« January 2008 | Main | March 2008 »
February 29, 2008
TN: ACLU Sues Tennessee's Felon Disenfranchisement Law As Modern Day Poll Tax
ACLU Sues Over Tennessee’s Felon Disenfranchisement Law
2/25/2008
Group Says Payment Provision Is A Modern Day ‘Poll Tax’
NASHVILLE – The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Tennessee filed a lawsuit today in federal court challenging the state’s 2006 law that made the restoration of voting rights for people convicted of crimes contingent on the payment of all outstanding legal financial obligations (LFOs), namely restitution and child support fees. According to the ACLU’s lawsuit, requiring some individuals to bear an undue financial burden before voting is tantamount to a poll tax in violation of the constitutional right to vote and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.
“Reports show that, nationally, over 50 percent of criminal defendants are indigent at the time of sentencing. Therefore, requiring a person with a criminal conviction to pay a fee before restoring their right to vote is nothing more than a modern day poll tax,” said Nancy Abudu, staff counsel with the ACLU Voting Rights Project. “This law locks citizens out of the democratic process when it comes to issues of great concern to them. The result is that the political power of poor people is further diminished and the collateral consequences of poverty multiply.”
Today’s legal action, filed against state and county officials, challenges a 2006 law that changed the process by which individuals with criminal convictions may seek the restoration of their voting rights. According to the law, “a person shall not be eligible to apply for a voter registration card and have the right of suffrage restored unless such person has paid all restitution to the victim or victims of the offense ordered by the court as part of the sentence... [and] unless such person is current in all child support obligations.”
The ACLU brought its lawsuit on behalf of three individuals – Terence Johnson, Jim Harris and Alexander Friedman – who have completed their terms of imprisonment, parole, and probation for their offenses. Johnson and Harris are ineligible to vote because they owe child support for children they currently have custody of. Friedman applied for restoration of his voting rights in 2006, but Tennessee denied his application, claiming he owes over 1,000 dollars in restitution.
“My dream is to have the opportunity to become a fully productive citizen again, regardless of my economic status. And I have the right to participate in the electoral process to bring about change to the issues that concern me most in my community,” said Terence Johnson, a plaintiff in this case. “I’ve served my time, I am a taxpaying citizen and I have custody of my daughter. It is wrong for the state to punish me and other people while we get our lives back on track.”
Until recently, Tennessee’s voting rights restoration law – a patchwork of rules, restrictions, and procedures – was the most confusing and complicated in the country. Although a former felon no longer needs to go before a judge to have his or her right to vote restored, the law still requires several procedural steps before restoration is complete. The ACLU is committed to securing additional reforms to make Tennessee’s voting laws more user-friendly and to ensure that all people who have been incarcerated can regain their full voting rights.
“The ability to vote should not be based on one’s financial status,” said Hedy Weinberg, Executive Director of the ACLU of Tennessee. “Penalizing low-income parents by charging them a fee to exercise their constitutional right to vote is shameful. This law has no place in a functioning democracy.”
In addition to the equal protection claim, the ACLU’s lawsuit charges the Tennessee law violates the 24th Amendment’s voting rights provision and the due process protections in the federal and state constitutions.
Attorneys on the case are Abudu, Laughlin McDonald and Neil Bradley of the national ACLU Voting Rights Project, Tricia Herzfeld of the ACLU of Tennessee, and attorney Charles Grant of the law firm Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC.
URL: http://www.aclu.org/votingrights/gen/34201prs20080225.html
A copy of today’s legal complaint is available at:
www.aclu.org/votingrights/gen/34203lgl20080225.html
Posted by lois at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)
PA Legislature asked to fund 3 more prisons
PA Legislature asked to fund 3 more prisons
Friday, February 29, 2008
By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau
HARRISBURG -- Jeffrey A. Beard is a state official who runs a steadily growing empire, one that will oversee hundreds more people this year than last and will cost $1.7 billion, or almost $67 million more than last year.
But unlike many governmental officials whose budgets and responsibilities are expanding, he's not happy about it.
Mr. Beard is the secretary of corrections, responsible for running the state's 27 prisons, which now hold 46,000 inmates, or 4,400 over capacity, with more checking in weekly.
As a result, he asked the state Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday to authorize construction of two or three additional prisons immediately at a cost of about $200 million each.
Because of tough, mandatory sentencing laws passed over the last 25 years and what he described as a "lock 'em up, throw away the key" attitude among many legislators, judges and constituents, the state correctional system has steadily expanded from the early 1980s, when there were only eight prisons with 8,000 inmates and a departmental budget of $94 million.
Mr. Beard told the committee that just since 2001, the prison population has grown by 21 percent, from 38,000 to 46,000.
"This growth is expected to continue at an average rate of 4 percent each year through the end of 2012, reaching 57,000 state prisoners," he said.
"Without authorization for further capacity and [without] legislation to mitigate the population growth, our state prison system may run out of bed space as soon as 2010."
He said his department is trying to ease the crowding with early release for non-violent prisoners, those convicted of lesser crimes and those who show good behavior while in prison. Such inmates, who aren't considered a danger to the community, are sent to half-way houses, where they still receive supervision, once they've served their minimum sentence. But the prison population keeps growing anyway.
The system can, to some degree, "double cell," meaning put two inmates in a cell designed for just one. That is already being done in many prisons but is not feasible in all areas of all prisons, either for security or medical reasons.
The cost of feeding and clothing prisoners, providing medical treatment and programs to help them overcome addictions to drugs and alcohol keeps rising, and now averages $32,000 per year per inmate. Two of the state's prisons house female inmates, and the rest are for men.
Mr. Beard said the state needs to build at least two new prisons, and preferably three, each costing about $200 million. There are eight sites in the running for the new prison buildings. The department recommended adding new buildings at existing prisons at Rockview in Centre County, Huntingdon in Huntingdon County and Graterford in Montgomery County near Philadelphia.
Mr. Beard said it takes two to three years to complete a new prison, so the state should get started soon for at least one of the new prisons to be ready by 2010.
Mr. Beard asked legislators to include $600 million in the next state capital budget, which will be voted on in late June or early July, at the same time the Legislature adopts a new operating budget of about $28.3 billion.
Capital projects totaling $11 billion are being requested by various state officials and legislators. Far less than that will actually be spent on capital projects, which are funded by massive borrowing that the state must repay.
Before a project can move ahead, the Legislature must approve it and then Gov. Ed Rendell must release the money.
Mr. Beard also gave the committee a short rundown on State Correctional Institution Pittsburgh, which was closed several years ago but now has been reopened due to the prison crowding crisis. It's being used for prisoners with drug and alcohol problems who are from the western part of the state. There are currently 932 inmates, with capacity for 1,500.
He wasn't sure how long it would remain open, saying much depends on how fast the new prisons are built and whether the growth in inmates slows down.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08060/861420-85.stm
Posted by lois at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)
MS: Senate OKs Bill for 3000 more cages
Senate OKs bill for more prisons
By Leah Rupp •\ February 28, 2008
Clarion-Ledger
Ten more counties could eventually see regional prisons go up within their boundaries under a bill that cleared the Senate this afternoon.
Senate Bill 2642 would create 3,000 new beds if all of the counties opened up jails with 300 beds a piece for state inmates.
Corrections Committee Chairman Willie Simmons, D-Cleveland, said planning for the future is essential with projected state prisoner numbers at about 28,000.
But several critics spoke out against the bill on the floor, saying more money for jails means less for other essential issues such as education and health care.
The bill passed by a vote of 37 in favor and 14 against.
"With all of the enhanced penalties we are passing, we are going to need these beds," said Simmons, adding that even if lawmakers approve the counties to build one of the jails, the commissioner of the Corrections Department would still have to sign off.
The Senate bill passed Thursday would approve Attala, Claiborne, Yalobusha, Tishomingo, Hancock, Lawrence, Copiah, DeSoto, Benton and Noxubee counties to also build new facilities.
But Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, said there are already enough people incarcerated in the state.
"What sort of people are we? Where are our priorities?" said Bryan, pointing to education and health care as areas money should be directed to instead of more jails.
Prisons should not be economic development pieces, he continued.
"Shame on us. We are trying to make money by incarcerating our fellow humans."
Regional jails have to be built using local and private funds, but the state would have to pay a per diem for any of Mississippi's prisoners that end up being housed there.
The state pays nearly $30 per inmate per day plus medical expenses at the Medicaid rate to house prisoners at regional jails. Usually, the money at first is used by local governments to pay off the construction debt.
By April 2009, 1,500 additional beds will open in new regional jails in counties that have already gotten approval from the Legislature in previous sessions.
Five facilities and one extension costing more than $55 million are in the works, Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps told The Clarion-Ledger in the recent past.
In all, with the new facilities that have already been approved, there will be about 4,600 beds in 16 regional facilities in Mississippi.
Other Corrections Committee bills passed this afternoon include:
- Senate Bill 2908, which would authorize the Corrections Department to contract with officials from Smith County for a maximum security regional correctional facility.
- Senate Bill 2136, which would allow some first-time drug offenders eligible for parole. A similar bill passed across the Capitol this week - House Bill
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080228/NEWS010504/
80228039
Posted by lois at 07:08 PM | Comments (0)
CT: Education Falls Below Prisons In State Budget
Education Falls Below Prisons In State Budget
By Julie Wernau, The Day
Published on 2/29/2008
Connecticut is one of four states in the nation spending more money on its prison system than on higher education, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts study released Thursday.
The study, “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008,” gets its name from the number of adult Americans currently incarcerated.
In Connecticut, taxpayers pay $1.03 toward prisons for every $1 spent on higher education. In the Northeast as a whole, from 1987 until the present, inflation-adjusted spending on higher education dropped 5.5 percent while prison spending rose 61 percent, according to the Pew findings.
“We didn't just wake up this morning and find ourselves here,” said Adam Gelb, project director for Pew's Public Safety Performance project. “This is a milestone that the nation has been approaching for a long time. Getting tough on criminals has gotten tough on taxpayers.”
The nationwide prison count has tripled since 1987, and the cost of imprisonment — about $86 per inmate per day in Connecticut, according to the state Department of Correction — has the potential to crowd out other pressing needs, said Susan Urahn, managing director for Pew Center on the States.
“States will need to make choices,” Urahn said. “Not necessarily between corrections and higher education, but between corrections and something.”
The Pew study found that public-safety initiatives like three-strikes laws, harsher sentencing laws and mandatory prison time for those who violate parole and probation, in addition to an aging prison population, have contributed to more Americans being incarcerated than at any other time in history.
“It's obviously troubling that our state is spending more locking people up than it is providing them with education,” said state Rep. Andrew M. Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, co-chairman of the legislature's Education Committee.
Fleischmann believes that if more people had access to higher education, fewer of them would be in prison.
In Georgia — a state that spends 50 cents on its prisons for every $1 spent on higher education — a scholarship program called HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally) provides free tuition and money for books to students with at least a 3.0 grade point average who are seeking a college degree from a Department of Technical and Adult Education or University System of Georgia institutions.
Fleischmann says that while Connecticut has an excellent university and community college system, the state needs to step up to make that education accessible.
The other three states spending more on prison than higher education are Vermont, Michigan and Oregon.
Nationwide, according to Pew, young black men are entering prison at an alarming rate. Approximately one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 is incarcerated, compared to one in 106 white men.
“I would be concerned if there were someone who was not disturbed by those numbers,” said Fleischmann.
Brian Garnett, spokesman for the state Department of Correction, pointed out that while Connecticut's prison-to-higher-education spending ratio was cited in the study, overall Connecticut was average in terms of its prison population growth and the percentage of state money spent on its prisons.
Garnett said since Commissioner Theresa Lantz took the helm in 2003, she has made re-entry programming a priority for Connecticut's prisons, doubling the number of halfway-house beds.
“Because they work,” Garnett said, pointing to a 24 percent recidivism rate for offenders who re-enter society through halfway houses, as opposed to a 47 percent rate for those who simply re-enter straight out of prison.
In Texas, the state decided that it would rather put the money needed to build eight new prisons into community programming for released inmates, according to the Pew study, and its prison population has now stabilized.
Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell has said she has a similar outlook on prisons.
“Community release programs that are conducted under strict guidelines and conditions enhance public safety because offenders who re-enter society under parole supervision are far less likely to reoffend than those who are released without the benefit of a supervised release,” Rell said in a press release last month.
Fleischmann said the legislature is moving in the right direction toward spending more money on education and less on prisons.
http://www.theday.com/re_print.aspx?re=24da50f5-b377-4c4b-bafe-34f89da09542
Posted by lois at 06:43 PM | Comments (0)
February 28, 2008
1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, Pew Study Says
February 28, 2008
1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says
By ADAM LIPTAK, NY Times
For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.
Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.
Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.
The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are.
The report’s methodology differed from that used by the Justice Department, which calculates the incarceration rate by using the total population rather than the adult population as the denominator. Using the department’s methodology, about one in 130 Americans is behind bars.
Either way, said Susan Urahn, the center’s managing director, “we aren’t really getting the return in public safety from this level of incarceration.”
But Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former federal judge, said the Pew report considered only half of the cost-benefit equation and overlooked the “very tangible benefits — lower crime rates.”
In the past 20 years, according the Federal Bureau of Investigation, violent crime rates fell by 25 percent, to 464 for every 100,000 people in 2007 from 612.5 in 1987.
“While we certainly want to be smart about who we put into prisons,” Professor Cassell said, “it would be a mistake to think that we can release any significant number of prisoners without increasing crime rates. One out of every 100 adults is behind bars because one out of every 100 adults has committed a serious criminal offense.”
Ms. Urahn said the nation cannot afford the incarceration rate documented in the report. “We tend to be a country in which incarceration is an easy response to crime,” she said. “Being tough on crime is an easy position to take, particularly if you have the money. And we did have the money in the ‘80s and ‘90s.”
Now, with fewer resources available, the report said, “prison costs are blowing a hole in state budgets.” On average, states spend almost 7 percent on their budgets on corrections, trailing only healthcare, education and transportation.
In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budgeting Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 increase once adjusted for inflation. With money from bonds and the federal government included, total state spending on corrections last year was $49 billion. By 2011, the report said, states are on track to spend an additional $25 billion.
It cost an average of $23,876 dollars to imprison someone in 2005, the most recent year for which data were available. But state spending varies widely, from $45,000 a year in Rhode Island to $13,000 in Louisiana.
The cost of medical care is growing by 10 percent annually, the report said, and will accelerate as the prison population ages.
About one in nine state government employees works in corrections, and some states are finding it hard to fill those jobs. California spent more than $500 million on overtime alone in 2006.
The number of prisoners in California dropped by 4,000 last year, making Texas’s prison system the nation’s largest, at about 172,000. But the Texas legislature last year approved broad changes to the corrections system there, including expansions of drug treatment programs and drug courts and revisions to parole practices.
“Our violent offenders, we lock them up for a very long time — rapists, murderers, child molestors,” said John Whitmire, a Democratic state senator from Houston and the chairman of the state senate’s criminal justice committee. “The problem was that we weren’t smart about nonviolent offenders. The legislature finally caught up with the public.”
He gave an example.
“We have 5,500 D.W.I offenders in prison,” he said, including people caught driving under the influence who had not been in an accident. “They’re in the general population. As serious as drinking and driving is, we should segregate them and give them treatment.”
The Pew report recommended diverting nonviolent offenders away from prison and using punishments short of reincarceration for minor or technical violations of probation or parole. It also urged states to consider earlier release of some prisoners.
Before the recent changes in Texas, Mr. Whitmire said, “we were recycling nonviolent offenders.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html U.S. map at this URL
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/One%20in%20100.pdf PDF of the Pew Report at this URL
Posted by lois at 06:18 PM | Comments (0)
NY: Overhaul Prisons to Cut Costs
Overhaul prisons to cut costs
By ELIZABETH LYNAM
[ Elizabeth Lynam is deputy research director of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan nonprofit civic organization, http://www. cbcny.org.]
First published: Wednesday, February 27, 2008
With the economy slowing and increasingly uncertain, New York needs to find ways to reduce expenses without harming essential public services. The state already faces closing a projected budget gap of $5.1 billion in the coming fiscal year, and that gap has been adjusted upward once just since January.
One place where the state can extract such savings is in its prison system. New York simply does not need all 69 of its correctional facilities. Some of those facilities are now more than half-empty, particularly at the medium- and minimum-security level. Two new maximum-security facilities -- Upstate in Malone and Five Points in Romulus -- have eased demand for beds at that level. Once-overcrowded facilities are simply not anymore.
Overall, the state's inmate population has gone down by 9,000 since the peak in 1999, primarily because drug-related incarceration, which used to account for 35 percent of the incoming prisoners, now accounts for only 21 percent.
FACTS: All of this means that the way New York manages its correctional facilities can change. Unneeded facilities should be closed used for other purposes. The number of correctional officers can be reduced, too. State leaders have been exceedingly slow to respond to the trend. They have resisted closing even one facility, and, as a result, the number of correctional officers employed by the state has dropped by only 500, or less than 2 percent, while the prison population has dropped by 13 percent. Camp Pharsalia, a minimum-security work camp in South Plymouth in Chenango County, is a good example. Efforts by then-Gov. George Pataki to redirect the facility, which had been operating at partial capacity and is still only half-full, for another state purpose were beaten back by a combination of local and legislative resistance. The opposition stemmed in part from the fact that local employment at the facility would lapse for six months while it was overhauled for an alternative use.
The case exemplifies how intertwined the issues of prison closure and economic development have become in many communities in upstate New York. But the prison system should be built around correctional needs, not local employment.
Otherwise, unnecessarily high tax rates will continue to discourage the very employment that so many upstate communities need. New York state already has the highest combined state and local tax rate in the nation, and excessive state spending is part of the problem.
Running prisons is expensive, and, while underutilized facilities are kept open, funding for other needs goes unmet. The annual cost of keeping someone in the custody of the prison system including debt service and fringe benefits for employees is about $57,000 -- more than the cost of tuition, room and board at Cornell (now $48,200 for the College of Arts and Sciences). The annual operating cost of the whole prison system is $3.6 billion.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer has courageously decided to take another run at the issue and with more than one facility. He has given the one-year closure notice for Hudson, Camp McGregor, Camp Pharsalia, and Camp Gabriels, and plans to shrink the system over several years by 1,316 beds. The operating savings from these closures when fully annualized in the financial plan are estimated to reach $34 million. Another $30 million of savings in capital costs will be generated in fiscal year 2010.
These plans are a good start, but even more can and should be done to better use the facilities. The Citizens Budget Commission estimates that New York can save nearly $300 million a year by fitting the size of the prison infrastructure to the population it serves. An additional $100 million a year could be had from developing more effective and appropriate alternatives to incarceration for drug offenders. What constituent groups around the state must realize, as they are lining up to protest the governor's proposals, is that as long as these jobs are being supported by the state in underused facilities, there is no ability to invest as much in other important areas including schools and real economic development -- the kind that brings private capital and jobs.
The governor has the right and the responsibility to run a prison system that meets the state's needs to safely provide for the inmates in custody with the appropriate number of correctional officers. The Legislature and the public need to support this concept, so that the real needs of these communities can be identified and addressed.
Elizabeth Lynam is deputy research director of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan nonprofit civic organization, http://www. cbcny.org.
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=667147&category=OPINI
ON&newsdate=2/27/2008
Posted by lois at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2008
Californians United For A Responsible Budget -Brief Filed in Prison Overcrowding Lawsuit on Measures to Save Millions
February 27, 2008
Coalition Proposes Reductions in Prison Population
That Will Save the State Millions of Dollars
Brief Filed in Prison Overcrowding Lawsuit Advocates Measures
to Save Millions Without Affecting Public Safety
SAN FRANCISCO- Today Californians United For A Responsible Budget (CURB), a coalition of more than forty community organizations, filed an amicus brief in the prison overcrowding lawsuit being heard by a panel of three federal judges. In its brief CURB, whose constituent organizations represent those individuals and communities most directly impacted by public safety policies, asked the court to alleviate overcrowding by substantially reducing the number of people in State prisons.
"CURB opposes the State's response to overcrowding, its $15 billion prison construction program, AB900, because it simply expands a failed system without addressing the root causes of overcrowding, incurring huge costs with no demonstrable improvement in public safety," says Bob Lane of Critical Resistance, one of the CURB Member Organizations.
The Secretary of Corrections himself, James Tilton, admits the prisons are already "too big to manage." In addition to the enormous capital costs, the program irresponsibly commits the State to funding future staffing for additional prisons at a cost of more than $1.6 billion per year. "This massive program will continue the pattern of recent years by siphoning money from education, health care, and vital social services into prisons," continues Lane. To prevent the futile diversion of resources by AB 900, CURB asks the court to bar its implementation. Only then can the overcrowding crisis be genuinely addressed by pursuing a different approach.
Echoing a string of reports by State commissions and recommendations by State-appointed and funded experts -- reports and recommendations which the State has consistently ignored -- CURB advocates alleviating overcrowding by reducing the numbers of people in prison. Relying on these recommendations CURB asks the court to order the State to change its parole and sentencing policy, to fully fund Proposition 36's program of drug treatment instead of imprisonment, to release elderly persons from prison, and to provide housing and job assistance and health care to support those returning home from prison. These measures will bring with them significant cost savings, calculated by the experts to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
"Overcrowding violates the rights of those in prison while unnecessarily depriving their families and communities of their presence, all without making those communities safer," says Hamdiya Cooks of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, another member of the CURB coalition. "CURB's proposals give voice to those who have the most direct interest in changing the direction of the State's corrections policy. Without implementing the measures CURB proposes the State cannot adequately address prison overcrowding."
"The Governor's recent proposals for early release and changes in parole policy are steps in the right direction, but they do not go far enough to have a significant long term impact on the growing population of those in prison or on the burgeoning corrections budget," says Heidi Strupp of CURB member Legal Services for Prisoners with Children. "Overcrowding can only be alleviated by reducing the number of people in prison, coupled with the changes that CURB proposes, which will not only reduce the population but remove the pressures for future overcrowding."
Posted by lois at 07:10 PM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2008
Immigrants far less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes
February 26, 2008
National Briefing | West
California: Study of Immigrants and Crime
By JULIA PRESTON, NY Times
Immigrants in the state, about 35 percent of adults, are far less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan research group. Among men ages 18 to 40, the group most likely to commit crimes, native-born Americans were 10 times more likely than immigrants to be incarcerated for crimes in California prisons and jails. The study included both legal and illegal immigrants, without focusing separately on illegal immigrants. But it found that native-born American men ages 18 to 40 were at least eight times more likely to be imprisoned for crimes than Mexican immigrants in that age range who were not naturalized citizens — a group likely to have a high percentage of illegal immigrants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/us/26brfs-STUDYOFIMMIG_BRF.html?sq=California%20Crime%20and%20Immigration&st=nyt&scp=1&pagewanted=print
Posted by lois at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)
Mrs. Johnnie Carr, 97, Is Dead. Civil Rights Leader
“Look back, but march forward,” Mrs. Carr urged the huge crowd of young people.
February 26, 2008
Johnnie Carr, 97, Is Dead; Was Active in Bus Boycott
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Johnnie Carr, an early civil rights activist who joined a childhood friend, Rosa Parks, in the historic Montgomery bus boycott and stayed involved in the movement up to her final days, died here on Friday. She was 97.
Her death was confirmed by a spokeswoman for Baptist Medical Center South, where she had been hospitalized after a stroke on Feb. 11.
Mrs. Carr succeeded the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association in 1967, a post she held at her death. It was that group that led the boycott of city buses in 1955 after Mrs. Parks, a black seamstress, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to whites on a crowded bus.
A year later, the Supreme Court struck down racial segregation on public transportation.
Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, praised Mrs. Carr’s commitment to the civil rights cause. “I think ultimately, when the final history books are written,” Mr. Dees said, “she’ll be one of the few people remembered for that terrific movement.”
As the civic group’s president, Mrs. Carr helped lead several initiatives to improve race relations and conditions for blacks. She was involved in a lawsuit to desegregate Montgomery schools, with her son, Arlam Jr., then 13, the named plaintiff.
In addition to her son, Arlam, Mrs. Carr is survived by two daughters, Annie Bell Beasley and Alma Lee Smith, The Montgomery Advertiser reported.
Mrs. Carr played a prominent role in 2005 on the 50th anniversary of Mrs. Parks’s refusal to give up her bus seat, speaking to thousands of schoolchildren who marched to the Alabama Capitol.
“Look back, but march forward,” Mrs. Carr urged the huge crowd of young people.
She also traveled to memorial services in Washington, where her eulogy for Mrs. Parks was “really the most dynamic” moment, recalled Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Just days before her stroke, Mrs. Carr participated in King Day ceremonies in Montgomery, speaking after a parade. Admirers marveled at her energy and commitment into her 90s.
In recent decades, civil rights landmarks, including the site where Mrs. Parks, who died in 2005, was arrested, have become historic points of interest for tourists.
“When we first started, we weren’t thinking about history,” Mrs. Carr told The Associated Press in an interview in 2003. “We were thinking about the conditions and the discrimination.”
Posted by lois at 07:26 PM | Comments (0)
February 25, 2008
NYPD in the Subways. An interactive map of racial profiling
NYPD in the Subways. An interactive map. Check out the racial breakdown of people stopped and charged while riding the subways in NYC
http://www.nydailynews.com/features/maps/subways_nypd/
Posted by lois at 09:49 PM | Comments (0)
February 24, 2008
TN: CCA to Build 8th Private Prison
Tenn.: New Private Prison Opening
CCA to Add 8th Private Prison in Tennessee
February 22, 2008: 12:40 PM EST
NEW YORK (Associated Press) - Corrections Corporation of America on Friday announced plans to build its eighth private prison facility in Tennessee.
The Nashville-based company said the $143 million facility will hold more than 2,000 prisoners and create 350 new jobs.
The company said it is still in "final negotiations" with Trousdale County, but plans to begin construction this summer on the 108-acre site in Hartsville, about 40 miles northeast of Nashville.
The Trousdale Correctional Center is then expected to be completed within 18 months.
While no main customer for the prison has been finalized, the company plans to offer to hold prisoners from Tennessee, the federal government or other states with prison space shortages.
Company and state officials touted the new prison as an economic development opportunity.
"With this new endeavor, CCA brings enhanced economic vitality to northern Middle Tennessee through purposeful careers and millions of dollars in salaries, benefits and tax revenue," John Ferguson, the company's president and chief executive, said in a release.
The company currently employs nearly 2,000 people in Tennessee.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/apwire/afbf6a02373ce7eabbf72886
f786d145.htm
Posted by lois at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2008
Minors in the Big House
Minors in the Big House
Te-Ping Chen
The Nation
January 28, 2008
First, she felt shock. When Oluwaseun Animashaun, of Providence, Rhode Island, learned that her state was planning to try 17-year-olds as adults, she couldn't believe it.
She thought of her younger brother, struggling to get an education in a city where, according to The Washington Post, less than half of students ever graduate high school. She thought of people she knew at school, people growing up in neighborhoods where over a third of families live below the poverty line.
She felt incredulity--and then anger. And now they want to throw us in jail?
Though geographically, Rhode Island is a tiny fragment of a state tucked just under Massachusetts' sleeve, the state--and particularly its capital, Providence--is a microcosm for many of the issues facing the rest of the United States. Rising levels of child poverty. Deepening inequalities. Manufacturing jobs that have disappeared, leaving a vacuum of opportunities for those with little education.
And, increasingly, the mounting challenge of supporting a prison population that continues to expand with alarming speed. Since 1976, with the rise of a "get-tough" stance on crime, Rhode Island's prison population has ballooned by 457 percent.
This summer, with a $300-million budget deficit forcing Rhode Island to cut state spending, lawmakers trained their sights squarely on one group: arrested youth. It costs $98,000 per year to detain a youth at the state's juvenile detention center, which provides counseling, education and rehabilitative services. By contrast, it costs $39,000 a year to lock someone up at Rhode Island's adult prison. To lawmakers, sweeping 17-year-olds into state prison seemed an easy way to shave off dollars from the state budget.
They hadn't reckoned, however, on youth like Animashaun. Or on how misguided the policy would ultimately prove to be.
Locking Up the Future
The nationwide movement to try youth as adults took off in the wake of the 1989 Central Park jogger case, a grisly incident in which five teens raped a 29-year-old woman and left her for dead. "People started fearing the onslaught of a new generation of 'superpredators'," says Liz Ryan, who directs the Campaign for Youth Justice. Particularly with the teen arrest rate for murder on the rise at the time, the case scattered panic: between 1992 and 1995 alone, 40 states passed laws making it easier to try juveniles as adults.
In fact, the predicted surge in youth violence never materialized. Amid economic growth from 1994-2005, violent youth crime actually dropped by 46 percent, according to a National Juvenile Justice Network report (PDF). And while the topic of juvenile crime continues to conjure up lurid images of youth violence or sensational accounts of gangs, in places like Connecticut fully 96 percent of youth are arrested on nonviolent charges (e.g., drugs, theft).
Nevertheless, trying youth in adult criminal court remains more common than ever. Ten states automatically transfer 17-year-olds into the adult system for all criminal offenses, three others do the same for 16-year-olds, and a Campaign For Youth Justice report (PDF) reveals that in 40 states, children as young as 14 are considered competent enough to stand adult trial. Every year, an estimated 200,000 youth enter the adult criminal justice system under state laws that automatically define them as adults, either because of their age or offense.
Meanwhile, every day roughly 7,500 youth are incarcerated in adult prison, sometimes for the most minor of offenses. Take, for example, the Wisconsin case of one 17-year-old girl sentenced to over two months in adult jail for stealing a neighbor's bicycle. Or the Florida case of a 17-year-old boy, likewise incarcerated in an adult facility after stealing a classmate's gym clothes.
Jail is a "terrible, terrible" place, says Ryan. And this is especially true if you are only 16 or 17 years old: incarcerated youths are among the most vulnerable of inmates, both physically and psychologically. In 2005, though youth accounted for only 1 percent of inmates, they made up 21 percent of all inmate-on-inmate sexual assault cases. And youth locked in adult prisons are a staggering 36 times more likely to commit suicide than those incarcerated in juvenile detention facilities.
While some facilities--for example, in Washington, D.C.--try to protect youth by locking them in secluded cells for up to over 23 hours a day, such isolation can prove traumatizing, particularly for youth with mental or emotional problems. According to one mother whose child was transferred to solitary confinement, such a life eventually drove her son, Kirk, to kill himself. "[We] did our best to support Kirk," she told the Campaign for Youth Justice in a recent interview. "Together we never missed a phone call or visit." But shortly after Christmas in 2005, Kirk was found dead--hanging by a blanket from the cell's smoke detector.
Psychological Costs
Even for youth who manage to escape a prison sentence, says Jametta Alston, Rhode Island's Child Advocate, being tried as an adult has "horrible repercussions." A conviction in adult court leads to a permanent record, one that can bar youth from employment for years to come. "Unfortunately under these laws for youth, a little mistake can become a big one," says Alston.
Meanwhile, well over a decade after states first began trying youth as adults, today, a significant body of evidence suggests that sending youth to adult prison may actually encourage youth to commit more crimes--making them far more apt to re-offend upon release.
As Brown University's Director of Child Psychology Gregory Fritz notes, adolescents are not only more impulsive and aggressive than their adult counterparts, but their brains are also more "malleable." So while proponents of harsher youth penalties argue they will deter future criminals, in fact, says Fritz, locking up easily influenced youth alongside adults may be more like "enrolling them in a graduate course in criminality."
The research appears to substantiate such fears. A recent report convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that laws supporting the incarceration of youth in adult prisons encourage higher rates of recidivism among youth, particularly violent recidivism.
By contrast, ACLU studies (PDF) estimate successfully rehabilitating youth can save lives and state dollars--up to $1,470 per youth.
While laws need to "hold people accountable," says Shay Bilchik, the head of Georgetown University's Center for Juvenile Justice Reform, they also need to recognize that youth are still developing. "At the time we were passing the laws, no one had a crystal ball," says Bilchik, a former Florida prosecutor and previous proponent of harsher youth penalties. "Knowing what we do now, says Bilchik, it's time for reform."
These days, voters are overwhelmingly endorsing a similar view. A December 2007 poll found 80 percent of Americans support redirecting funds spent on incarceration to programs aimed at supporting youth development.
Meanwhile across the nation, states are reconsidering and revising the harsh laws that continue to leave thousands of youth behind bars. In 2006, Colorado eliminated the state's juvenile life-without-parole sentence. The New York Times reported that last year Connecticut, which previously tried all 17-year-olds as adults, revised its law upward to age 18. Similar moves are being explored in California, Michigan and Illinois, among other states. Advocates are additionally pushing for tighter federal protections of youth in the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, currently up for renewal in Congress.
Change is Possible
Yet this year, even as states across the nation were turning away from harsher youth sentencing laws, Rhode Island was moving to embrace them. Not to punish youth, but to cut costs. Legislators speculated sending 17-year-olds into adult prison (which provides less rehabilitative services than juvenile detention facilities) would save $3.6 million for the state.
According to mother and sentencing reform organizer Sheila Wilhelm, of Providence, whose 29-year-old son was recently released from prison, such a move wasn't surprising. When push comes to budget crunch, says Wilhelm, "it's easy for lawmakers to mistreat the most vulnerable people: the children and the poor."
Like most places nationwide, in Rhode Island, youth of color disproportionately suffer from harsher youth penalties. Blacks and Hispanics make up only 17 percent of Rhode Island's population, but constitute fully 81 percent of all arrested youth. (Nationwide, while black youth represent 64 percent of all juveniles arrested for felony drug offenses, they make up 76 percent of all such cases transferred to adult court.)
"It's up to the point I can't stand it anymore," says Animashaun, the 17-year-old daughter of Nigerian immigrants. "The government should be giving us tools to develop our lives, not lock us up. Why are we defining youth's lives with dollar signs?"
This June, Animashaun and other Providence youth began protesting the law with the backing of groups such as Youth in Action, Youth Pride, Inc., Providence Student Youth Movement (PRYSM), RI Kids Count, the ACLU, the Family Life Center, and Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE). They hosted a youth lobby day, a city forum, and turned out en masse for a series of press conferences and rallies.
Sympathetic legislators, including Rep. David Segal (D-Providence), joined the outcry. "Children can't vote, but we can throw them into jail?" says Segal. "It's an absurdity."
Advocates won their victory this November after, in the heat of reexamining the law, legislators discovered that trying all 17-year-olds as adults would actually end up costing the state dollars. While legislators had assumed it would cost $39,000 a year to incarcerate a youth in state prison--the average cost for a state inmate--because Rhode Island's prison protects youth by housing them in maximum security, the per-youth cost is actually $100,000 a year. Chagrined, lawmakers repealed the law (though 500 youth's cases are still being heard in adult court, pending settlement of a lawsuit brought by the Rhode Island Office of the Public Defender).
Looking back, says Animashaun, the campaign wasn't always easy. "Our education is not the best," says Animashaun. "We're not exposed to systems or government, so many of us just didn't know how to voice our anger."
But for the youth who became involved, it was transformative. "Before, I would say I never really believed in change," says Jasmin Woodbury, a 17-year-old member of DARE active in the campaign. "But once you set your mind to it, and set a goal and strategy, it can really happen."
"So many times when issues happen we don't find out until way after there's nothing we can do," says Woodbury. "We wanted to show that youth are there to stand up for themselves."
Originally from Oakland, California, Te-Ping Chen is a December 2007 graduate from Brown University. She currently lives in Washington, D.C.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080218/minors
Links to the organizations and papers mentioned in this article can be found by the URL above.
Posted by lois at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)
CT: Training School Reversal
he most glaring hole in the juvenile detention system is the lack of facilities for girls. Long Lane has been closed for five years, and there has been little progress in helping female offenders under DCF care. Many are sent to York Correctional Institution for women in Niantic for lack of a more appropriate setting. Others are sent to states as far away as Utah and Iowa, where they are isolated from their families. This is a tacit admission that the state is giving up on girls at a critical time in their development. Girls can't wait years for the DCF to fulfill plans for a new facility.
Training School Reversal
February 15, 2008
Hartford Courant
No doubt about it, the Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown is a prison. No school that we know of has high-security fencing, fortress-like windows and unwelcoming steel doors.
For those who may have forgotten its genesis, the $57 million building that replaced the Long Lane School was supposed to help rehabilitate troubled boys. Instead it became a symbol of the corruption in the Rowland administration and an icon of poor planning by the state Department of Children and Families, which is responsible for young offenders. Its operation has been the subject of repeated investigations and scathing criticism by the state's attorney general and child advocate.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell was so fed up with worsening conditions there that she vowed to close the place in favor of smaller, community-based facilities where children would get counseling, schooling and other needs closer to home. Now, equally fed up with the lack of progress on alternatives, she wants to retool the facility and double the number of beds there to its capacity of 220.
The governor's catalyst is a pending surge in juvenile offenders that will result from a new law passed in June. As of 2010, the state will no longer treat 16- and 17-year-old offenders as adults unless they have committed certain violent crimes, such as murder or rape.
She's right that the state must plan now to accommodate the change, which is a good one. She complains that the legislative leadership has failed to act in favor of smaller treatment centers. Until it does, the Connecticut Juvenile Training School will have to do.
Certainly, creating smaller communities inside the training school and separating older from younger offenders is preferable to sending young people to adult prisons, where they have a greater chance of becoming hardened criminals. Perhaps the governor's request for $8 million to make room for more juveniles in the Connecticut Juvenile Training School would be acceptable with the right programs in place.
The most glaring hole in the juvenile detention system is the lack of facilities for girls. Long Lane has been closed for five years, and there has been little progress in helping female offenders under DCF care. Many are sent to York Correctional Institution for women in Niantic for lack of a more appropriate setting. Others are sent to states as far away as Utah and Iowa, where they are isolated from their families. This is a tacit admission that the state is giving up on girls at a critical time in their development. Girls can't wait years for the DCF to fulfill plans for a new facility.
Weaving older offenders into the current system requires planning. The goal is to help teenagers headed in the wrong direction get a second chance. So far, the state is not succeeding all that well. Up to half the youths released from the school eventually return.
While the state works out a better strategy, the Juvenile Training School will have to take in more children. But this isn't ideal.
Copyright © 2008, The Hartford Courant
courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-juvyschool.artfeb15,0,2886369.story
Courant.com
Posted by lois at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2008
VA: Senate Agrees to Re-entry Bill & Bill Moves to the House
“How much more do you need to know to move to say that housing, employment and medical care assistance is needed for those who re-enter society?” Branch-Kennedy said.
Senate OKs Inmate Rehabilitation Bill
By Alexander Harris
February 4, 2008
RICHMOND – The Senate on Monday unanimously approved a bill that mandates the creation of a plan to help every Virginia prison inmate re-enter society.
Senate Bill 200 directs the Virginia Department of Corrections to develop a society re-entry plan for every new inmate as soon as possible from the date of incarceration.
The plan would allow inmates to complete drug rehabilitation programs, vocational training and college courses in preparation for their productive return to society, said the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Linda “Toddy” Puller, R-Mount Vernon.
“They need to start some sort of program on every prisoner and get them ready for what they do when they get out, so they do not commit more crimes,” Puller said.
Senators passed SB 200 on a 40-0 vote. It now goes to the House for consideration.
Puller said the bill is the product of a joint legal commission to study prisoner re-entry that she has chaired for the last three years.
“The goal of the commission is to do certain things to make people able to get out and not do the actions that would have them come back to jail,” Puller said.
The bill is also part of the legislative package supported by Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell.
J. Tucker Martin, McDonnell’s communications director, said the goal is to keep people from returning to prison after being released. According to data from the Department of Corrections, nearly one-third of released inmates return to prison within three years of their release.
“I think that we’ve seen a need for a structured re-entry into society for prisoners,” Martin said. “Too often we find inmates leave prison with no plan and no hope, so they return to crime.”
One former inmate, who calls himself Universal L.I.F.E. Allah, said most prisoners are not properly prepared to re-enter society.
“From what I’ve seen from the time I was incarcerated … there is no true rehabilitation taking place,” Universal said.
Universal served 12 years in various correctional facilities; he was released last summer from Coffeewood Correctional Center in Mitchells. While in prison, Universal received job training in residential electrical wiring and took correspondence courses. Now that he has been released, Universal plans to finish his business degree at Virginia Commonwealth University and enter an electrical apprenticeship.
“Those who want rehabilitation have to take the initiative and apply themselves to those programs,” Universal said.
A local advocacy group, Resource Information Help for the Disadvantaged, assists prisoners who want to take the initiative to find educational courses and receive vocational training. The group also provides inmates with information on how to apply for benefits they may be entitled to, and where to find legal help.
The director of RIHD, Lillie Branch-Kennedy, also said that re-entry planning is the key to reducing recidivism.
“Today’s prisoners are tomorrow’s neighbors, and we need to get to them from the beginning … when they bring them down there and have them locked down 23 hours with little to no education or rehabilitation,” Branch-Kennedy said.
Under the current laws, the Department of Corrections does not begin re-entry planning for most inmates until 90 days prior to their release.
“I said that I wanted to better myself, period. I knew one day that I would be released; if I didn’t do it, no one would do it for me,” Universal said.
Both Universal and Branch-Kennedy agree that inmates are not made aware of and encouraged to enter programs enough. They said many inmates come out of prison homeless and unemployed.
“How much more do you need to know to move to say that housing, employment and medical care assistance is needed for those who re-enter society?” Branch-Kennedy said.
The bill does not address the issues of housing, employment and medical care of released inmates, but it does include a provision for mentor pairing when possible. It directs the Department of Correction to coordinate with private organizations and government agencies to set up programs.
Posted by lois at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2008
CCA VP nominated by Bush Adm. to be Federal Trial Court Judge
Gus Puryear is the General Counsel & Executive VP of CCA nominated by Bush Administration to be federal trial court judge
Meet Bush's Prison Nominee
News: Tennessee's next trial court judge might be a prison company
executive who has less courtroom experience than most inmates.
By Stephanie Mencimer
February 20, 2008
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/02/jailhouse-
justice.html
In October 2000, Dick Cheney faced off for a debate with Connecticut
Sen. Joseph Lieberman. The 60-year-old Cheney appeared comfortable
discussing the ins and outs of policy and made good-natured jokes
about Lieberman's singing abilities, or lack thereof. Cheney's smooth
performance reflected his many years in public service. But the
aspiring vice president also had a strong debate-preparation team
made up of longtime friends and GOP loyalists. Among them was
Gustavus Adolphus Puryear IV, a legislative director for Tennessee
senator Bill Frist, who was on contract with the Bush/Cheney
campaign. Puryear apparently did such a good job prepping Cheney that
he was called in again in 2004 to help him gear up for his debate
with Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards.
Puryear's efforts on behalf of the Bush administration paid off last
June when the president nominated him to be a federal trial court
judge for the Middle District of Tennessee. Puryear certainly isn't
the first judicial nominee selected primarily for his political
service, but still, his resume is remarkably thin on the practice of
law, a basic prerequisite even for the best-connected political hacks.
Puryear got his start in politics in the mid-1990s working as counsel
to the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, then chaired by Fred
Thompson, as it investigated the Clinton fundraising scandals. From
there he went to work for Frist. Beyond a brief stint in private
practice for a corporate law firm when he was fresh out of law
school, Puryear has spent more time inside an executive suite than a
courtroom. And it's that corporate work that makes him an especially
questionable candidate for the federal bench.
Puryear was in Washington last week for his confirmation hearing
before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Senators Arlen Specter
(D.-Pa,) and Dianne Feinstein (D.-Ca.) both put his resume under a
microscope, noting his conspicuous lack of trial experience. At one
point Specter asked him point blank, "How many cases have you
actually tried?" To which Puryear answered: Two. Indeed, according to
his written questionnaire for the committee, of the two cases he has
tried in the entirety of his legal career, he was lead counsel on one
of them. The last time he litigated a case in federal court was more
than a decade ago.
Puryear has spent the bulk of his legal career at the Tennessee-based
Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private
prison company. As its general counsel since 2001, Puryear has made
millions of dollars working for a company that profits from the
country's incarceration boom, particularly through his recent sale of
more than $3 million worth of the company's stock. (His financial
disclosure form shows a net worth of more than $13 million.) His
employer creates enormous conflicts for Puryear as a potential
federal judge, as the CCA gets sued all the time, often in the very
district where he hopes to preside as judge. Since 2000, roughly 260
cases have been filed in that court against the CCA, its officers,
and subsidiaries.
In addition, Puryear's current job involves overseeing the CCA's
defense against inmate litigation, a prison staple that he has
publicly dismissed as a nuisance, even though such litigation has led
to significant verdicts and settlements against the company. For
instance, in 2000, a South Carolina jury hit the CCA with a $3
million verdict for abusing juveniles. Other successful suits have
alleged that the company's employees abused inmates and provided
negligent medical care. Yet in a quote he no doubt now regrets, in
2004 Puryear said that, "Litigation is an outlet for inmates. It's
something they can do in their spare time." Inmate lawsuits typically
account for more than 10 percent of the docket in Tennessee's Middle
District, meaning that Puryear will see his share of them if he gets
confirmed.
During his confirmation hearing last week, Puryear told the committee
that he would recuse himself from any cases involving the CCA—at
least, he said, for some time after he's divested all of his stock in
the company. He dismissed concerns about his conflict of interest by
noting that the CCA cases make up a small part of the court's
workload and that his recusals would not create problems for the
other judges. But his promises to recuse still don't get to the heart
of a fundamental conflict: To the CCA, inmates are a revenue stream
warehoused at the cheapest price. This not exactly the view of the
criminal justice system you want from a judge if you are a defendant.
A trial court judge in Tennessee's Middle District can expect to
handle more than 60 criminal cases a year. Every person Puryear sends
to prison is a potential money-maker for his former employer, which
contracts with the federal government to manage 15 detention
facilities, and also holds federal prisoners in other CCA
institutions that house state and local prisoners when the need
arises, according to Steve Owen, the company's director of marketing
and communications. The number of inmates coming from Tennessee may
be relatively small, but still, it seems fair to ask whether
Puryear's conflict of interest runs so deep that he might have to
recuse himself from criminal cases entirely.
Thus far, Puryear has largely escaped media scrutiny, as the activist
groups that monitor the federal courts tend to focus mostly on
appellate courts and the occasional Supreme Court battle rather than
on trial court nominees. Puryear's CV also doesn't signal fights on
many of the hot-button social issues that usually set off a
confirmation battle. He doesn't sound—or look—like Robert Bork. He's
young, patrician, a model member of the exclusive Belle Meade Country
Club, and director of the Antiques & Garden Show of Nashville. But
for his deep voice he could be Niles on "Frasier." Nonetheless,
Puryear might be in for an unexpected fight, due in part to his
decision to publicly dis jailhouse lawyers.
Alex Friedmann was one of those jailhouse lawyers. He spent six years
inside one of the CCA's prisons in Tennessee for attempted murder and
armed robbery. Friedmann actually sued the CCA while incarcerated for
retaliating against him for his comments to a reporter for The
Nation. Representing himself, he took another case all the way to a
jury trial, where he mostly lost, though he won a default judgment
against a former unit manager. He also appealed a different case
against the state, over censorship, that went all the way to the
Sixth Circuit court of appeals where he won. "In that regard, I'm
more qualified than [Puryear] is," he observes, noting that Puryear
isn't even admitted to practice in the Sixth Circuit.
Now out of prison nine years, Friedmann is an editor for Prison Legal
News, which is how he first learned about Puryear's nomination. After
doing a little checking on him, Friedmann ran across Puryear's quote
about inmate litigation, which didn't sit too well with him, and he
set out to torpedo Puryear's nomination. As a former CCA inmate and a
board member of a Florida nonprofit group that opposes prison
privatization, Friedmann readily admits that he's not a disinterested
party in the nomination battle. Nonetheless, his political instincts
are sound. He is cobbling together a coalition to oppose Puryear's
nomination, including the American Federal State and Municipal
Employees Union, which opposes private prisons for their anti-labor
positions. Friedmann's currently at work trying to enlist the real
powerhouse of liberal judicial activists to join the coalition:
women's groups.
Friedmann has compiled stats from the federal court docket on the
CCA's lawsuit history in order to highlight the potential conflicts
of interest Puryear might face, and he picked apart Puryear's resume
and his responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee's questions last
week. For instance, when pressed on his view of criminal defendants
and prison inmates, Puryear pointed to his service as a commissioner
on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. Skeptical,
Friedmann checked out Puryear's attendance record with the
commission. He says the commission held eight public hearings between
2005 and 2007—and Puryear missed at least four of them. "If the
gentleman does have a genuine concern about inmates, why did he miss
half the meetings?" he asks.
Friedmann is also raising significant questions about Puryear's
response to questions about the death of a female inmate at the CCA's
facility in Nashville. The medical examiner ruled that 34-year-old
Estelle Richardson was beaten to death while in the company's
custody. She suffered a skull fracture, broken ribs, and liver
damage. Prosecutors indicted four CCA guards in 2005, but later
dropped the charges after being unable to determine the time of
death. So far, no one has been held responsible for Richardson's
death, although the CCA settled a private lawsuit filed by her family.
When Sen. Feinstein asked Puryear about the case, Puryear disputed
the medical examiner's findings and claimed that Richardson's death
might not have been a homicide at all. He suggested that the broken
ribs and liver injury may have been caused by CPR. It's "common" for
people to suffer such injuries from CPR, Puryear said, to which a
dumbfounded Feinstein exclaimed, "Common?" Apparently not satisfied
with Puryear's answers, Feinstein asked him to provide the committee
with further written information about the case.
Meanwhile, after the hearing, Friedmann called the Tennessee medical
examiner who worked the case, who he says reaffirmed the original
finding that Robinson's death was a homicide and that there was
nothing to suggest her injuries were caused by resuscitation efforts.
Friedmann also spoke with the lawyers who represented Richardson's
family and he says that they told him that the CCA never raised CPR
injuries as a defense in the litigation. Puryear's comments to the
committee, says Freidmann, are "not supported by the medical record,"
which makes him skeptical about Puryear's judgment as a lawyer—and
his credibility.
Friedmann seems to recognize that prison inmates are not the stuff of
judicial confirmation fights, so he has also homed in on another
issue that might provide more traction, not to mention the interest
of powerful women's groups: Puryear's country club.
The tony Belle Meade Country Club in Nashville is so exclusive that
you have to be a member just to access its website. It didn’t admit a
single black member until 1994, a racist history so potent that even
Puryear's mentor, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, quit the
club in 1993 when he first ran for office. While Belle Meade admits
women, Friedmann has heard that it still won't give "lady members"
voting rights. (Troy Cunningham, the controller of the club for the
past 17 years, wouldn’t respond to questions about women's voting
rights, saying that "all questions flow through the members," meaning
that someone will have to put the question to Puryear himself.) But
if Friedmann can stir up controversy over Puryear's country club
membership, he might actually have a shot at scuttling his nomination.
Stephanie Mencimer is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington, D.C.,
bureau and the author of Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the
Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right
to Sue (Free Press, 2006).
Ex-Inmate Crusades Against Judge Nominee
By TRAVIS LOLLER Associated Press Writer
© 2008 The Associated Press
Feb. 21, 2008, 2:33AM http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5558158.html
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A private prison company executive nominated to
become a federal judge has run into a determined opponent _ a former
inmate.
President Bush in June nominated Gustavus A. Puryear IV, chief lawyer
with Corrections Corporation of America, to become a U.S. district
judge in Nashville.
That led Alex Friedmann, who spent six years at the company's prison
in Clifton, Tenn., to investigate Puryear's qualifications. He looked
up every case where Puryear was listed on the docket as counsel.
The prisoner-turned-inmate advocate found only five instances where
Puryear was the attorney of record. By his count and Puryear's, the
judicial nominee has been involved in only two federal court trials
during his career.
That's just one more case than Friedmann himself has handled in
federal court.
Convinced that the well-connected Puryear was unqualified to be a
federal judge and might face a conflict of interest overseeing
litigation involving his former employer, Friedmann began a public
relations campaign against the nomination that led all the way to the
Senate.
He formed the group Tennesseans Against Puryear and enlisted the help
of the liberal Washington-based Alliance for Justice and the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, both of which
sent letters opposing the appointment.
Puryear, a 1993 graduate of the University of North Carolina law
school, didn't respond to several phone and e-mail requests left at
his home and office for an interview with The Associated Press.
At a Feb. 12 hearing of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Diane
Feinstein, D-Calif., questioned Puryear about several issues
originally raised by Friedmann and the nonprofit Private Corrections
Institute, a group opposing private prisons that Friedmann helps run.
Puryear told the Senate committee he already was selling off his
stock in the company, according to reports in The Tennessean
newspaper. He owned CCA shares valued at just under $1.3 million as
of Feb. 1, according to Lionshares.com, an online database of stock
ownership. He also pledged to recuse himself from cases involving CCA
even after he no longer holds a financial interest.
The committee also questioned Puryear about whether the volume of
lawsuits against Nashville-based CCA _ the nation's largest for-
profit private prison company _ would burden other judges who would
have to hear the cases when Puryear recused himself. Puryear said it
would not be a significant burden.
Friedmann's campaign against Puryear continues. He plans to send a
letter to the Committee on the Judiciary pointing out what he
contends are inaccuracies in Puryear's answers.
The two men have never met. Although Friedmann learned of the
nomination because he keeps tabs on CCA, he insists his crusade is
based on Puryear's lack of qualification and not because he's a CCA
executive.
Friedmann sued CCA and several employees in 1996 while incarcerated
for six years for armed robbery. Serving as his own lawyer, Friedmann
eventually won a $6,000 judgment against a former prison unit manager
for a civil rights violation.
Puryear's legal resume includes significant political work _ serving
as counsel to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and junior
counsel during the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee
investigation of campaign finance abuse led by former Sen. Fred
Thompson. He also was a debate adviser for Dick Cheney in 2000.
Stefanie Lindquist, an associate professor of political science and
law at Vanderbilt University, said courtroom experience is good but
not essential for federal judge nominees.
She sees more significance in the American Bar Association rating of
Puryear as "qualified," instead of "well qualified" to be a judge. "A
`qualified' rating is relatively weak. That's going to hurt him,"
Lindquist said.
Lindquist said Friedmann's efforts are unusual for even temporarily
disrupting what should be a routine confirmation. There are about 180
Bush nominations pending as the administration and Democratic-
controlled Senate tangle over some sharply contested nominees.
Of the Puryear nomination, Lindquist said: "If there are other, more
controversial nominees, this might slide through as a compromise."
On the Net:
Tennesseans Against Gus Puryear: http://www.againstpuryear.org
Posted by lois at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)
MA: Shift in crack sentencing rules begins to free prisoners
US shift may free up to 30 inmates
Judges here trim prison time for crack convictions
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | February 21, 2008
Federal judges in Massachusetts have begun ordering the release of prisoners convicted of crack cocaine offenses, responding to a government decision to retroactively reduce the harsh penalties for using and selling that particular form of the drug. Up to 30 could be affected.
Since Feb. 6, judges have reduced by 15 to 33 months the sentences of at least three Massachusetts inmates imprisoned for crack offenses. As a result, two who have already exceeded the shortened sentences will be freed March 3, the first day prisoners are eligible for lightened punishments for crack-related crimes. A third is expected to be released in June.
In one case, US District Judge William G. Young criticized the US Sentencing Commission for failing to implement the new sentencing structure right away when it voted on Dec. 11 to make the lessened penalties retroactive for some 19,500 federal prisoners nationwide.
"The failure of the Commission immediately to implement its solution to the 'fundamental unfairness' in the way crack cocaine offenders were treated under the previous version of the guidelines . . . virtually guarantees that some defendants . . . will spend more time in prison than they should have," Young wrote Tuesday.
Young said one convicted crack dealer, Carlos Gagot, would be finished with his sentence as a result of a 33-month reduction at the request of the defense and government. But the judge said he was pow erless to free Gagot immediately. Still, Gagot "ought not spend one more day in prison than necessary" and should be freed March 3, Young wrote.
Miriam Conrad - head of the federal public defender agency in Boston, which represented the three defendants whose releases have been ordered - said her office has come up with a list of at least 27 other inmates who may be eligible for sentence reductions.
"I'm getting letters from prisoners on a daily basis," she said.
An analysis by the US Sentencing Commission, which voted unanimously Dec. 11 to lighten punishments retroactively for some crack offenses, said 91 prisoners convicted in federal courts in Massachusetts will be eligible through 2012 to seek reductions of sentences imposed for selling or possessing crack. But Conrad said she believes the number could be much higher than 91.
Christina DiIorio-Sterling - a spokeswoman for US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, whose office agreed to all three sentence reductions - said many factors will determine how prosecutors treat such applications.
"In general, there will be some offenders for whom early release may be appropriate, given the reduction in sentencing as mandated by the changes in the guidelines," she said.
Advocates for such offenders were buoyed by the first reductions in sentences to take place as a result of the government's effort to reduce the stark disparity between punishments for crimes involving crack cocaine and those involving cocaine powder.
"Everyone knew for years that the crack guidelines were just obscenely inflated, compared to powder cocaine," said Page Kelley, the federal defender who represented Gagot, "so this is a very belated and meager correction of those guidelines."
US District Judge Nancy Gertner, who ordered yesterday that Fernando Morales be released March 3 for the time he has served on a crack-dealing conviction, said in an interview that federal judges across the country have long decried the disparity between penalties for crack cocaine and powder cocaine.
"It was right to change it, and it should be changed even further," she said.
The third prisoner whose release has been ordered is Deborah Woodard. Young reduced her sentence from 135 to 120 months, making her eligible for release in June.
A bill pushed through Congress in the national frenzy following the 1986 death of Len Bias, a first-round National Basketball Association draft pick for the Celtics whose death was initially linked to crack cocaine, imposed extreme mandatory penalties for crack.
Under the law, someone caught with 1 gram of crack received the same sentence as someone with 100 grams of powder cocaine. It also imposed a minimum mandatory sentence of five years in prison for dealing 5 grams of crack and 10 years in prison for dealing 50 grams of crack.
Advocates of the two-tier penalty system said crack was cheaper and more addictive than powder cocaine and was more frequently linked to violent crime. But critics said that those differences were overstated and that blacks bore the brunt of the inequity, because they account for at least 80 percent of federal crack defendants.
The Sentencing Commission reduced the sentencing range for crack cocaine offenses by two levels last year, lowering the maximum recommended sentence for selling 5 grams of cocaine from 78 months to 63 months.
Nonetheless, prison terms for crack cocaine are still longer than those for powder cocaine, because only Congress can change the 100-to-1 ratio and mandatory minimum sentences.
Mary Price of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, an advocacy group, said she has heard of judges in other states issuing orders similar to those in Massachusetts.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.
Posted by lois at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2008
New Orleans: Demoliton begins on jail destroyed during Hurricane Katrina
"The Justice Facilities Master Plan released last September called for the Sheriff's Office to get back to its pre-Katrina size of more than 6,000 beds by 2015. One part of the plan envisioned as many as 8,000 beds, up considerably from the current 2,600 beds. But Gusman said that is not his intention. "We don't want to have a bigger jail," Gusman said. The Sheriff's Office currently plans to mothball the much-criticized House of Detention, which holds more than 800 inmates in sometimes cramped quarters, once the new jail building is finished, said Renee Lapeyrolerie, a spokeswoman for the agency. That plan is conditioned on the city finishing work at Old Parish Prison, a jail building right behind Criminal District Court, she said. The planning for the new jail still has some work, Lapeyrolerie said. It is expected to be completed by 2011."
Demolition on prison buildings under way
by Valerie Faciane, The Times-Picayune
Monday February 18, 2008, 8:03 AM
Demolition began Monday on three jail buildings damaged by Hurricane Katrina, making way for a new facility that Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman said will provide services and programs to help inmates.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency will foot the bill for the $52.3 million project. The first step involves knocking down Templeman III and IV, two jail buildings built in 1995 and 1996 that the federal agency determined sustained significant damage during the storm, in part because of structural deficiencies. A gymnasium building also will be demolished.
After the wrecking balls have cleared the property, the Sheriff's Office will erect a new building with the capacity to house 1,438 inmates, as many inmates as were held in the two Templeman jails.
But Gusman said that he envisions a different kind of jail, one that will have the space to adequately house all the inmates, while also providing programs where they can learn skills before they are released. Since Katrina, all of the inmates housed in Orleans Parish jails are awaiting trial.
"Since I first took office in 2004, I have been committed to rehabilitating our inmates as a key component in reducing crime in our city," Gusman said.
Jim Stark, acting associate deputy administrator for FEMA's Gulf Coast Recovery Office, said the jail renovations are part of the overarching Justice Facilities Master Plan developed by various criminal justice agencies last fall in a process financed by FEMA.
But federal money will provide less than 25 percent of the almost $1 billion needed to build all of the projects in the ambitious master plan, which would include a new headquarters for the New Orleans Police Department and Orleans Parish district attorney, as well as a combined court building for criminal and civil courts.
Stark said the city will have to come up with other sources of money, such as bond issues or state financing, to complete all of the projects in the plan.
After a press conference in front of the buildings set to be demolished, Gusman and Stark headed over to a backhoe equipped with a jackhammer attachment. Both took a turn behind the controls of the backhoe, with the help of a professional construction worker, driving the hammer into the tile facade of Templeman III.
The Justice Facilities Master Plan released last September called for the Sheriff's Office to get back to its pre-Katrina size of more than 6,000 beds by 2015. One part of the plan envisioned as many as 8,000 beds, up considerably from the current 2,600 beds.
But Gusman said that is not his intention. "We don't want to have a bigger jail," Gusman said.
The Sheriff's Office currently plans to mothball the much-criticized House of Detention, which holds more than 800 inmates in sometimes cramped quarters, once the new jail building is finished, said Renee Lapeyrolerie, a spokeswoman for the agency. That plan is conditioned on the city finishing work at Old Parish Prison, a jail building right behind Criminal District Court, she said.
The planning for the new jail still has some work, Lapeyrolerie said. It is expected to be completed by 2011.
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/02/gusman_will_announce_jail_demo.ht
ml
. . . . . . .
Posted by lois at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)
Cash cruch boosts private prison profits
Cash crunch boosts government service firms
By Helen Chernikoff, Reuters
Wednesday February 20 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7324401
NEW YORK, Feb 20 (Reuters) - The weakening U.S. economy has unleashed
layoffs, reduced profits and sucked value from the stock market, but
some companies, such as those that run prisons and consult for
government, can benefit from harsh economic times.
When state and local budgets see shortfalls, cash-strapped
governments hire companies like management consultant Maximus Inc,
social services provider Providence Service Corp and prison company
Corrections Corp of America, according to analysts.
Government belt-tightening could be a boon for a range of mid- and
small-cap names whose share prices have in many cases fallen as far
as more cyclical companies that really do suffer in a downturn. And,
analysts say, that could present some stock market opportunities.
The housing slump has hurt public budgets, as depressed property
values and lowered homeowners' equity cut proceeds from real estate
and sales taxes.
In 2009, 25 states are facing shortfalls, according to the Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities. That pain trickles down to local
governments, which increasingly look to privatize services they
traditionally have performed.
By outsourcing a prison, states can save as much as a quarter of its
cost, Avondale Partners analyst Kevin Campbell said, which is why
private prison companies boosted their market share to 7.2 percent in
2006 from 6.5 percent in 2001-2003.
States might begin a new wave of prison privatization sooner than in
the 2001 recession because the United States is still suffering from
prison overcrowding as a result of that last downturn, Campbell said.
SHARES DOWN
Yet shares of Corrections Corp, the United States' largest prison
company, are down about 20 percent from their 52-week high of $33.25.
The story is similar with other prison companies. The Geo Group is
down about 19.7 percent from its 12-month high of $32.89 and Cornell
Companies is off about 24 percent from a high of $27.76.
"You would expect them to outperform given their defensive nature,"
Campbell said.
Corrections Corp and Geo's share prices are "compelling" in part
because they will reap business from California's prison bed
shortage, estimated at 60,000 beds or more, Lehman Brothers analyst
Jeffrey Kessler said.
California's projected 2009 budget shortfall, at $14.5 billion, is by
far the country's biggest, according to the Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities.
Kessler anticipates strong 2009 earnings for both Corrections Corp
and Geo.
A recession could also cause a spike in crime, resulting in a further
increase in demand for prison beds, Kessler said. "This would put
further wind at the back of the private prison companies."
Companies such as Tyler Technologies Inc, a provider of software to
local government, resist recessions well, said Eric Marshall, who
follows government services for the Hodges Small Cap Fund.
Tyler's stock is down about 14 percent for the year, but has
outperformed the Russell 2000 .RUT>, down about 18 percent for the year.
RECESSION-RESISTANT
The company is recession-resistant because it is "tied to the need to
process parking tickets and utility bills and those things are going
to happen no matter what," Marshall said.
Of course, downturns make local governments even hungrier to collect
that revenue efficiently.
The same dynamic supports Maximus Inc, a management consultant to
government, whose shares are down about 23 percent from their year
high of $48.33, partly because of a failed attempt to sell itself,
said Jeffries & Company analyst Matthew McKay.
Maximus has grown revenue in every downturn and expects a repeat
performance because the company's emphasis on efficiency appeals in
tight times, Chief Executive Richard Montoni said during a recent
conference call.
Maximus is set for a surprisingly strong showing in 2008, said McKay,
who has a "buy" rating on the stock and a one-year price target of $55.
Likewise, Medicaid administrator Providence Service Corp is trading
at $28.57, but Sidoti & Co. analyst Greg Williams' 12-month price
target for the shares is $37. He said he rates them a buy in part
because they're a "counter-cyclical play."
In 2008, California accounts for almost 18 percent of Providence's
$310 million Medicaid administration business, a direct result of the
state's budget woes, Chief Executive Fletcher Jay McCusker told Reuters.
"A recession drives clients to our business," said McCusker, adding
that Providence picked up new business in Florida, Virginia, Maine,
Illinois and Nevada during the 2001 recession. "We anticipate no
decrease in business even though state budgets may be flattening.
Posted by lois at 02:53 PM | Comments (0)
A Home Remedy: Alternative Sentencing Program for Youth
February 20, 2008
A Home Remedy for Juvenile Offenders
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
NY Times
When Jacob Rivera, 15, was resentenced in May on an assault conviction, he felt he had received a “blessing.”
Only months earlier he had been sentenced to a year in state custody, and he had already spent weeks bouncing between a juvenile detention center in the Bronx and a residential treatment campus upstate. Two of his older siblings had spent time in those facilities and, he said, had “come out a mess.” He could see his future.
But the court gave him a second chance because his case had not been properly reviewed for inclusion in a new alternative sentencing program, which the city started in February 2007. The program, called the Juvenile Justice Initiative, sends medium-risk offenders back to their families and provides intensive therapy.
The city says that in just a year, it has seen significant success for the juveniles enrolled, as well as cost savings from the reduced use of residential treatment centers.
Under the program, Jacob went back home on probation, and he and his family were assigned a counselor, Eddy Lee, who visited the two-bedroom Bronx apartment that the teenager shares with his mother, Michelle Rivera, her husband, a younger brother and other relatives.
Within weeks, the situation improved as Mr. Lee provided intensive counseling to the family, with the aim of defusing what had become an increasingly angry relationship between Jacob and his mother. Instead of screaming at Jacob when he refused to comply with her curfew, Ms. Rivera called Mr. Lee. Over time, Mr. Lee persuaded her to agree to be less strict if her son would agree to be more forthcoming about his whereabouts, and more responsible.
Soon Jacob started meeting curfew and began passing his court-ordered drug tests and staying in school. If he continues on this course, he will end his probation in July, Mr. Lee said.
By the standards of juvenile justice, Jacob is a resounding success. And he is not alone. The city said that in the year since the program began, fewer than 35 percent of the 275 youths who have been through it have been rearrested or violated probation.
State studies found that more than 80 percent of male juvenile offenders who had served time in correctional facilities were rearrested within three years of their release, usually on more serious charges.
While in-home services mean that hundreds of teenagers with criminal records are returned to their communities, city officials say it is a trade they are willing to make. “It’s an uphill battle,” says Ronald E. Richter, the city’s family services coordinator. “These young people and their families present complex challenges.”
But whether the children go to residential correctional facilities or not, they come back to the community eventually anyway, Mr. Richter said, and the program “helps parents learn how to supervise and manage their adolescents so that they act responsibly instead of engaging in dangerous behaviors.”
Every year, hundreds of children in the city under 16 are found guilty of crimes ranging from graffiti to assault. They are tried and sentenced in the family courts; more serious crimes like murder are usually sent to the criminal courts.
Until the Juvenile Justice Initiative, family court judges had few options for dealing with youngsters convicted of less-serious crimes. They could place them on probation and hope for the best, or send them to upstate residential centers. The decision would typically depend as much on the gravity of the crime as on the stability of the child’s family. Judges are more likely to send a child into state custody if the home situation is complicated or unsafe.
“We were locking up way too many children, ” said Leslie Abbey, who runs the program for the city’s Administration for Children’s Services. “It was relied on too heavily, and it wasn’t working.”
The problem with incarceration, as juvenile justice reformers saw it, was that it could make behavior worse by introducing teenagers to even more hardened youths.
Some states and other counties in New York, including Westchester, have been experimenting for years with intensive in-home and in-community therapy for children who have significant criminal records but are not psychopathic.
The basic idea is to reach and help borderline youths at a moment of crisis, and turn them away from a more serious criminal path. By treating them in the context of their families and environments rather than in isolation, officials found that recidivism was usually less than half that of residential correction programs. The city says that it hopes its program will be as successful, but that it will take many years before it can be sure.
Still, at roughly $17,000 per child, such in-home therapy programs cost a fraction of the annual expense of keeping a child in secure detention, which can be $140,000 to $200,000.
In fact, the financial incentive is such that both the city and state are rapidly moving away from residential detention. Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the state’s Office of Children and Family Services, recently announced that she would close six nonsecure facilities, a cut that will save the state $16 million a year.
The elimination of detention beds puts more pressure on the city to succeed.
It is a tough order, but Qadriyyah Razzaaq, for one, is a believer.
Ms. Razzaaq has been caring for John Whittington, 15, the son of a cousin, since he was 5. But last year, Ms. Razzaaq, a home health aide with her own children to care for and a job that often requires her to work 12 hours a day, was ready to give up on John, who was getting into ever more serious trouble.
First, on a dare, he set a fire in a school toilet, she said. Then he began running with gangs, and his graffiti appeared in hallways in his apartment building. Finally, she said, he robbed someone of an iPod.
When he was arrested for the iPod theft, she didn’t even go to detention to get him. “I was so angry,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘I am going to leave him there and teach him a lesson.’ ”
When Ms. Razzaaq heard about the Juvenile Justice Initiative, she was not optimistic. “He had already been in counseling,” she said, “I didn’t believe it would help.”
But to her amazement, the therapy at home made a difference. The counselors told her that John had been keeping secrets from her because he was afraid she would abandon him, the way his mother had. She spent more time with him alone, something he seemed to crave.
His behavior improved. John will still fail the seventh grade for a third time at the end of the school year, but so far he has not violated probation.
At home, Ms. Razzaaq has a new level of trust. “We have little problems, but we speak about it first,” she said. “He doesn’t wait to be caught.
“I know his future is so much better than it would have been if he had gone upstate.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/nyregion/20juvenile.html
Posted by lois at 02:15 PM | Comments (0)
CA: 6,900 "beds" cut in prison plan. Lawmakers critical of $222,000 cost for each new bunk.
6,900 beds cut in prison plan
Lawmakers critical of $222,000 cost for each new bunk.
By Andy Furillo - afurillo@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, February 20, 2008
California's $7.9 billion prison construction and rehabilitation plan will provide at least 6,900 fewer beds than previously promised and take longer to complete, according to testimony at a legislative hearing Tuesday and interviews with corrections officials.
An expansion plan slated for existing prisons has been downsized from 16,000 to 13,000 beds, officials from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation told lawmakers at a state Senate Public Safety Committee hearing. The expansion beds will now cost $222,000 each, or 48 percent more than originally estimated, and won't come on line until December 2009 - 11 months later than originally scheduled.
The construction plans became law last year under Assembly Bill 900, which promised a total of 53,000 new beds. The reconfigured plans may require millions more in funds that have yet to be allocated.
Senate Public Safety Committee Chair Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, said in an interview the figures reaffirm her position that AB 900 "was the wrong policy for the wrong reason."
"You can't get past the $222,000 per bed figure," she said. "There is black and there is white, and $222,000 per bed, I don't care how you divide it, that is a staggering, overwhelming cost to the taxpayers."
Republican committee member Sen. Dave Cogdill of Modesto said AB 900 backers proffered the plan last year as a way to keep the state from releasing inmates early. He expressed frustration that it is getting delayed and downsized at the same time the administration is trying to release 22,000 prisoners early.
"We moved ahead quickly last year on approving one of the largest bond issues in the history of the state in order to deal with our overcrowding crisis," Cogdill said during Tuesday's 2 1/2 hour hearing. "Instead, what we've got is a plan that moves it off by 20 months ... and the only solution we've been offered is to let people out of jail. That's not acceptable, not only to the Legislature but to the people of California."
At Tuesday's hearing, corrections construction chief Deborah Hysen laid out the reasons for the added costs, smaller size and lengthier timeline on the program. Among them: revised plans calling for more cells instead of dorms, a failure in the initial planning to include enough space for rehabilitation programs and health care [editorial insert: Some of you might remember that AB900 was and still is touted as the prison expansion that will allow the CDCR to really implement Rehabilitation, yet somehow the CDCR planners neglected to include programming space in the new cellblocks], and infrastructure problems that prevented expansion at some of the prisons.
The Legislature, she said, added to the delays because it failed to allow private contractors to design as well as build the new projects, instead using state employees for design jobs.
Costs are expected to increase, Hysen said, due to contractors charging "what the market will bear."
AB 900's provision to help the counties build 13,000 more jail beds is in line for a bigger reduction than the bed program. C. Scott Harris, executive director of the Corrections Standards Authority, estimated that AB 900 will pay for only 60 percent to 70 percent of the beds envisioned, or 3,900 to 5,200 fewer.
"Things are much more expensive around the state," Harris said.
Meanwhile, the $1.14 billion AB 900 allocated for hospital beds won't be enough to build the 8,000 originally thought, according to J. Clark Kelso, the prison system's federal medical care receiver.
"My understanding is that all the players understood, you're not going to be able to build facilities for that many patient/inmates at that cost," Kelso said.
Kelso said he is now revising the hospital bed plan, but not to downsize it: He thinks he might need as many as 10,000 beds.
Officials also will downsize the "re-entry" program that initially called for 16,000 beds in 32 mini-prisons around the state, Hysen said. Corrections officials had touted the program as crucial to a long-term prison fix because of its emphasis on rehabilitation programming designed to cut California's worst-in-the nation 70 percent recidivism rate.
Copyright © The Sacramento Bee
********
Plan to ease prison crowding falls short
DELAYS HAMPER PROGRESS; FEWER BEDS EXPECTED
By Edwin Garcia
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau
Article Launched: 02/20/2008 01:35:19 AM PST
SACRAMENTO - Prison officials acknowledged Tuesday that implementing the state's historic law to ease overcrowding will result in fewer beds than promised and take longer than anticipated.
The law, last year's AB 900, was supposed to provide 53,000 new beds over the next several years. But Deborah Hysen, the top official who oversees prison construction for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, told the Senate Public Safety Committee hearing that they now expect only 50,000 new beds.
She and her boss, Secretary James Tilton, blamed faulty assumptions for the discrepancy. Hysen said her division was taking steps to produce better estimates in the future.
Committee members repeatedly expressed frustration with what they characterized as a lack of progress in building prison space, implementing educational programs and other reforms that the department has promised will relieve overcrowding.
"I think we're going to hear for some time, 'We're going to do, we're going to do, we're going to do,' " Committee Chair Gloria Romero said, "but it seems that we never really get to the 'we have done.' "
AB 900, which was passed by the Legislature without a public hearing, then signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, was implemented at a time when federal judges were hinting that they could take over the prison system if the state didn't do something drastic to tackle the population crisis.
About 171,000 inmates are housed in 33 prisons built to hold about 100,000.
The law authorizes $7.4 billion in bond funding to create 53,000 beds for inmates in state prisons, county jails and re-entry facilities, and authorizes the transfer of up to 8,000 prisoners to cells outside California.
Ten months later, the beds are still in the planning stages, fewer than 3,000 inmates have been transferred and the court continues to seriously consider whether to take over the system.
Construction of the first beds, officials said, has been delayed and won't be available for another 20 months.
Tilton, who acknowledged "some bad schedules and bad estimates," tried nonetheless to keep the outlook positive by noting that one of the areas of most concern - the male adult prison population - has about 5,000 fewer inmates than in October 2006, which means fewer prisoners are being housed in gyms.
Tilton also said more parolees are being diverted into rehabilitation programs, instead of prison, when they test positive for drugs, which is helping to reduce the high rate of recidivism.
As a result of the recent, slight population dip, Tilton said, more inmates will be able to enroll in training and counseling programs behind bars.
"I'm excited about the fact that I'm not here, like I thought I'd be two years ago," Tilton said, "to say I'm out of beds."
Committee Vice Chairman Dave Cogdill, R-Fresno, said he was concerned that the delay, coupled with a reduction in the number of beds, and Schwarzenegger's proposal to release up to 28,000 low-risk inmates could have a detrimental effect on the public's safety.
"That's not acceptable," he said, "to not only the Legislature but to the people of the state of California."
The hearing was considered informational; the committee took no action.
Posted by lois at 02:03 PM | Comments (0)
OR: Bad Bills: more prison time, more prisoners, more money
Lawmakers talk minimum prison time
Alternative to ballot initiative heads to full House, Senate for votes
PETER WONG
Statesman Journal
February 20, 2008
Lawmakers moved ahead Tuesday with a less costly alternative to a more expensive ballot initiative that would set minimum prison sentences for first-time property and drug offenders.
The ballot initiative is sponsored by former state Rep. Kevin Mannix of Salem, who already has submitted about 150,000 signatures, 83,000 of which are required to qualify it for the Nov. 4 ballot.
The alternative, which the Legislature's budget panel cleared unanimously, would focus on longer prison sentences for large-quantity drug dealers and repeat property offenders. It also would require treatment for many offenders. If approved by both chambers, voters also would decide its fate Nov. 4.
It also has a hefty price, according to a report from the Legislature's budget analysts.
In the 2009-11 budget cycle, the measure would add 1,400 inmates and $62 million to Department of Corrections spending, plus $40 million in grants for treatment of drug and alcohol addiction. In 2011-13, the measure would add 1,700 inmates and $106 million, plus money for treatment grants.
According to the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, Mannix's initiative would add 4,000 to 6,000 inmates to the state system, which now tops 13,000, and require spending $256 million to $400 million more in the next two-year budget.
A second bill that advanced Tuesday night would add restrictions to a 2003 alternative incarceration program, which allows some inmates early release from prison if they complete drug treatment and community leave under the Department of Corrections.
Inmates ineligible for the program are those convicted of violent crimes under Measure 11, aggravated murder and sex crimes. Under the bill, ineligible defendants would be expanded to those convicted of criminally negligent homicide, second-degree assault if there was serious physical injury, and failure of a driver to aid a seriously injured crash victim.
The price tag for House Bill 3638 is estimated at $4.1 million in 2009-11.
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080220/STATE/80
2200414
Posted by lois at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)
February 19, 2008
NY Times Op Ed: Bob Herbert: Cruel and Gratuitous
February 16, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Cruel and Gratuitous
By BOB HERBERT, NY Times
It happened last spring.
The police commissioner’s office and a New York City police captain tried to convince the public that a marauding band of kids had gotten out of control and terrified residents, motorists and pedestrians on a street in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.
The cops were wrong. And they must have known that they were wrong, that the picture they were creating of youngsters climbing on top of cars and blocking vehicular and pedestrian traffic was completely false.
The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes, carried the canard further. That had to have been deliberate, too. He went on the Brian Lehrer radio program on WNYC and said that his office had investigated the matter — had conducted what he described as an “independent inquiry.”
“We had many, many interviews with local store owners and people who live in the neighborhood who are, frankly, scared to death of these kids,” he said. “And they were not just walking on one car; they were trampling on all sorts of cars. It was almost as if they were inviting their arrest.”
Thirty-two people were arrested on that Bushwick street last May 21, including young women and children. They had been walking along a quiet, tree-lined block of Putnam Avenue on their way to a subway station where they had hoped to catch a train to attend a wake for a friend who had been murdered. The police, who have said that the friend was a gang leader, surrounded the group and closed in.
The youngest person arrested was 13. All of the kids were handcuffed, cursed at and humiliated, and several spent 30 hours or more in jail.
To date, there has been no evidence produced — no witnesses, no photographs or videotapes, no dented vehicles or broken mirrors, nothing whatsoever — to indicate that any of the youngsters had done anything at all that was wrong.
How is it that you can have a rampage in broad daylight on a street in New York City and not be able to show in any way that the rampage occurred?
At least 22 of the 32 people arrested have had their charges dismissed or were never formally charged at all. No one has been convicted of anything.
The case against 18-year-old Zezza Anderson was dropped last month after his lawyer, Ron Kuby, filed a motion demanding that Mr. Hynes’s office produce documentary evidence of the youngsters misbehaving. No evidence was produced. Instead, an assistant district attorney moved to have the charges against Mr. Anderson dismissed, acknowledging that the case against the defendant could not be proved.
I’d like to know why, after the better part of a year, the authorities are still tormenting some of these kids. Why are charges still hanging over 10 of them? Why should it take more than nine months to resolve charges of unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct?
A number of the kids have missed days at school to show up for court dates at which nothing of consequence happens. Asher Callender, a senior at Bushwick Community High School, had to go to court on Friday, only to have his case postponed again until March 3.
These are not gangsters. These are not drug dealers. These are kids who were trying to go to a wake for a friend. It was not the kids who were out of control, it was the criminal justice system, which can’t seem to tell the difference between right and wrong, between the truth and deliberate lies, or between justice on the one hand and gratuitously cruel behavior by public officials on the other.
All the charges in this case should be dropped and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who apparently wants to be mayor of this city, and District Attorney Hynes should offer the kids a public apology.
The authorities have become accustomed to treating disadvantaged young people in New York City like dirt and getting away with it. In this case, local school officials, community residents and the civic group Make the Road New York rallied to the youngsters’ cause.
Neither the police nor the district attorney expected to be confronted in any kind of sustained way over their treatment of these kids. Mr. Hynes said on the radio program: “None of these kids are going to be prosecuted. They’re not going to go to jail ... We are going to offer every one of them community service.”
What he meant was that he expected the kids to go quietly, to plead guilty and passively accept the blot on their records and what he thought of as mild punishment.
But the kids had a surprise for him. They refused to plead guilty to something they hadn’t done. Ten of them are still paying the price for standing up for themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/opinion/16herbert.html?scp=3&sq=Bob+Herbert&st=nyt
Posted by lois at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)
February 18, 2008
TX: Pretrial detention, unnecessary incarceration driving Texas jail overcrowding
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2008/02/pretrial-detention-unnecessary
.html
Friday, February 08, 2008
Pretrial detention, unnecessary incarceration driving Texas jail overcrowding
The topic of the panel I presented on at yesterday's jail overcrowding symposium in San Antonio was "Who are in county jails and why?," and a significant part of my own presentation focused on excessive pretrial detention. I'm in the process of expanding this research into a longer, footnoted paper, but for now here are some excerpts on the subject:
The biggest single reason for jail overcrowding: Put simply, more Texans are incarcerated pending trial, i.e., before they're convicted, than at any time in history.
An analysis by Grits of data from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards found that despite declining crime over the same period, county jail populations increased 27% between 1995 and 2005. Almost all of that increase stemmed from more frequent detention of defendants before trial. In other words, there are many more defendants who can't make bail these days in county lockups. Particularly for misdemeanants, just a decade ago many of those defendants would have been released on personal bond so taxpayers wouldn't pay to house them.
These trends represent harsher decisions by judges about when defendants should be released on bond -- another case where being tough on crime amounts to being tough on taxpayers, with little identifiable public safety benefit. A decade ago, pretrial defendants made up 30.3% of the statewide Texas jail population. Today the number is more than half, at 53%.
What does that mean to the average defendant? Judges are more likely to require them to put up bail than ten years ago, when more low-level offenders would have been released on 'personal bond,' or a 3% bail fee and a promise to appear. Now if they can't pay, more defendants just sit in jail awaiting trial.
With so many jurisdictions operating local lockups that are bursting at the seams, it makes little sense to continue the trend (unless, perhaps, you're a bail bondsman). Here are the incarceration rates for pretrial detainees at Texas' largest county jails:
What percentage of Texas county jail inmates are awaiting trial? In 1995, just 30% of Texas county jail inmates statewide were incarcerated awaiting trial. As of January 1, 2008 that figure had risen to 53%. In many counties the figure is much higher: County
Total percentage pretrial defendants
Misdemeanor and state jail felony pretrial defendants
Statewide
53%
10%
Bexar
58%
21%
Dallas
67%
15%
Harris
56%
12%
Tarrant
61%
18%
Travis
65%
24%
The same pattern repeats itself around the state in jails big and small. Pretrial detention decisions by judges drive most local jail overcrowding problems.
There are few substantive barriers to solving the problem, only ideological ones. One year ago Nacogdoches County had to ship prisoners to other jurisdictions because of overcrowding, but has eliminated its problem entirely by reducing pretrial detention. County commissioners invited USDOJ consultants to assess their situation, and DOJ ³told commissioners the jail was being 'over-used,' and that more innovative programs could be implemented so that non-violent offenders 'never occupy a bed in the jail.'"
In response, over the past year Nacogdoches has been doing just that. As of the most recent monthly jail population report, their 292-bed jail was less than 2/3 full. In December 2006, a whopping 68% of the Nacogdoches County Jail population was made up of pretrial offenders; by January 1, 2008, that number had declined to just 34.5% of the jail population.
(I had a chance to speak briefly with Nacogdoches County Judge Joe English at the event who confirmed that their once full jail now had more than 100 empty beds! He said that public meetings where the DOJ consultants focused on pretrial incarceration decisions by judges caused the local judiciary to rethink its bonding policies. I'll be following up to get more detail about exactly what they did there and how they went about it - that's a real success story)
That same jail overcrowding solution will work for nearly every jurisdiction in Texas with full jails. If Bexar County, for example, could lower its percentage of pretrial detainees to 34.5% from the current 58%, it would reduce the jail population by 935 inmates, eliminating the short-term crisis entirely.
A county sheriff pulled me aside later to agree with me, and said he believed that too many judges these days were improperly using bail as punishment, which I thought was a good point. There must be some motive that explains these numbers, and that fits as well as any.
Tyler District Judge Cynthia Kent reacted negatively to my comments in the following panel, claiming that when she'd tried to use more personal bonds in her own court, 70% of defendants didn't show back up! However, I've reason to think that figure is inaccurate or skewed. Another conference participant leaned over to me at that point and declared that he previously ran a federal pretrial services division where use of personal bonds is much more widespread. He told me his division experienced around a 5% no-show rate (making me think I need to learn more about the federal pretrial system to see what can be adapted for local use). In Harris County, those deemed lowest risk by pretrial services have about a 3% no-show rate.
Speaking to Judge Kent later, it turns out that their local District Attorney stridently opposes creating a Pretrial Services division in Smith County, which means that there's literally no infrastructure there to support the use of personal bonds. Even so, county officials still want to build a bigger jail! If it were me, I'd invest in a new pretrial services division long before I spent money on bricks and mortar. (UPDATE: A commenter tells me Smith County DOES have a pretrial services division, it's just unpopular with judges and other local officials.)
The other big focus of my talk was the large number of mentally ill people filling up local jails, but the truth is solutions to that problem are more difficult to come by and likely will arrive much farther in the future. Reducing pretrial detention is a solution that can work today, immediately. For county officials looking to solve a short-term jail overcrowding crisis, there's little doubt this is the quickest, least painful solution. The question really is not can they solve the problem, but are local judges and county officials willing to do so? ______________________
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2008/02/fabelo-texas-jail-growth-outst
ripping.html
Friday, February 08, 2008
Fabelo: Texas jail growth outstripping prisons
Dr. Tony Fabelo, Texas' premier criminal justice statistician, has been a busy man lately, including serving yesterday as the featured speaker at the Bexar County jail overcrowding symposium. He's put a copy of his presentation online, entitled Managing Jail Population Growth in Texas: The State and Local Challenges.
A few highlights:
Between 2000 and 2007, Texas rate of incarceration in prisons actually declined by 9.4%, while the rate of people incarcerated in county jails rose by 4.3%. (Slide 19) This was a period of major population growth and declining crime, so for jails' rate to continue to rise over that period is pretty significant.
Incarceration rates in the largest counties over the same period varied widely, indicating that the actions of local decisionmakers accounted for much of the variation in outcomes. Here are the changes in jail incarceration rates between 2000-2007 for Texas' five largest counties (Slide 20):
Harris: 15.72%
Dallas: -13.46%
Tarrant: -6.02%
Bexar: 7.54%
Travis: -15.08%
Fabelo corroborated my assessment earlier in the day that pretrial detention is driving county jail growth. While overall jail population increased 18.6% between 2000-2007, he said, the number of pretrial detainees increased 49.2% over the same period. (Slide 21)
He poin