he says. “It’s a power dynamic. If people know you have a record, it’s like a scarlet letter.”

I n the Legislature, state Rep. Mike Festa, a Democrat from Middlesex County, has filed the Public Safety Act of 2007-2008, which would make significant changes to the CORI system. The bill would shorten the time period before a conviction record could be sealed. Right now, an offender can petition to have a felony conviction sealed after 15 years and a misdemeanor after 10; under the bill, they could be sealed after seven and three years, respectively. The bill would also make it easier for a subject’s record to be sealed if the charges did not result in a conviction.

In addition, the proposed law would create two versions of CORI reports: Law enforcement officials and employers who work with vulnerable populations would be given the subject’s complete record; other entities would receive CORIs that show convictions and open cases only. The bill would also toughen up anti-discrimination protections for ex-offenders, making it illegal to refuse a person a job simply because he or she has a CORI (exceptions would be made if the record shows a recent conviction for a crime related to the work he or she would be doing).

Locally, Festa’s bill is co-sponsored by state Rep. Ben Swan (D-Springfield). There are more than 30 other pieces of CORI reform legislation kicking around the State House, including several filed by Rep. Cheryl Coakley-Rivera, another Springfield Democrat, although Festa’s is the most comprehensive.

Similar legislation was considered last year. Because it was developed too late in the 2005-06 session to be filed as a bill, advocates instead tried to get it passed by attaching it to the state budget. While the Senate approved the amendment, the House—where Speaker Sal DiMasi is generally cool to attempts to make law by attachments to the budget—did not. In the end, legislators created a commission to study CORI reform—a move that, to many, felt like a stalling tactic.

Indeed, nothing ever came of the commission. But reformers hope to build on the momentum of last year’s effort to get the new bill passed. The key, says Brandyn Keating, executive director of the Boston-based Criminal Justice Policy Coalition, is educating legislators and the public about what the proposal would and would not do. For instance, activists aren’t looking to limit in any way the information available to law enforcement officials. The reforms, would, however, limit the information some reviewers would receive if it’s deemed irrelevant—“keeping misdemeanors out of the hands of the shift manager at Subway,” Keating explains. None of the proposed changes would affect the state’s sex offender registry, which is managed under a separate system—a point CORI reformers are especially anxious to make.

“We’ve had a very reactionary way of doing public policy relating to criminal justice over the last 16 years or so,” says Keating, who, like many, points to the Weld administration as a turning point in the state’s approach to dealing with offenders. The “lock them up and throw away the key” approach might appeal to voters, but, over the long term, it’s done little to improve public safety, critics say.

“That’s why we call it the Public Safety Act. We think it enhances public safety to get people back in the mainstream,” says Tony Winsor, an MLRI staff attorney and author of the CORI Report. “The Bill Weld, ‘the more we punish people, the more we enhance public safety’ [approach]—that’s bullshit.”

Research shows that an ex-offender is less likely to end up behind bars again if he or she is able to find housing and a job. “To construct unnatural barriers for those needs to be met is very illogical and counterproductive,” Keating says.

Lois Ahrens of Northampton, founder and director of the Real Cost of Prisons Project, thinks CORI reform has become inevitable. “It’s one of those tipping point things,” she says. “There’s so many people with CORIs right now, and it’s affecting so many people”—the people with the records, their families, employers.

The Boston City Council and Mayor Tom Menino have both called on the Legislature to reform CORI laws, and Gov. Deval Patrick has spoken about the need to reform the system. Those positions are not without political implications, though: Menino took heat for his policy of not checking new hires’ CORIs after a public works employee with a history of drug and traffic violations ran down an elderly woman with a snow plow last winter. And Patrick backed away at least temporarily from his support for CORI reform during last fall’s gubernatorial campaign after opponent Kerry Healey began attacking him as weak on public safety.

Meanwhile, in some communities, parents and politicians continue to push for more background checks on employees and volunteers, especially in schools. In Boxborough, for instance, school officials have adopted a policy to check all volunteers, regardless of whether they have unsupervised contact with kids. “We decided to CORI everyone, and that way we don’t have to worry about it,” the superintendent explained to the Boston Globe .

Perhaps the most significant resistance to CORI reform comes from the state’s district attorneys, who have taken an official position against changing the system. Plymouth DA Timothy Cruz, president of the Mass. District Attorney’s Association, has been quoted saying all criminal records should be available to the public; to bolster his case, Cruz points to widely reported violent crimes, such as the 2002 rest-stop murder of a woman by a convicted rapist who was working at a Burger King there.

“The DAs have enormous influence in the Legislature,” notes Tony Winsor. “The general sense of the average legislator is: ‘If the DAs don’t like something, then I don’t dare like it, because then I’ll be labeled as soft on crime and won’t be re-elected.’”

“A lot of the knee-jerk reaction we get from DAs and law enforcement is because of misunderstanding,” Keating says. “It’s actually in the best interest of law enforcement that people be able to get appropriate employment. … It’s in everybody’s best interest.”

Indeed, Keating believes reformers have support within law enforcement circles, from prosecutors to cops on the street. County sheriffs, who deal directly with ex-prisoners’ reintegration into society, are considered a particularly sympathetic group.

“You can put us in the category of those who feel CORI needs reform,” says Rich McCarthy, spokesman for Hampden County Sheriff Mike Ashe. Ex-offenders trying to re-enter society often already face numerous challenges: substance abuse, a lack of marketable skills, an inadequate education. Unnecessary barriers created by CORIs make it that much harder.

“We have 2,600 sentenced people we release each year into the community,” McCarthy says. “Either they bridge back into the community, or they’re going to fall off the cliff. … This is the kind of thing that hopefully we can coalesce around, because it’s smart public safety policy.”

A t its root, the movement to change the CORI system comes down to matter of faith: Do we believe that someone can do something wrong—sometimes gravely, horrendously wrong—but still, ultimately, be a worthwhile person, someone of value to the larger society?

“Hopefully people can make mistakes and change,” Ahrens says. “Not because of [prison-based] rehabilitation, because there isn’t rehabilitation. But because they’re young. Because they stop being addicted to drugs. Because they’re no longer drinking.”

And just below the surface of the CORI reform question are other, stickier issues, from the racism many consider inherent in our law enforcement system (“Policing is targeted in neighborhoods of color,” Ahrens says. “If you’re African-American, or you’re Hispanic, you don’t start out with a level playing field.”) to our decision to treat drug addiction as a crime, not a health problem.

“It’s about deep-rooted ‘isms’—racism, classism,” Petigny-Perry says. He’s not convinced there’s enough momentum to fix what’s wrong with the CORI system, he adds. “But the more conversations that peel back these layers, the better.”

That includes a conversation about society’s responsibility to ex-offenders once their sentences are over. “We lock [people] up to hold them accountable for their actions. But we don’t hold society accountable for what happens to them,” Petigny-Perry says. “Is there a need for prisons and jails? Yeah. But what happens afterward? … I think we’re failing people as far as preparing them to reintegrate back into the community.” •

mturner@valleyadvocate.com
http://www.ctnow.com/custom/nmm/valleyadvocate/hce-vla-0531-va23cover23.artmay31,0,5932787.story?coll=hce-headlines-va-advocate
Copyright © 2007, Valley Advocate

Posted by lois at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)

AL: Land sold to fund state's prisons

AL: Land sold to fund state's prisons
Montgomery Advertiser
May 29, 2007

The Alabama Department of Corrections has a $30 million hole in its operating budget for next year -- a hole the agency plans to fill by selling unused state land. While that might address the problem next year, there is a good chance the hole still will be there year after year. And the land will be gone.

The fact that the department is resorting to using one-time revenues from the sale of public property to pay for recurring operating costs underscores the long-term underfunding of the Alabama prison system by the Legislature.

Corrections Commissioner Richard Allen recognizes that he is addressing a continuing funding problem with a one-time solution, but he said he has no other realistic option to meet his budget for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.

"We don't know where the money will come from after next year," he admits.

The state prison system has thousands of acres of land scattered around Alabama, and Allen said there is no foreseeable use for much of it. The agency is conducting a study to determine what land it can sell and what revenue it can expect from that sale, and will make recommendations to Gov. Bob Riley this week.

Allen said he hopes the agency can realize enough revenue from the sale of land to fund such continuing operations as the department's housing of prisoners out-of-state and its drug rehabilitation programs.

Allen said the department plans to maintain necessary buffer areas around existing facilities where possible.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any state agency looking at its property holdings to determine whether there is excess land for which there is no realistic foreseeable use, and selling what is not needed now or expected to be needed in the future. But it is unsound fiscal management to use the one-time revenues from such land sales for operating expenses that will continue in subsequent years.

Allen makes a persuasive argument that he has no choice, even though all the agency will be doing is delaying its budget crisis for a year.

But delaying the Corrections Department's fiscal crisis for a year won't accomplish much if the Legislature doesn't use that time to come up with long-range funding options for the agency.

The state's prison system funding problems are well known. The system houses roughly twice the number of inmates that its facilities were designed to hold, creating dangerous situations in some prisons. The system also has a high number of prisoners per corrections officer, which only adds to the problems. It's per-prisoner costs are always among the lowest in the nation.

The Corrections Department is funded out of the state General Fund budget. Despite a booming economy which has spurred record high revenues in the state's education budget, revenues in the General Fund have failed to keep up with the growth in costs for those programs which it funds, including Medicaid and state troopers.

The state attempted to address chronic overcrowding problems in a variety of ways in recent years: It is paying to house inmates out of state, it reduced a backlog in the paroles processby creating a second parole board, and it changed sentencing laws to allow more alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent criminals. Those changes did reduce the number of inmates somewhat, and new sentencing guidelines could further help to slow the growth of the inmate population.

But despite those changes, the number of inmates has again reached an all-time high, according to a department spokesman. In April the department had 28,775 inmates, about 300 more than the previous all-time high in April 2003.

If Alabama policymakers are going to continue to have a tough-on-crime stance that locks up lots of people for long sentences, then they need to find the funding to pay for the necessary prison system to house them. Otherwise the system eventually will implode. After all, the Corrections Department only has so much land it can sell.

http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070529/OPINION01/705290307/1006

Posted by lois at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)

IA: New director focuses on future of state’s prisons

Wednesday, May 30, 2007
New director focuses on future of state’s prisons

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

DES MOINES — Iowa’s new director of corrections says he will use his skills as a consensus builder in the debate over the future of the state’s prisons.

John Baldwin, 57, was named the state’s top prison official in April, succeeding Gary Maynard who left to take a job in Maryland.

Baldwin, a Fort Dodge native, said he will try to help the state’s political leaders find common ground on the issues, which include a growing population of women inmates and outdated prisons.

‘‘I think I have a very open style. I try for consensus where at all possible,’’ Baldwin said in an interview with The Des Moines Register.

He said one of his priorities will be to emphasize fundamental skills for correctional workers to ensure their safety and to help inmates be successful once they are released.

Baldwin, who has served as interim director on three different occasions, said he will be seeking input from the state’s wardens, directors of community corrections and the American Federal of State, County and Municipal Employees, the union that represents correctional officers.

‘‘Within the next year and a half, we are going to craft programs that are tailored for each one of those’’ prisons and community corrections districts, Baldwin said.

‘‘They are going to be different in Fort Madison than Rockwell City, and they are going to be different in the 5th District than they are in the 3rd District.’’

A report submitted to the Legislature by the Durrant Group, an Iowa-based consultant, called for a $200 million program to upgrade the state’s prisons.

Baldwin said he agrees that the antiquated maximum-security prison at Fort Madison must be replaced and that programs for female inmates should be consolidated at the Mitchellville prison — a project that would require more construction.

He also wants to build more community corrections centers because nearly 400 inmates are on waiting lists to enter the residential centers.

‘‘If we concentrate on those two prisons — at Fort Madison and Mitchellville — and on the community corrections side, we would go a long way toward solving some of those overcrowding issues,’’ he said.

He said the state also must address the growing number of women in prison — a group that is growing at a faster than men.

Baldwin wants to develop a gender-specific system to classify inmates, updating a system developed 25 years ago.

He also wants to focus on a treatment program for women that deals with substance abuse and family issues.

‘‘Women have different needs, and I think we can address some of them in the community,’’ he said. ‘‘Women, on average, come into prison with less violent crimes than men, and they stay fewer months in prison, and they recidivate at a lower rate. We should be able to craft some programs to expand upon that and keep the women in the community.’’

http://www.timesrepublican.com/Central%20Iowa/articles.asp?articleID=9924

Posted by lois at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)

May 29, 2007

Myths have a way of hiding what we don't want to see

"Isn't it time that we stop worrying about the behavior of faraway dictators and start downsizing prisons here at home?"

Originally published May 29, 2007

Florida's incarceration rate is booming
By Ronald Fraser

Myths have a way of hiding what we don't want to see.

Americans, for example, are quick to charge Third World dictators with abusive prison policies. But prison incarceration rates tell a different story.

Recent reports show that 45 of the 50 democratically elected state governments in the U.S., including Florida, imprison their citizens at a faster pace than any of the foreign governments headed by dictators.

Rulers in Libya, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, China and Pakistan made Parade magazine's 2005 world's worst dictators list. And the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, located in Oakland, Calif., has issued a report titled, "U.S. Rates of Incarceration: A Global Perspective," showing the incarceration rates for these five dictatorships - the number of persons in prison for every 100,000 population - ranging from a low of 57 in Pakistan to a high of 207 in Libya.

By comparison, prison policies made in Tallahassee locked up 499 state citizens for every 100,000 population in 2005. In other words, Florida imprisons its people at a rate more than two times faster than Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya and eight times faster than Pakistan under Gen. Pervez Musharraf. If inmates held in local jails in Florida were added, the spread would be even wider.

Only five states - Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Minnesota and North Dakota - have prison incarceration rates less harsh than Libya's. All other states enforce prison policies that put dictators around the world to shame, including more than 600 inmates per 100,000 population in Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas.

The NCCD study went on to compare prison rates in U.S. states to foreign countries with a similar population. While New York state and Australia have about the same size populations, New York prisons hold 92,000 inmates to Australia's 25,000. California's 246,000 prisoners compare to Poland's 86,000, even though each has similar populations.

Why are prisons in America filling at a faster rate than anywhere else in the world? Some say our crime rate is the cause.But the Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., reported: ³Criminologists Alfred Blumstein and Allen Beck examined the near-tripling of the prison population (in the U.S.) during the period 1980-1996 and concluded that changes in crime explained only 12% of the prison rise, while changes in sentencing policy accounted for 88% of the increase.²

Legislatively dictated sentences for even minor offenses tie the hands of judges and juries. These mandatory minimum punishments continue to keep hundreds of thousands behind bars for just using or selling tiny amounts of ³illicit² substances.

In addition, about one-half of all inmates in the U.S. are serving time for nonviolent offenses. If prisons were only used to separate dangerous people from the rest of society, the 89,766 state prisoners in Florida in 2005 could be drastically cut overnight.

This uniquely American belief in prisons as the all-purpose punishment for offenses great and small has resulted in one in every 136 U.S. residents living behind bars.

Rather than reforming inmates, U.S. prisons have become a merry-go-round. More than one-half of all inmates leaving prison find their way back - often due to minor violations of parole or probation rules.

The NCCD study ends on this note: ³The rate of imprisonment in the United States is considerably higher than any other industrialized nation. To ignore it is to condone the flagrant waste of money and lives and the crime-producing effects of needless imprisonment and to perpetuate the myth that more imprisonment means better protection of the public.²

With only 5 percent of the world's people, the United States is home to 23 percent of the world's prisoners. If the rest of the world followed America's prison policies, the worldwide incarcerated population would grow from 9 to 47 million.

Isn't it time that we stop worrying about the behavior of faraway dictators and start downsizing prisons here at home? ______________________

Ronald Fraser writes about public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization. Contact him at fraserr@erols.com.
http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070529/OPINION05/705
290311/-1

Posted by lois at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2007

CA: Our prison mess: Politicians just make them worse

CATHERINE CAMPBELL:
Our prison mess: Politicians just make them worse
By Catherine Campbell
05/26/07
Fresno Bee
For the past 30 years, the California Legislature has passed laws lengthening prison sentences, built prison gulags all over the state, emptied the taxpayers' treasury to the prison guards union and its candidates, used crime to frighten and manipulate the voting public and refused to acknowledge the catastrophic prison system they created -- all out of self-interest.

Assembly Minority Leader Mike Villines' self-congratulatory, chest-thumping commentary in The Bee May 3, titled "California's Prison System in Crisis," would have us believe that he and the rest of the Legislature stood tall in the face of a possible "takeover" of California prisons by a federal judge.

Politicians love crime. Give a politician a good crime, preferably a sex crime against a child, and he will pop up on the front page with a new piece of sentencing legislation, named after the victim, of course, having consulted his advisers on the political up-tick such a photo op will give to his political fortunes.

Before 1977, politicians did not set prison sentences, the state's Adult Authority set sentences. Most convicted criminals went into prison not knowing how long they would spend there, and their release date was determined by a rather harsh board of former cops and parole agents who periodically reviewed their crimes, history and prison behavior in determining their sentence lengths.

The Adult Authority was arbitrary; it tended to be racist, and it punished prisoners who spoke out. But it was, in the end, more humane than what we've got now.

Prisoners had a motive to behave well in prison and to rehabilitate, because that was the key to freedom. True fiscal conservatives, Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown, were running our state then.

Prison sentences were relatively short, and our prisons were dungeons where corruption, brutality and neglect were rampant. Given what has happened since, perhaps this was a good thing. Perhaps we should have left well enough alone.

Instead, in 1977, with the passage of the Indeterminate Sentencing Law, we gave the issue over to politicians, who love defining whole new crimes and increasing sentences, and have gone at it with an enthusiasm that would make one think they actually believe in what they are doing.

But their enterprise is cynical. Every study done, whether by law enforcement or pin-headed intellectuals at the University of California at Berkeley, establishes that longer sentences do not make us safer in the long run; they just make more prisoners and more prisons.

In the 1980s, politicians were faced with the mounting prison population.. They started spending tons of money on new prisons. After the ribbon-cutting ceremonies were over, these behemoths emerged as unwieldy, out-of-control, brutal and mismanaged human warehouses.

They built them in remote corners of the state to please their urban constituents, and where doctors, dentists, psychiatrists, social workers and other essential professionals would refuse to work.

The inevitable outcome of these purely political choices was unconstitutionally inadequate medical, dental and mental-health care; violations of the federal rights of the disabled; the repeated unlawful use of force against prisoners; the warehousing and abuse of imprisoned youths; and a parole system in shambles.

It should be noted the hijacking of crime for political ends is not a phenomenon unique to California.

In the early 1970s, President Nixon made a point of politicizing crime, and many other states did what California did, with equally disastrous results: increased prison population, longer sentences and escalating spending on incarceration. This is not a California problem; it is an American problem.

No federal judge has "threatened" a takeover of California prisons, contrary to Mr. Villines' dramatic pronouncement. Three federal judges have put court monitors in place to supervise the reform of systems of care in California prisons, and all three judges have said that if the Legislature does not ante up to its responsibility to undo the damage it has done, the federal judiciary will have to put the prison system in receivership.

These judges do not thump their chests and make claims to courage. They respond to the evidence presented in a court of law.

So what does our brave Legislature, including Mr. Villines, a Republican from Clovis, do in the face of imminent court action? It votes to build more prisons, and to pay for them with lease revenue bonds, better known as credit.

Unlike other bonds, a lease revenue bond does not require voter approval.. Legislators know polls have shown that taxpayers would not vote to pay for new prisons, so they delayed payment and gave corporate investment houses huge windfall profits from the interest on these bonds. That's what Mr. Villines calls "courage."

Mr. Villines rejected a "sentencing commission" -- a substantive reform recommended in every recent study of the problem, and by some of the same people responsible for creating our prison problem, including former Gov. George Deukmejian -- because, says Mr. Villines, that would undermine public safety.

Truth be told, Mr. Villines and his Republican colleagues fought a sentencing commission because it would limit their power to exploit crime as a political issue. It would take sentencing out of their control and put it under the supervision of a representative group of professionals from academia, law enforcement, and the public.

Some sentences would be shortened because they are disproportionate to the harm done, and some might be lengthened, like the penalty for driving while using a cell phone -- very dangerous behavior indeed.

Some people would be released, like the very elderly, and the very ill. The parole system would be revamped to focus on dangerous offenders. A sentencing commission would, in fact, make us safer, and it would be a step toward compliance with constitutional standards.

The Legislature has been failing the people of California for 30 years, and as one who has worked on behalf of men and women in prison, I can attest to the immeasurable human toll in compromised health and wasted life that exists behind those walls as a consequence of political manipulation and our collective indifference.

I can only be grateful there are federal judges willing to hold the Constitution in one hand, and the evidence of neglect in the other, and then promise all Californians, free or imprisoned, that the law will be obeyed.

Catherine Campbell is a Fresno appellate and civil rights attorney. She can be reached at cathsoup@comcast.net.

http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/valley_voices/story/50121.html

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

Alone in a City’s AIDS Battle, Hoping for Backup

May 28, 2007
Alone in a City’s AIDS Battle, Hoping for Backup
NY Times
By IAN URBINA

WASHINGTON, May 28 — The nation’s capital is the only city in the country barred by federal law from using local tax money to finance needle exchange programs. It is also the city with the fastest-growing number of new AIDS cases.

These two facts keep Ron Daniels on the move, tirelessly driving his rickety Winnebago from drug corner to drug corner across the rougher parts of this city, counseling the addicted and swapping clean needles for dirty ones.

Faced with an AIDS problem growing here at a rate 10 times the national average, Mr. Daniels, the director of Prevention Works, the city’s only needle exchange program, is armed with a shoestring budget of $385,000 in private donations, a small fraction of what programs in other major cities receive in state and local money.

Since Washington is not part of a state, Congress controls the city’s local system of government, and for nearly a decade members of the House, citing concerns about worsening drug abuse, have inserted language into the bill approving the city’s budget to prohibit financing such programs.

That may soon change.

“This city’s situation is totally improper,” said Representative José E. Serrano, Democrat of New York and chairman of the subcommittee responsible for the District of Columbia appropriations bill. “It’s politically obscene to have Congress tell the District of Columbia that it can’t use local funds for something like needle exchange programs, which have been proven to have a major effect on fighting a deadly disease.”

Calling the matter both a public health concern and a basic political right of home rule, Mr. Serrano said he planned to make it a priority to remove the language that prevents the city from financing such programs. The city’s mayor, Adrian M. Fenty, has said he will provide city money as soon as Congress takes such action.

Washington was among the first cities nationally to create an AIDS monitoring office after the virus first appeared in the United States more than 20 years ago. But it has slid backward in its fight against the disease, which is commonly spread by intravenous drug users sharing needles.

“For every person I help, there’re seven more I can’t reach,” said Mr. Daniels, 49, who describes his program as providing a thin wall between the city’s drug and AIDS epidemics. “But I’d be reaching a lot more if my hands weren’t tied.”

Critics of needle exchange programs argue that rather than reducing the suffering of drug users and preventing them from spreading diseases, the programs foster further drug use.

“We need to fight drugs, not show people that they can be used in a safe manner,” Representative Sam Graves, Republican of Missouri, said last year during House floor debate about drug policy.

Mr. Daniels said fighting drugs was exactly what his program did.

“The needle is just an enticement, really,” he said, looking through the screen door of his van at a line of about 10 people who gathered within minutes of his arrival at a corner on the city’s grittier Northeast side.

He said his program, which reaches about one third of Washington’s estimated 9,700 intravenous drug users, relied on clean syringes to attract users so he and his staff of four could counsel them about drug rehabilitation and testing for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

“Want ointment? Alcohol pads?” asks Mr. Daniels, running down his checklist as he prepares supplies for a heroin addict who counts a week’s worth of used needles, dropping them in a plastic bucket. “Need food? Condoms?” Mr. Daniels asks.

One by one, they file in: a security guard sick of hiding his addiction from his wife, a carpenter looking for methadone, a prostitute with a bad case of the shakes. Many are rail thin. Most have sores.

Teefari Mallory sits at the laptop entering data on each user. Three other staff members go into the neighborhood to talk about safe sex and AIDS prevention.

“Give me 5 apples, 10 blues and 2 groins,” says a man named Bernard after dropping 17 used syringes, a week’s supply, into the bucket.

“Apples” and “blues” are syringes used by addicts who have been taking drugs for shorter periods. “Groins are what you use when all your other veins collapse,” said Mr. Daniels, who used to be known on the streets as Boo when he sold drugs and needed four hits of heroin a day to get by.

In Washington, with just over half a million residents, one in 20 are H.I.V. positive.

And the number of people with AIDS is growing. The city’s rate of new AIDS cases was 128.4 per 100,000 people in 2005, compared with a national average of 13.7 per 100,000, according to the most recent data available from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which compares the district with states rather than other cities.

Intravenous drug use is the second-most-common way H.I.V. is spread among men in Washington, with unprotected sex being first, according to city health officials. For women in the city, sharing needles is the most common mode of H.I.V. transmission, city officials say.

There are more than 200 needle exchange programs in at least 36 states, about half financed by city or state money, according to the North American Syringe Exchange Network. Needle exchange programs and support services in New York City, for example, receive more than $3 million in state and local money, according to the Harm Reduction Coalition, which works with 12 programs in the city.

Back at the Winnebago, Yvonne Zywusko, a 39-year-old prostitute, climbed on board, shaking in withdrawal from not having used heroin in over a day.

“Look at me,” she said as she dropped two used needles in the bucket. “I wasn’t raised this way. I went to Catholic school. My family had a lot to offer me, and I missed out.”

Reaching out to prostitutes is an especially high priority of Mr. Daniels’s program, since they have great potential to spread H.I.V.

Seeming disgusted with herself, Ms. Zywusko described how she sold her body and slept in stairwells, but she began shaking her head as she added that she was still not ready or able to kick her addiction.

She added that the one line she was trying not to cross is sharing needles. “I got checked in January. It was negative,” she said about her last H.I.V. test. “I’m lucky.”

Financing for needle exchange programs is hardly Washington’s only problem in its fights against AIDS.

“D.C. is a city where a progressive local government wants to do the right thing, but a lot of factors work against it,” said A. Cornelius Baker, a policy adviser in Washington and the former executive director of the Whitman Walker Clinic, which ran its own needle exchange program in the city until 1998, when Congress first blocked local money from going toward such programs.

The city’s AIDS prevention office is currently on its 12th director in just over two decades, a turnover rate that has hampered its focus, Mr. Baker said. The city is also predominantly black, and it has a large gay population, and the infection rates for both communities have historically been high, he said. Shame and stigma have also hindered a willingness among blacks to confront the problem, he added.

There are also broader prohibitions.

In 1988, Congress banned federal money from being used on needle exchange programs, though it included an exception allowing the president to waive the federal ban if review by the surgeon general or secretary of Health and Human Services determined that syringe exchange programs were proven effective and did not increase drug use.

A number of federal studies found that such programs did not increase drug use, and in 1998 Donna Shalala, then the secretary of Health and Human Services, concluded, “A meticulous scientific review has now proven that needle exchange programs can reduce the transmission of H.I.V. and save lives without losing ground in the battle against illegal drugs.”

However, President Bill Clinton did not remove the ban on syringe exchange financing, and in 1998 Congress reinforced the ban by removing the executive waiver.

The attention paid to the issue helped embolden critics in Congress, who decided not only to tighten the federal ban but also to block Washington’s own financing of such programs. In recent years, Mr. Clinton has said he regrets not having done more to lift the ban.

Across the Anacostia River and worlds away from the wealth and power of Capitol Hill, Curtis Toney, 40, groans as he gently lowers himself into the Winnebago’s overstuffed chair. Mr. Toney unwraps a bandage on his leg. The smell makes Mr. Daniels step back.

“We have got to do something about that,” Mr. Daniels said, reaching for gauze pads.

Mr. Daniels was infected with H.I.V. over 17 years ago after sharing a needle. He said he began using hard drugs when he was a teenager and became an addict in his early 20s while in the military. A Washington native, he now parks his Winnebago near many of the abandoned buildings and corners where he once bought and used his drugs.

A man arrives neatly dressed but with no needles to swap. He asks for a referral to an outpatient drug rehabilitation program. “I got a problem,” he says, explaining that the city’s in-patient drug programs last too long and his employer will not give him that much time off for “personal reasons” without asking questions. “I’d be fired if I tried to explain.”

Mr. Daniels estimates that he makes 50 referrals to drug treatment programs per month.

“I got the guy you need to call,” Mr. Daniels told the man. “But, look,” he added, looking him squarely in the eyes, “I will see you next week, and I’m going to check up on what you’re doing.”

Barclay Walsh contributed reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/washington/29cnd-district.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2007

A scale for the price of life. In Iraq, a human life is worth $2,500; in Manhattan, $1.8 million

A scale for the price of life
In Iraq, a human life is worth $2,500; in Manhattan, $1.8 million
Tom Engelhardt
Sunday, May 20, 2007

What is the value of a human life?

We usually think of this in terms of sentiment -- of memories, grief, love , longing, of everything, in short, that is too deep and valuable to put a price upon. Then again, is anything in our world truly priceless?

As anyone who has ever taken out a life insurance policy knows, we humans are quite capable of putting a price on life -- and death. In her book "Pricing the Priceless Child," Viviana Zelizer reminds us that, starting in the 1870s in the United States, in that era before child labor laws, the business of insuring working-class children, who were then valuable to poor families, achieved enormous success. For a few pennies a week, $10 in all, you could, for instance, insure your 1-year-old against the future loss to the family of his or her earning power.

The courts weighed in, assessing the literal value of an earning child to a family. In those days, poor urban children died regularly in staggering numbers under horse's hooves, the wheels of street cars, and trains. In an 1893 editorial, the New York Times referred to this as "child slaughter," and juries reacted accordingly. When Ettie Pressman, just 7 years old, died under a team of horses in 1893 while crossing New York's Ludlow Street with her 9-year-old sister, a court granted her father $1,000 to compensate him for "his daughter's services and earnings." ("Yes," her father testified, with "what I earn and what the children earn used together we have enough. They earn $3 each week.")

This came to mind recently, thanks to another kind of "child slaughter" -- in this case by U.S. Marines, who, in early March, went on a killing rampage near Jalalabad in Afghanistan. Sorry, in Pentagon parlance, this is referred to as "using excessive force." A platoon of elite Marine Special Operations troops in a convoy of humvees was ambushed by a suicide bomber in a minivan and one was wounded. Initially, it was reported that as many as 10 Afghans were killed and 34 wounded as the platoon fled the site.

Later, it was admitted that the Marines had wielded that "excessive force" excessively and long after the ambush had ended, laying down a deadly field of fire at six spots, at least, along a 10-mile stretch of road. Their targets, according to a draft report of the U.S. military investigation of the incident (which the Washington Post got its hands on) were Afghans, on foot and in vehicles who were "exclusively civilian in nature" and had engaged in "no kind of provocative or threatening behavior."

In the process, the Marines were reported to have murdered "12 people -- including a 4-year-old girl, a 1-year-old boy and three elderly villagers.'' According to a report by Carlotta Gall of the New York Times, a "16-year-old newly married girl was cut down while she was carrying a bundle of grass to her family's farmhouse. (U.S. troops at the time took the camera of an Afghan Associated Press photographer who happened to come upon the scene and "deleted" photographs from it, including ones "of a four-wheel drive vehicle where three Afghans had been shot to death inside.")

After much protest in Afghanistan, Col. John Nicholson met with the families of the (now) 19 Afghans who had been killed and the 50 who had been wounded by the Marines. He offered this official apology: "I stand before you today, deeply, deeply ashamed and terribly sorry that Americans have killed and wounded innocent Afghan people." And then he paid about $2,000 per death to family members. The military calls these "condolence payments" and makes similar ones for deaths judged wrongful, in Iraq.

Recently, through a Freedom of Information Act request, the American Civil Liberties Union pried loose some of the requests for compensation payments submitted by Iraqis and Afghans (and the military's decisions on them, including denials of payment). They make grim reading. Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher offered this description: "What price (when we do pay) do we place on the life of a 9-year-old boy, shot by one of our soldiers who mistook his book bag for a bomb satchel? Would you believe $500? And when we shoot an Iraqi journalist on a bridge we shell out $2,500 to his widow -- but why not the measly $5,000 she had requested?"

In 2005, Iraqi payments already seemed to average about $2,500 for a wrongful death. That, for instance, is what the families of two-dozen unarmed Iraqis slaughtered in another Marines-run-amok moment at Haditha, also after an attack on a convoy of humvees that wounded a Marine, received. ("They ranged from babies to adult males and females," said Ryan Briones, a Marine witness to the event. "I'll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood.")

This practice is not new to President Bush's wars. During the Vietnam War, as part of the American pacification program, U.S. officials made what were called solatium payments for wrongful deaths caused by American forces. Back then, the United States valued Vietnamese adults at about $35, while children's lives were worth about $15.

We don't know who exactly decided on the value in U.S. dollars of the life of a 16 year-old Afghan girl, slaughtered while carrying a bundle of grass to her family farmhouse, or on the basis of what formula for pricing life the decision was made.

Despite the relatively small amounts paid out in Iraq, we do know that total official payments for wrongful deaths, as well as for injury and collateral property damage, caused by American troops, total at least $32 million, according to Editor & Publisher's Mitchell -- and that figure is considered low because similar payments are made unofficially "at a unit commander's discretion."

We also know something about how the U.S. government evaluated the wroth of the lives of slaughtered American innocents after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The family or spouse of a loved one murdered that day was also given a monetary value -- $1.8 million, on average from the September 11th Compensation fund, created by an act of Congress and signed into law by the president 13 days after the attacks.

So there we have it. In the modern version of "child slaughter," the U.S. government has indeed offered the world an evaluation of what price slaughter should exact in the deaths of innocents everywhere:

The value of a civilian slaughtered by al Qaeda terrorists on Sept. 11: $1.8 million.

The value of a civilian slaughtered at Haditha, Iraq, by U.S. Marines: $2,500.

The value of a civilian slaughtered by U.S. Marines near Jalalabad, Afghanistan: $2,000.

Never say that the U.S. government is incapable of putting a price on the deaths of innocents.

Tom Engelhardt is the founder of www.tomdispatch.com. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2007/05/20/INGOMPSTQT1.DTL

This article appeared on page D - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.

Posted by lois at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

CA: The Orange Grove: Prison deal froze out voters

Sunday, May 20, 2007
The Orange Grove: Prison deal froze out voters

New facilities financed with bonds that public was denied a chance to OK.

This month's prison deal brought cheers and plaudits from virtually all political corners in California. The Legislature, threatened by a federal court takeover of the state's prison system, averted the crisis - it is hoped - by enacting a comprehensive bill to deal with prison overcrowding and other corrections issues. Gov. Schwarzenegger hailed the agreement as another example of how California can work in a post-partisan world.

But, like most political decisions made under duress, there are legitimate questions as to whether the deal reflects good public policy - or whether it was even legal.

To recap: California has a huge and growing prison population. Those who are politically conservative were not about to let convicted felons out early. Those on the left - who would prefer more leniency for the incarcerated - were pushing for programs dealing with rehabilitation as well as a new sentencing commission.

But political compromise in California is difficult, and often the only way to reach that compromise is with lots of taxpayer dollars to appease both sides. It is amazing what a soothing effect buckets of taxpayer cash can have on the adversaries in a political dispute.

That is what happened here. The tough-on-crime Republicans got their extra prison beds - 53,000 - and the Democrats got their rehabilitation programs designed to reduce recidivism.

The centerpiece of the agreement was a $6.1 billion bond proposal. That is a huge amount of indebtedness, especially considering that voters just approved $42 billion in infrastructure bonds last November.

Which brings us to the No. 1 question posed by taxpayers: Why were these prison bonds not put to voters for approval?

The short answer - really no answer at all - is that, as "lease revenue" bonds, they are exempt from voter approval.

There is no debate that lease revenue bonds, and their questionable cousins, "certificates of participation," are instruments of indebtedness. However, because their repayment is - in theory - not guaranteed by the state's general fund, they are not considered "general obligation bonds" which, if over $300,000, require voter approval.

Last time we checked, $6.1 billion is a bigger number than $300,000.

In any event, there are instances at both the state and local level where lease revenue bonds make sense. Specifically, if the improvement being financed generates revenue, you can argue that voter approval should not be required because the source of the repayment does not put taxpayers at risk.

The clearest example of this is a public parking garage. Garages generate money, which can be used to repay the bondholders. Some publicly financed sports facilities, and their attendant retail and other business properties, might also be candidates for lease-revenue financing.

Which brings us to prisons. What revenue do prison facilities produce? Well, none. Lease revenue bonds in this context are based on a fiction. Rather than face voters who might reject long-term financing for prison construction, our political leaders have signed off on a system whereby the debt will be "repaid" by future revenue appropriated to the Department of Corrections. In other words, general fund money will simply be transferred from the right pocket (Corrections) to the left pocket (bond payments).

How did this come about? Without going into all the gory details, simply understand that a lot of special interests make a lot of money on the public debt "industry." Bond underwriters, bond lawyers and the bond buyer community love public debt, and they are not going to let a little thing like a constitutional provision mandating voter approval stand in their way.

Over the past several decades, the law has been carefully crafted by law firms specializing in public debt to create fictions like lease- revenue bonds and certificates of participation. Indeed, in their marketing literature they openly brag about being able to "circumvent voter approval."

But what is good for the public debt industry and politicians looking for a quick fix to a thorny problem is not necessarily good for taxpayers. In addition to ducking voter approval, lease-revenue bonds are more expensive for the very reason that they are not backed by the full faith and credit of the state. Indeed, the true cost of this "bond" proposal could be as high as $15 billion - well over twice the amount being used for the construction itself. This is truly adding insult to injury.

What is needed to rein in politicians from both parties is a constitutional amendment requiring a public vote for all long-term indebtedness. That was the original intent of the California Constitution in 1849. Thus, in addition to general obligation bonds, voters should be able to approve lease-revenue bonds, certificates of participation, long-term pension obligations and other post-retirement benefits promised by politicians and bureaucrats who will be long gone when our children are still paying off this debt.

It is time to stop the fiction and have our leaders face reality.

the Orange County Register..
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/abox/article_1700144.php

Posted by lois at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

Boston Herald- Op-Ed: Give taxpayers a prison break

Give taxpayers a prison break
By Carl Sciortino
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Boston Herald

Massachusetts taxpayers are paying $43,000 per year to incarcerate people, and now we are facing a proposal to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new and expanded facilities. I believe we can better direct our money and resources if we address our excessive incarceration rate at the root: mental illness, substance abuse and mandatory minimum sentencing.

It is estimated that nearly one in six inmates committed their crimes to support a drug addiction. More than 16 percent of jail inmates suffer from some sort of mental illness, 70 percent of whom were arrested for nonviolent offenses. When someone is picked up on the streets intoxicated, why are we paying $43,000 a year to lock them up rather than providing them with treatment services?
At a recent forum I attended, then-Corrections Commissioner Kathleen Dennehy reported that there are approximately 250 people civilly committed every day, with no criminal charge whatsoever, who are there for one reason only: because there aren’t enough detox and treatment beds.
Sheriff Andrea Cabral touched upon this issue in a recent Boston Herald article.
Leslie Walker, executive director of the Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, and Sheriff Michael Bellotti have echoed Sheriff Cabral’s concerns that we need to be looking into alternatives to incarceration, such as examining our state’s mandatory minimum sentencing laws and providing treatment on demand for substance abuse.
It’s too easy to simply lock these individuals in our jails.
We need to ask ourselves whether building more jails and prisons is the answer. I believe it is not. The more we build, the easier it is to simply lock people up without ever asking whether that is the best use of our resources or the best way to make our communities safer.
H.1723 - An Act Relative to Incarceration and Its Impact on Public Safety - calls for a five-year moratorium on the construction or expansion of jails and prisons while creating a special commission to make recommendations related to overcrowding, the effectiveness of incarceration on issues such as mental illness and substance abuse, and alternatives to sentencing for more cost-effective means to reduce overcrowding and ensure public safety.
It is clear that our current strategies for reducing overcrowding are not working. New jails and new prisons will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars without addressing how we can actually improve public safety.
More money for the Department of Correction is not the answer. Incarcerating more of our citizens who are in need of forms of treatment is not the answer. We need to understand that overcrowding cannot be solved by building more correctional facilities; it requires a fundamental re-examination of why our facilities are overcrowded to begin with.

Carl Sciortino is state representative from the 34th Middlesex District, including neighborhoods in Somerville and Medford.
http://news.bostonherald.com/editorial/view.bg?articleid=1003317&format=text

Posted by lois at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)

Wall Street Journal: Profits for Private Jailers

SMART MONEY
The Wall Street Journal Sunday
Profits for Private Jailers
By DAN BURROWS
May 27, 2007

The prison business looks ready to stage a breakout.

Tougher mandatory sentences were already straining the nation's jails. Now, the Department of Homeland Security's Border Initiative and its detention of undocumented immigrants has further burdened the system. Federal prisons already have 33% more inmates than they were designed to house and state prisons are similarly overcrowded.

The upshot? A severe shortage of prison space -- and a robust outlook for the three biggest private jailers.

A Need to Outsource

The vast majority of prisons are still owned and operated by federal or state governments; less than 8% of prisons are outsourced to private operators. But the private market -- dominated by Corrections Corp. of America, Geo Group and Cornell -- is expected to grow substantially over the next five years.

A February report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonprofit research foundation, forecasts a 13% increase in the inmate population by 2011 -- in line with past growth rates, but further compounding the overcapacity problem. That amounts to as much as $27.5 billion in new prison construction and operation.

That kind of burden leaves states and the federal government with little choice but to outsource incarceration to private companies.

Corrections, Geo and Cornell are "far and away the biggest beneficiaries of that trend," says Patrick Swindle, an analyst with boutique investment bank Avondale Partners in Nashville, Tenn.

Higher Profit Margins

Take Corrections, the biggest of the bunch with about a 50% market share and expected earnings growth of some 22% a year over the next five years. The company recently amended a contract with California to house an additional 4,700 inmates, with more expected to come from the state's desperately overcrowded system. Occupancy rates of 90%-plus and better contract terms are boosting profit margins.

Geo, with 30% of the market, is enjoying new contracts, better terms and sky-high occupancy rates as well. As a result, analysts, on average, expect earnings growth of 16% a year for the next five years.

Another plus is the company's emerging Geo Care business, which takes over crumbling state mental institutions. "These are very old state facilities, many of which need to be replaced," Mr. Swindle says. "Geo Care is a first mover in the space, and that business is really beginning to get its legs." Geo Care contributed $70 million to Geo's 2006 revenue of $861 million, almost double its contribution the year earlier.

Small but Growing

With just 8% of the private prison market, Cornell is the smallest player. But the company is expanding its Folkston, Ga., prison in response to demand from the U.S. Marshals Service. And in January, it renewed a long-term contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to add housing at its facility in Big Spring, Texas.

Cornell's long-term earnings-growth rate is projected at 11% a year for the next five years.

There's another bright side to this somewhat dark industry: These stocks have a defensive aspect. Jamie Cuellar, portfolio manager at Brazos Capital Management, which owns shares in all three companies, says the sector is almost countercyclical.

"When times are bad, more people tend to go to jail," Mr. Cuellar says. "It's awful, but it's true."

Write to Dan Burrows at dan.burrows@dowjones.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118022826756215918.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Posted by lois at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2007

CA: Gov. wants to track gang parolees. The $48-million proposal calls for electronic monitoring

Yet another...predictable outcome of the sex offender stupidity...

From the Los Angeles Times
Gov. wants to track gang parolees
The $48-million proposal calls for electronic monitoring, but Democrats opponents cite the high cost and unproven results.
By Evan Halper
Times Staff Writer

May 26, 2007

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants the state to track scores of violent gang parolees the way it does sex offenders, monitoring them with ankle devices and maintaining a statewide database that records their movements.

On Friday, the governor proposed extending a pilot program - used to monitor 20 gang members in San Bernardino - to Los Angeles, Sacramento and Fresno as part of what he called a comprehensive strategy to combat gang violence.

"We are targeting gangs inside and outside the prisons," Schwarzenegger said at an Oakland news conference.

"We will also treat convicted gang members like sex offenders," he said.

"The worst of the worst will get" global positioning system "bracelets so we know exactly where they are and what they are doing. If they try to recruit new members or terrorize people in the community, we will know where they are and we will be able to bust them."

The plan, while applauded by some law enforcement and community groups, received faint praise from the Democrat-dominated Legislature, where members advocate a more preventive approach to gang violence.

Some Democrats suggested that the governor's $48-million proposal, which also modestly increases spending on job training, witness protection and activities for at-risk youths, lacks substance.

They question whether spending scarce resources on ankle bracelets, in particular, is the most effective way to fight crime.

"These little shots here and there don't seem to make a difference," said Assemblywoman Anna Caballero (D-Salinas), head of the Select Committee on Youth Violence Prevention.

"You need a coordinated plan with an overall strategy," she said.

Caballero said the ankle bracelet technology "is untested and very expensive."

The bracelets are so costly, in fact, that the state can afford to contribute only 20 to gang prevention efforts in each of the three new cities targeted for the program. Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary James Tilton said the expense comes mainly from two areas. Each black anklet is equipped with an antenna and costs more than $3,000 per year. The state also spends thousands of dollars more paying parole agents to monitor the movements that the bracelets record.

The state is already preoccupied with getting 3,000 of the bracelets on high-risk sex offenders, the result of an initiative approved by voters in November.

"What we're trying to do is move this program forward, to show it can be successful with gang members," Tilton said. He said that if the state succeeds, the program would be expanded.

Department officials say that in San Bernardino, the bracelets have helped police locate gang members at the scenes of several crimes, including a carjacking, drug trafficking and shots fired at police officers.

The tracking device also helped police locate the suspect in the murder of a gang member who was wearing a bracelet by tracing where the victim had been before he was killed.

Since March 2006, the 20 devices have been used to monitor a total of 50 gang members in San Bernardino. Department officials say that more than half have been returned to custody for parole violations or other crimes.

The issue of gang violence has been prominent in the Capitol this year as the governor and legislators struggle to find solutions to what statistics show is a rapidly growing problem. Figures released by the administration show that gang-related crimes in Los Angeles were up 14% last year, even as overall crime declined. In Compton and Santa Ana, more than two of every three homicides recorded in 2005 were gang-related.

The state Department of Justice estimates that California has more than 420,000 gang members.

"The state must coordinate the fight against gangs," Schwarzenegger said.

"When we crack down in one area they pop up somewhere elseŠ. We are telling the criminals the crackdown on them will not stop anymore at the city limits or the county line," Schwarzenegger said.

His plan includes the creation of a state anti-gang coordinator who would work with local agencies, as well as the creation of regional task forces and a centralized criminal intelligence and analysis unit that would track gang activity in the state's 22 prisons.

Caballero says some of the ideas merit consideration, but criticizes the overall plan as being light on prevention strategies such as job training and other social service programs.

She notes that in Los Angeles, city and county officials estimate that they use more than $900 million in local, state and federal money each year combating gang violence.

The governor's proposal to add $48 million in spending statewide, she said, "stops short of proposing significant new investment in anti-gang programs."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gangs26may26,0,4548423.story?coll=la-home-center
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

Posted by lois at 05:21 PM | Comments (0)

WI: Prison mental health unit for women backed

The Capital Times

Prison mental health unit for women backed
Judith Davidoff ‹ 5/24/2007 10:52 am

In its scathing report on conditions at Wisconsin's Taycheedah Correctional Institution, the U.S. Justice Department noted that there were many instances when inmates at the women's prison required inpatient psychiatric care but did not receive it.

"Staff also stated that some inmates are housed in administrative segregation solely because their psychiatric symptoms are so severe that there is simply no other place to put them," investigators wrote in their May 2006 report. "This often leads to ... further dangerous behavior."

While the state does operate an inpatient treatment center for men inmates with severe mental illness, there is no equivalent facility for women inmates. But as the defendant in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union -- and with the threat of another lawsuit coming from the U.S. Justice Department -- the state is taking steps to change that situation.

The state Building Commission in April recommended building a free-standing $11 million, 45-bed female treatment center at the Winnebago Mental Health Institution. The Joint Finance Committee is expected to vote today on whether to support this project in the 2007-09 capital budget.

In its request for funding, the department of Health and Family Services said the state would likely be sued if it did not build a facility equivalent to the Wisconsin Resource Center for male inmates.

"Should the state fail to voluntarily correct these shortcomings, the U.S. DOJ has indicated it will initiate legal action to force compliance," the department said.

It also noted that the state's current practice of using the Winnebago Mental Health Institution for inpatient services was not adequate for several reasons, including insufficient space and appropriate security.

Todd Winstrom, attorney for Disability Rights Wisconsin, which has kept close tabs on health care issues at Taycheedah, agrees.

Winnebago is "not equipped to take female inmates for the long term," he said. "It hasn't really been effective from anyone's perspective."

In a memo to the Joint Finance Committee, Winstrom said the Department of Corrections estimates that 50 percent of women in Wisconsin's prisons have a diagnosed mental illness; 18 percent in this group have the "most serious and persistent" forms of mental illness.

The prevalence of mental illness among female inmates is twice that of male prisoners, Winstrom also said.

"The single most glaring need to get to the point where we're starting to provide minimally adequate treatment to the women with the most serious mental health needs in our prisons is the ability to offer intensive, inpatient treatment," Winstrom said in an interview. "The U.S. Department of Justice and ACLU both identified this as just a gaping hole in the range of services we're offering to these women."

Winstrom said putting mentally ill inmates in isolation only exacerbates an individual's symptoms and dangerous behavior and has, as noted in the U.S. Justice Department report, resulted in at least one inmate killing herself.

It behooves the state to address the mental health needs of women prisoners, Winstrom added.

"Women coming out of prison who've been able to get the kind of treatment they need because this facility exists will return to the community much more stable, less likely to get into trouble again and much less likely to pose a public safety threat," he said. "Everyone benefits from this."

Efforts to reach Joint Finance Committee co-chairmen Sen. Russ Decker, D-Weston, and Rep. Kitty Rhoades, R-Hudson, were unsuccessful.
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/136184

Posted by lois at 05:18 PM | Comments (0)

WI: Her first vote put her in prison

Here's an example of the so-called "voter fraud" Monica Goodling & Co were so intent in prosecuting. Lois

Her first vote put her in prison
Woman is one of five from city convicted of voter fraud
By BILL GLAUBER
Posted: May 21, 2007

Union Grove - Kimberly Prude is 43, a grandmother of three and the face of voter fraud in Wisconsin.

The first vote she cast in her life, in the 2004 presidential election, landed her in the middle of a political storm and put her on a road to a two-year sentence inside the Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center.

"At this point, I'm not interested in voting," Prude said last week in a measured voice as she sat in a spare meeting room at the minimum security prison.

It was her first interview since her conviction in September 2005. She wore a gray T-shirt, blue jeans and white tennis shoes. She smiled and appeared comfortable discussing her life in prison, where she earns 26 cents an hour as a cleaner in the kitchen and is studying to complete a high school equivalency diploma.

On advice of her attorney, she declined to discuss the case, which is on appeal.

How Prude got from the streets of Milwaukee to a prison in Racine County is now the stuff of American political history.

Prude cast an illegal vote in 2004. As a felon on probation and under state supervision, she was ineligible to vote.

A woman who dropped out of high school in 10th grade, struggled with substance abuse and compiled a criminal record, Prude found herself up against the might of the federal system.

"I tried to get help in the beginning," she said. "I wrote Oprah (Winfrey's) O Magazine. I got my daughter to call certain talk show hosts, Montel Williams, Maury Povich. There was no interest."

In almost any other election year in perhaps any other state, such a vote might have gone unnoticed and unpunished.

But in Wisconsin - a key battleground state - the closely contested 2004 presidential election between President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry
(D-Mass.) was placed under a microscope, especially in Milwaukee. GOP warned of fraud

In the days leading to the election, Republicans leveled accusations that the vote was subject to fraud and challenged 5,600 addresses of voters on Milwaukee's rolls, while Democrats warned of intimidation and potential suppression of minority voters including African-Americans, such as Prude.

The election was held. The votes were counted. The debate died down.

But the issue did not go away.

In early 2005, Republican officials in Wisconsin complained to senior White House political adviser Karl Rove that Milwaukee U.S. Attorney Steven M. Biskupic was not being aggressive enough in pursuing voter fraud cases.

Biskupic has said he was unaware of those complaints and has repeatedly denied that his office prosecuted any voter fraud case because of White House pressure. As early as 2005, Biskupic was on an "evolving list" of 26 U.S. attorneys to be fired by the Bush administration, according to The Washington Post.

After all the allegations of voter fraud made during the 2004 presidential campaign, federal attorneys in Milwaukee brought 14 cases. Six of those were dismissed before trial, and only five convictions were secured, all Milwaukee residents. Prosecutors had to prove that the voters intended to defraud the system. 10% of all U.S. cases

Although 14 cases may not sound like a lot, they made up more than 10% of all the federal voter fraud cases brought in the United States from 2002 to 2006, according to The Christian Science Monitor.

Four of the cases here involved allegations of double voting, and 10 others involved felons accused of voting.

As in a majority of states, Wisconsin prohibits felony offenders from voting until they have completed probation and parole. Only two states deny the right to vote for all ex-offenders, and nine other states restrict certain ex-offenders or impose a waiting period to vote, according to The Sentencing Project, an advocacy group.

One of those charged by prosecutors here was Derek Little, a felon from Milwaukee, who registered to vote and then cast a ballot on the same day. The only identification he had was a parolee card.

"In big bold letters, it says OFFENDER, and they still let me vote," Little said. "I thought it was their job to know the rules."

Federal attorneys dropped the case. But the experience left Little shaken.

"The Department of Corrections should take the time out and make sure a person understands each and every one of the rules 100 percent," he said. "I don't want anyone else to go through this situation. It will turn you into a nervous wreck."

Prude's case was different.

She worked as a local volunteer for the John Kerry-John Edwards campaign, even calling people to inform them how they could vote.

Went to Sharpton rally

On Oct. 22, 2004, she volunteered for a rally that featured the Rev. Al Sharpton. As the rally ended, Sharpton encouraged the crowd to follow him to City Hall, where people could register to vote. Prude joined the crowd, registered to vote and then submitted an absentee ballot. While waiting in line, she said, she heard someone asking for people to work the election-day polls. Prude signed up.

Later, Prude said she notified her parole agent that she had a job as a poll worker and the agent told her she couldn't vote. Prude claimed she called the election commission to attempt to withdraw her ballot but that a person she spoke with told her not to worry about the vote.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Frohling said Prude's story "changed repeatedly."

"You didn't get the sense (from Prude), 'I made a mistake, I forgot.' This was, 'I did it, now I'm trying to cover.' "

During the three-day trial, Prude testified she made a "terrible mistake" by voting and tried to correct it.

The government said Prude was amply warned that felons under supervision could not vote. Prude's parole officer testified that on Sept. 27, 2004, he warned her not to vote.

The government said that at the polls on election day, "Prude improperly vouched for individuals she had never met. She also signed as the corroborating witness on two on-site registration cards for the same voter."

A jury convicted Prude of voter fraud.

She was sentenced to serve two years concurrent with a state sentence for forgery. She pleaded guilty to the state charge in 2000; her six-year prison term was stayed and she was placed on supervision.

The voting fraud conviction contributed to her probation being revoked.

Due for release in fall

Prude is expected to be released from prison in the autumn. She plans to return home and pursue a job lead.

For now, she said, the things she misses most are holidays. Asked what gift she wants for her first Christmas at home, she thought for a moment and said, "You know what, I want no surprises this year."

Original Story URL: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=608187

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

N.M. pays more for private prisons, report says

N.M. pays more for private prisons, report says
Associated Press- Thursday, May 24, 2007

SANTA FE - The amount the state pays to house inmates at private prisons soared 57 percent over the past six years, a period in which the number of prisoners rose by 21 percent, a new audit shows.

In general, the report said, the state Corrections Department "lacks active long-term planning to accommodate inmate growth, leading to a disjointed approach to acquiring bed space that proves costly."

The 100-page audit by a Legislative Finance Committee review team said New Mexico pays significantly more than nearby states do for private-prison housing.

"Business decisions across two administrations may result in New Mexico paying an estimated $34 million more than it should pay for private-prison construction costs," the review said.

Corrections Secretary Joe Williams said higher operating costs are justified. He said New Mexico's costs cannot be compared to those for other states because prisoners here have more space, more programs and more security. Williams also said New Mexico's labor costs are higher, which increases the cost of building prisons.

The Corrections Department's official response said that "instead of looking at the use of privatization in such a negative manner, New Mexico should be proud that we are leading the nation and that it is working so well."

More than 40 percent of New Mexico's inmates are in private prisons. The total inmate population was 6,544 as of Wednesday.

The state pays nearly $69 a day per inmate at the private Lea County Correctional Facility in Hobbs and more than $70 at the Guadalupe County Correctional Facility in Santa Rosa.

The report said Texas pays $34.66 a day per inmate for private prisons, Colorado pays $50.28 a day, Oklahoma's rate is $41.23, Idaho pays $42.30 and Montana $54.58.

The LFC recommends New Mexico restructure contracts with the GEO Group, the state's major private-prison operator, for existing facilities. GEO also will operate a private prison being built at Clayton.

The state's contract for the Clayton prison will have a more equitable fee structure, and if the Hobbs and Santa Rosa contracts were renegotiated to conform with that, New Mexico could save nearly $5 million a year, the report said.

The report also said the state has paid for services it hasn't received. For example, the state in 2004 required GEO, formerly Wackenhut, to provide four mental health staffers for a sex-offender unit. The company billed the state more than $300,000 but did not hire new staff until 2005, the report said.

GEO was brought in to manage private prisons by former Gov. Gary Johnson, a trend continued by Gov. Bill Richardson.

The Institute on Money in State Politics said Richardson received more than $42,000 from GEO - more than it gave to any other candidate for a state office last year in the nation. The company gave other New Mexico politicians about $80,000 in the last election, it said.

GEO has contributed the maximum allowed to Richardson's presidential campaign, and individual GEO executives gave $9,000 to the campaign.

Williams, who worked for Wackenhut before becoming secretary, disputed any link between GEO's political contributions and higher private prison costs. A spokesman for Richardson said last year it was outrageous to imply any connection.

The LFC report also said the Corrections Department needs better oversight of health care for inmates, both to contain costs and to ensure adequate care.

The state is negotiating with Correctional Medical Systems of St. Louis to take over an inmate health care contract recently terminated with Wexford Health Services.

Pittsburgh-based Wexford was criticized for the quality of care. Williams said the state has recovered about $160,000 from Wexford for staffing shortages and improper billings.

He said his department will try to incorporate audit recommendations into the new contract being negotiated.

Under that contract, CMS cannot save money by leaving positions open and must have 268 full-time employees, compared to the 208 who worked for Wexford, said Tia Bland, a spokeswoman for the Corrections Department.

It's been estimated prison health care will cost New Mexico $34 million this year and $39 million in the fiscal year that starts July 1.

Two prison health experts who visited five New Mexico prisons in February and March said several lack enough doctors, dentists and optometrists.

Their report said some diabetics at the New Mexico Women's Correctional Facility in Grants weren't getting medication to fight infections as required by national standards; no medical staff was at the Penitentiary of New Mexico in Santa Fe during a March 9 visit; and nurses often spend time doing clerical duties because there are so few clerical workers. E.W. Scripps Co. C 2006 The Albuquerque Tribune
http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2007/may/24/nm-pays-more-private-prisons-report-
says/

Posted by lois at 05:08 PM | Comments (0)

CCA Expands Oklahoma Prisons

Associated Press
Corrections Corp. Expands Okla. Prisons
Associated Press 05.24.07, 11:05 AM ET

Private prison operator Corrections Corporation of America said Thursday it will expanding two Oklahoma prisons to accommodate increased demand from several state customers.

CCA plans to add 660 beds to its 1,032-bed Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing, Okla., and another 660 to its 1,010-bed Davis Correctional Facility in Holdenville, Okla. The company expects to complete the expansions by the end of the third quarter at a cost of $90 million.

The state of Oklahoma handles inmates at both prisons, which are running at or near full capacity.

Corrections Corporation of America (nyse: CXW - news - people ) shares hit a new 52-week high of $63.25 in morning trading before sliding back to $62.79, up 38 cents.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/24/ap3754928.html

Posted by lois at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2007

NY: State senator proposes registry for drug dealers

State senator proposes registry for drug dealers
By YANCEY ROY
ALBANY BUREAU
(Original publication: May 25, 2007)

ALBANY - First a sex-offender registry. Now one for drug dealers?

A Southern Tier senator said yesterday that he would introduce a bill to create a statewide roll call for convicted felony drug dealers. Similar to the one for sex offenders, convicts would have to registe with the state for up to 10 years, notifying the Department of Criminal Justice Services of any address changes, and the list would be available on the Internet.

"I think it would be one of those extra deterrents and I think it would clearly be effective," said Sen. George Winner, R-Elmira. "Drug dealers are not out there wanting to advertise their location. And it would make neighbors and others aware and very vigilant of their activities."

The Republican said that similar legislation has been proposed in Maine and New Mexico. Also, he noted that the federal Drug Enforcement Agency recently launched a "Meth Site Registry" that posts locations in each state where methamphetamine clandestine labs or dumpsites have been found.

Winner got the idea from Police Chief David Rouse of Bath, in Steuben County.

"Absent of a drug-dealer registry, drug dealers can conceal their identities and criminal pasts, moving undetected from one jurisdiction to another while continuing their illicit trade," Rouse said in a statement. "When encountered by law enforcement they provide bogus identification and their true identifies are not known until they are subsequently arrested and fingerprinted."

The bill does not yet have a sponsor in the Democrat-led Assembly. Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, D-Brooklyn, who heads the Codes Committee that weighs all criminal-justice legislation, said the proposal is laudable and he is willing to take a look at it but has some concerns.
"My initial reaction is that it may take away from the importance and efficacy of the sex-offender registry," he said.

The state has devoted a lot of resources to that registry because of the pernicious nature of sex crimes, he said.

"I'm just a little afraid of doing it because, why not all crimes? Why just drug crimes?" he asked.

Cara Matthews contributed to this report.

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070525/NEWS05/705250363/1021

Posted by lois at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2007

Maine Voices: Building More Prisons Isn't the Answer

MAINE VOICES Building more prisons isn't the answer
Our state has failed to meet its obligation to deal with the mentally ill and substance abusers.

Lani Graham, M.D. May 23, 2007

— We read with interest the May 7 editorial entitled "Prison overcrowding can't be ignored."

The last paragraph began, "Long-term solutions need to be considered as well " and suggested that these should include building new prisons. Disappointing, but not surprising.

In his 2001 book, "Going Up The River: Travels in a Prison Nation," Joseph T. Hallinan outlines in vivid detail the reasons for the growing number of inmates and the solution on the top of everyone's list -- more prisons.

Rural states are considered perfect sites for new prisons, not only to house inmates, but as money-making operations that take overflows from other states and employ poor people.

Hallinan's book describes this as the "largest silent migration in American history of young urban men to prisons in white rural America."

No doubt we will soon hear that building yet another prison, perhaps the one now being spoken of for Washington County, is a "win/win" solution

Before Maine gets sweet-talked into going into the prison business, it might be worth considering other "long-term solutions."

We believe the current crisis in Maine's prison system relates as much to failures in the health care system, in public health and in the community as it does to sentencing options.

It seems likely that ignoring these failures and the knee-jerk "building prisons" will, at best, be a temporary fix, and at worse exacerbate the situation.

Health care is in crisis in Maine. Everyone knows it from the rural mill worker to the CEO of any Maine business. Current Maine health care spending is $8.3 billion and rising.

This is a public health crisis of the first magnitude. Everyone is looking for ways to cut costs in health care and two favorite areas are substance abuse and mental health -- in the community and in the jails and prisons.

Mental health treatment in prison is not a current priority, even for those inmates who will shortly return to their communities.

Jails and prisons are filled with people who have mental health and substance abuse problems.

A 2006 report from the Bureau of Justice shows that not only is there a high prevalence of mental health problems among prison and jail inmates, these inmates are more likely to have been homeless in the year before arrest, experienced physical or sexual abuse, and are more likely to be recidivists.

Nearly a quarter of prison and jail inmates who had a mental health problem, compared to a fifth of those without, had served 3 or more prior incarcerations.

The simple truth is that people who are mentally ill or substance-abusing are being incarcerated because we as a society are choosing this solution instead of addressing the root problems in the community or treating the patients.

Fifteen percent of state prisoners and 24 percent of jail inmates meet the criteria for a psychotic disorder, as compared to 3 percent in the general population.

It used to be that we as a society were horrified by tales from old mental hospitals, where the mentally ill were kept in large open wards and never allowed outside. What about now, when we keep the mentally ill in shackles in tiny prison cells, deprived of all personal contact, and explain our conduct by calling them "criminals"?

Also troubling is the influx of thousands of returning veterans who may have traumatic brain injuries and/or depression, PTSD, substance abuse and other common psychological responses to combat.

Will they too, become fodder for the new social services safety net -- the nation's prison industry?

We can and should lead the nation by strengthening our health care system, making sure that private and public insurance covers mental illness and substance abuse, and removing the multiple...legal and policy barriers that keep people from getting the help they need before they fall into the criminal justice system.

Shame on all of us if we simply push more of our citizens into prisons.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Lani Graham, M.D., is a family practice physician who serves on the Governor's AdvisoryCouncil for Health Systems Development. Carol Carothers directs the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Maine.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=107404&ac=Phedi

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

Maine is a state addicted to prisons

Erik Steele: Maine - a state addicted to prisons
Tuesday, May 22, 2007 - Bangor Daily News

Maine, like the rest of America, is addicted to prisons. The only way we are going to beat this addiction is if we stop using our drug of choice - more prisons - for our current problem of prison overcrowding. The answer to prison overcrowding is fewer prisoners, not more prisons.

The principle reason our prisons are overcrowded is that jail time is our society's preferred method of treating people who commit crimes primarily because they are addicted to drugs or alcohol, or are mentally ill. Half of all prisoners in America have these conditions as the primary problems that led to their crimes. If, as part of their sentences, we aggressively treated those prisoners for the illnesses they have instead of simply incarcerating them, and devoted more resources to treating these problems before they resulted in crimes, we would need fewer prisons, not more.

In recent discussions about running out of jail cells in Maine we have been doing just what addicts usually do when they run out of their drug - scramble desperately for more drugs. Recent proposals put forward as the answer to Maine's prison overcrowding have primarily been ways of housing more prisoners, including sending state prisoners to county jails, outsourcing Maine's prison overcrowding problem to other states by sending prisoners to a for-profit prison in Oklahoma, building a new prison in Cutler, and expanding the Charleston Correctional Facility.

But Maine has more than enough prisons; what is has is too many prisoners. There are currently more than 2,100 in Maine's state prisons alone, a number projected to grow more than 20 percent in the next four years. In this regard Maine is like the rest of America which is why, by some estimates, Americans are the most imprisoned people in the world. According to California Prison Focus, America has 25 percent of the world's prisoners but only 5 percent of its population. A record 7 million Americans, or one in 32 adults, was either in jail, on probation, or on parole at the end of 2005. More than 2.2 million Americans were in prison in 2005, up from 1 million in 1990. Drug charges account for 46 percent of total prison population growth since 1995, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

There are many reasons we are addicted to prisons. These institutions are an apparently simple solution to the complex problem of crime, and it is certainly gratifying to just lock criminals up, out of sight and mind, and throw away keys. We are tired of being crime victims, and prison is a partial solution to our crime problems (despite growing evidence that education, jobs, drug treatment, and mental health treatment are more effective at reducing crime than prison time). We have used the courts and prisons as our main attack in the "war on drugs."

The American private prison industry, which actively lobbies for laws that increase prison sentences and supports political candidates who are supposedly "tough on crime," is increasingly influential in this country, and in Maine. It has a vested interest in using prisons as the only hammer to hit the nail of crime.

The same private prison company that owns the prison in Oklahoma to which Maine proposes sending some of its prisoners has contributed thousands of dollars to the political campaigns of Maine Gov. John Baldacci, 2006 Republican candidate for governor Chandler Woodcock, and the Maine State Legislature's Criminal Justice Committee Chairman William Diamond, according to recent news stories. That company, Corrections Corp. of America, is the country's largest private prison company, and it did not make political donations in Maine because it loves Mainers. It did so to buy access to Maine's debate about its prison overcrowding problem, and you can bet it will not be lobbying for funding for programs such as drug courts and other alternatives to our prison overcrowding problem.

Withdrawal from addiction, as Merriam-Webster's definition points out above, causes predictable withdrawal symptoms. In this case, withdrawal will result in claims that our crime rates will increase if we stop incarcerating so many people, that our leaders are going soft on crime and drugs, and that those of us who want this addict off this drug are addicted ourselves to smarmy liberal instincts to save souls. There will be accusations we want to empty our prisons, etc.

Rubbish. Finding alternatives to prison is a good, solid Maine type of idea, like selling bronzed moose poop to New Yorkers. It is common sense, and good economic sense, because we can no longer afford the expensive prison solution that does not work well as treatment programs for the mentally ill and drug addicted. In addition, we keep running out of prison space no matter how many costly prisons we build. Maine spent more than $140 million on prison construction in the late 1990s, and here we are again needing millions more for the same idea. We need a better idea this time.

Several other states, including our neighbors in Connecticut and Vermont, are well on their way to finding jail time alternatives to solve prison overcrowding because they, too, can no longer afford this prison addiction. A commission has been set up in Maine to look at prison overcrowding and is due to report back to the Maine Legislature in December; It will suggest many of the same solutions recommended by previous commissions that looked at the same problem (most recently in 2004). It should not recommend more prisons.

Unless we deny ourselves the easy, hugely expensive solutions of more prisons or exporting our prisoners, we are just going to keep snorting this drug of incarceration. Instead, we should put our money into innovative programs that keep the drug addicted and mentally ill out of jail unless there is no alternative, and save jails for those who truly need to be there. If we need more prison capacity in the short term it should be approved only until that time when we have kicked our addiction and found other solutions.

It's time for us to get tough on this drug, and "Just say No!"

Erik Steele, D.O., a physician in Bangor, is chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.

http://bangordailynews.com/news/t/viewpoints.aspx?articleid=150109&zoneid=35

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OK: House passes faith-based prisoner re-entry program

May 23, 2007
House passes faith-based prisoner re-entry program
TIM TALLEY
Associated Press Writer

OKLAHOMA CITY ‹ Legislation that encourages churches and other faith-based groups to prepare state inmates for life after prison and reduce the number of repeat offenders was overwhelmingly approved by the Oklahoma House Tuesday.

Lawmakers voted 93-4 for the legislation in spite of concern that it may violate the constitutional separation between church and state and would give faith-based groups some of lawmakers' oversight authority over the state Department of Corrections.

Rep. Richard Morrissette, D-Oklahoma City, said he agreed with the goals of the legislation. "They are extremely meritable and worthy. But you are crossing the line," Morrissette said.

He complained that the bill would grow government by creating a new Office of Faith Based Initiatives and that there would be little accountability for how tax dollars allocated to the office would be spent.

Rep. Al Lindley, D-Oklahoma City, said it is appropriate for church groups to work with state prisoners but they should pay for the services with money the groups raise on their own, not state tax dollars.

"State government has no business paying for programs run by a church," Lindley said.

The Department of Corrections already sponsors faith- and character-based programs at two state prisons, the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center for women in McCloud and the medium-security Oklahoma State Reformatory in Granite, said DOC spokesman Jerry Massie.

The programs are patterned after similar programs in Texas, Kansas and Florida and are designed to provide opportunities for offenders "to make positive, lasting life changes," Massie said. The programs are voluntary and anyone can apply to participate.

"Institutions that have implemented these programs in other states have reported less violence among inmates, fewer inmate misconducts and a decrease in recidivism," Massie said.

Character training curriculum was developed with the help of the Character Training Institute of Oklahoma City, a nonprofit group that provides seminars and consulting services to encourage success in business, schools and other organizations by developing good character, he said.

Massie said character training is performed by prison staff and volunteers and religious training is performed exclusively by volunteers. A total of 200 inmates are enrolled in the yearlong program at Mabel Bassett, he said.

In Arkansas, the InnerChange Freedom Initiative has a capacity for 50 female prisoners at the state's Wrightsville Unit. The state's Tucker Unit can take 120 men.

In the Bible-based Arkansas program, inmates live in a separate unit and attend classes on skills including computer skills and anger management. They also participate in religious devotionals. After being released from prison, participants receive guidance from a mentor and a local religious group for at least six months.

Rep. John Wright, R-Broken Arrow, said Oklahoma's faith-based legislation offers "a glimmer of hope" to state inmates who need help as they prepare to leave their prison cells and re-enter society.

"Send a ray of hope that you think their lives can be productive. And give them some help," Wright said.

The measure's author, House Speaker Lance Cargill, R-Harrah, said government should not discriminate against faith-based and volunteer groups that want more input in counseling and rehabilitation of state inmates.

"If it's a good program, demonstrated results, it's worthy of support," Cargill said.

He said the faith-based program will initially be funded with $100,000 in state funds. A policy council composed of lawmakers, prosecutors, crime victims and former inmates will review prison re-entry policies and suggest improvements.

Cargill has said statistics point out that two-thirds of all prison inmates commit new offenses and wind up back behind bars within three to five years.

The measure would establish incentives for partnerships between prison officials and faith-based and community groups. It would also encourage private and public groups to help inmates find jobs and services before th